Weeks later, after nights filled with the metallic clanging of a cowbell that no one could explain, I decided to pay closer attention — to be more vigilant. This story was like a lace curtain, full of loose threads, and I was trying to mend the pieces together. That’s when the memories began to surface, things I had long dismissed.
I’ve started to hate the scientific community. Not because I’m irrational, but because it forces us to dismiss what we can’t explain.
It wasn’t until my fifties that I began to truly think about this. During a ghost hunt in Gettysburg, the woman leading the event handed each of us a small bag of investigative equipment : a REM pod, a recorder, a scanner, and a few other tools. Before we started, she played clips from past paranormal investigations, laughing as she pointed out how often people ignored clear signs: flashlights flickering on and off, knocks echoing through the dark, shadows moving where no one should be.
It struck me that maybe we don’t fail to see these things , maybe we subconsciously filter them out, because they don’t fit within the narrow comfort of what we call science. So i began to mend some of the threads of the lace together.
One of those threads became Jinny.
The street I lived on was a strange blend of eras. A handful of historic homes, centuries old, their wood darkened and worn with age, surrounded by smaller houses that had sprung up in the 1950s when the old land was subdivided. MIne was one of the modest newer homes but right across the street from my house sat a sprawling Italian Colonial, more than 150 years old. It was a stately, corner-lot home with wide porches, faded shutters, and tall arched windows that seemed to hold secrets behind the glass. The property stretched over several acres of wooded land, and even in daylight, there was something unsettling about the way the trees leaned toward the house, as if they were whispering to it. A well sat a few feet from the side door and a large pond complete with Canada Geese and Snapping turtles lay at the back of the property. The remnants of an old pool , now filled with debris, and surrounded by fencing and overgrown ivy completed the creepiness of the homestead.
This night, years before the cowbell torture, I took my two dogs at the time, for their usual walk. Abbie, my little Shih Tzu, was a “Look at me!” kind of dog, friendly, eager, desperate for attention from anyone passing by, pulling incessantly until pet. Arthur, my stocky pug, was her opposite , a “Stoic , calm dog” . The kind of dog who was just happy to walk and mind his own business.
I remember that night clearly. It was a balmy summer evening, the kind of night when the air feels thick and sweet, and the sky glows blue before fading to indigo, what I always called the blue hour. I crossed the street with the dogs, preferring that side for its lack of lawns and the privacy of the woods surrounding the old home.
As I stopped to let them sniff, I heard something. A woman’s voice , humming softly, almost like a lullaby.
I turned toward the woods. The sound drifted through the trees, low and mournful, the melody broken by the rustle of leaves. And then I saw her.
She was of average height, pale-faced, her hair pulled back in what might have been a bun. I don’t remember her clothes, only her ankles ; pale and above a pair of plain black shoes. It’s strange what the mind chooses to remember. Perhaps that too, was part of the plan.
The house had been vacant and for sale at the time, which made her presence even more unsettling. She moved slowly, weaving through the trees, her humming fading in and out with her steps.
Just then, my neighbor Cathleen spotted me and shouted through her open screen door,
“Are you walking? Hold on ! Let me get Cassie’s leash!”
Within seconds, she came hurrying down her stoop, dragging Cassie, her overweight, perpetually grumpy beagle.
Cassie hated everyone, yet tolerated my dogs as long as we kept a respectful distance, an odd perpetual truce. When she approached I pointed out what I saw,
“There’s someone on the Trent’s property,” I strategically pointed with my chin towards the woods where she stood. “Maybe the house was sold?” I added.
Cathleen frowned, glancing at the for-sale sign still standing in the yard.
“What do you mean?”
“Look,” I whispered , motioning once again, this time with my eyes, towards the woods. “There’s a woman walking there. Listen — can’t you hear her singing?”
Cathleen squinted into the trees, puzzled. “Hear what?”
The humming stopped. Just like that.; gone, and the woods fell silent.
We walked up the street and I tried to explain what I’d seen, but Cathleen just dismissed it,
“Oh, you’re always seeing weird stuff.”
So, I joined the program and let it go.
But as we walked, something gnawed at me. Neither of the dogs, not Abbie, my “love me” Shitzhu, nor Cassie, the “kill you” Beagle had reacted. They hadn’t pulled, barked, growled, or even pricked their ears. It was as if they hadn’t seen her at all.
Time passed, it may have been a year or more, and that night became just another half-remembered story ; a torn edge of lace. But one afternoon, I found myself sitting on the porch with Martha, an elderly neighbor in her nineties who had lived on the street her entire life. She had sparse dyed, red hair set in a style from the 1950s, a toothless grin, but a mind clear as glass. She loved to talk about “the old days.” Which was fine for me, because I loved hearing about them.
Martha lived across from that same large house, but since it sat on a corner lot, she was on the adjacent street. She nodded her head as she gazed at The Italian Colonial which you could tell had once been beautiful, but now its paint was peeling and ivy clawed at the clapboard.
“Poor Jinny would be turning in her grave if she saw that house now,” Martha said, fanning herself with a newspaper.
That was the first time I’d heard the name.
“Who was Jinny?” I asked.
The old woman looked toward the house on the corner lot. It had been sold a few years earlier and the new owners had not kept up with it. It appeared to be dying in its own right, cracked window panes, drooping molding, shingles laying on the floor and chipping paint. The grass was waste high and small seedlings were sprouting from the rain gutters.
“Jinny would be rolling in her grave.” She repeated.
“What happened?” I asked again,
Her eyes softened behind thin, watery lids and her arthritic hands trembled slightly as she folded them in her lap , fingers bent and swollen from age, the knuckles gnarled and blue-veined.
“She lived there years ago,” Martha began, her voice thin but steady. “Sweet woman. Her husband abandoned her, but she stayed. She loved the neighborhood kids. Used to throw pool parties, bake cookies, hand out lemonade in the summer. Then she got very sick. Very sick. I mean we all chipped in to help but she never got over Alan”
She paused, staring across the street as if she could still see those sunlit afternoons. Her lips pressed together, and her voice softened. “Only 15.”
She nodded slowly, her gaze unfocused now, her mind drifting to a sad, faraway place.
“Alan?” I asked.
She blinked and nodded again, as if replaying the memory.
“Oh, such a sad story,” she whispered. “He stole his father’s car one night, during a bad storm. Roads were slick. He lost control and crashed right into that tree.”
She pointed, her hand trembling, and I realized she was pointing to a tree which stood in front of my house.
“Oh I remember that night. Bad storm. Jinny came running out when she heard the crash,” Martha said. “Held him in her arms right there on the road. But he was already gone.” Her voice lowered, and the words came out like a sigh. “Some of the neighbors said she never really understood what had happened. That she just sat there, rocking him… humming in the rain.”Her voice faltered. The cicadas seemed to quiet. Her words hung heavy in the thick summer air and that was how I learned about Jinny, the woman who wandered the woods, humming to herself on quiet summer nights.
Haunted and Waiting 
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