The von Artle Legacy

By C. D. Moulton

Note: I would classify this as paranormal, but there is no such category listed. I do not believe in ghosts, but something very strange was going on then. It has been more than 30years, and I still have no solid answers.

The von Artle Legacy is based on a true experience

A woman inherits a small lush island in Florida. When she and her computer expert husband move in they find there are ghosts. Two in the main house and one in the servants quarters house where Tom is setting up his computer business.
The ones in the main house are friendly and welcoming.
The one in the comp house is most definitely not!

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. D. Moulton
• Release date: Jul 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201081362

Book preview

Prologue

The house wasn't hard to find. It was merely difficult to reach.

Madelaine looked at her new almost-ancient structure she'd inherited from her late uncle, Frederich Ricard von Artle, just last month and saw possibilities. True, it was old and weathered, but was also built of heart pine and cedar with cypress decking in the verandah that went around three sides. The old tin roof didn't show any rust, but it was also manufactured back when they put the heavy zinc galvanizing on thick enough to last centuries instead of only until it was off the wholesaler's lot.

Em, as everyone called Madelaine White, knew the sheeting was actually steel, not tin. She also knew the house sitting there on its little island had weathered some hellacious hurricanes since it was built by her great grandfather, Erich von Artle in 1887 – 1888.

Inheriting that place came at just the right time. Tom had lost his job as a computer technician more than two years ago, their savings were gone and now the company she'd worked for, four years of near-minimum wage, was no longer in business. There simply were no jobs in that part of Michigan anymore. The GM plant was closing down, which would throw thousands more onto the unemployed lists.

The place was going to need a lot of work, but she was sure it was solid. That roof wouldn't leak before 2050 – and then only if the house was hit by twenty more major hurricanes! The wood was bleached and weathered, but there was no rot in the cypress and cedar and the pitch in the heart pine would have hardened like carbon steel over the years.

She remembered the one time she'd seen the place. She'd fallen in love with it then. May of 1972. She had been four. Her father had come to south Florida to visit Uncle Fred and he'd brought them out to the house by boat. They spent a full day exploring the sixteen acre island surrounded by the dense red mangroves.

That was the only time in her life she'd met Uncle Fred. He was a recluse who lived in a large mansion in Paradise Shores in Naples. He'd tried mightily to be a gracious host, but her father had let his envy of the old millionaire show. The result was that they'd never come back.

Uncle Fred left her the island place because he had no other relatives and because she'd made a statement at the time that had both deeply amused and impressed him. She remembered the reading of the will last month: ...And to my niece, Madelaine Louise von Artle, I leave Orchid Isle and all the fixtures thereon. This I leave to Madelaine alone with no connection to any other living person and stipulate that she alone shall control and own said property. It shall not pass to her parents or guardians in any way or part. She may not dispose of said property for a period of twenty five years after my death. There is a trust fund to pay for any needed repairs or taxes, the bulk of which shall revert to her on the event of the first day of her twenty sixth year of ownership of Orchid Isle.

This separate stipulation eventuates because of my one and only meeting with her when she was four or five years of age. I remember when she and my stupidly overly-proud brother and her mother visited Naples in the Year of Our Lord, 1972. We had taken a leisurely boat cruise of the area, thence had stopped early on Orchid Isle. We had been on the island for perhaps four hours when I explained the strange history of the place and why it was supposed to be haunted.

I told Madelaine specifically that there were reputed to be ghosts on Orchid Isle and remember vividly how she, in her very wise manner (So very strange in such a small person), looked at me with wide, all-knowing eyes and said, Well of COURSE there are, Uncle Freddy! But they're very FRIENDLY ghosts!

"I bequeath Orchid Isle, its added properties and trusts and its friendly ghosts to Madelaine.

Should Madelaine predecease me the properties shall revert in enduring trust to the State of Florida to be utilized as a permanent natural historical preserve.

The house was once beautiful and soon would be again. The money in the trust would amply pay for repairs, though Em had been informed by the lawyers that there was a separate legal codicil to the will that made it very plain the place could be restored, not modified except for the addition of some modern plumbing and electricity – and that within strict limits.

She and Tom had saved about four thousand dollars. Their only expenses from that would be food. Everything else was taken care of. The island could be made to produce a great variety of fresh vegetables and there was seafood for the taking in the clear surrounding waters.

Tom broke her out of her reverie with his warm amused tone.

It looks a bit bleak, but it also looks about as solid as anyplace I ever saw! I hope the trust lets us fix up this road. Even our Jeep had all it could do to get out here. I just KNEW those rotten bridges were going to dump us into the swamp!

They're not swamps, Hon. They're reed flats, she corrected. Shall we go on in? Our new home awaits!

He grinned. And your friendly ghosts?

She laughed lightly at him. "They're excited at the thought of company. They remember me, but they'll have to wait and see about you!"

They drove carefully on to the house, parked the Jeep in front on the path – it could hardly be called a drive – and marched up bravely to open the big hand-carved mahogany doors Great Grandfather Erich von Artle had imported from Honduras.

Em giggled and yelled, Yoo-hoo! We're here!

The sun reflecting in through the front windows seemed to pick up little eddies of dust kicked up when the door was flung open, reflecting back like little fogs. Two of them, one on each side of the door.

Oh, Tom! Look! They've come to welcome us! Em cried. They really do almost look like silhouettes of two people, don't they?

Em was delighted by the effect and could understand how with stories of ghosts inhabiting the house people could imagine they had actually seen spirits there.

A bit too much, Tom agreed. I'm just glad they're of the friendly type. They've kept the place awfully clean for a house no one's lived in for a hundred years.

Oh, silly! Grams and Gramps lived here. Dad and Uncle Fred lived here for twelve years when they were small. That was fifty or so years ago.

I know. Didn't your grandparents on your father's side die sort of mysteriously somehow? Tom asked.

They did disappear sort of.... Em replied. "They were living here then. They went out in the gulf and a storm wrecked their boat. They were found three days later. That was when Daddy was fourteen. Uncle Fred was in his late teens. Uncle Karl and Aunt Wilma raised Dad, but Uncle Fred went out on his own and got rich on his wits.

"Karl and Wilma weren't really uncle and aunt. They were more close family friends.

"Uncle Fred inherited this place because he was the eldest son. That was the way they did things then. Dad got nothing and Uncle Fred was trying to get a start. Dad seemed to resent Fred all his life because Fred made millions while Dad barely got by.

"Uncle Fred was right about Dad in that one way, you know. He always was stupidly over-proud. He offered to help a few times, but Dad yelled about not taking any charity from the likes of him. I never could understand why he was that way. Uncle Fred did really want to help. He rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. He married a woman in Montana and they fought for years. They hardly ever lived together, then she died of some kind of cholera or something a year before the war. He never considered remarrying.

"I'm the end of the von Artle line! I fully expect you to do something about that! – In fact, you already have. We're going to have a new family in our new home! I didn't tell you because we couldn't afford it before, but I'm about a month pregnant!

Somehow, I wanted to wait to tell you after we got here.

Tom grabbed her and spun her around, dancing across the solid oak floor. Em felt a kind of approval coming from the very fabric of their new/old house. A family would be welcomed here!

Chapter one

You've already been there to check the place over? Donald Seaman, the attorney handling the estate asked when Em and Tom came to town in the morning after their arrival in Naples. "Do you find it habitable?

I'm sure you'll find it wiser to rent some place nearby until you are able to do extensive work on Orchid Isle. The house has been uninhabited for sixty four years.

I thought it was only about fifty, Tom said. We didn't see anything that would keep us from moving right in.

We can clean up the kitchen and one other room today and move in tomorrow, Em said emphatically. The house is solid and in excellent condition. What we need is access to the trust so we can start bringing the place up to date. We also have to get the bridges repaired.

Is that trail in there the county's or ours – or what? Tom asked. We have to know if the trust does that kind of repair work.

The trust handles all repairs, landscaping and any other stipulated modernization of the property, within bounds, Seaman replied. "Your property extends for one hundred feet to each side of the causeway – which means virtually nothing so far as your holdings are concerned, but means you can draw any funds to update the roadway and bridges. Within that distance is mainly only mangroves and reeds, which no one may legally own.

You may repair the bridges, for instance, with wooden planks and posts and you may bring in new oyster shell and limerock for the roadtop, but you may NOT pave the roadtop nor build concrete bridges. Certainly no McAdam paving there. Perhaps bricks, but that would prove prohibitively expensive. There are some very severe limits to what you may do to modernize.

Oh, we don't want to change anything like that! Em declared positively. We'll want it to be as much like the original place as we can. We do want a gas stove and oven, running water and some electricity.

You may put in a well and put in plumbing, but only to the now-existing baths and kitchen, Seaman instructed. "You may put in electricity to the well pump, the kitchen and baths, the parlor and the master bedroom, hall and stairway, but only minimally for sockets. Lights may be put in only so long as all fixtures closely resemble those available around eighteen ninety.

"You may expand the baths. You will find they are but small chambers where various bowls and ... so forth were used. The old mirrors will have become useless by now.

"You will find water that is fit for washing, but not for drinking there. Lots of sulfur in it so you may wish to have drinking water delivered or you may purchase it at any local supermarket. Conditioning it from a well will prove awfully expensive and not very satisfactory. An RO unit would do well, but you would have to hide it somehow.

"Mr. von Artle was not being unreasonable. Chandeliers and fixtures that look much like those that held candles or gas jets of the period may be employed with electrical bulbs. You may even place hidden florescent tubes in the kitchen and baths.

"Remember, hidden!

"Television or other entertainment equipment may be placed if it is installed in cabinets fitting the period. There is a fixed stipulation that all furniture must be constructed of real wood. No plastics or composites. The funds will more than cover the very best.

"Gas heating may be installed in the fireplaces where they are already built in such as the artificial logs that closely resemble real wood. You will find other fireplaces in each bedroom, the parlor and the kitchen.

The kitchen may be modernized far more than any other room. I don't believe there are any gas stoves and ovens that look like the old woodburner already installed there.

I can convert that old stove to gas, Tom said. It will be maybe a little less efficient than the newer ones, but you won't see the difference unless you look inside.

Yes. Very well. I can employ a crew to repair the roadway and bridges immediately if you so desire, Seaman said. I'm sure you'll want to make a schedule for the various repair crews to work where it will interfere least with your daily lives.

I'm going to do most of it myself, Tom replied. I'll need a crew of professional house painters for the exterior work, but everything else I'll do myself. I'll have to have one room where I can put my computers. They're how I make my living.

Oh, Seaman replied. We may run into a bit of a problem with computers. There's simply no way to make a computer look like something from the turn of the century.

What about the servant's cabin? Em asked. It's not part of the house and I don't see it mentioned at all in the will except to be listed as a separate dwelling on the property. Couldn't we restore it on the outside just like it was and put the computers inside?

Seaman looked over the will for a few minutes, then said it was technically a violation, but the fact that the building was only mentioned as being there but not given specific limitations might well allow it.

I'll guarantee to restore the exterior to the way it was in eighteen ninety and can bury the electrical and come in through the floor, Tom said. "There won't be any way to tell it's got anything inside.

"I've been wondering about something ever since Em and I were there yesterday: Why isn't there