Ghosts get lonely, too

My mother and Olivia have been in town for the last few days to watch AJ’s little league tournament. I’m not eating the sour grapes, but there was a massive abuse of the “call up” system and some of the teams had some of their not so wonderful players go on vacation so they could call up major league players from the 9-10 teams. This resulted in a highly unbalanced tournament that was an awful pain to watch. This led to us having copious amounts of free time this weekend.

One of the things my mother was interested in was going on a ghost tour of Franklin. In case you are unaware, Franklin Tennessee has the title of one of the most haunted cities in the United States. I don’t necessarily believe in those things nor am I saying I’ve seen anything, but the tours offer some interesting insight into the city. I was actually really excited to go walk around my town and hear what the guide had to say. I’ve frequently seen guides dressed up in the turn of the century gear and thought it was a nice diversion.

It was perfectly lovely to watch people in my group fall in love with my town. It is no secret that I love where I live. I’ve lived in Nashville, moved away, and then become so homesick for it that I made myself miserable. It’s not that I didn’t like where I was when I was away because the people I was living near were some of the best. Rather, it just wasn’t my home. I didn’t grow up in Nashville or Franklin. I grew up in the Midwest. However, this has become my home. The people are friendly. I get my four seasons, but my winter is super short (and I like it that way). It’s got city life, when I want it, but the country is less than a block away from my house. My drive to work is almost completely lined with trees.

On the tour, the guide was telling us about the houses and the Civil War and I watched my mom peek around the houses, tiptoe her way up to windows and move apprehensively away from the rocking chair where she’d just been seated after hearing a particularly good story. The “clairvoyant” in our group, who was “only a little clairvoyant” took in the stories with an open jaw and wide eyes. The girls visiting from Omaha giggled but stayed quiet the whole time. Everyone was enraptured with the history of our town and it’s rare to get that kind of reaction when you are at historical sites.

At the first house, the guide was telling us about some of the stories she’d heard about the place. She’d mentioned that one of the owners had felt like a ghost was spooning him one night so he’d rolled over and “flattened” the ghost to get rid of it. I looked at my sister and wryly said, “Have some empathy. Ghosts get lonely, too.” She laughed and while we weren’t scared, it set the tone for the rest of the night.

Ghosts get lonely, too, and so do people. My sister plans to attend Belmont in Nashville in two years. I’ve missed living near her. Maybe my mother will move at some point as well. There are lots of other ghost tours in this area…we have lots of work to do here.