Rose came from a loving, normal family. Her parents were kind, God-fearing church goers. She was an only child and Rose had many aunts, uncles and cousins who were always at their home.
She had a normal childhood: family pets, summer vacations, birthday parties. It was a typical 1990’s suburban life.
One of her fondest early memories was when she was two or three years old. Every night after her mother would tuck her in bed her Aunt Betsy would come to her crib and sing her to sleep. She can still remember the lullaby:
“I left my baby lying here,
lying here, lying here
I left my baby lying there
To go and gather blueberries.”
Aunt Betsy was really old. To a young child, everyone is old. But Aunt Betsy was really old. Her face had deep creases like she’d been working in the sun all her life. Her hair was straggly and, to top it all off, she had a wart the size of a pencil eraser on her chin. If you looked up “wicked witch” in the encyclopedia, Aunt Betsy’s face would be there. But Aunt Betsy was no witch; she was really nice.
As Rose got a little older, Aunt Betsy stopped visiting. She never heard what happened to Aunt Betsy and, like many of our early childhood memories, Rose’s memories of Aunt Betsy vanished.
As terrific as her childhood was, and as nice as she was, Rose was a practical joker. April fool’s day was her favorite “holiday.” She did everything: Saran wrap on the toilet bowl, tape open the kitchen sink sprayer, prank phone calls, you name it. Nobody was safe from Rose! One time she even tried the flaming bag of poop at the front door prank, but no one came to the door. Boy that prank stank, literally and figuratively!
Besides being a prankster, or maybe because of it, Rose was a loser. Total loser. Pretty much everything she’d ever tried was a failure. Like the flaming poop.
In second grade she volunteered to play an angel in the school Christmas pageant and her wings fell off. The other kids and even the parents laughed at her.
In middle school she went to the spring dance and slipped on the gym floor. To the amusement of the entire school, she split her pants.
She went to her high school’s senior prom without a date. All her friends had dates. When it came time for pictures, she had no one to stand with and asked the school mascot, The Golden Elephant, to take the picture with her. It would have been fine but after the picture the Elephant’s trunk got a bit out of control and caused her an embarrassing wardrobe accident. The school principal was not amused.
And she got fired from jobs!
She worked as a Census taker for three days. She got booted because she was too embarrassed to tell her supervisor that no one wanted to talk to her and they caught her making up data.
She got fired as a bank teller because she couldn’t count money.
She got a job at the local Ford dealer to move cars around the lot. She was fired when she sideswiped a Ford Escort with an F-150 pickup.
She was fired from Walmart for telling a customer that they couldn’t double bag their groceries at self-checkout.
She got a job at her local congressman’s office answering constituent calls. She was fired after hanging up on the Governor because she didn’t believe the caller was actually the Governor.
Loser!
After this string of odd jobs, Rose was starting to worry. Her rent was coming due in a few weeks and she was broke. She needed a job. Desperately, she logged onto one of the online job sites.
After an hour of searching, she came across this listing:
Ghost Ambassadors offers ghost tours in some of the most haunted cities. We aim to deliver fun, yet honest accounts of the hauntings that are so prevalent in our community.
We are looking for tour guides! Are you passionate about our town? Always telling visitors and friends interesting things about it and are obsessed with spooky lore or true crime? Get paid to tell entertaining stories with this fun and flexible, part-time Job.
Pay is $50 to $75 per tour, plus tips
Experience: Qualified candidates should be skilled in customer service and public speaking.
Wow, she thought. I can walk people around town and prank them with phony ghost sightings and noises. I’ll make money and have a blast doing it!
She applied and got the job. During orientation she was asked if she believed in the paranormal and she told the trainer that she absolutely did not, but that her belief would not affect her job performance. She looked at the job as more entertainer than tour guide/historian and a belief in ghosts was not necessary.
To her surprise, she learned that there were a number of locations around town that experienced paranormal activity.
Supposedly the most haunted location was the Morris Mansion on First Street. The mansion was built in the late 1860s by Eli Morris and his wife Elizabeth. Eli was a wealthy merchant and pillar of the community. Elizabeth tended to their children. Unfortunately, in 1873 Elizabeth perished during the birth of their third child John. Eli mourned the loss of his wife and never remarried.
Folklore has it that Elizabeth could be seen walking in and around the mansion, looking for her child.
Rose was psyched to prank her guests. She visited the mansion during the day to see the layout of the property. Using some heavy-duty twine, she tied branches together with the end of the twine near the base of the footpath that led to the front door of the mansion. She tied more twine to the front gate so that it would slam shut when she tugged on the end of the twine.
Satisfied that she could scare the bejesus out of her guests, she left for work.
Her first tour group was eight young women who were in town for the wedding of a friend. Rose took them through the other ghost locations, and as they neared the Morris Mansion – the final stop on the tour – she built up the ghostly background of the property.
“Elizabeth Morris was a good woman who died a terrible death. She was delivering her third child and died after being in labor for three days. Now, she wanders the property, looking for her baby.”
“To this day, Elizabeth’s spirit haunts the earth.”
As they neared the front gate, Rose clandestinely tugged on the twine for the branches. The rustling branches made the young women scream.
“She roams about the mansion, coming and going freely.”
The gate slammed shut and the women screamed louder and huddled together in a scrum.
“Boo!” Rose shouted. The women screamed and then realized the whole thing was a fake. They laughed, and the group headed back to the tour’s start.
Every night for the next few weeks, Rose acted out the same script. Folks screamed in horror, and then laughed when they realized the prank.
One night she was hosting seven couples from a home and school association. The warm night was cloudy and a storm was brewing on the horizon. There were flashes of heat lightening which kind of gave a spooky look to the tour. When they reached the Morris Mansion, Rose was ready to start pulling on the twine leads to rustle the trees, but a few gusts of wind beat her to it.
As she was starting to tell the ghostly story of Elizabeth Morris, the group heard a faint voice singing a lullaby. The voice became increasingly loud and the lullaby repeated over and over:
“I left my baby lying here,
lying here, lying here
I left my baby lying there
To go and gather blueberries.I found the wee brown otter's track
Otter's track, otter's track
I found the wee brown otter's track
But ne'er a trace o' my baby, O!”
Rose’s knees became weak and she nearly fainted. It was the long-forgotten lullaby that Aunt Betsy sang to her years before; the vividness of her memory exploded from its deep recesses.
Rose was speechless; her guests were terrified. The spooky voice of Elizabeth Morris became stronger and her apparition began to coalesce.
“My Rose! My lost child. Come to me. Be with me!”
Rose felt like gagging; she could be sick at any moment. Memories of her youth swam in her head. The wind gusted in the trees; a flash of lightening lit the front of Morris Mansion.
Then, as suddenly as Aunt Betsy spoke, all was silent.
Once gripped in terror, her guests looked at her and began to laugh and clap. “How did you do that?” “This is the best ghost tour I’ve ever been on!” “I’m telling all my friends!”
Word of the tour took off and Rose’s tour was booked solid for months. Aunt Betsy didn’t appear for any other tour guide, and she didn’t appear on every one of Rose’s tours, but just enough that people booked tours hoping to see Aunt Betsy.
Rose got a raise and promotion. No longer a loser, Rose was finally a success! The local newspapers and TV stations interviewed her as “The Ghost Whisperer.”
But things weren’t as wonderful as they might seem.
Shortly after her first sighting of Aunt Betsy in front of Morris Mansion there were incidents where things in her apartment moved around. And then, little by little, she would glance dark shapes out of the corner of her eye. When she turned to look there was nothing there. But she was certain there was.
After a few months the dreams began. Nightmares. Horrible dreams of what she believed to be hell. Demons. Ghastly images of blood, gore, beheadings and mutilation.
Rose was not sleeping. She couldn’t bear the horrible dreams. She saw her doctor who prescribed some powerful drugs to help her sleep but they really didn’t provide any relief.
Exhausted, she had a minor fender bender when she dozed off driving to work.
Her life became unbearable. In her desperation to sleep she took nearly all of the drug prescribed by the doctor.
In her delirium she heard Aunt Betsy:
“I left my baby lying here,
lying here, lying here
I left my baby lying there
To go and gather blueberries.
But this time, Aunt Betsy took her hand and led her away.
Rose was given way too much Gabapentin and worked for a bunch of people that was part of the Biden Administration