The Green House
By Carrie Leber

I suppose if I really looked back, wandered through my adolescence with a fine toothed comb, I could probably find a few instances in which spirits had been trying to get my attention.

After all, stories about the house I grew up in abounded in my sleepy backwater hometown. The previous owner, Mr. Buck, had committed suicide in the garage shortly after my parents closed on the home. He'd been a mason and had created remarkable flagstone walls, brick moon-gates, and patios throughout the property. Chatter went around that our house was rife with ghosts. But if Mr. Buck's spirit lingered at all to admire the stone slabs he'd lovingly laid in life, the feeling to us was that of a guardian angel.

Growing up with a kindly spirit hovering over your shoulder - you do take in stride things that might cause others hearts to skip a beat. Searching for a stray set of keys and then having them drop from thin air onto the floor. Falling from a tree and being mystically caught in mid-air before hitting the ground.

But these were subtle tricks of the mind - did they happen? It would be easy to pretend I imagined them. After all, I'd never actually seen Mr. Buck that I remember. No misty apparitions or pleading voices at the midnight hour ever materialized to my recollection.

Years later I moved into a cottage on Mount Tamalpais in Mill Valley - it was a converted potting shed behind the main house on the property. Perched high on a steep incline with cyprus, fir and pine all around - it had the feeling of a tree house. Off the kitchen and through a sliding glass door was a generous deck built over a terraced garden. It was very quiet and private - except for lights from the main house - at night it was completely pitch black and you could barely make out whispers of light from neighboring houses.

Across a fairly narrow plank that led from the deck to a crunchy pebble path, you could follow steps cut into the hillside down into the garden. When I first moved in, a few beleaguered plants straggled out of the ground, waging a losing war with the ivy that had evidently been encroaching on everything for some time. It took a few weekends to pull back the wildness and find the tracings of what had been before.

Someone had taken great care to create well cultivated beds - perfect for an idyllic mountain garden. Antique roses and a few of their cousins were resuscitated with pruning and fertilizer. I also put in Impatiens and Chrysanthemums, ferns and herbs - a bird bath and a few chairs for sitting and drinking it all in. To be honest it was the first garden that was really mine and I loved it.

While I admired my work on my private mountain plot, apparently someone else was taking great pleasure in its rehabilitation as much as I was.

One evening - a Saturday in early Fall - I was sitting doing some work at my desk. In front of me was a large picture window- it was a very dark night and looking out I could only make out the outline of trees against a star filled sky. I was gazing out for a moment, cultivating some thought, and getting ready to turn back to the pages in front of me, when a very unusual sight came into view.

A woman, about 26, I'd say - started down the path from the driveway into the garden. I've told you that this pebble path was pretty crunchy and to walk across it silently wasn't possible. Nor was wandering under a motion sensor spotlight without triggering it on - but that's exactly what happened. She had long red hair and was wearing brown pants and a dark blouse - but merely describing those colors doesn't accurately depict what she looked like. It was much like seeing a hologram radiating out in front of you - one in which every color is brilliantly prismatic - a halo of light encircled her body - one that was not projected from the outside - but emanated from within.

She ambled along towards the deck - of course I stood - amazed, shocked, mouth open. She looked at me and smiled gently - then traveled across the plank and out of view. I ran to the sliding glass door to see her. By this time she should have been at the door - or at least on the deck - there wasn't anywhere else to go. She was gone. Believe me when I tell you - when you see a spirit - at least like that one - there's no mistaking it.

The next day I talked with Wendy who owned the property and lived in the front house with her husband and two dogs. I asked her if she'd come back at all the previous night - I mean I could have been imagining things. No - Wendy hadn't come back, but the description of the woman did seem to jostle something in her memory.

Yes, the long red hair, the attachment to the cottage, the gentle smile - all attributes of someone who'd lived on the property for more than 30 years and had died in the house before Wendy and her husband had purchased it. Mrs. Green (name has been changed) in life had been an avid gardner and the cottage that I was living in had been her greenhouse and potting shed - a spot where she'd spent many happy hours. Her garden had been her refuge and a great source of joy - until she was no longer able to care for it. Later, when she was housebound after a stroke, she had watched in dismay as the ivy took over what she had worked so hard to create. She passed away some time in the 1950's. This according to the elderly neighbors who remembered stories about her.

I suppose she came by to let me know she was happy that someone had rejuvenated her space - and while I never regarded her as a "ghost" nor ever saw her again, her spirit did seem to remain as a comforting, nurturing force all the years I lived in that house.

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