The Court Yard
As a child, I live in Highlands, New Jersey. I lived in an apartment building, and across the street was an odd-shaped building that always intrigued me as a child. The building was shaped like a triangle and only had windows on the top two floors. The front yard was a beautiful garden with all types of plants and trees throughout the summer and spring, and those plants seemed to overtake the property. However, as the cooler weather started to set in and the summer ended with fall peaking around the corner, the property seemed to take on a new life. When the first signs of fall appear, it feels like someone is awoken from a deep slumber. The property had a sense of urgency, and whoever was waking was there to care for the building and property before the first snowfall of winter.
Almost as if by magic, trees were trimmed, the flower beds cleared, and the fountains cleaned. It was like the property was getting ready for guests or one particular guest. Eerily there were never any workers while the work was being done. We would have seen workers and work trucks during the day because all that separated the property from the sidewalk was a chain link fence. As a gardener, now that I am grown, I think back to the amount of work that was completed and how it was peculiar, there was never anyone seen. My bedroom window was directly across from the main doors of the building, and I never saw anyone in the garden or the building. I was grounded a lot when I was a kid, and I sat watching the building being stuck in my bedroom.
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When I lived in Highlands, I was a member of the local Girl Scouts. As Highlands had a lot of history, we got to do a lot of historical walking tours. Many people in my old Girl Scout troop never remembered these stories, but they stayed in my memory. These tours would happen on all three levels of our town. One day we were walking past where I lived, and I asked the volunteer if she knew anything about the building across the street from where I lived. She smiled, had us stop in front of the property, and told us the story about the building and its family that lived there.
The story goes that when the town started, the building was once a print shop, and the owner was quite wealthy. The owner of the print shop also ran the only newspaper in town. The print shop owner was fair in pricing, willing to help someone out, and would willingly accept trades to help his fellow townspeople. The printer's fairness helped bring him business from all parts of town and all people in the surrounding area. He never turned away a sale, regardless if he received fish from a fisherman, fruit and vegetables from a gardener, or meat and fur from a hunter. These trades helped him care for his family and staff.
His fairness and kindness led to a wealth of being a proud businessman and a devoted husband and father. The print shop owner joked he would search for a husband for his daughter far and wide, so this man would take over the business when he retired. He joked about this because his daughter deserved the best, and he knew his daughter would be the one to choose her husband, as this would make her happy. People in town knew the father was joking. However, it did not stop young men from far and wide from coming to court the daughter. These young men who visited would leave shortly after arriving, angry since they were all rejected.
Many of the suitors who visited the daughter thought she was a woman who kept the house, her husband, and future children. These assumptions were furthest from the truth as the daughter had learned much from her father, and although she helped her mother run the home, she also knew every aspect of her father's business. She had spent years watching and questioning her father on how the business ran so she could understand what he did. With a firm understanding of the business, she would help him run the shop while he was away and would also go to meetings in his place.
During one of these meetings, the daughter would meet her future husband. A gentleman was coming in to inquire about some adverts to have posted in the newspaper, and as her father was running late, he had sent his daughter ahead to start the meeting without him. When her father arrived at the local tavern to meet the gentleman and talk business, he could see his daughter and the gentleman were so engrossed with each other that her father had to get their attention because they had never even noticed he was there.
Before long, the happy couple had announced their engagement, and the wedding followed quite soon after. Everyone in town went to the wedding ceremony at the local park and enjoyed cake and punch after the ceremony. Later that evening, the family hosted a private ball and reception to celebrate the couple. The family came into a prosperous time after the daughter had been married, and they lived in happiness and prosperity. Her husband worked with her father in the printing business, and it thrived and grew. As the couple reached their first wedding anniversary, the happy couple announced they were expecting their first child. Shortly after, they welcomed their first child, a daughter. The father was overjoyed with the happiness his daughter and husband shared and was excited about the birth of his Granddaughter.
Soon their joy turned to grief. The father had caught pneumonia, and after a long battle, he finally passed away at the end of the summer. Her mother, who had attended to him while he was sick, soon fell ill and passed away within a few weeks of becoming ill. After a while, the daughter and her husband settled into a new version of daily life. Her father had taught her husband the family business so well that the business flourished, and the couple had found a new sense of peace in the home after so much loss. Their peace lasted until just before their daughter's third birthday. A horrible sickness swept through the town, and although they had taken precautions, their little girl soon fell ill. The loving parents did everything they could to save and comfort the little girl. While their daughter was sick, people would say you would see the young mother holding and walking her daughter in front of the windows by the courtyard. For weeks anyone who walked past the building could hear the small child crying and see the mother pacing with the child in her arms. Soon after, their young child passed away, leaving her mother devastated.
Weeks following the daughter's death, the young mother would sit next to the daughter's burial plot. She would sit there so often that her husband had placed a padded bench for her use. One night the first snowstorm of the season hit, and the snow piled high all around town. The husband became concerned because his wife was nowhere to be found. The whole staff took to the streets, and the town magistrate was bought in to work on a search. Later that day, one of the maids had taken the shortcut through the courtyard to get home and saw a shoe poking out from a nearby snowbank by the daughter's grave. After the staff moved the snow, the wife's body was found near her daughter's grave, resting her head on the headstone. Her husband was so grief-stricken as they had to bury his wife next to his daughter. Although he continued to run the business in honor of his wife and father-in-law, it would be rare for him to leave the building. After some time, the help had left, and only a maid and the butler were the only staff that remained.
Now when the snow starts to fall, it can be said that is when you can hear the sound coming from the building across the road right before the sun goes down. First, you can make out the sound of a baby crying. Then a woman crying can be heard on more than one occasion. I could have sworn I had seen a woman walk through the second floor carrying a baby. The events would always begin the same way, with the garden being overgrown till the fall. Then as if by magic, it would be cleaned and fixed up right before the snow falls. For many people in the town, when the courtyard had its transformation, it became a reliable sign that winter would be upon us soon. Then a winter storm hit the last winter I lived in the apartment. Coincidently this storm hit right after the courtyard had transformed. During the snow storm, I was looking at the property from my bedroom window and noticed two graves at the base of the oak tree right past the graves sat a bench near the house. Then in the storm, I saw a man standing in a top hat and cloak gazing at the gravestones.
**I have a little bit of an update on this story. As I was doing a Google map search for a new Kindle Vella series I have on Amazon and I discovered this historic building no longer exists. From what the pictures show on Google street view, the property is now just a garden. It makes me sad to know that the building is no longer there. However, I hope the spirits of this property are now at rest.**
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