Ghost Stories: The Story of a Ghost Song

The Story of a Ghost Song: "U Don't Know" Back to G host Stories
Our Ghost Story of the Month for May 2007!
By Jeff Knabel

This is the story of a song I wrote about an experience I had with the ghost of a
woman actress from the 1800's. I was staying at a friend's place in Longmont,
Colorado last April 2006. It used to be called 'The Times Call' building years ago.

The upstairs where I stayed had been closed off
since 1964. There is a calendar hanging on one
of the doors in the apartment looking over Main
St. The page is still on April 1964. In the late
1800's they used to print one of the local
newspapers, 'The Times Call', on the 1st floor.
There was a big explosion from a gunpowder
barrel, in the basement next door in the 1870's,
and the building and the adjacent buildings had to
be rebuilt as a result of the fire that ripped through
walls of half a city block. 'The Dickens Opera

House' at the end of the street was spared..

A bystander, who was standing on top of the opera house at the time of the
explosion, was blown off to the roof of a building below. He was spared with an
injured leg. A business across the street had all its windows blown in from the
shock wave. The woman inside was frantic, and ran out of her shop screaming
with the blood streaming down from her cuts and bruises.

After the dust settled, and a couple of years went by, the block was rebuilt and
ready for action. 'The Times Call' building started printing again, but used the
second floor as a boarding house, instead of the owners living there. They rented
out rooms, a hot bath, and a meal for people coming and going on the old
locomotives and stage coaches. One of the patrons happened to be a
semi-famous actress, who must have traveled across the country performing in
various venues for the general public. I wish I knew her name.

These days the interior of the upstairs looks like something from
an old western movie. There are old sky lights on the ceiling, the
wall paper is slowly peeling off, and the hard wooden floors are
warped as if everything is sinking into the middle of the main
living room. In fact the water in the fish tank against one of the
walls, leans toward the center of the room. Watch out for the
staircase that leads down to the street level. It leans one side
higher than the other as well from old age.

Last spring while I was playing guitar and working on some new
music, I thought I saw someone out of the corner of my eye. In
fact, I'd been staying there for a few weeks by then, and thought I
felt some sort of presence there. That night when I went to bed, I

put on a video, 'The People Who Live Under the Stairs.' I fell asleep and I felt a
cold whisper in my ear.

I woke up to find the movie still playing and the face of a woman on the TV screen.
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. That was about 2 a.m. in the
morning. I tried to go back to sleep, but my mind was on high alert.

A few hours later I made some coffee, and started to play my guitar. I felt a
presence in the room again, but it felt friendly, as if it liked what I was playing. As I
played, I came up with a nice chord progression, some lyrics, and a cool chorus
line. An hour or so later I finished writing my song called 'U Don't Know.' The vibe
in the place was electric.

My friend Joe, the present owner of the building, came home around 10 a.m. I told
him about my experience the night before, and the song that I wrote about it. He
told me he knew about a presence in the building, but didn't want to scare me. He
said he had some friends over in the past that felt the same sort of energy that I
did. He asked me what the ghost sounded like. I said, 'A woman in her thirties,
maybe.' He asked me what she looked like. I described her and his jaw dropped
to the floor.

Joe asked me to wait in the room while he went to
get something. He came back ten minutes later
with an old photograph he had been keeping in
storage with other old artifacts. These things where
still upstairs when he first bought the building a year
before. Remember the upstairs had been locked
up for years. When he showed me the photo, it was
a black and white picture of a lady in her late
twenties, dressed in an old western theater outfit.
She was the same lady I had seen the night before.
I was shocked!!!

Actual photograph of the ghostly lady.

I stayed there for a few more weeks, and every time I played guitar and sang she
would let her presence be known. It was a friendly presence as it turned out. So
now when I go to visit my friend Joe at 'The Times Call' building, she lets me know
she's still there.