Ganpa
Cathy Stephan: “Um, so my grandpa died in the house–my grandma and grandpa's house. And, then, after my grandma died, we moved in there. And once in a while, we would notice something weird, like the garage door would go up at when we went away, the TV would come on, just some weird things like that. My brother noticed it, too. Um, very logical person. Couldn't explain it. And one time, when…I just moved back home with her, she was little. And, something else I just remembered: Before my bed was set up, I was sleeping in the couch by the steps, and I heard footsteps coming down the stairs, and there was nothing there.
Another time: She was still, you know, really young, like a year and a half or two. She was taking a nap in her crib, and I heard her babbling. So, I went downstairs to get her after her nap, and she had a teddy bear in her crib that had been on a dresser on the other side of a lamp. So, there was no way for her little arms to reach it. And, I said, and you know, ‘Pumpkin’ or ‘Honey,’ whatever, ‘how did you get the teddy bear?’ And she says, ‘Gampa gave me it.’ So, we think that was my dad, who'd also passed away by then.
Going forward, she was in first grade. I was still going to college up here now, going to RIT and doing an internship out in Alexander, and I mixed up my days. I was supposed to be home to get her off the bus, and I was still in Alexander. We lived in Henrietta. I am literally flying home as fast as I can on the thruway. I don't know where she's at. I can't find it when I get home. As a mother, it was gut-wrenching. Heart-wrenching. Like, awful. I finally find her at our sitter's house. For some reason, she just got off the bus there, even though she had never done it on that day before. And so, I said, ‘Honey, why are you at Miss Stephanie's house?’ And she said, ‘I saw Ganpa at school. He told me to come here.’ Saved my butt!”
Meighan Stephan: “Um, he appeared to me in school behind one of my friends, and I could hear him telling me, like, ‘'Hey, Mom's gonna mix up the days. I need you to go to your sitter's house.’ Like, ‘You'll be safe there.’ And, I just responded to my friend, who was also talking to someone at the same time, like, ‘Okay.’ And you know, they never knew I could see spirits or converse with them.”
Recorded at Genesee Country Village & Museum’s “Spirits of the Past” event on October 21, 2022.
Man in black
Cathy Stephan: “My brother and my nephew lived in that same house. This is way pre-Meighan. Um, and my brother works second shift, my parents were out of town. So, I was watching my nephew. Again, lived in the basement because that's what you do when you go back to mom’s. You move into the basement. Not too comfortable, because you got to get back out soon, right? I put him downstairs. I put him to bed twice that night already, and he came up, you know, came up again, and I said, ‘[unintelligible] you have to go to sleep now.’
And I went back upstairs to do my homework at the dining room table, and I heard him coming up the stairs, and I turned to tell him to go back to bed. The door opens. A tall man in a black tophat and black clothing or a cloak came out of the basement and went around the door and disappeared. The thing is, you can't go around the door, because the door, when you open it, there's a wall that’s right there.
So, it's like an almost like a… you can't go around it, but he did somehow and he disappeared. I ran back downstairs, and my nephew was sleeping.”
Meighan Stephan: “We're talking many years later… my mom and my grandma, they went grocery shopping or something. I'm sitting at my grandma's dining room table doing homework, and all the sudden I hear 13 steps. That's how many my grandma has from the basement to the house. And I was like, “What the heck? Like, did my mom somehow go, like, down the garage steps and come in that way?” I look up, and the door had opened, and a gentleman in black tophat, black cloak, black shoes, black everything. He's standing at the very top of the steps staring at a wall. And it's like he could tell I was looking at him, because I see him just turn his head, look at me, look back at the wall… and he actually faced through the door and went down the hallway.
And I was like, ‘Not my house!’ And I booked it from the dining room into the living room to, like, catch him by the front door. He was completely gone. Now, I had never known, like, years before that, she had seen the same thing.”