Myself and my late lunch of a chicken sandwich and cottage cheese are here with another ghost story for you.

First drawing for the during-Thon prizes is coming up at 5! So don't forget to get those entries in!

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Mrs. Marshall

From: harvestmom@aol.com (HarvestMom)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: Lady of the house
Date: 27 Mar 1999 04:31:38 GMT

My mother began working for a wealthy DC family several years ago, they would come to Delaware to their beach house each summer and several times during the "off season." A year into her service with them, the lady developed liver cancer which quickly spread. She stayed at the Delaware house and requested that my mother be the one to take care of her through her last days. She was a sweet lady and Mom agreed although it broke her heart. Since I was still only 16 she couldn't be there 24 hours a day so she asked one of her sisters to come and help out. The family didn't really care for Virginia at all but tolerated her because of their love for my mother. The illness didn't take long to take the lady's life, she died in October, just a few months after learning the cancer had spread. I called Mom when I got home from school that day, as I did every day to let ehr know that yes I was ok. She told me the Mrs. had passed away in the middle of the night, she was gone by the time Mom got there that morning and she asked if I would please come down and help her clean up a little because the family was already on their way back to DC and she just didn't feel comfortable being there with just her sister. She said there had been tension between the family and Virginia before they left but no one had mentioned why. I had a friend drive me down and helped Mom do the "end of season" cleaning because the family would not be returning until the spring. As we were leaving, Mom said she wanted to make sure all the doors were locked so she was going to check the downstairs doors at each end. I stood by the main entrance at the foot of the stairs (in the foyer) waiting. Virginia came down the stairs and placed some of her belongings on the table that sat there and then she placed a mug there that I knew did not belong to her but she intended to take it with her. I watched as the mug appeared to be picked up and thrown down to the floor. It was no where near the edge of the table and I wasn't close enough to the table to have caused that to happen. In my heart I believe Mrs. Marshall was having her "final say" to Virginia, letting her know that she couldn't get away with taking anything from the house. Mom came out to see what had happened and I told her, she said that Virginia should never have tried to take anything, no matter how small and she deserved it. I agree 100% yes these were weathly people whom you'd think to be snobs but the truth is that they'd have given you the shirt off their backs if you'd asked
them.

Mom continued to work for them for years after, caring for the man each time he came down and making sure things were in order when his adult children came to visit. Each day she would say she felt the Mrs. nearby and it made me a little uneasy going there to help out on weekends that there would be a full house. I never felt her until the end of the summer when I was cleaning the pool furniture for storage. I felt as though I were being watched and I looked all around and noticed her standing in the window of her dressing room, just as she had the first season we were there. (After that first time she said it impressed her how much time I put into making sure the pool furniture was perfectly white before I got it ready for storage.) She was smiling when I saw her there, and she nodded to me, I smiled and waved to her thinking to myself that if anyone looked and didn't see her there they'd surely think I'd flipped waving at an empty window but I didn't really care because I hadn't gotten the chance to say goodbye to Mrs. Marshall and it was as if she knew that this would be my last season there and she didn't want to miss her chance to say goodbye to me. It was really neat.