Speaker 1: The Old Castle. An interesting ghost story took place in
the late nineteen sixties and an Austin Holmes sometimes referred
to as the Old Castle. Although many people seemed to
know about the phantom even earlier than that, it was
the experiences of mister and Missus Roy Winters that became
most well known. When the Winters were moving into the
old fortress like home, some of their new neighbors came
forward to warn them about the haunting. Missus Winter's positive
response was likely not what they expected. I was delighted,
she told the writer for the Austin American Statesman. Now
I had a castle and a ghost to go with it.
It wasn't just any old ghost, either, This one came
complete with a gristly legend. The story went that in
the nineteen twenties, when the house was vacant and undergoing
some construction, a man murdered his young wife there. He
then disposed of her lifeless body and the water tower,
the oldest part of the building. Ever since, her lonely
spirit had roam through the rooms seeking peace. Miss Winters
was eager to meet her resident to specter, but for
the first few months that she and her husband lived
in the home, all was relatively calm. Her normally passive
border collie acquired a strange habit of barking and ground
at two am, but nothing else was a miss. It
wasn't until Miss Winter's was alone in the house for
the very first time that she experienced what she described
as a vision. It could have been a dream, she
admitted in the Halloween nineteen seventy seven edition of the
Austin American Statesman, But I don't think so. It was
very lifelike. The newspaper story quoted Miss Winter's description of
the events. She awoke at two a m. To find
she had a clear view of the stairway leading to
the top of the old water tower, a wall built
since the nineteen twenties had mysteriously vanished. The room was
lit with a rosy light apparently issuing from the window,
and in the midst of a nebuless mass floating the
face of a woman. The apperation quietly approached Miss Winters
and spoke a single sentence, I am leaving you. It
was the last thing that Miss Winters remembered before darkness
overcame her. She later assumed that she had simply gone
back to sleep. The next morning, Miss Winters pulled out
some canvas and brushes, and from memory began to paint
a portrait of the woman. It took several days to
create the likeness. When it was done, Miss Winters had
the painting hung in her living room For quite some time.
The portrait was the only reminder that the Winters had
of the ghost. Then, eventually, this spirit did make herself
known again, though only on an annual basis. From that
point forward, the paranormal activity tended to be less dramatic.
Miss Winters blamed the mysterious ringing of her doorbell and
unexplained opening and closing of her garage door on the
spectral woman. Her husband blamed both on mechanical mouthfunctions. Mister
Winter did not admit to having witnessed some puzzling events, however,
such as the windless morning when he watched the patios
wing move back and forth quite deliberately. And then there
was the inexplicable event that took place staring a party
that the Winters hosted in early in nineteen seventy seven,
of guests had asked Miss Winters to tell them of
her ghost story, and she was obligating. I was halfway
through the story, she said when one of the candles
popped out of its holder and fell. When the florest
we had rented it from came to pick it up,
he was astounded. He said that never happens. Chances are
nothing like that ever happened again in the home. The
Winters eventually sold their haunted castle, and some years later
rider rich Tarp interviewed the current residence. We have not
experienced anything that I would say borders on the supernatural,
said the man. We got a one hundred and forty
pound Newfoundland dog who is afraid of thunder, lightning and
loud noises, and she's never given any indication that there's
any fallen spirit here. Perhaps then this is one famous
ghost who is now at rest. Oh