Now you see it, now you don’t: The spooky tale of the old Farmer farmhouse

By Mary Murkin

The crisp autumn air was beginning to move through the trees — bringing with it a shower of orange, yellow and red leaves, as well as a cavalcade of acorns hitting the roofs of houses and cars every couple of minutes.

It was a sunny, chilly Friday afternoon, late October 1977. I was sitting in American History class, surrounded by the usual cast of characters — my high school classmates. As Sue Loggins finished putting on the final touches of her mascara before the bell rang, she reached over and hit me in the shoulder with her make-up case. She whispered, “Since there’s no home (football) game tonight, are you ready to ride the roads this evening?” Startled, but glad for the interruption, I turned to her and exclaimed, “Heck, yeah!”

We were ordinary teens who were as cool as could be … like most 16-year-olds are. Sue came from a home whose parents believed in buying their teenage daughter a new car when she became of legal driving age. Sue had the nicest, brand new, white VW Rabbit that I’d ever seen, which included a sunroof! 

That night, Sue picked me up at about 6 p.m. and we set out driving west of town on Old NC Highway 49, heading toward Farmer. There was only one road to Farmer and we were on it.

“You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille,” we crooned, “with four hungry children and a crop in the field.” We were singing legends in our own minds. 

The next thing I knew, about half way out to Farmer, Sue was making a sharp right turn into the driveway of a large, abandoned old farmhouse. It was a beauty! No doubt about it. Sue said, “Let’s go look in the windows on the porch!”  So we did. 

Looking into the window to the right of the front door, we could see that was the living room. There were still a few pieces of furniture scattered around the room. We could see that every window still had old lace curtains hanging from it. Along the far wall was an old wood­en bookcase with a few books still standing on the shelf waiting to be opened and enjoyed.

As we walked along the front porch to get to the window on the left hand side of the front door, Sue gave the door a push and it opened. Stunned, we both just stared at each other. We knew this was a sign that we should go inside. We stepped into the living room and could tell that it had been years and years since anyone had lived here. There was no sign of recent life in this house. We walked from room to room and tried to imagine the family who had lived here and where they all went. 

After a thorough walk-through on the main floor of this beautiful old farmhouse held in time, Sue announced that she was going to go upstairs to the second floor to look around. I chose not to go upstairs and decided to wait for her in the living room. I walked over to the bookshelf on the wall at the far end of the room. I took down 

a book that had always been one of my favorites, a collection of Christmas Stories written by Charles Dickens. This book was old … very old … even 45 years ago, I could tell it was an exceptionally old book. It was pub­lished in the late 1800s. I don’t know what came over me, but I felt that I needed to keep this book as it was very kindred to the literature of my child­hood. 

At last, Sue came down­stairs and described the rooms that she had seen upstairs. Each of them had a few pieces of furniture and all of the windows still had their yellowed lace curtains. There was nothing scary or tragic about anything here at the house. It was just quietly vacant.

Sue and I got back in her car and decided to come back to town to get some sort of refreshment at Dog ‘N Suds on South Fayetteville Street. With our tummies full of food and our minds full of an interesting adventure, we decided to call it a night.

On Monday afternoon, when we were back in our American History class, Sue and I were discussing the experience we had on Friday night and seeing the abandoned old farm house. Per usual, Jimmy Coe was listening in to our conversation and abruptly butted in by saying, “Hey, could I go with you guys to see that house, too?”  We said that we would take him if he wanted to go on Friday evening that week. The plan was all set.

Friday evening FINALLY rolled around. Sue and I went and picked up Jimmy. We hit the road and headed toward Old NC Highway 49. After a few minutes, we were on the way to Farmer — talking and laughing and singing. We drove and drove and before long, we were getting close to Farmer. 

This surprised us and tickled us to no end that we had been jabbering and laughing so much that we missed the beautiful old farmhouse. We turned that little white Rabbit around and started heading back into town. We got pretty far along on that piece of road and we were almost back to town. Now we were really perplexed.

We turned that car around again, turned off the radio and drove very carefully back down the road to Farmer. We were watching diligently for the abandoned old farmhouse on the right hand side of the road. Nope! It wasn’t there … anywhere. We saw no traces of any house that had been torn down, burned down, moved, etc. No foundation, no chimney, no driveway, no nothing!

Upon this realization, all three of us started talking at once! What was going on? Where was the house? How did this happen? What was a rational explanation? 

Then, I remembered THE BOOK!!!! That old Charles Dickens Christmas book. I pulled open my backpack and rifled through a week’s worth of mess all the way to the bottom. There it was! That sweet old book. Proof that I had been in the farmhouse. Proof that the farmhouse existed. Proof that we had not lost our minds. It was proof, but it was not an explanation.

Till our dying days, we will probably never know where that house went, or why we saw it. My only guess is that we were in some sort of a time dimension that allowed us to see what we saw. I refer to this as time being bent, or at an angle of some sort that let us go through the old farmhouse door that one last time.