here’s the story about our opening of the ‘secret room’ in our house in honor of it’s 150th birthday. 

 

I’m sorry this has taken so long to post. I took over 600 photos  over the last 4 days and have been so sleepy by the end of these packed days I haven’t had a time to sort through them..   thi sis the first of those backlogs.. and it’s interesting stuff

 

When I bought this house in 1982 I heard a story of a mysterious ‘ghost room’ on the third floor that was set up  by the houses first private owner in the 1970’s. The room is on the third floor just below the bell tower. Its on a section of flooring that was isolated wehn the floor was cut away to create the current high open space in the fron entrace. 

we’dd heard various accounts of what was in there from folks who’d visited back then.. all the stories involved a table and some handmade objects..   Some folks  said it’s where the houses famous ghost lived.. others said it was a time capsule of sorts.   we’d never looked in there .. but we enjoyed having the mystery of it.. 

Well.. this year our house is turning 150 years old according to the oldest deed we can find it was built in 1868. . We arent sure how much of the current building dates from them.. but thats when a school was built on this spot. 

We’ve devoted the week to celebrating that birthday.. one thing we decided  to do was to open the time capsule.. SO.. on Thursday morning.. our good friend Tm came over with his tools and we set to work. 

 

One interesting thing that happened is that the first two times Tim touched the sheetrock with his saw, the power to the saw failed.. thoguht the lights never dimmed.. .. pretty weird.. 

 

soon we had a small hole.. we took our first looks 

 

then Tim opened it  up more . 

here’s what we saw – a mix between  a time capsule and a junk pile.. but  totally fascinating 

it was all covered by this curtain. 

we pulled the curtain aside.. and here’s what we found.. .. Note the first thing we saw was the word ‘Samuel’ !!!

 

 

it was amazing to  see..  there’ was not note, note epxplaination.. jus all this stuff.. a broken chair, an old table, a box of shells. a sled, old dresses, a flag. what did it all mean ?  

we decided what we would do.. gabe was elected to crawl inside and look around.  he’d hand us  out some things to look at. then we’d put them back right where they’d been.  Here’s just a subset of what we found . 

some artwork

 

a beautiful book of woodcuts one of the housemates had made in a class

 

 

and  a whole lot of other  random junk

some undeveloped film !

 

 

these things are from the first private owner of the house.. the guy who made this room in the 1970’s 

 

 

and a clue.. the latest date we could find.. a letter to the former owner on 10 Feb 1976.. must have closed this up shortly after.. (interesting footnote.  we just traceld Merrall down.. he now lives in New Zealand and raises cows for raw milk !) 

 

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our neighbor paties biology exam

 

 

cool grave rubbing 

 

look.. we even found a ‘max’, a ‘sam’ and a ‘Gabe’ !

 

 

 

We spent more than 4 hours goign through the stuff.. all interesting.. but no explanation.. no message.. what do we do with this ?   

 

Here’s what we  decided . 

 

we hung a light  in there and screwed  a plexiglass window over to allow folks to look in . (it was a big hit at our party !) 

over the next couple of months we’ll add  some of our own stuff to add to the time capsule . .. this time with an explaination.. then seal it all back up just like it had been before.. for the next geeration to find. 

Do you have any good ideas on what we should add ? We’d love to hear them !!!!

now.. more stuff to blog about.. stay tuned

nite all. nite sam

-me