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Brown survives Halloween Night alone at Wampee

Published Monday, November 10, 2008 4:48 PM

By Dan Brown
Berkeley Independent

The darkness is almost complete save for a bashful street lamp or two, as if this were a place light feared to tread.

The thumbnail wedge of the crescent moon touches the treetops as pinpricks of light poke through the black ceiling of the midnight sky. A sudden breeze sweeps through the treetops speaking in a whispered hush, revealing a coveted secret perhaps, or maybe voicing a quiet warning.

Careful where you tread, there be ghosts here.

The house stands alone, quiet and dark, an ethereal spirit peeking from behind the shadows, beckoning – come if you dare, all are welcome here.

It is Halloween Night, the night of souls, the time of spirits.

The clock approaches midnight, the witching hour, when babies are born, when the old die, when prayers are offered to Heaven, and when deals are struck with the Devil.

It is the time when the dead walk, and the living tread precariously.

Care to hear a ghost story?

I spent the night at Wampee House on Pinopolis Point, alone, and on Halloween Night no less.

I spent the night alone at Wampee House, a house reputedly haunted, alone, and I survived. I lived to see the dawn bleed in great smears above the horizon across a lake of liquid pewter.

I accomplished something Terry Bradshaw could not. Bradshaw may have four Super Bowl rings, but the spirits did not send me fleeing from the house shortly after midnight.

I stayed.

I communed with the Netherworld on its most hallowed of eves and survived.

Strange things have happened in this house.

Strange things have happened here long before the current Wampee House was built in 1822. Ghosts have haunted Wampee for centuries, long before the English settled here.

According to legend, the Indians who died in battle haunt the grounds here, a finger of land pointing north into Lake Moultrie.

One of the more famous ghost stories haunting this house is of the Indian maiden who died following her husband into battle who has been seen standing at the front steps to Wampee House wearing a flowing white gown, bidding welcome to all who dare cross this threshold.

Then there is the child who haunts the upstairs bedroom, the maiden in blue, whose portrait hangs above the hearth there.

The young girl has been seen looking out the upstairs window, waiting for someone or something that never comes.

Or maybe … she waits for me.

The security guard, my escort inside the house, says that mostly it’s the strange things that happen here that garners the most attention, objects being moved or going missing only to turn up later at a completely different location.

“The only thing I’ve noticed,” she said, while wishing to remain anonymous, “is after people have stayed here overnight I’ve come in and smelled something strange, like a woman getting her hair permed.”

The rooms of Wampee House are places where even animals fear to tread. Moultrie, the black lab of caretaker Sandy Gibson, refused to venture any further than the foyer hallway.

“That old dog refused to go upstairs,” Gibson said. “He’d stay in the hallway right there and wouldn’t move.”

I stayed in the upstairs bedroom, the bedroom with the portrait of the young maiden, whose eyes seemed to follow me wherever I walked. I stayed where Terry Bradshaw would not.

An old pirate, believed to have wandered away from his ship at Stony Landing, is believed to lurk here.

Lights appear in windows.

The feeling of being watched, chills creeping up your spine, and sudden burning sensations attacking extremities are some of the things visitors have experienced here.

I saw none of that. I felt none of that.

I have had strange things happen in my life. I’ve seen my share of the weird. I have my own ghost stories I frequently tell, my UFO stories so to speak.

Sadly, none of that happened on Halloween Night at Wampee.

“There are just as many nights where nothing happens out here as nights that something does,” Gibson said when we first discussed the notion of me spending the night there.

Still, there are the stories.

Maybe the spirits are waiting for me to come back.

Maybe this was more a ruse to lower the defenses and ease the anxiety. You’ve seen it many times before in the movies. The first guy killed in the movie’s first ten minutes peeks around the corner expecting death or the monster waiting on the other side.

Nothing’s there.

Our guy heaves a relieved sigh and believes for a second that all is well, and then he turns.

Okay, so I’ve turned.

I’ve heaved my sigh of relief.

I’ll come back if they let me. I’ll bring a paranormal investigations team with me if they’ll let me. We’ll check out Wampee House. We’ll see if anything, or anyone is there.

The true fun of spending the night at Wampee House, Halloween Night no less, is in the stories told. The first creed of storytelling is to never let the truth stand in the way of one.

I spent the night at Wampee House and lived to tell about it.

I survived.

Terry Bradshaw couldn’t do it, and that’s the truth.

There’s something to be said for that.

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