Ball House Falling Down

By GINGER HOUSTON

WHITNEY -- The ink was barely dry on the story several months ago about this wonderful old house out on the flats, when the phone started ringing with people who want to know the rest of the story. We have not yet been able to talk with some of the surviving members of the family, so this story may or may not be complete at this point.

Ferne Green Smith mentioned almost in passing to me that she had spent a lot of time in the old house as a young girl because her girlfriend's parents lived there as caretakers for Puget Ball, the youngest son of John Ball, who built the house. Even though it has been about 50 years since she has been in the house, she still recalls many details of it.

"The third floor was one big room, like a ballroom. The second floor was all bedrooms; there were five or six, I don't remember which. The walls were all nicely plastered and there were hardwood floors throughout the house and they shone like mirrors, they were so great. Anna Boyd was my friend who lived there and her bedroom was in one of the turret rooms, an ideal place for two nine or ten-year-old girls to fantasize about their Prince Charming coming to rescue them.

On the ground floor, when you came in the front door, there was a formal parlor on your right, then a family parlor and a dining room. They had double siding between them all and they could be opened to make one great big room. There was a huge chandelier over what would have been the dining room table, and all of the rooms had little glass-covered wall lights or sconces. It was a beautiful home."

One of the features of the house was that it was completely plumbed for Carbide gas lighting, but it was not plumbed for water or sewer. There was water into the kitchen and that was all.

We finally were able to track down where at least some of the ghost stories may have come from. Pat Ball Dahlstad, the daughter of Puget Ball, belonged to a 4-H Club, along with Ferne and Anna, and it seems they were allowed to use the house for parties, some of which were at Halloween. They, of course, invited town kids who were not familiar with the house and the fact that it had more than one stairway.

According to Ferne, "We could go up the back stairs and pop out of the closets as ghosts, witches or whatever, and scare the living daylights out of the kids we had invited. We had a lot of parties there, but the Halloween ones were the most fun."

The house has been vacant since the early 1940s, and according to Pat, her father, Puget, sold the property in 1945, mainly because of the amount of work required to keep the dikes up.

All of the hardwood flooring, the lighting fixtures and other furnishings have long since been removed from the house, which is now basically just a shell. I guess the biggest mystery of the place is -- what is holding it up?

First published on the Internet in 1995 by permission from Ginger Houston, Roger Fox and Fidalgo Magazine.