Sacramento, CA
Private Residence - CA
Jan. 3, 2008
 | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  |
My name is Andi Laughing Star, and I grew up with a ghost in the house. My parents live in the
homestead my dad's parents built in the 1940's near the site of an old civil war era train depot. Three
generations of our family have heard, seen, or even communicated with the civil war soldier who walks a
patrol post in the hallway at this house.
I have called him Billy Ray since I was a child, but I do not remember how I got that name for him. Either
he told me his name at one point, or this was merely the impression I had of him. My parents have
investigated local burying grounds for this name and found nothing. They did not consider that he
may have been buried in a far-away family plot in an unknown region, but we have no way of knowing or
tracing that possibility.
He is very tall; his head tops the doorways so that he has to duck to look inside, and his shoulders are
almost broad enough to fill the hallway completely. He wears the motley patched butternut and gray
uniform of a Confederate soldier and carries a musket with a fixed bayonet. A few years ago, we
found a rusted bayonet in the back yard. I still have it and I wonder where it might have come from.
Perhaps it belonged to him in life.
Throughout the year until recently, Billy Ray has walked a patrol in the hallway at this house most
visibly on the feast days in May, July, October, and just before Christmas. Throughout the year,
usually between midnight at 05:00 AM, we hear his spurs and the click of his musket as he prepares to
fire; but we do not always hear the boom of the firing musket. He has shown himself to my cousins,
who lived in the house before I did, and to my husband long before we were married. Other members
of the extended family have heard but never seen him.
Of all the members of the family, this entity has physically touched (shoved) my mother and used to
watch and protect the room I slept in as a child. He has communicated in more than just physical and
auditory means, and his patrol route is fairly regular and usually somewhat predictable.
This is the picture of the hallway taken from the north and facing south. (The glowing white spots
you see are the reflections of the flash on the pictures and mirror. Billy Ray’s form is much more
pronounced; in the past, visitors have mistaken him for a living person when he showed himself to them.)
The gate is to contain the dog on party days and to keep the grandchildren away from the heater. It
also marks the spot where Billy Ray stands when he is not patrolling.
From this perspective, the bedroom on the left (just behind the sculpture) was my bedroom for many
years and was the room Billy Ray protected in the night. We wondered if there was an armory or some
other valuable piece that he guarded there in life, but we have no evidence of that either way. Directly
across the hall is my parents’ bedroom. The doors at the midpoint of the hallway lead to the porch on
the left and the bathroom on the right, while the near-right door in the picture is another bedroom.
Billy Ray stands at the end of this 20-foot hallway nearest the space heater and faces north. He
usually begins at parade rest with his musket butt resting on the floor next to him. At roughly midnight,
he begins his patrol by snapping to attention and pacing 10 times to the far bedroom (nearest on the
right in the picture). He stops at attention, executes a 270-degree turn clockwise until he faces the
bedroom door, aims, and fires his musket into that room. Then he snaps back to attention, shoulders
his musket, and marches back toward the heater.
Just in front of the heater, he does another 270-degree clockwise turn (he never turns
counterclockwise) and fires into what used to be my bedroom (the room on the far left in the picture).
After this, he snaps back to attention, shoulders his musket, does one more 270-degree turn until he
faces north again, and steps back into parade rest in front of the heater. He repeats this patrol at
regular intervals of 15-30 minutes until just before dawn.
In the night, if someone wanted to go to the bathroom or the kitchen, he or she had to turn on a light
to go around him in the hall, or he would not let this person pass. As the only southern-born member
of the family, I may be the only one of the close family who never had to get his permission to pass his
post in the night.
When I was a teenager, my parents unfurled my grandfather’s memorial flag for Memorial Day. The
only place large enough in the house to fold that flag was “on Billy Ray’s turf” in the hallway, so we
folded the American flag in the hall where the Confederate soldier stood. The house turned cold,
gray, and brooding. We ran the heater almost constantly, but we could not keep heat in that hallway
for weeks, and the family was irritable without understanding why.
We thought that maybe it was because Billy Ray was upset or angry, and what ghost would not be
to see the enemy flag folded on his turf?! So we bought a Confederate flag and paraded it in the
hallway a couple of times. Almost immediately, the entire mood and feel of the house changed. We
were able to warm the hallway and bedrooms again, and the mood was entirely more cheerful after that.
They never folded the American flag in the hallway again; they fold it in the front yard instead.
When I was perhaps 15 or 16, I moved from the bedroom nearest the heater to the one at the other
end of the hall. My mom was helping me move my belongings into that room, felt a presence behind her,
turned, and saw him standing behind her peering into my new bedroom as if he was curious about the
changes that were happening. She said, “Excuse me,” and he stood up to let her out of the room.
Although I had moved my bedroom, he continued to guard the room I had left, so I know his
protection was not of a child who was a fellow Southerner; it was the room he was guarding.
We know Billy Ray is a benign spirit who is just doing his job. The only time he ever physically
touched a family member was when he pushed my mom or when she walked through the space he
occupied. He has never tried to harm the family, and he is welcome to remain.
More recently, my uncle passed away a year or two ago. My mother has some of his ashes in the front
room in a little shrine with some candles nearby. Uncle Danny plays with the candles when she lights
them, but Billy Ray has been strangely silent and distant. My grandfather, who can usually be seen or
felt sitting in his favorite chair in the front room during the holidays, also seems to have moved on. We
wonder if Billy Ray has left to make room for Uncle Danny to protect the house and its people. If
this is the case, we hope he has found his rest at long last.
All Rights Reserved.
