July 12, 2006
Ghostly Gray Cat
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Barrett Ravenhurst, Ph.D., Jim Thorpe,
Pennsylvania, 1987 to present
I have owned the largest New Age shop in northeastern Pennsylvania,
The Emporium of Curious Goods, for the past 19 years. For 16 of those
years I lived in an upstairs apartment until I bought a 22-room
Victorian mansion in the next town. Quite frequently during the
apartment living, and still to this day downstairs in the shop, I see a
large gray cat! Usually out of the corner of your eye, but then it
vanishes when you look directly at it. I'm not the only one to see it.
Many customers over the years have said things like, "You know you're
not alone in here," or they'll just outright tell me they saw a big,
gray cat which vanished before their eyes! One lady recently told me she
saw it lying on a counter and went over to pet it, thinking it was real,
and it vanished before she reached it.
Just a few months ago I was behind the counter and four teenage boys
were looking at books in the front of the shop. I heard the familiar cat
call, "puss, puss, puss, puss," come from one of them. I looked up to
see what was going on and they called back to me, "Hey, do you know you
have a cat out here?" I asked them what it looked like and where it was.
They told me it was a big, gray cat and had walked around the corner of
the counter. Now, the counter in question is against the wall -- so if
it walked around the corner it had to vanish into the wall! When they
looked for it again, they couldn't find it.
My partner once saw a curtain (hanging at a door in a passageway)
flip up at the bottom and then lower again just as if an invisible
animal had walked under it. Both one of my clerks and I have actually
felt a cat rub up against our leg as we sit behind the counter.
We don't know where it came from, but we nicknamed it, "Spooky" and
when we come in in the morning and find an item thrown off a shelf and
broken on the floor, we always say, "Well, Spooky was on the prowl
overnight again!"
One odd thing is the fact that the mansion I bought was the site of a
suicide years ago. It belonged to a doctor and his wife committed
suicide in the carriage house still on the property. She closed the
door, turned the car on, and was found many hours later. There are many
rumors I've heard as to why, but I do not know if any of them are true.
But the ending of this story is that it is the most quiet house I've
ever lived in. No activity at all, no feelings, no vibes, no nothing. I
have five cats and at times they seem to follow with their eyes
something moving across a room or up a wall, but at the same time I
experience nothing.
The only odd thing concerning the cats is the fact that my oldest cat
(which incidentally was gray) died of old age problems a few years ago
in the house. I buried him under the kitchen window area outside in a
large patch of ivy. This has now overgrown the grave site, but all the
cats at various time sit on the kitchen windowsill and just stare down
at the spot where Salazar is buried. Sometimes their tails twitch and
their heads move back and forth as if they are following something
outside. I've even gone out to look when this happens and there is never
anything there (at least I can't see it).....but they definitely see and
watch something.
It seems strange to me that a house from 1895 which probably had many
deaths there over 100 years, plus a suicide, only manifests a recently
deceased cat.
