Long Branch, Maple Gap, VA

by Diane
(USA)

I once lived in a house on Long Branch located in Maple Gap, Virginia. It was an old board type house. It had gray tar paper type siding. It was on a setting that was close to the branch that ran along the road way. You had to cross a little wooden bridge to get to it. It had a small kitchen with a back door to the outside. It had a living room with a large bed room to one side and a small bedroom to the opposite side of the wall. The small bedroom had several windows facing out toward the bridge. I slept in the room with my husband. My children had the other bedrooms. I was nearest the windows. I had a night stand at the head of my bed. If I stood up, I was beside the windows. I had to walk alongside the bed, across by the foot of the bed, and there was the door to the livingroom. Just through the doorway, we had a coal stove. The small bedroom had a light that had a pull string to turn it on and off. The light string hung just above the center of the bed. Every night, we'd go to bed. Every morning at 2:15 a.m, I was awakened. At first, I felt the quilt on my bed be tugged. I thought it was my husband. So, I just tugged back and held the cover hard as I could. I fussed about him taking all the cover. He claimed he never felt the cover tugged. I turned over and went to sleep.It went on like this for a week or so. Then, one night, when I felt the tug of the cover, I pulled and the cover was pulled back. I pulled and once again the cover was pulled, but, with more force. I turned over and fussed at my husband and told him, I'd just get up for a while if he was going to be like that. Of course, he denied pulling the covers and feeling the tug itself he said he didn't feel it. I knew it was him.I turned back over to go to sleep..but, just as I looked toward the doorway, I saw an old man standing there. He had on bib overalls and a long sleeve undershirt, the kind of longhandles that people used to wear. I saw him staring hard right out the window. It startled me. The man came around the bed, to my side. He stopped in front of the windows, pulled out a pocket watch on a chain and looked at it and stared out the window a few minutes. I kept still with the covers pulled up to just below my eyes and held it very tightly. After staring out the window for a long while, the man walked toward the night stand and removed his watch and layed it on the night stand by my side of the bed. He turned and got hold of the cover and started to pull it back. He tugged, and I held on tight.He tugged some more and when I didn't let go, he looked confused. So I jumped up and went across the bed and I pulled the light chain as I got up and I shoved my husband and told him about the man.He didn't see him.And, he claimed he never pulled the cover.He accused me of pulling on the cover..That made me mad. So I went into the living room. It was winter then, and, I opened the coal stove and poked up the fire. I went and checked on my babies, and, they were sound asleep. I let the house warm up for about an hour, then I closed the draft of

the stove. I went back to bed and went to sleep. Well, the next night, I experienced the same thing. I know it was always at 2:15 a.m. because of the small clock I kept by my bed on the night stand. This time, when the old man came he would stand in the bedroom doorway for a few minutes and look out toward the window. He then proceeded to walk by the foot of the bed, and, take his watch from his pocket and look out the window. After a few minutes, he came up alongside my bed and layed the watch on the night stand. He then tugged on the quilt .He kept pulling the quilt, I tugged back and when I did, the quilt was jerked completely off the bed with such a force that the quilt flew in the air and landed in the floor at the foot of the bed. Needless to say, I made a leap toward the middle of the bed grabbing the light chain as I went..When the light came on, the man disappeared!..My husband calmed me and told me it was just a dream. I decided to try to lay back down. I turned the light off and instantly the man appeared again. My husband couldn't see him, so I jerked the light string back on and ran into the living room.. My husband said he never saw the man! He did admit to finally feeling the jerk of the covers..But, he didn't see the man!..I had this occur regularly and I soon found out that if I had the light on, the man would disappear. If I turned it off he would reappear. But, if I waited until after 3:00 a.m., then turned off the light, the man wouldn't reappear that night..Needless to say, I kept the light on during that time afterward..My husband's aunt used to live in that house. She said her and her husband wouldn't sleep in the small bedroom, because she always heard noises in there and got a bad feeling. They just kept the door to it shut and fastened. When I told her what the man I saw looked like, and what the man did, she told me something. She said that there were some of the older kin people of theirs that used to live in house. She said that the man I had seen had died. She told me that the man's wife had went somewhere to visit and something happened to make her late to return. When she had not returned late into the evening he was worried and he had been watching for her. Said, he would stand looking out the windows waiting. And, after it got on into the night, that the man had went to the windows to look one last time, before, laying his watch on the night stand and deciding to go on to bed. He died before his wife returned. When she got there, that is where she found him. He apparently had his bed in the room as the same as we had including a night stand beside it. As close ad we can figure, his spirit must have thought I was in his bed and shouldn't have been there. He was trying to lay down and I made him angry by being there. She had a photo of him in a box she kept under her bed!..She went and got it and it was indeed the man I saw!..The old house was sold now. It was torn down and a new home was placed further up above it's location..I don't know if the new owner's have had any nightly visits or not...I hope his soul now rests in peace..But, who can say for sure?..