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Restless: Soldier, priest return to find restCONTINUED FROM 1Ehad made his last confession to his old friend and confidante as the reverend had helped the youth prepare for his execution. Brennan clutched his Bible tightly as tears rolled down his cheeks.“I forgive everybody from the bottom of my heart, and I pray God to forgive me. May the stars and stripes never be trampled on, said Gillespie.A black hood was placed on his head. Then the hangman pulled the lever which dropped the floor out from under Gillespie’s feet. He fell, pulling the noose tight and snapping his neck. He twitched only a few times and then was still.Gillespie was only 24 years old and left behind a young wife in Syracuse, N.Y.He also left behind some personal items in Brennan’s care to be delivered to relatives.According to Stanton, “There is a tradition among the Cumberland people that the night after the execution, Father Brennan heard the military tread of a soldier in the hall, and opening the door, he was confronted by his dead penitent, who rebuked him for being too slow in carrying out his promise.”The sightings of Gillespie’s ghost are still reported today.“He has most often been sighted at the head of the beautiful staircase leading from the first floor to the upper floors of the rectory,” said Father Thomas Bevan, current pastor at St. Patrick.Though he is not sure how many people have reported some sort of ghostly encounter with Gillespie, he noted that reports of the host have been showing up in print since the turn of the century.“It always happens in the front part of the rectory, which existed at that time. The rear part was not added until 1907,” said Bevan.The rectory was built in 1854 and has 28 rooms. It used to be filled with pastors assigned to the area and visiting pastors. Now, at times, Bevan is the only one living there.The experiences with the ghost take different forms — sometimes voices, sometimes shadows and sometimes an actual apparition. At least once, an apparition was seen that some believe may have been Brennan.Father Paul Byrnes, pastor at St. Michael Church in Frostburg, spent a memorable night in the rectory years ago. It was a time before he had ever heard of the parish ghost and he was alone in the rectory.“I heard footsteps downstairs walking back and forth on a wooden floor, but there was wall-to-wall carpeting down there,” said Byrnes.He put up with the noise for awhile. Then he began to wonder if someone might be downstairs stealing things from the rectory. He walked downstairs and called out, “Who’s down there?”There was no response but the footsteps came toward him to the point where the person should have been in view, but he saw nofifi I do believe in an afterlife and I do believe people in the afterlife can make themselves known here. I don't think it's common, though. 33Father Paul Byrnes,Pastor of St. Michael Church, Frostburgone. •The heavy tread stopped and Byrnes, a bit shaken, went back to his room. Then the noise ; started up again. Byrnes went out and yelled ; down, more forcefully this time, “Who’s down there?”The heavy footsteps walked toward him once more and this time, the sounds started coming up the stairs toward him.Byrnes quickly retreated to his room where he prayed for whatever restless soul might have caused the noise.Mary Paugh, the housekeeper at St. Patrick, was cleaning the rectory one day. She had turned on her vacuum when she heard her name being called. She turned off the vacuum and leaned over the railing.“I looked over the steps but I didn’t see anyone. Then I said, ‘Yes, what do you want?’ but no one was there,” said Paugh.Paugh’s aunt, Pauline Moyer, had been a secretary at St. Patrick in the 1970s when she had her own encounter. She saw a priest, perhaps Brennan, standing in the archway at the top of the stairs. When she climbed the stairs to speak with him, he was gone.“She asked Father Lyness (the pastor at the time) who the visiting priest was. He said there wasn’t one. He was the only one here,” said Paugh.One evening when Bevan was alone in the rectory, he had a near encounter with the ghost. He was sitting in his two-room suite when the bells on the door began jangling.“I knew there was no one in the rectory but me and I wasn’t going to get up and look to see what was ringing those bells,” said Bevan.Paugh said she had accidentally rung those bells earlier in the day and it was right after that happened that she turned and saw a black shadow moving independently in the hallway.“It made my skin crawl,” said Paugh.Paugh said she definitely believes in the ghost and Byrnes agrees with her. “I do believe in an afterlife and I do believe people in the afterlife can make themselves known here.I don’t think it’s common, though,” said Byrnes.Now Paugh has gotten used to that fact that she might not be alone in the rectory even if she is the only person there.“When things start feeling eerie, I stop and say, ‘Fine, if you want to come out, you have to help me with my work,’ ” said Paugh.James Rada can be reached atjrada(fi times-news.com.The Church of St. Patrick, Centre Street, Cumber land, is home to ghostly sightings.PAUGH
Newspaper Details
Cumberland Times News
Cumberland, Maryland, US
Sun, Aug 15, 2004
Page 26
Full Page
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MD, USA 19 Dec 2024
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