Thurber House

It was supposed to be much simpler than this. An uncomplicated look at one of Columbus' historic landmarks which I'd first visited two months ago. I'd been planning to go there for some time but one thing or another had intervened, delaying my appointment until months after the original inkling. And after some research the legend of the ghost that haunted this old house would dominate the paradigm completely for once it was known there was a ghost, that was the first thing people wanted to talk about.

The Ghost

Read Thurber's account of the ghost here.

Evidently there was a man who lived there who killed himself after finding his wife with another man. The accounts tell of footsteps racing around the dining room then bolting upstairs. Most observers say that the footsteps are quite loud.



My visit was in the waning days of summer and the moment I opened the front door I knew it would be memorable. Halfway through, perhaps partway up the stairs I thought I felt the presence of my mother. She would have loved this house. It was very much like the home she grew up in as a girl in the 1920's. I could see her at the piano or in the kitchen and knew that if I could take her with me through the house she would have loved being reminded of her youth. She would have felt comfortable here. These rooms, these objects, they were from her world. I was now talking to her under my breath in the hope that she could hear me giving her a running commentary of something she would have found fascinating. Six years after her death and I'm still talking to her now and then in the hope that she'll actually listen. It was a comforting feeling and it lasted all the way out the door and into the car to make the short trip home. My visit was undermined by dead batteries in my camera which I'd hoped which to supplement this article. I would have to leave and then take my precious photos another day. That day was today.



When I walked in the front door it was a damp and drizzly day. Gone was that idlyllic late summer afternoon. Upon entering I waited for that wonderful presence which I craved, my mother's all too familiar ubiquity. It was something I'd wondered about for two months with the main question being...was it real? And as I trod upon the old creaking floorboards I could only reply "No". For I felt nothing. Not a whisper of her presence. In actuality it was probably my overactive imagination, wishing for something that could never be. It was my mind playing tricks on me and preying on the longing for times past when life was simpler, better.

There is a scene from a film called Before Sunrise that takes us on romantic journey through a night of newfound love. The places the lovers frequented were seen at night while lit with the warm twinkling of mood lighting. At the end of the film the camera re-visits these romantic places and they turn out to be quite uninspiring in the cold light of day. Did that romantic night really happen? Was it an illusion? Were we really that happy for that brief time? My second visit to Thurber House was the one seen in that cold hard light. It was the icy water splashed in the face of delusion. A waking up to reality and a reminder that we find the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. But Mom still would have loved it.