Hi, I'm doing my midterm assignment for my journalism class. I'm writing an article entitled "Ghosts Vs. Skeptics". I'm supposed to add as many opinions as possible, including quotes. So if you would be so kind as to read a little of this and let me know your skeptical viewpoint on it, I would be forever grateful.
Please put your name so I can quote you. If you don't feel comfortable adding your name, you can also PM it to me, and let me know which comment was yours.
Look at this from a debunking perspective as well as a poor piece of evidence, if you'd be so kind. In other words, please don't just respond with "What a load of hooey!"
Thanks ever so much
The Lady of LOG CABIN VILLAGE ... and other spirited tales
BARBER'S BOOKSTORE: A literate ghost
It wasn't until three decades after Brian Perkins became owner of Barber's Bookstore that the ghost finally ran him out.
Oh, sure, weird things had been happening ever since 1969, when Perkins bought the 1910 building at Eighth and Throckmorton streets: the banging of feet climbing the stairs, the icy grasp of a random cold spot, the footsteps that no one can explain.
But "the most interesting manifestation" of the Barber's ghost, says Perkins, now 72 and mostly retired, was its interest in his books.
On late nights and early mornings, Perkins, the only (living?) person in the building, would be roused from his work by the sound of flipping pages, as if someone were thumbing through one of his thousands of tomes.
"After a while, you understand that nothing is going to hurt you," he says, "that it's a friendly presence."
Perkins' cat wasn't so sure.
The "feisty, very endearing animal" was brought to the bookstore to live. But within a couple weeks, the cat refused to go upstairs, and the building had "changed his personality completely. He was scared to death, I think," Perkins says.
One of Perkins' sons is the only person known to have seen a possible apparition. The younger Perkins had been bedding down in an upstairs room when he awoke to see a man in white walk past his door. Perkins' son grabbed his gun and searched the premises.
No one.
The century-old building has a colorful history. The upstairs was formerly a boardinghouse on the western edge of Fort Worth's notorious red-light district, Hell's Half Acre.
One unverifiable story goes that a furious father shot his daughter's lover on the staircase. Mitchel Whitington's book Ghosts of North Texas takes that a step further: The girl was actually a prostitute who had fallen in love with one of her cowboy customers and killed herself after watching her paramour die.
She supposedly haunts the building, too, giving off a faint perfume.
Perkins' last and spookiest encounter came in the early 1990s, just a couple years before he closed the bookstore. Again, it occurred on a day he was in the building alone, or thought he was.
This time, he heard boxes shuffling around on the top floor.
Perkins looked up the staircase. "You could see sunlight, and then you could not see sunlight. Something was moving back and forth in front of the light source and making . . . major noise.
"I left the building that day," Perkins says. "I had a bad feeling about that."
Barber's Bookstore now houses a deli downstairs and may soon house a bookstore on its top floor. One possible name, says likely proprietor Dwight Greene: Ghost in the Attic Books.
-- Fort Worth Star-Telegram (TX)
October 31, 2004
Author: LIZ STEVENS; Star-Telegram Staff Writer
Please put your name so I can quote you. If you don't feel comfortable adding your name, you can also PM it to me, and let me know which comment was yours.
Look at this from a debunking perspective as well as a poor piece of evidence, if you'd be so kind. In other words, please don't just respond with "What a load of hooey!"
Thanks ever so much
The Lady of LOG CABIN VILLAGE ... and other spirited tales
BARBER'S BOOKSTORE: A literate ghost
It wasn't until three decades after Brian Perkins became owner of Barber's Bookstore that the ghost finally ran him out.
Oh, sure, weird things had been happening ever since 1969, when Perkins bought the 1910 building at Eighth and Throckmorton streets: the banging of feet climbing the stairs, the icy grasp of a random cold spot, the footsteps that no one can explain.
But "the most interesting manifestation" of the Barber's ghost, says Perkins, now 72 and mostly retired, was its interest in his books.
On late nights and early mornings, Perkins, the only (living?) person in the building, would be roused from his work by the sound of flipping pages, as if someone were thumbing through one of his thousands of tomes.
"After a while, you understand that nothing is going to hurt you," he says, "that it's a friendly presence."
Perkins' cat wasn't so sure.
The "feisty, very endearing animal" was brought to the bookstore to live. But within a couple weeks, the cat refused to go upstairs, and the building had "changed his personality completely. He was scared to death, I think," Perkins says.
One of Perkins' sons is the only person known to have seen a possible apparition. The younger Perkins had been bedding down in an upstairs room when he awoke to see a man in white walk past his door. Perkins' son grabbed his gun and searched the premises.
No one.
The century-old building has a colorful history. The upstairs was formerly a boardinghouse on the western edge of Fort Worth's notorious red-light district, Hell's Half Acre.
One unverifiable story goes that a furious father shot his daughter's lover on the staircase. Mitchel Whitington's book Ghosts of North Texas takes that a step further: The girl was actually a prostitute who had fallen in love with one of her cowboy customers and killed herself after watching her paramour die.
She supposedly haunts the building, too, giving off a faint perfume.
Perkins' last and spookiest encounter came in the early 1990s, just a couple years before he closed the bookstore. Again, it occurred on a day he was in the building alone, or thought he was.
This time, he heard boxes shuffling around on the top floor.
Perkins looked up the staircase. "You could see sunlight, and then you could not see sunlight. Something was moving back and forth in front of the light source and making . . . major noise.
"I left the building that day," Perkins says. "I had a bad feeling about that."
Barber's Bookstore now houses a deli downstairs and may soon house a bookstore on its top floor. One possible name, says likely proprietor Dwight Greene: Ghost in the Attic Books.
-- Fort Worth Star-Telegram (TX)
October 31, 2004
Author: LIZ STEVENS; Star-Telegram Staff Writer
