Yet the powerful feeling kept Lisa from paying much attention to the tour lecture. She slipped away from the group and went outside to the back area to walk around.
"I began a silent conversation in my mind with this presence," Lisa says. "I do this because I know they are there and I want them to know that I know they exist on another level of frequency. I do believe in some way this makes them more comfortable in the attempt to communicate with us. I proceeded to ask this presence for permission to take a few photographs."
The Spirit Obliges
Lisa took five panoramic photos with a conventional film camera. She rushed to develop the film, certain that she had captured something extraordinary. To her disappointment, however, she saw nothing. But some time after she returned home from her trip, she began to experience a strong compulsion to reexamine the photos, as if something or someone was telling her to do so.
"So I did. And there he was, right below the sign that marks Nathanial Hawthorne's birthplace. In one of the photos was an image that appeared to be a little boy. I needed to find out:
- Who was this little boy and why did he come to me?
- Why did he appear in the photo? Because he wanted to be seen? But why?
- What keeps his spirit trapped at this young age at the House of the Seven Gables?”
In her search for answers, Lisa made some astonishing discoveries. Lisa went to her local library to research Hawthorne.
Julian
"The first book I pulled off the shelf was Twenty Days with Julian & Little Bunny by Papa, a book Nathaniel wrote about the twenty days he spent alone with his five-year-old son and his pet rabbit when they were moving out of Salem to New Hampshire. When I first glanced at the cover, chills went down my spine. It was as if I was looking right through his eyes into his soul, the sadness in this child. He also appears to carry the look of an old soul."
The resemblance between the portrait of Julian on the cover of the book and the ghost child in Lisa's photograph (see comparison) is astonishing and unmistakable. So Lisa at first thought the ghost to be that of Julian. But Julian Hawthorne did not die at a young age; he grew up to be an author in his own right and lived well into his eighties.
"I am beginning to believe this might be Nathaniel Hawthorne himself at this young age of four years old," Lisa theorizes. But how could this be since, obviously, Nathaniel lived to be an adult? Why would his ghost appear as a young child?
Next page > Lisa Finds Some Answers
