A Ghost Story. A True Story.
The mills were built of the local blue granite. The stones could sweat a moody indigo in the right kind of light and that morning’s light was just right. It was raining more than snowing the days before, and the small-shouldered river some called a creek spoke in storm rushed phrases. The pathway was dank, mud ridden, and I appreciated how my body warmed in the repeated steps through the softer places.
A fog heavy soaked the tops of the Mill’s many stone ruins. The long walk to the center of the historic acreage was familiar. The passage shabbily dressed in the mood of the season. Winter. A winter that crept through marrow. I treaded a footpath established in the early nineteenth century, as a company was built and then expanded that would establish both family and industry as empire. The Mill was not one mill, but many. Small stone structures carefully separated along the banks of the Brandywine.
The water powered machines mixed black powder. Black powder during the age of American expansion and power. The work’s volatile nature meant production needed to spread along many acres, ensuring accidents wouldn’t spread spark and flame through the entire factory. The stone ruins slant-faced towards the river. Designed to propel explosive mistakes over the water. The uniformity of the mills in a row always felt ominous to view. Conveying an unstoppable power of the many.
Now a preserved historic sight and museum, my interpretive station on this day was deep inside the property. I always walked. Parked in the main lot to enjoy the quiet of a long stroll through the towering hardwoods and history.
Interpreting at the Mill was my professional pleasure. This winter morning, I was walking into my fourth year with the institution. It wasn’t living history. We didn’t take on personas, become specific characters, or role-play daily scenarios. But we dressed in appropriate respect to the workers. To their roles in the Industrial Revolution. I wore thick denim, a dark stained leather jacket, and my black leather flat cap. By no means historically accurate, though my outfit once frightened a visitor to shallow scream as my movement on a bench revealed I wasn’t the exhibit mannequin she had believed.
Past halfway came the Millwright Shop. At the center of that part of the grounds, the pathway narrowed through a row of mills dating to earlier times. The shallowing of the river rose the sound of whitewater surging through the rock-strewn bed. A pair of Canadian Geese murmured as they swam side by side along the green glass top of mill-race water. Their gentle wake shimmering chevrons.
I was looking forward to a busy day. The typical schedule mapped a steady flow of school groups, adult bus tours, and walk-in visitors every hour. My mind was busy with conceptualizing my routine. And I started to think about lunch. A comfortable late morning gap brought a chance to grab a favorite sandwich from the museum café.
And then a man appeared. A kind of a man.
On the pathway. Perhaps 50 yards ahead. He had stepped from the wooden bridge crossing the race and I thought it odd I did not see him on the bridge. I had not heard the weighted steps of his boots. Even soft soled shoes echoed a distinct clunk on the footbridges.
He appeared in a clear suddenness. Then turned upriver. His clothes were decidedly dark. Roughhewn britches with a dirty dark jacket falling below his waist. I could see his heavy boots. Blacker than black his boots. Shaped simply. Seeming out of time. His dark hat crumpled in a manner that invited imagery of a fisherman or old-time dockworker.
The years at the Mill made me familiar with the ground crew, the exhibit team, the arborist and assistants. I could recognize anyone from this distance. Know them immediately by name. And they were as familiar with me. It was routine to acknowledge with a wave. A shout of good morning. Or the norm of pausing for chit-chat about the weather, staff gossip, gripes and swipes about the higher ups.
This man wasn’t the norm. I did not recognize this man. The next moments felt strangely suspended.
The man appeared to walk normally yet covered a large number of yards in a breath. Then he turned towards the river and disappeared from view behind the next roll-mill buildings. I figured I would say hello as I made my way past the footbridge, now following in his foot tracks.
But there were no tracks.
And there was no man.
I goose fleshed. Froze my steps. Turned my head to confirm the noticeable marks my weight had been leaving in the rain softened earth. As I looked ahead, I realized how many more steps were needed to reach the far side of the mills. I had just watched a man cover this distance in what appeared a few steps. A crow’s call scared me to pulse my back and shoulders. I noticed the sound of my own breath above the rush of the Brandywine’s banter.
I walked closer to the mill.
“Hello?”
A questioning tone. Not a greeting. On edge with risen hairs, I cautiously turned the blue-stone corner. These mills, like most of the ruins, were not landscaped for visitors. I stepped through the grasses and weeds, carefully maneuvering to see the riverbank. There was no man, nor anything to be mistaken for a man.
Suddenly I feared this wasn’t anything odd, but an indigent soul, and I was about to discover him and others bedding down within the ruins’ walls. I crawled through the nooks and shadowed secret places far from public view. Exploring the mill front only revealed damp overgrowth. I grew more wary of the snakes and wolf spiders that preferred these untreaded places.
I re-played what I had seen.
Doubt and certainty hammered in opposition. Maybe the fog of my imagination mixed with the strange humid cloud. Nudged my mind’s eye to see what I had pictured a thousand times. Interpreting the Industrial Revolution brought years of study about the workers. This was a time of the hardest of labors and hardships. Sun-up to sun-down toil. Small wages in giant places of machinery and danger.
I had crept through the ruins, dug in the library archives, reviewed hundreds of nineteenth century photographs. Few candid shots of workers existed. The captures usually of laborers long standing, waiting for the camera’s exposure to finish. Each revealed overwhelming details of their time.
The more I walked the Mill, taught the Mill, the more I filled in those images of those who back carried the enormous danger of their time.
Maybe it got the best of me that morning.
Or maybe I did see him. The Irishman.
The clothes. The hat. Those black boots. It looked right for the time. The time the Irish were here. The Irish were hated in America. The lowest form of immigrant. But some companies hired them. Understood their work would bring profits. The Mill hired them. And where the Irish were accepted, many of them arrived. A number of their descendants still lived in town.
A ghost could have been trapped. Still running his mill. An endless loop of labor repeating. A spirit might be here by choice. The work his pride. Defining ability and skill. And so, he stays. Continuing what makes him whole.
Residual energy is a common theory in museums like this one. There were so many souls, so much energy expended in the creation of work, money, town, and tradition. A bit of that energy may have moved before me that morning. As it had always moved before me. For some reason, on this morning, I was privileged to see it.
We didn’t talk about ghosts at the museum. Paranormal legends were never part of our training nor included in our interpretation. Other than certain guides fabricating a headless powderman tale to younger groups around Halloween, ghost stories were kept amongst ourselves. I kept my story to myself. For a while.
When sharing my experience with a trusted friend, a fellow educator, she responded with a clear voice. Told me that from the deepness within my eyes, and the deeper tone of my telling, that I, without doubt, had not imagined what I saw.
Had not imagined him at all.
The Irishman.
1. Cover photo: DuPont Powder Mill, National Park Service photo, Wikimedia.
2. The Author interpreting the work of the Irishmen, Hagley Museum, Jeanne Stozek photo, taken near the time of the story.
3. The Author in front of photo panels of the Irishmen, Hagley Museum, Jeanne Stozek photo, taken near the time of the story.
© Copyright William Hazel, 2024
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