Spirits and Wine

"A graceful, elegantly told ghost story that is at times frightening, at times heartwarming, often quite funny, and always an engrossing and fascinating read." ---Rodney Vaccaro, Emmy Award–winning Hollywood screenwriter and producer "I started Friday night and got up Saturday morning with a desire to get back to it to finish. In my experience, if I wake up and the first thing on my mind is getting back to a book, it's a good book." ---Bryan Uecker, co-owner of The Book Nook & Java Shop, Montague, Michigan"A spellbinding mystery of timeless love, loss, and a house that held all the answers. I couldn't put it down."  ---Judith Evans Thomas, coauthor of the Born to Shop travel books "Living in a 100-year old Michigan farmhouse myself, I was totally pulled into the real possibilities Newhof's characters found themselves in. Ghosts and real life haunts made for a compelling read." ---Robbyn Smith van Frankenhuyzen, author of the series Hazel Ridge Farm Stories"Spirits and Wine is a can't-put-down novel that feels less like fiction and more like sharing a glass of wine with your best friends who go on to disclose the deeply disturbing, deadly things occurring in the lovely old house they planned to restore. Susan Newhof writes truthfully and with beautiful care, evoking the icy appeal of a small lakeshore town in Michigan while revealing the wretched secrets that cling to one dwelling. After reading this harrowing tale in one sitting, I am dying to ask the author---did these menacing events really happen . . . to you?" ---Jerrilyn Farmer, author of the best-selling Madeline Bean Mysteries "If only the walls could talk---and they do in Susan Newhof's thrilling Spirits and Wine. Readers, be prepared for an absorbing adventure into John and Anna's journey to solve a century-old mystery wrapped within the walls of their newly purchased 'dream home.' Told creatively in tandem, the couple's story of life in pursuit of truth will leave you wondering just where the fact ends and the fiction begins. Keep the lights on and enjoy!" ---Beckey Burgoyne, author of Perfectly Amanda: Gunsmoke's "Miss Kitty"---To Dodge and Beyond    It's a mystery and a ghost story, all wrapped up in one. A newly married couple buys an old house in a small lakeshore town in West Michigan and finds it haunted by the dramatic secrets of its past inhabitants. As the couple settles in, disturbing events prompt them to investigate who those residents were, what happened to them, and why one spirit remains active. Could the Spanish influenza epidemic in the region, which resulted in the deaths of an unprecedented number of young, healthy adults in Michigan and elsewhere in 1918---19, and the resulting slew of orphans, have something to do with the spirit now haunting their house? They are determined to discover the truth about their house, even if it jeopardizes their own safety.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Spirits & WineBy Susan NewhofThe University of Michigan PressCopyright © 2011University of MichiganAll right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-472-11800-7Chapter OneMaple Hill had been situated on Lake Street in Carlston, Michigan, for 121 years by the time John and I first saw it. On that particular afternoon, silver and red Christmas garland wrapped the front pillars, and swags of plastic evergreen were anchored at each corner of the porch roof with red velveteen bows. On the porch itself, three white wicker rockers with red striped cushions were lined up side-by-side, and on each seat lay a pinecone wreath tied with red ribbons. The chairs were flanked by twin, life-sized grapevine deer covered in white lights. A six-foot cardboard cutout of Santa Claus stood just to the right of the front door. Inside, an electric candle glowed in each window, and we could see colored lights blinking dimly from somewhere behind them in most of the front rooms. Even the "For Sale" sign in the yard had a red bow on it. It was mid-July. "Well, at least it doesn't look abandoned," I told John. "Maybe the owner just likes Christmas." We called a realtor and arranged to see it a few days later. And that's how we came to meet Margaret, the owner. "It's my favorite season," she told us as she led us around the house. "I never take down the decorations completely. Sometimes I pack away a few things, but I always put up more. This house just asks to be stuffed with Christmas!" John rolled his eyes for my benefit alone. There was a decorated artificial tree in nearly every room, including the first-floor bath, and plug-in air fresheners made the whole place smell like cinnamon and baked apples. For as warm and bright as it was outside, it felt like the dark days of December inside. Margaret had hung heavy brocade drapes over most of the windows, and her furniture was big and broody, leaving little room to walk. Not the picture of grace under the best of circumstances, I bumped into a grapevine reindeer rearing precariously on two of its hoofs, which crashed into a side table and sent a bowl of potpourri sailing. Margaret asked if we had kids as she led us up the stairway to the bedrooms on the second floor. I told her no, but I was mostly distracted trying to navigate around a dozen or so fabric cats wearing red and green calico bonnets and occupying a significant part of each step. The banister was wrapped in garland, too, which left little room to grab hold, and I was trying to avoid another stumble. There was more. Brittle spruce cones hung by ribbons that were thumbtacked into the window ledge, and Christmas cards lay heaped in a silver bowl on the landing. I couldn't imagine how someone could walk up and down those stairs every day, carrying laundry or even just a coffee cup. I guess Margaret was used to it. Meanwhile, she was clearly disappointed by my answer about kids. With the big yard and all, she had hoped a family with lots of children would buy the place. The upstairs hall was wide, which was a relief, and the rooms that opened on to it were in various stages of renovation. Maybe that's being generous. Some of the rooms looked like they hadn't been touched in years. Dusty garland draped each doorway, and wreaths made of some kind of artificial greenery hung by suction cups in most of the windows. The closets were small and covered with curtains instead of doors. And the floors were so slanted that a fair game of marbles wouldn't have been possible. I asked Margaret why there were no doors on the closets. She had just drawn aside a lace panel that didn't quite reach to the floor and did only a passable job of screening out the clutter of suits and men's pressed shirts behind it. "I don't think this house had any closets when it was built," Margaret replied, leaning against her dresser. "And there sure weren't many when we moved in three years ago. We carved out a few, but none of them have standard-size openings, so we just hung curtains instead of trying to fit them with custom-made doors." I remember squeezing John's hand. He smiled. I knew we would deal with the curtain issue later. Margaret suggested we finish with a tour of the basement, and I'll tell you, the thought of just trying to get there was daunting. "You first," John offered. He sounded gallant, but it was really self-defense. Margaret led the way back down to the front hall stairs, through the living and dining rooms and into the kitchen to a five-foot-tall door in the back corner to the left of the sink. It was tricky getting down the narrow basement stairs. John thinks they were added when the outdoor access was bricked shut sometime in the early 1900s. Fitted between an old waste pipe, two support beams and the foundation wall, it was a clever project for the tiny space. "The steps are treacherous, but you'll get used to them," Margaret told us as she started down first. I gripped the block wall and took a deep breath. The air was cool compared to the heat outside, and it had that characteristic musty old basement smell. Margaret didn't exaggerate the state of the steps. They were awful, but there were only eight of them. When I reached the bottom, I stood still for a few moments waiting for my eyes to adjust to the relative darkness. We were in a small, windowless room dominated by a giant and very old furnace that sat silent in the July heat, looking deceptively ready for the next cold spell. Margaret said it had been converted twice—once from coal to oil, then again to gas. John figured it would need to be replaced before winter set in. Beyond the tiny furnace room was another room that was likely used to store coal at one time and who knows what else. The floor space measured only about twelve feet by twelve feet, and each side ended at a block wall about four feet high. From that block wall to the outside wall—a space of about five feet—it was all dirt, sloping from that short wall gradually upward toward the foundation. It was a typical Michigan crawl space, Margaret told us. The area left just enough room for someone to crawl around to fix wiring or plumbing or a loose board in the floor above. The dirt, having seen neither rain or snow nor any other elements for over a century, was bone dry, almost powdery. In many places the dirt had been covered with old boards and doors to make a sort of deep shelf where seasonal things like canning jars and flower bulbs could be stored safely on top in the cool darkness. Margaret kept her unused Christmas decorations there. John said it might also be just about perfect for storing wine. There was a relatively new water heater, two old worktables and not much more, except for a tangle of new and old water pipes and the remnants of ancient wiring that hadn't been removed when the electrical service was upgraded. We headed back up the stairs into the kitchen. I couldn't resist. "Is it haunted?" I asked, trying to sound casual. With more than one hundred years' worth of families having walked its halls, I figured somebody interesting must have stuck around. "No," Margaret replied, looking slightly off-put by my question. "There's nothing like that going on here." John asked why they were moving. Margaret told us that her husband had been transferred. His law firm had decided to open an office in Cleveland, and they wanted him to head it up. It was one of those offers that are too good to pass up, but they were real sad to leave the house. She said they thought they would otherwise have lived there forever. Then she switched the subject and offered us iced tea. Anna said later that she couldn't imagine living "forever" in a house that was so dark and cluttered and perennially blinking with Christmas lights. But Margaret's answer did explain why she and her husband had gone to the trouble and expense of shoring up the foundation and replacing several crumbling plaster walls with drywall. Yet, in spite of what they had already accomplished, the place needed a ton of work. Many walls in the bedrooms upstairs were covered with old wallpaper that would have to be removed before painting. It did occur to me, however, that the paper might be the only thing keeping the walls from cracking. The bathrooms needed to be gutted and rebuilt, and the kitchen felt like a cave, with brown cabinets, brown paneling and brown vinyl flooring. I assumed the electrical service, even though "updated," was minimal, and Anna has already told you about the furnace. As I added up costs in my head, I estimated replacement of that beast alone at somewhere around $5,000. And there was something else that wasn't really a problem in the grand scheme of renovating the house, but was certainly unattractive. The yard was pocked with what looked like twenty or thirty abandoned flower beds—smallish plots of lawn that had been dug up rather randomly around the one-acre lot, seemingly with good intentions, then given over to weeds. I thought, at first, they were the work of a dog with too much time on his hands. But Margaret didn't have a dog. And she apparently didn't have a green thumb, either. There wasn't a healthy-looking flower or vegetable plant anywhere on the grounds. Not a petunia or rosebush to be found. No herbs or tomatoes, not even an old bed of peonies or a leggy lilac bush. Nothing but those tufts of turned-over ground, some rugged old spruce that probably predated the house, and a row of fine, ancient maples along the north property line for which the place was named. Getting this place in shape, both inside and out, would be a huge expensive project. Anna started gushing before we were barely out of the driveway. It was clear that she loved it. "Did you catch her reaction when I asked about ghosts?" she asked me. She was digging through her purse to find the directions to the restaurant where we were meeting the realtor so we could talk. "She thought you were nuts," I told Anna. She read off the directions, and I followed. It wasn't far. Anna said she should have anticipated Margaret's reaction just by the religious pictures all over the house and the framed Bible passages in the kitchen. But she was hoping for some stories. Not that Margaret would have told her the truth anyway. I imagine that owners who want to sell keep the details of unexplained phenomena to themselves. I turned into a parking spot and shut off the car. In the two minutes it took us to go from the house to the diner, Anna had already sketched the first floor and found places to put our piano, the pie safe, and the cranberry love seat that had been her grandmother's. I put my arms around her and suggested that she not get emotionally involved with the house, yet. And I started to enumerate the reasons why. But I gave up when I saw the expression on her face. I had seen it before. She was smiling and pretending to listen. I knew in her mind it was a done deal. "Too late?" I asked. "Yep, I think so," Anna said, grabbing her papers, and she was out of the car in a second. Jayne Tolbert was our realtor. She's gorgeous and funny, and we both liked her a lot. She and Anna were whispering conspiratorially by the time I came out of the bathroom and headed to their table. Anna suggested that maybe Margaret would find our offer more acceptable if we promised to keep all that garland up for sixty days after closing. That made Jayne laugh. For three years, she had driven past the house nearly every evening on her way home from work. She told us the decorations were at one time a topic of considerable talk in town, but the novelty had worn off, and now the place was just something that made people shake their heads. Jayne had figured it would take an outsider to get past the weirdness of it. And Anna certainly seemed to have gotten past it. Jayne apologized at least three times for having turned us loose alone with Margaret. She had an unexpected financing problem at a closing just before our appointment to tour the house, and hadn't been able to take us through herself. She didn't like to leave potential buyers in the hands of the owners because she thought sometimes they were less than forthright about their home's condition. But in this case, she felt that underneath all the lights and tinsel, we would find a pretty solid house. I can't help but have questions about that day, the timing of our finding the house, Jayne's meeting that kept her from joining us. I've wondered how different things might be if we had waited until the next day to tour the house, or the next week, when she could have gone through it with us. Maybe someone else would have seen it first and put in an offer, and we would have found another place. "Consider yourselves lucky if she leaves that garland up," Jayne offered. "There has to be two hundred dollars' worth across the porch roofs and up those pillars." "Anna's always wanted an old house," I told her. I remember looking at my sweet wife of less than six months and shaking my head. I reached for the sketch in her lap and held it up to show Jayne. "She has places for the furniture already!" It was true, this dream of mine to have a big old place. I told John about it early on in our courtship in case he was inclined to chrome and plastic. I wanted flower and vegetable gardens, too. Years of apartment living had confined my passion for gardening to window boxes and patio tomatoes. This house would give me nearly an acre to play with. And John could have a dog. But first things first. John had questions. He turned to me and asked if I could live in a house without closet doors. My face got hot, and I put my hands over my eyes. I knew this was coming. One night a couple years earlier when we were dating, I stopped John mid-kiss and asked if he would please close the bedroom closet door. He thought it was an odd request in the midst of some world-class foreplay, but he got up and pushed the door lightly, never taking his eyes off me. So he didn't notice that the door didn't quite close. I asked him to try again. He got a bit exasperated and asked if he was falling in love with a neat freak. But he did get up once more, and this time he hit the door with his hip, slamming it tight. I told him that things live in closets. Sitting there in front of Jayne, he was grinning from ear to ear, remembering that conversation. I said I would just have to get used to it, and John immediately realized that kind of stuff really does unhinge me. He softened and took my hand and told me he would look for some doors that could be cut down to fit. And then he laughed and reminded me that we didn't even own the place yet. An hour later, we held a copy of our offer, which Jayne would hand-carry to Margaret, and we headed back to our apartment. It was late afternoon already, and warm. Anna and I drove the old road, past the city beach and the little bar that served fried perch. A few miles later, I wheeled into the parking lot of the state park and asked Anna if she wanted to go for a walk. She shouted yes and bolted out of the car, yelling over her shoulder, "I'll race you!" Halfway to the shore, she kicked off her shoes without slowing down. After three years of dating and six months of marriage, I still loved just looking at Anna. So I sat there for a minute thinking how good my life was. Then I opened my door and pulled off my shoes and socks and tucked them behind the front seat. I took out a small cooler, a paper bag and a towel from the trunk and headed for the water. I remember feeling the sand, so warm on the soles of my feet. Anna and I love living near these incredible beaches. Anna was already up to her knees in Lake Michigan. It had been unseasonably hot and the water was over seventy degrees. She waved and yelled to me, but the offshore wind blew her words away. I held up the cooler for her to see, then spread the towel and sat and watched her play. "The water's wonderful," she said, walking toward me a few minutes later. The hems of her shorts were wet, and she was out of breath. Then she kneeled down next to me and held her hands out and asked, "What's all this?" I said I thought she might get thirsty. I took a bottle of champagne, two very cold glasses and a dozen strawberries from the cooler. Cheese and crackers were in the bag. She was suddenly all over me, in what started as a hug and ended with both of us on our backs in the sand. (Continues...) Excerpted from Spirits & Wineby Susan Newhof Copyright © 2011 by University of Michigan . Excerpted by permission of The University of Michigan Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

About the Author

Susan Newhof, author of Michigan's Town and Country Inns, is a writer and a consultant in media relations and public speaking. She and her husband, Paul Collins, live in a century-old home in Montague, Michigan.

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