Several years ago, a young, intelligent, attractive, teacher from upstate New York came to teach at Honaker Elementary School. She boarded with Mr. Busic and me while she was teaching in Honaker. After leaving Honaker, she traveled extensively throughout the United States and came back to my house about ten years later to tell me the strange story about the ghost that lives in my house.

On December 17, 1983, soon after lunch, this teacher, asked permission to go upstairs to look at the picture of a beautiful Victorian lady that hangs on the wall in my bedroom.

When she came back downstairs, she sat quietly so long without speaking that I finally asked, �What is wrong? Are you ill?�

�No.� She replied, �I was just thinging about the first night I spent in this house. I never told you or Mr. Busic what happened; but when I went to bed that night I was afraid. The house was old and strange. You and Mr. Busic were different from the people I had known in New York. The moon was shining through the windows and making strange pictures on the walls and ceilings. I could not go to sleep.

Finally, a beautiful woman with long hair came into the room. She came over to the bed and crawled in beside me. I turned slightly until my head rested on her soft, long hair; I went to sleep, feeling safe and secure.

When I awakened the following morning, the woman was gone, and I could hear you and Mr. Busic downstairs. Instead of going downstairs to the bathroom you had assigned me, I decided to look for a bathroom upstairs. Just as I was going out of your bedroom into the bathroom, there on the wall before my very eyes was the picture of the lovely young woman with whom I had slept - replete with the long, soft hair and billowy chiffon gown.�

In the spring before the teacher�s visit with me in December, her baby brother, who was a senior at John Battle High School, had been killed in a car accident. His sister came home for the funeral. She finished her unusual story by telling me this strange incident:

�After I went back to New Mexico following Jackie�s death, I was bitter and could not accept the tragedy that had taken my brother from me. I was losing faith in God and all the beliefs that had once been dear to me, until one night a beautiful young lady with long, soft hair and a flowing chiffon gown came into the room where I was grading papers.

With the sweetest smile I have ever seen on a human face she said, �Jackie sent me back to talk to you. He wants you to know that he has never been as happy before, nor known such joy as he now experiences in an atmosphere of beauty and love.� Then she told me how Jackie still stands on one foot with the other foot hooked behind his heel. She told me secrets that only Jackie and I shared. Nobody else could possibly know the things she told me except Jackie and me. She finished her story with �Jackie wants you to promise never to worry about him again. He wants you to be as happy as he.� Then she left the room as mysteriously as she had appeared. A great warmth and sense of peace engulfed me. My mind was free of worry and bitterness. I went to sleep and slept soundly for the first time since Jackie�s death. And yes, Mrs. Busic, she was the same woman as the one in the picture in your room. I just had to see that picture one more time.�

Written by Georgia I. Busic

Note:

The picture of the young woman in the flowing white gown was in the house when Mr. and Mrs. Busic bought the house. They did not know who she was but always kept her hanging on the bedroom wall, where she still hangs today.

Mrs. Busic died April 4, 1997. On the morning after her death Eldridge [her son] and I were walking through her bedroom, going downstairs. On impulse, I stopped and placed my hand on the picture. The curved glass covering the picture, which had been maintained with loving care for many years, had cracked.

Janice B. Busic