Lawson Family

The old Hudson home intrigued the Lawson family. Ben and Cheryl Lawson were the adventurous type and they loved a good mystery. Although they never permanently lived in the home, they would visit it secretly. They had been doing research for months trying to piece the history together.

I found out the details of their time spent at the home from a website that Ben has created. He posts different stories about the ghostly encounters that he has had. Looking at websites like this, people might be skeptical of the truth. But after what I have learned so far, I believe his story. Just as I do with the other families' stories. They seem to be consistent with one another. He had written different ghostly encounters in a journal, and in 2005 he posted them online. This is what Ben's story said:

"Cheryl and I began visiting the old Hudson home in 1996. Rumors about this house suggested that it was haunted, so we wanted to see for ourselves. You see, we'd been moving across states looking for truly haunted houses to try to communicate and understand ghosts. We'd only come across a few that actually were, and this one did not disappoint.

Back then, we were just getting involved with the paranormal world. We researched the house starting with the local library, and we found everything that we could about the home and the previous owners. We learned about the woman who died in the house and how she experienced child loss.

We found that a lot of things didn't add up. Mrs. Hudson, the woman who was murdered in the home, had a baby that died from asphyxiation, but it was supposedly an accident. Her baby's remains were found in the river down the hill from the home. Mr.and Mrs. Hudson were very secluded and they rarely interacted with anyone. When we asked older people of the town about the Hudsons, they had little information because of the lack of interactions.

Our best attempt to communicate with this ghost was by using a ouija board. The first night we used it, we went to the bedroom that Mrs. Hudson was killed in. The two words that were spelled out on the board were Rose and murder. We remembered the name of Mrs. Hudson's baby was Rose. We started to wonder if that meant that Rose was in fact murdered, and it wasn't an accident. The words given seemed like such a simple clue.

The experience was not very intense. The ghost simply spelled out the words and then we were left with nothing else. We attempted to communicate more, but never got a response after that. If Mrs. Hudson was the one communicating with us, was she trying to tell us that someone else murdered her child?

We began to think that Mrs. Hudson was a wandering ghost unable to be put to rest because she had unfinished business here on earth. Someone murdered her baby, and possibly her, but no one knows anything about it. We've come across ghosts in the past that haunt a specific place and cannot be put to rest until they are able to take care of that unfinished business, and in this case I believe she needed to bring justice to her killer.

Our next step was to try to lay the ghost. We rallied up a bigger crowd consisting of twelve people (other paranormal investigators and curious neighbors) to try to put her to rest finally. She attempted to make the circumstances extremely difficult. Anything we tried to do she would try to prevent us. For example, we would try to communicate with the ouija board and she would answer with a "no" to every question no matter what. She would slam the doors we wanted to enter, specifically the bedroom where she was murdered. She would also target people when they were alone and scare them so that they would leave the house.

We finally settled in the basement, and this made her very unhappy. Picture frames, wall tiles, and small loose objects began flying across the room. All of a sudden, a large painting that was fixed in the center of one of the walls made a loud cracking sound. We walked over and noticed that not only was the painting cracked, but also the wall. I leaned in closer and found stacks of money piled within the wall. Why was the ghost revealing hidden money?

After that incident, most everyone was extremely frightened and ready to leave. We decided we would quit for the night.

As everyone left that night, while Cheryl and I began locking up the house, we heard a soft knocking on the basement door. We walked over and opened the door and saw the ghost of Mrs. Hudson. Other times when she had been communicating, we never saw her actual ghost. But this time, we communicated with her in a way that's hard to believe even for me to this day because it was almost as if we were talking to a normal human being. She was sad and frightened, rather than menacing as other ghosts have been. The thing that I remember her saying was:

"I cannot rest until the world knows what happened to my poor Rose. My death was malicious, but it started with the death of my baby. My husband. He did this to her. To me. Help me."

Then she was gone, and we never saw her again. Due to family circumstances, we had to move states shortly after, so we were never able to help Mrs. Hudson."

This pair of investigators found out who murdered Mrs. Hudson, but why was nothing done to bring her justice? What does the money have to do with her murder?

Story Source: The Roaring Bull of Bagbury, Miss C. S. Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore, p 108., Sacred Texts

Author's Note: In the original story, there is an old man who was a terrible person who only ever did two good things during his life. When he died he made a confession to this. His ghost would not rest, and he would get inside buildings in the shape of a bull and make loud noises causing the shutters and tiles to fly off the building. He made it nearly impossible for anyone to live close to him. It took twelve parsons to lay his ghost, and it was still a difficult task. When they finally got him to the church and laid him, he created a huge crack up and down one of the walls of the church. I changed this story greatly to fit into my storybook. I used the concept of having twelve people try to lay the ghost, but in my story, she cannot be laid because she has unfinished business to complete before her soul can rest. I also used the idea of having the ghost being unable to rest, but they have different reasons for doing so. I changed the ending to her not being put to rest because we still have to uncover the rest of Mrs. Hudson's dark past, including why she was murdered by her husband and why he was never charged with murder.