Contact

I thought it would happen at some point in time and it did.  I better talk about it before I convince myself that it didn't happen.  I keep telling myself it's stress, I was tired, annoyed, distracted, whatever.  Nevertheless it happened.  I was doing chores and had opened the door to the milk room steps to throw out some cracked corn to the driveway ducks.  Suddenly I heard a female voice say, Maggie.  That's it.  Maggie.  It went right through me as if it came from inside me, but it was an unfamiliar voice.  There was nobody behind me.  Nobody in front of me.  The only person home was Matt who was lying on the sofa inside.  It had to be Lydia, the spirit who has haunted this farm for 200 years.  I'm a little shook up just thinking about it.  I was not afraid, or really shook up...just surprised.  I went about my business with the attitude of, okay, now it's happened.  I was glad I was not on the hay mow ladder where I might fallen off, but somehow I don't think I would have.  The voice was not malicious, just friendly but in an intense way.  Like, "I'm here."  Lydia made contact with Daryl and Kim Parkinson when they were farm sitting while I went to Mia's wedding.  They were working in the barn when they heard a light and lilting, "Hellllooo."  Each thought the other had said hello and asked did you say something?  They thought perhaps Sister Bernadette had stopped over and called in the barn door, but no, there was no one.  When I returned from the wedding Daryl's face told me something scary had happened.  He was still shook up a day later and said he is NOT going out into the barn in the dark!  I lived here for a year before Chris, old farmer who still lives next door in Lydia's house, asked me if I met Lydia.  I asked him why he waited a year to tell me and he said he had to be careful of who he tells for fear they would think he was a "crackpot."   His encounter was much more dramatic.  According to Chris he was sitting at his desk in the upstairs bedroom when he turned around to find the room transformed into another era.  There was Lydia, all suited up in her night clothes and cap, sitting up in her bed, looking at him.  He turned around, then looked back and she was gone.  Chris went downstairs to swallow some black coffee and that was the end of it.  One and only sighting in the 50 years Chris lived in that house with his family.  Sister Bernadette and Sister Grace, Chris' siblings, believe Lydia appears when something is going wrong with the farm, like the time some farm hands were smoking in the barn and were visited by a reproachful spirit.  Maybe Lydia was sensing my feeling of being overwhelmed and "touched" me to let me know I was not along.  Lydia's grave is across the road, owned by others.  I would love to visit her resting place to pay my respects....but then, Lydia is not resting.  She is here.