Cynthia kavanagh

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Rob: Can you first just tell us really basically, what is your name and what do you?

[00:00:04] Cynthia Kavanagh: My name is Cynthia Kavanagh. I was born Cynthia Ackley. I now live in Salem, Oregon, 30 years after the sale of the haunted house I lived in when I in high school.

[00:00:24] Rob: Can you tell us a little bit more about 1 La Veta Place? What was it like? Can you describe what it looked like?

[00:00:35] Cynthia: Well, when we first moved in, it was just-- Let's put it this way. To begin with, my dad had always been a house flipper before he flipped houses.

[laughter]

He usually, and due to the fact that we moved around a lot since he worked for Martin Marietta, that usually gave him about enough time to go in, find a nice house, add onto it in some way or another and then we'd move on again. We went into this one, it was like, "Oh, we know what we're doing for the next umpteenth years." [chuckles] It wasn't real--

[00:01:19] Rob: How many years were you in that house?

[00:01:22] Cynthia: I personally lived there twice for four years. The first time all through my high school years, 9th grade through 12th grade, but my mother lived there for about 25 years.

[00:01:38] Rob: Wow, 25. What was it like spending your high school years in 1 La Veta Place?

[00:01:46] Cynthia: It was mostly learning a lot of refinishing skills and basically going to high school and hanging with my friends and things like that . Never made it a secret that we, all my brothers and my sister and my folks all thought the house was haunted. My friends depending on how much they believed or disbelieved in ghost, just kind of like, "Okay, that's what you think." I never got ridiculed for living in a haunted house, but as far as I know, nobody was ever scared away from coming over after school and things like that.

[00:02:29] Rob: When did you first discover that the house was haunted?

[00:02:36] Cynthia: My mom was the first one to be told by an outsider that it was haunted and it was from a group of kids that lived across the street from-- My mother and father became really good friends with their mother and father, the Ourslers . They were playing more or less in their front yard and we shared a common yard that would basically went down the end of the street. If you would clear down the end of the street, you'd end up in the Hudson [laughs] if you kept going straight.

It was a clear field and they were out there and my mom was outside one day and the kids looked around at her and they go, "Do you live here now?" It's typical kid questions. She goes, "Yes, we're moving in." "You got kids." "Yes, we have four kids, but they're not here yet, they still live in Maryland. She said, "You want to come in and look around." A couple of them said, "Sure, let's go." A couple of them said, "No, that's okay." The ones that said, sure said they think the place is haunted they won't go in.

My mom was never sure if it was because the house had sat vacant in front of their house for seven years, nobody had gone into it, which my father always thought it was a strange phenomenon because it was right there on the Hudson. There were always people walking up and down the river banks and in the age of hippieism and wandering spirits and the house had never been vandalized in the whole seven years it sat empty.

The only problems that were there were inherited because of a house that had sat with no maintenance, not because people had gone in and broken windows or graffitied the walls or anything like that. That in and of itself was like, the house was more or less sending out vibes that, if you don't want to respect me, I'm not going to respect you. You can just move on.

[00:05:09] Rob: Did you ever see a ghost and who was the first person in your family to see one if so?

[00:05:19] Cynthia: Probably my mom was the first one to see one. I had seen one on several occasions when I was in high school. I will also add to the fact that I also lived in the house from my late 30s until I moved out here into Oregon. After my first husband passed, I brought my children back to New York to live with her for about three three and a half years. I've had it on both sides and laid out adolescents and also middle-aged living in the haunted house.

[00:06:04] Rob: Could you tell me a little bit about the first time your mom told you she had seen a ghost?

[00:06:14] Cynthia: She basically said that she'd heard footsteps and one of the things that always baffled her is, none of the trades people that my father actually had come in. We did a lot of the work ourselves to do it yourself part of it, but he did hire plumbers and electricians and things like that. He was always in compliance with codes and they wouldn't stay in the house when nobody else was in the house.

As one of the plumbers said, "No, I spend too much time running up and downstairs seeing who else is in the house with me." My mom was telling us this one evening and she asked us, "Well, has anybody else heard anything?" She said, "Because I never worry about how it's old, it's creaky and I just feel like there's people looking out for us." Most of my sister and my brothers mostly agreed with her that, "No, nothing really steered you into running to another room."

The first encounter I had with that kind of sensation came with me when the first room I had chosen, which later turned into the family dining room/TV room because of the way do it yourself projects work. I was sitting on my bed reading and like I said, the house was old enough that it did have electricity, but strangely wired. It was a light in the middle of the room was on a pole chain rather than a light switch.

I looked up and the pull chain, which had a large crystal marble at the end of it was swinging back and forth. Instead of swinging back and forth in a complete arc, like somebody had been rolling around on the floor upstairs, which wouldn't have been uncommon because it was my brother's room, it was swinging out as though somebody was standing right under it, flicking it away from them and then waiting for it to come back to center and then flicking it back.

I went downstairs very quickly and go, "I don't know if this is relevant or not but my light chain is moving," and everybody crepes back up there and by then it had stopped. It was dead still in the middle of the room. Like I said, that was my first pick for a bedroom, but then when things got changed around and we really needed to got the downstairs kitchen, that particular room I was sleeping and had a very tiny kitchenette in it.

My dad made the decision to make that into our dining room kitchen while the main four kitchen was being redone and he saw it over the dining room table, do the exact same thing. Nobody else was in the room with him.

[00:09:42] Rob: Interesting. Did it become normal these experiences?

[00:09:49] Cynthia: Pretty much. That wasn't the first experience my dad had with hearing things or he had actually lived in the house probably about six weeks before, we, as a family moved in together. Being an old house, about every other doorway had a transom over it, an operational transom for ventilation and things like that in the heat. Mom's bedroom had one, which meant if the hall light was left on, it would shine straight in. My dad had always been the darker the better, the more restful night sleep.

The first night my mom moved in with him, she started to get into bed and she got back up and he's going, "Where are you going?" She goes, "To turn off the light in the hall naturally. It's coming right in the window over there, right?" He goes, "Never mind." She goes, "What do you mean never mind?" He goes, "I don't want to talk about it." That was the end of the discussion.

[00:10:58] Rob: Whoa. What the? Did you think that he was freaked out by it?

[00:11:04] Cynthia: Yes, he never totally described what happened to him the few weeks before we moved in. When he found out that the rest of us weren't upset at all about it, he got-- He wasn't upset. It then became one of his topics of conversation as the years went on and we received more visitors. At dinner time, he'd ask, "How'd you guys sleep last night? Did you have any unusual things happen?"

A lot of times people would, "No, no, it was very nice," or one cousin, it was my mom's cousin, so he's just about six or eight years younger than she was, he said, "Well, I kept going down the hall trying to find where the kids were that weren't in bed because I kept hearing people talking. We were all supposed to be going to bed. They should've been in bed an hour ago. I never found anybody." That was the first that I knew off from an outside source was when my cousin, Alf , heard voices in the hallways.

[00:12:27] Rob: Did you ever invite a psychic or do any search on the history of the house to find out maybe what could be causing the hauntings?

[00:12:42] Cynthia: For the most part, no, because it wasn't as easy to search back in the '60s and early '70s. The only research we had on the house came from a man that lived off and on next door to us, his aunt lived next door actually. He was the grandson of the man that built the house.

[00:13:11] Rob: Oh, interesting. What did he say?

[00:13:14] Cynthia: He never admitted that there was ever any hauntings when he was a kid. He wasn't there all the time because, like I said, he was the grandson, but he would go in the summer times and visit with his grandfather and family up on the Hudson. His only comment to my folks was, "Well, I'm glad to see the house is back into the hands of somebody who can really appreciate all its attributes," or something along those lines.

[00:13:54] Rob: That's great.

[00:13:54] Cynthia: I think I was a senior in high school when I first heard him talking to my dad about it. It took him about three years to get comfortable enough with the fact that we weren't freaked out with what was going on to actually talk to my dad one way or the other about the house.

You had asked earlier had I ever seen my own personal ghost? I had. I've seen her about three times over the course of my living there. Only one time did I actually come face to face with her.

It was one evening I was staying up very, very late and watching something on TV I'm sure, and went to go-- There is a sun porch that has French doors from two rooms off the two separate rooms into the house. One of which, as I said, was our upstairs had been dining room. It was later turned into a TV room, kitchen, and then my bedroom. I went around to make sure that the French doors were locked because they had a habit of popping open unexpectedly when nobody else was around.

I made sure the TV room doors were closed and went in to go into my bedroom. The French doors had long clear glass in it. I looked in and there was a woman all dressed in white sitting on the edge of my bed looking into where my dresser mirror was brushing her hair. She turned and looked at me and nodded to me, and I just nodded back and went back into the TV room and got a glass of water and sat there for a few minutes.

Then out loud I said, "I think I need to go to bed now," and went back in using the hallway door rather than the French door. Nobody was in there then, so I just went to bed.

[00:16:26] Rob: You saw that spirit two more times. You called her your ghost, is there a reason you called her your ghost? Did other people in the family have their spirit?

[00:16:40] Cynthia: My mother had seen a gentleman. I saw her three times while I was in high school, but mostly from behind, she was walking away from me the other two times. Only once did I see her face to face. Then before we moved out here, my current husband and I, we weren't even in the same room, but he saw her. He described her the exact same way as I described her. I go, "Oh, you saw my ghost?" He goes, "I don't want to talk about it." [chuckles]

When he had first seen her, he heard her come up the stairs. He heard something come up the stairs. We'd had the door propped open because it was warm. On the third floor, it got very warm in the summertime. Something creaked across the floor and sat down on the bed. He opened his eyes and he saw a blonde woman sitting there staring at him.

She just smiled and nodded, and then got up, walked back out. He fold over and started shaking and going, "Cyn, wake up, wake up," because I'm sound asleep right next to him, I didn't hear a thing. I go, "What?" He goes, "I think I saw her." I go, "Saw who?" "I don't know, she was blonde." I said, "Oh, you saw my ghost. Go back to sleep." [chuckles] Then he goes, "Okay, I don't want to talk about it."

[00:18:20] Rob: That's great. As you saw--

[00:18:22] Cynthia: That's why I've always referred to her as my ghost is she was always keeping an eye on me. My mother saw a gentleman in almost pre-revolutionary clothe, and my father saw the foot of somebody wearing a mocassin as he was starting up the basement stairs. It was looked like they were about 15 feet in front of him. As he went through the doorway and looked up the stairs, he saw a mocassin foot walking away down the hall.

[00:18:58] Rob: Wow. How did your parents feel about it being haunted? Were they afraid, comforted?

[00:19:07] Cynthia: None of us were really afraid. We startled with the way things would pop up and disappear and people would be around. I think only once did my mom have any fear. Even when she saw the man sitting in mid-air, she wasn't afraid of him. She just startled her. Only once in a very late evening, she was in the dining room looking out over the Hudson and she got this feeling of cold next to her standing there.

She told me, she said, "I'm not sure why I started talking out loud to myself," but I did and I go, "Oh, it's a beautiful night," or something like that. I'm really always feel so peaceful standing here looking out over the beauty of this house. The dread part that she had first felt slowly vanished. That was the only time that she ever felt alone.

My dad was out of town and us kids were all in bed asleep. She said that was the only time that she ever felt like somebody was angry that she was there, or looking to provoke her. For the most part, like I said, all through the years, even when after my dad died, she always felt like my youngest brother was the only at home. My sister living in college and I was living in Texas. I think my brother was living in Kansas.

My brother that's younger than me in Kansas. My youngest brother was getting ready to go to college, but we're all worried, "Well, are you going to be okay all by yourself?" She goes, "I'm never all by myself. I always fine in this house, but don't worry." She lived another 15 years in the house more or less alone.

[00:21:33] Rob: What was your mom like just as a person?

[00:21:38] Cynthia: She always had a look on the bright side attitude for most things, most of the time. Looking back, it's like she was never upset with having to pack everything back up in the boxes every three to five years and move off into a different direction. Sometimes, we went places that she didn't really want to go, but she always made the best of where we were.

The one time I can remember she didn't really want to go, we had just finished and it was mostly my father, my mother, and my brother George had just finished the renovations on a farm house that they had bought in Maryland. We had just moved in and when she was getting settled there and my dad's company, out of the blue, made him move to Colorado. That was probably her least favorite move of all. In the end, she learned how to ski. [laughs] She said, "Couldn't have been all bad. I did learn how to ski."

[00:22:56] Rob: That's great. Colorado's beautiful. [chuckles]

[00:22:59] Cynthia: She did have problems with the altitude sickness. She always felt light-headed when she was living there. Due to the fact that they were finally moving into some place that they had always talked about living on a piece of property with some acreage and some historic value, and things like that. She felt robbed of the experience mainly because they'd spent months and months making it habitable and then six or eight weeks later, move on again.

[00:23:38] Rob: [chuckles] Back to the La Veta House, she did a story with Reader's Digest about the house. Why did she do that story? She was very public about it being haunted.

[00:23:54] Cynthia: She wrote it in the mid-'70s. She always loved, even back in high school, she kept all her poems that she wrote and the essays, and things like that. She had lots of them and she'd always wanted to be a creative writer. In fact, took several creative writing classes just to learn more about the craft itself.

I think one of the instructors that she was taking classes from had mentioned, "You've learned several lessons here and all of you are getting quite good at writing the stories. Now, you need to start putting yourself out there to actually want to do this more than just learning how to journal for yourself, you have to learn how to face rejection basically in the long run. You need to start submitting your essays and stories to different publications and see what it feels like when it's not the class critiquing your work." The first thing that came to mind was the Reader's Digest. Mainly because the couple that I told you about that lived across the street, Mr. Oursler was one of the contributing editors for the Reader's Digest.

[00:25:36] Rob: Oh, wow. She said to him that's so lucky. I wish getting your writing out was that great. She submitted it to him.

[00:25:48] Cynthia: Actually, she did wanted to do if you read the fine print on the Reader's Digest, I'm sure it still says that we're always looking for contributing stories. Anything you think is interesting to address and such and such an editor. She told Noel, his wife and her bestfriend, "I'm going to submit a story so that if Tony finds out about it, he'll know that I didn't go behind his back per se. I just didn't want any influence."

She submitted it to all the proper channels at any contributing person that wanted to get there or published. She did it that way and when it came to the table from what I've heard, he saw it and he basically goes, "All right. I have to excuse myself for this particular reading because this woman is my neighbor." He just left room while they discussed it the rest of the editing staff as to its merit.

They want it to put it in any one of the publication and because Reader's Digest paid money to people even for jokes, and all things like that. I think she got paid $1,000 or maybe $1,500 for the article. That was her foray into the, "I submitted a piece of work into the universe to be judged by other people and we'll see how it does." [laughs]

Her joke to herself was she always afraid. She kept writing. She'd write all the time, but she never really submitted anything else because, "I can say I honestly been a published author and have never had anything rejected."

[laughter]

That gives you a sense of what her sense of humor was like.

[00:27:59] Rob: What was the story like that she wrote for the Reader's Digest?

[00:28:05] Cynthia: It was basically telling how the kids told her about the haunted house. The crafts people told her, big men doing heavy duty jobs didn't want to stay past the time. Everybody else left. She put in several of the stories that have been told back and forth through the family and stuff like that.

[00:28:40] Rob: When did she decide to sell the house? What was the process? Was it easy? Was it difficult?

[00:28:53] Cynthia: Like I said, she stayed there for many, many years after my father passed. She was our backup for all of us kids. I said my brother George moved in with her. He had been working overseas as a civil engineer in the Middle East for several years. [coughs] Excuse me. When he came back, he and his wife had quite a difficult divorce to start with so he moved back in with mom and went on to meet his now wife.

Then my brother, William, was back and forth depending on what kind of jobs. He's always been our vagabond brother. He was there. Then I was also there with my three children after my first husband. She was always there with a nice big house that lots of people [laughs] can be in without tripping over everything. If you have your typical four bedroom house, three bedroom house and you move in, your daughter and three kids moved back in that that makes for a frayed nerves, but we didn't have that problem so much.

The reason she wanted to sell is taxes, was it was getting to the point that she knew the renovations, the restorations that my father had done and we had tried to keep up, we're getting to the point that, it was a full time job, again, she wasn't up to it. She was then where I am now in life. I'm like, "I just had a knee replacement and I'm trying to remodel my bathroom." I'm going, "Why did I start this?"

[laughter]

It's like, I could see where she was 30 years ago. She just maybe painting some walls would have been okay, but actually, getting down on the floor to rip up the carpeting in the bathroom. Come to think of, "Why would you put carpeting in the bathroom?" [laughs] She knew that between the renovations that needed to be done and the taxes, it was just getting to a point where even with the insurance policies that my dad left and after she sold the farm in Maryland, she wasn't sure how much longer she had and wanted to make sure the asset she had would see her through to the end.

[00:31:48] Rob: When she initially puts the house on the market, how quickly was there interest in it?

[00:31:57] Cynthia: Oh, quite quickly. Both people that knew about the house and things that went on and she was never shy about showing people through. I can remember at the time she put the house on the market, I was living with her with my children and my new husband, Mark. There was quite a lot of interest in the house.

The fact that it had been-- when my dad remodeled it, he had made it so there was a kitchen on every floor so that it could be a mother-in-law type situation where people, like we did, could move in and you could have your in-laws there or your children moved back in large extended families.

Or I remember one time when mom had people come through this one young Jewish couple came in with one of their mothers. I'm not sure which one it was, but the older woman goes, "Well, at least you can cook kosher."

[laughs]

There were so many kitchens in the house. I had not thought of it like that because, but to truly cook kosher, you got to separate your dishes and your cooking utensils and everything from one from the other.

[00:33:41] Rob: Did you ever meet the Stambovsky's?

[00:33:48] Cynthia: I did once.

[00:33:50] Rob: What was your first impression of them?

[00:33:53] Cynthia: Oh, I was quite excited for mom because she had told me that they'd been through two or three times and they were expecting their first child. I was basically happy for mom. I was getting ready to move out here to Oregon market just taken a job out here in Oregon.

I was really happy that I'm going, "Oh, well, at least this way, you and William can move to Florida," my brother and her, "He can get you down settled in Florida and I won't have to worry about you packing up your house, six or eight months from now after I've already moved out to Oregon." We thought the timing was wonderful.

[00:34:42] Rob: Now, was it a conscious decision to not share that the house was haunted or was it just a mistake, or did--?

[00:34:53] Cynthia: Actually, I remember her telling them off hand. I don't think Mr. Ellis actually put anything out, but whether it was haunted or not. Like I said, a lot of people in Nyack especially have haunted houses. Mom's, this was the first one to get notarized, but Mrs. Stambovsky had said something to the effect that, "This is going to be a beautiful place to raise our family," and my mom's comment was, said something to the effect of, "I'm sure the ghosts will really love having young children here."

That was the only time that I know she mentioned ghost and it was just an offhanded remark and my two younger children were five and eight. They had all grown up, even my children grew up knowing there were ghosts in the house.

[00:36:06] Rob: When did your mom first realized that something was going wrong with selling the house with the process with the Stambovsky's?

[00:36:21] Cynthia: That I'm not sure of, because I think that I would already moved out here. That part of the story was never clear and I'm pretty sure it wasn't made clear to her until after she had already packed up everything and had bought a house in Florida and was in the throws of a total new.

[00:36:50] Rob: Would that be why your mom decided to take it to court the down payment? Basically, I know that he requested the down payment back because they wanted withdraw their purchase.

[00:37:12] Cynthia: What? Actually, it was not a down payment, it was what was called earnest money. I don't know if New York has changed their laws since then, but earnest money from what I was told, was different than what most of the rest of the world in the financial world thought of it as a down payment.

Most of the time down, payments are considered fully refundable within a specified legal time. I'm sure your sister could tell you more, but 7 working days, 30 working days, whatever. At the time earnest money was to necessarily refundable. It was to guarantee that, "I'm giving you this money because I am so earnest about buying this house that nothing's going to stop me." That's why she [chuckles] let it go to court and refuse to refund the money was because it was earnest money. If you had any doubts about it, why did you wait so long before you told me?

[00:38:30] Rob: That's interesting. He had felt that the house was like very well-publicized as being haunted and that it could devalue the house for future buyers. Did your family feel that way or did you think that it actually added value?

[00:38:47] Cynthia: We didn't feel one way or the other. It was just a fact of life. Like I said, growing up when I was in high school, we never hid the fact that we lived in a haunted house. The story came out. That was in the '60s. The story came out in Reader's Digest in the mid '70s. By the early '90s, we've pretty much taken it for granted that, yes, there's lots of haunted houses in this village, we just live with it. It wasn't until mom went to court that it actually became the legally-haunted house.

[00:39:40] Rob: Of course. How was the trial for your mom? The first trial ended up siting with your mom based on the concept of buyers beware. How was the trial for her and how did you feel after that ruling?

[00:40:00] Cynthia: Like I said, I was living out here and the fact that I knew that it was earnest money, not a down payment and they had lived with the knowledge they were moving in for longer than the period of time, any contract would give them per grace period, I was like, "Okay, mom, you don't have to return the money, don't worry about it."

Then when they decided to pursue it even further on up to the New York Supreme Court, it surprised me. It's like, "well, you kind of knew what you were getting into when you were told that by the first court that it's buyer beware. There was no damage done. Your reputation wasn't harmed in any way, your ability to move in wasn't harmed in any way. Why should you want to not move into the house?" We were [crosstalk] Yes, it is.

[00:41:18] Rob: I've seen so many pictures of it. It's really great. What was the Supreme Court trial like? I imagine that's a pretty surreal situation to have your mom up at the Supreme Court at New York.

[00:41:35] Cynthia: Again, I wasn't there. She and my brother actually went to that particular trial. I'm not sure if she even attended any of the proceedings for the under court. She just had a lawyer represent her. She did sit in court for the Supreme Court ruling. She always took it as a win, even though she had to return half the money, she only had to return half the money.

Again, that glass half full part of her came through and it's like, "Well, they got me a little bit on the part where I couldn't guarantee there wasn't other tenants in the house, but then again, they couldn't prove there were so, I'm happy." [laughs] That's the way she looked at it.

[00:42:38] Rob: Your mom sounded like such a great funny person. I think that one of the things that this core trial is really known for is for having a very tongue and cheek ruling at the end of it, referencing whose going to call, and certain things like that. It's known as the Ghostbusters' case, a lot of places.

Did your mom since she got half the money back, did she actually appreciate that sense of humor or did I could also see on the flip side, somebody being offended by it being so flippant, but how did she feel about it?

[00:43:19] Cynthia: She wasn't upset at all. Like I said, she said, "Well, at least I got to keep half of the earnest money because I was earnest with them." She was able to not long after the court ruled in the favor of discontinuing the contract, she was able to turn around and resell it to somebody who swears they, as far as I know, they only lived there a couple of three years, but they swear they never saw any signs of any hauntings, ghost or abnormal creeping's in the house. They weren't at all upset with living there and had no problems turning around and selling the house for a profit from what they bought it for. [laughs]

[00:44:13] Rob: How did your mom feel about it being the first legally-haunted house?

[00:44:20] Cynthia: She was proud that it was the first legally-haunted house. She put that as a sign that things are progressing in the world that there are things out there that we know nothing about. We shouldn't be so closed-minded as to to think just because we don't know anything about it, we should fear it.

She never feared living there, she didn't think and she'd admit that ghost stories and sometimes people have terrible problems with the supernatural, but if you go into it with a feeling that things can be worked out, they usually can. When she felt the presence when she was looking out the dining room window, talk it over, things can work out in the long run.

[00:45:23] Rob: That's a beautiful thought. Your mom passed away a few years ago and my understanding is she's not buried far away from there. Why did you lay her to rest near La Veta?

[00:45:45] Cynthia: Because it was near where my dad was, they're together.

[00:45:53] Rob: That's great. That's wonderful. Have you ever been back?

[00:45:58] Cynthia: In fact, I was back just last Friday. A week ago, Friday.

[00:46:01] Rob: Why were you back there? How was it? What was it like?

[00:46:05] Cynthia: My husband and I had promised his mom a trip to Ireland for her birthday, which didn't happen.

[laughter]

We went back to see her and stay with her. We did some traveling through parts of New York that she'd never been before, even though she's a lifelong New Yorker. She'd never been up to Lake George and things like that. One time when she had an appointment a week ago, Friday, we dropped her off and Mark drove me over to the house.

It was the only day that we were there, that it rained and it was drizzly and dark and on again, off again, rainstorm and we were standing outside the house and I could see from a couple of angles some of the work they'd done and it was looking really, really nice from the outside. About the time we were getting back in the car, we could hear a gentlemen speaking and Mark says, "Oh, I think someone's out on the back, on the deck, on around, on the sides."

About that time, his little dogs come running up to the front gate barking at us. I was like, "Hi, sweetie." I love dogs. The gentleman comes around and he has a cellphone in his hand. He's like my husband when he's on a phone call, he paces. He looks at us, he goes, "Can I help you?" I go, "Oh, I'm sorry. No, we're just leaving." He goes, "You are?" Just as I introduced myself, I go, "I'm Cynthia," and my husband said, "She used to live here." He goes, "Oh, you're the infamous Cynthia Ackley, huh?" [laughs] I have a reputation I didn't even know I have. [laughs]

[00:48:04] Rob: How did you feel about that?

[00:48:07] Cynthia: It amused me because I didn't know I was infamous. I said, "Yes, I did use to live here, but just go back to your phone call. I'm sure this is Friday, you're working. I'm just taking a look at the place," and we got back in the car and left.

They have done over the years, they've added things that my dad never got to like there was never a railing around the outside of this large wraparound porch. One of the past owners had put a very beautiful, very in keeping with the house and that was one of the stories. The gentleman that lived next door had told us was, "There had been no railing on the house even when it was built."

My dad asked Scott, "Why?" Scott, he goes, "You see all the bushes down there?" My mom goes, "Yes, the Barberry? It's something I want to get rid of." He goes, "Yes, my grandpa planted those. He figures, if you were stupid enough to stand that close to the edge of the porch and fall off, he deserved to remember it."

[laughter]

In one side of the house, it was a good four and a half foot drop out off the porch [laughs] but he didn't want anything spoiling his view of the river. He never put a railing around the porch.

[00:49:45] Rob: Did you see any spirits or feel any spirits when you were back?

[00:49:51] Cynthia: No, not this time. I do know that when we were at the memorial, Noel and Tony

Oursler had hosted the memorial for us after the church service for my mom's funeral. My sister's boy took pictures of the house and this was back in the early 2000. He had a camera with film, not a digital camera. She got the photographs developed and in two windows that look out the front towards the Oursler house, you can see hand prints and faces looking out the glass.

[00:50:42] Rob: Wow.

[00:50:42] Cynthia: It's hard to see if you can't make out any features or anything like, there's a real person standing there. You can just see shadows of hands and so, yes.

[00:50:56] Rob: How did you feel seeing that picture?

[00:50:59] Cynthia: It's a mixed blessing of feeling towards it. It's like, "Well, it looks like everybody showed up to say goodbye to her, but did she gone in to live with them or did she go on to other places?" It's one of those things that you ponder and can never find the answer.

[00:51:26] Rob: Definitely. That's a great place, I think to wrap things up. Do you have any last thoughts about your time at La Veta, or the court case or your mom or anything like that?

[00:51:42] Cynthia: It was just something that I lived and I enjoyed living there at both times I lived there and wouldn't trade those parts of my life for anything. Some of them was hard, when the reason I moved back in with mom was hard, but things still worked out for the very best in the long run.

I've never had anything, but fond memories of living there that I wasn't so fond moving in because I didn't want to leave my friends again when I was in high school, but as far as knowing it's there and still being taken care of in such a fine manner is going on now. It's like whether the people that live there or not I've ever had any experiences, I don't know, but maybe someday somebody else will.

[00:52:40] Rob: That's great. Thank you so much, Cynthia. I really appreciate you taking out your time to do this and I apologize again, for all the technical issues at the start.

[00:52:52] Cynthia: Oh, that's okay. Like I said, my husband's doing his own work on technical things and it's just a whole new setting up and things are progressing so quickly with the technical and it's hard to keep up. [chuckles]

[00:53:10] Rob: Oh yes. Both, Ray, I work in video production like our day job. This podcast, is something we do for fun. Refiguring out how to shoot things in all of this has been a nightmare [laughs] honestly. It's been very difficult.

[00:53:31] Cynthia: My husband downloaded a whole new higher end application for his computer just to keep up with things. You not only want to help out because everybody needs some support, but you got to learn it too. [chuckles] I do envy you guys.

[00:53:51] Rob: Well, thank you so much, Cynthia. I hope you have a really great day and we'll also reach out to you when it's going live. We're just at the beginning of putting this season together. Our last episode of the first season just came out. We're aiming for April-ish, but I'll definitely let you know when it's actually coming out.

[00:54:14] Cynthia: That sounds wonderful.

[00:54:16] Rob: Awesome. I really appreciate you taking your time.

[00:54:19] Cynthia: I've had a good time talking to you and I hope things work out, that the podcast gets going and you keep finding more and more interesting things to talk about.

[00:54:33] Rob: This has been great. This was awesome. I can't wait to put this together. Anyways, have a great day.

[00:54:40] Cynthia: Thank you for calling me.

[00:54:41] Rob: Of course. Bye.

[00:54:44] Cynthia: Bye.

[00:54:52] [END OF AUDIO]