WHEN FURNITURE ATTACKS!!

TRUE STORIES OF GHOSTLY ENCOUNTERS

WITH POSSESSED POSSESSIONS!

“God save the sinful soul that is hiding!”

                                                Old Manx Saying

A long stretch of bad luck that began some years ago in a New Orleans home eventually brought suspicion on a Victorian-era infant’s coffin.

Simply constructed, from good maple wood, the coffin’s exterior is plain and ornamented only with a raised cross made of the same wood and fixed to the lid, and wooden handles on either side. Inside, the coffin is lined in worn purple velvet; the interior of the lid contains a mirror that somehow broke over the years, but was pieced back in place by a previous owner. This mirror provided the only clue to the real purpose of the coffin: It had been used, very likely for years, as the temporary repository of dead children while a mortuary photographer did his work.

The coffin’s unsavory reputation as an object of ill-fortune dated from the time the matron of a local family obtained it from a descendant of the photographer. The new owner kept it as a curio for many – apparently – uneventful years. When this matron eventually died, the coffin passed into (or through) the possession of her various children, each of whom came to regret bringing the object into their homes.

One son who had it experienced unexplained knockings and objects flying off furnishings in the room where the coffin was kept. When his sister relieved him of the heirloom she reported hearing the sound of babies crying and the pattering of feet around the coffin. When another sister expressed interest in taking the coffin, it was quickly surrendered, and it is apparently with this woman that the object’s more sinister effects began to manifest. Almost as soon as she brought it into her home, the woman’s husband lost his job, her teenage son was drafted into the Vietnam conflict, and a daughter barely survived a car accident in which, alone in the car, she had plowed off the road and into a giant oak tree. All these incidents were in addition to troublesome knockings and whispering that seemed to center around the infant’s coffin. Soon, it was relegated to a corner of the attic, but the misfortune continued and did not abate until the coffin was removed from the house, into the possession of a distant cousin.

The coffin continued to fulminate evil in its new home, bringing years of misfortune to the unsuspecting owner, who had been told nothing of the curio’s unsavory history. The new owner, who used the coffin as part of a Victorian decorating scheme, became the brunt of a new series of misfortunes experiencing everything from failed relationships to loss of her home. Unwittingly, the woman took the coffin to her new home; the bad luck continued until a psychic friend paid a visit and fixed on the thing as the source of the problems. Once again, the coffin passed to a new owner who, as it happens, is also a magical practitioner familiar with how to protect himself from the negative effects of the obviously cursed item. But the evil of the coffin has not been removed; as the current owner warns, it is only lying dormant.

“If the soul of the dead be a lost soul it knows its doom … Thus it is that the spirit of an evil man cannot stay and yet dare not go; and so it strives to hide itself in secret places anywhere …”

Old Manx Folk Belief

Furnishings which become the objects of unexplained misfortune and supernatural disturbances are often reported from various places the world over. Clocks, bed frames, chairs, statuary, walking sticks – an almost-endless variety of mundane objects can become the focus of terror, even danger, and have even reportedly held generations of families “hostage” to a supernatural will. Many people believe, as the folklore of the Isle of Man above illustrates, that ordinary objects can, and often do, become the sanctuary of ruined spirits or other, possibly inhuman entities. These spirits can remain with the object forever or until it is destroyed, especially if the attachment is fueled by a spirit’s fear of passing on through the final death process. These spirits can create supernatural mayhem and, worse, draw the attention of other spirits whose accumulated malevolence can taint the object over lifetimes.

Until recently a friend had just such an object in her possession.

In the history of the New Orleans funeral and mortuary business the Ranson name looms large. At the turn of the century the Ranson family owned and operated several funeral homes across the New Orleans area. In the early twentieth century, however, the family sold their interest in several homes, one of which is the famous Jacob Schoen and Sons home on Canal Street.

The Schoen funeral home is one of few such places that can readily be called “beautiful”. Its sprawling rooms, spacious hallways, and Victorian accents such as gilded ceiling-to-floor mirrors, damask settees, and ornate jardinières give one the feeling of having stepped back into time. In the peaceful, dimly-lit viewing rooms, polished solid wood blocks stand ready to support the coffin; once this is in place, a wooden acolyte bench (commonly called a “kneeler”) is provided where mourners and visitors kneel to say prayers beside the dead.

When the Schoen family took over operations of the home from the Ranson family they received almost all the property, inventory, and furnishings with the purchase, which allowed the Schoens to provide uninterrupted service to the community immediately after the sale. However, a few specific items were taken from the home by members of the Ranson family; an old acolyte bench which had served at the coffin of a Ranson family patriarch was one such item.

It is a plain, ordinary acolyte’s kneeler constructed of a dark, common wood; a cushioned strip covered in dated red vinyl supports the knees; a hinged lid opens at the elbows to receive missals or prayer books. In appearance, there is nothing exceptional about the bench; it looks just like any other that one might see in a funeral home or in a church. But something about it was special enough for the Ranson sisters to wish to keep it – and they did so, for years.

The Ranson sisters – there were three – would be considered eccentric even by today’s standards. They lived together in a roomy brick home in the Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans where they enjoyed an independent lifestyle, thanks to the hard work and accumulated worth of their father and other family who had helped develop the New Orleans mortuary business. Gardeners attended the meticulously-kept lawns, a cook and housekeeper made certain that the needs of the sisters were met, and soon the home became a sanctuary to the sisters, one from which they rarely emerged.

The acolyte bench went into this sanctuary and remained there as one by one the sisters grew old, lost their wits, and eventually died. Management of their affairs and dispersal of their estate fell to a nephew, Sonny, who was almost overwhelmed by the task. In their many years of seclusion the sisters had amassed a treasure trove of valuable antiques and worthless junk. Fine 17th century furnishings strove to exist alongside piles of newspapers and magazines; beautiful, one-of-a-kind cut crystal chandeliers, some of which came from the finest shops of New Orleans, gazed down at piles of dollar-store trinkets, Tupperware, made-to-fit clothing and shoes, and other unidentifiable junk. Room after room was proof: the sisters were hoarders.

Already amazed at what he was finding, Sonny Ranson was puzzled and somewhat disturbed when, in the midst of the trash, he opened a door to a small room adjacent to the garage and found the acolyte bench there – alone.

Like his eccentric aunts, Sonny Ranson is now dead and through a series of coincidences immediately following Hurricane Katrina the acolyte bench which held such a strange fascination for the family was ultimately deposited in the living room of a friend of mine. It was then that the weirdness really began.

Crying, sighing, the creaking of the wood and the depression of the old vinyl as an unseen entity kneels down in prayer; books and holy pictures placed in the well of the kneeler disappearing without a trace only to reappear in an area of the house where they were never kept; and troublesome dreams in which a ghostly woman with long white hair was kneeling at the bench, her head down on her arms were just a few of the occurrences. In addition to these inexplicable events, the owner began to notice a marked decline in her health; not only this, her financial situation took a turn for the worse and bad luck seemed to plague everything she did. Bravely, my friend held onto the bench for a few years, but ultimately the nature of the hauntings became more obvious – the woman she had seen only in dreams, for instance, now began to appear as a shimmering apparition kneeling at the bench during my friend’s waking hours; realizing she had to change her luck or go into ruin, my friend got rid of the bench. Today it resides in a warehouse, gathering dust and spider webs, but no one who knows the history of the bench will take it.

Another apparently haunted item also came from a funeral home.

The tall lamp obviously was once part of a pair which framed a coffin viewing area and was retrieved from a collection of funeral home discards after Hurricane Katrina. Which of the local homes the lamp may have originated from is unknown, but there is no doubt in the mind of its owner that the lamp is haunted – primarily because he witnessed it turn on and off when there was no bulb in it AND the lamp was unplugged!

Though not connected to the bench described above, it shares the same dark warehouse corner.

“The evil soul hides in dark channels and blind walls, and the wise creatures that live near man smell the terror, and flee.”

Old Manx Folk Belief

Some remarkable haunted furnishings that actually drove mice and roaches – New Orleans roaches, at that! – from a home came to my notice recently.

They are a pair of rather gauche marble-top tables supported by plaster pedestals carved in cherubic representations of the “Three Graces,” and wherever they have been kept strange happenings have reportedly occurred.

A realtor who was handling the sale of the home was the hapless recipient of a set of tables that had framed the bed where the leader of a local Satanic cult became ill, languished through hospice care, and eventually died. The realtor, a skeptic and atheist, wasn’t bothered in the least by the circumstances which led to her receiving the desirable pieces free of charge. She readily accepted them and brought them back to her own home, which is still under renovations following severe damage sustained in Hurricane Katrina. She states that the construction had exacerbated a mice and roach problem, turning it into an infestation that had challenged three successive pest control companies. The vermin just wouldn’t leave – that is, until she brought the old marble tables into her home. Almost immediately the mice vacated the property. The roaches, which in New Orleans are tough to eradicate completely once they have staked a claim on a house, lingered only a little while longer than the mice then they, too, disappeared.

In many folklore traditions, this is a sure sign that an evil soul or spirit has taken up residence in the house. The realtor, who lives alone, reports that she began hearing heavy, labored breathing in her living room, where the tables framed her sofa. An unseen hand knocks on the hard marble surfaces and often the tables, though heavy, move out of position without any human aid. The realtor, a non-smoker, reports that she often comes home to the smell of cigarette smoke in the living room; the dead man who once owned the tables had been a heavy smoker.

But the deal-breaker, apparently, was when she walked into her kitchen late one night and glanced into the living room to see the shady, filmy apparition of a man standing beside her sofa. The sight so startled her that she screamed and ran out her back door to her neighbor’s home where she waited while the man and his teenage son searched her house for an intruder. It was only after she had a moment to sit and gather her thoughts that she realized the apparent intruder in fact had no legs!

Convinced that the haunting is the result of bringing the tables into her house, the tables are on their way to the same dark warehouse where the other possessed possessions described here now reside!

“ … The Dead are dead … They can know or do nothing.”

From an Old Manx Folktale

Reports of possessed possessions, haunted furniture and other items, are as numerous as reports of any other type of haunting. The inexplicable attachment of spirits to common, inanimate objects is not only puzzling but also disturbing by the mere fact that the object is supposed to be just that – inanimate. When the things we surround ourselves with take on a life of their own it challenges our concept of an ordered world in which there is a place for everything, and everything is in its place.

Some “things” know better.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: All of the items described in this article are available for purchase by the brave, or foolhardy – as the case may be. Please see the site contact information. Serious inquiries only, please. All photos © 2010 alynepustanio.com. All Rights Reserved

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