Did Helene Encounter a Ghost?

I found this story on one of the diskettes I retrieved from Helene Hadsell’s home in 2022. The file properties state it was last updated on 11/22/2004, and based on the header, I assume it was an assignment from one of the writing classes she took.

The Strasbough Church

Abandoned in the middle of the prairie, the Strasbough church stood sentry over the cemetery that was now its silent congregation. Migrant farmers from Germany built the little wooden church. They came seeking a better life. In the late 1880s, the U.S. government encouraged German and Russian farmers to come to South Dakota to develop the virgin territory and raise wheat.

As time passed, the farm community around Ipswich, South Dakota, outgrew the church, and people began attending the church of their denomination in town. Occasionally, the local farmer families used the church as a meeting place to pray for good crops or rain.

Our farm, where I grew up, was a quarter of a mile from the church. Whenever I reflect back on my childhood days, I remember the church and the Sunday my nine-year-old cousin, Allen, my aunt, and my uncle came to visit. They lived in town, and I looked forward to their visit because Allen would play with my sister and me. The men usually had a game of horseshoes going on while the women sat on the summer porch fanning themselves while drinking lemonade. When the afternoon sun got too hot, everyone went into the house to play a game called ‘Pitch’ on our big dining table.

“Now is our chance to explore,” Allen suggested on that memorable Sunday. The church was one of our favorite places to go. Cathy, my sister who was eight and two years older than I, would follow Allen while I tagged behind. Allen and Cathy would read the stone markers in the cemetery and makeup stories about people buried there. We always checked the door of the church on the chance that it might be open. That particular Sunday, the door gave way with a dry squeak, and we peeked in to see if there was anyone inside. The place was empty. “Daddy and Mama said the church is haunted by ghosts,” I said, turning to Allen as we stood in the doorway. “Yes, it is,” Cathy
added. “We heard them talking one night as we were listening through the heat grid on the floor in our bedroom upstairs.”

“Maybe the ghosts are hiding in the confessionals,” Allen snickered as he opened the confessional doors. “Nope, they aren’t in there: I bet they’re in the loft waiting for us to sing and play the organ,” he said as he threw back his head, letting out a peal of laughter, heading for the wooden stairs. Allen and Cathy took turns pumping air into the organ to get sound while I tried to find a song among the keys. Tired of that activity, we went back downstairs.

Bolder now, we approached the altar and stood gazing at a mural of the saints on a strained glass window behind the alter. Suddenly, we heard a heart-stopping thud. Paralyzed with fear, we clung to each other, saying the only prayer we could think of, which was grace before meals. When nothing rose out of the floor or floated down from above, we regained our courage.

“There is our ghost,” Allen shrugged indifferently as he pointed to the brass candleholder on the floor in front of the altar. The heat must have melted the wax to one side, causing the candle to fall over and roll on the floor,” he explained, using a Sherlock Holmes method of deduction. Finding the cause brought such relief that we began laughing hysterically.

Suddenly, a gust of wind blew the door closed. It was so violent that the windows vibrated, and at the same time, an echoing scream from the loft momentarily froze us to statues where we stood. The moaning and screeching, followed by the organ playing, brought us back to the Now as we literally flew down the aisle toward the door. Breathless after running and stumbling the quarter mile to the safety of the porch swing, we caught our breath and silently began swinging the rest of the afternoon, trying to figure out what really happened.

Was it just the wind? Was it the dead congregation in the cemetery that rose to frighten us away from their place? Was it all a child’s imagination, the shrieking, the moaning, and the organ playing? And what about the candle that crashed on the floor?
We will never know. We only know one thing: It happened, and it scared the yell out of us.

Enjoy the above video as I read out a few of Helene’s encounters with
spirits, ghosts, and 4th-dimensional beings on this All Hallows’ Eve.