Whar Stories

Whar Stories
Student Sees Author Edith Wharton and Associates

--From "The Ghostly Register" by Arthur Myers, published 1986

[The Mount is] a neo-Georgian mansion built between 1900 and 1902 by Edith Wharton, one of America's great literary figures, as a country retreat in the Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts. In 1978, a very high-powered acting troupe called Shakespeare & Company moved into The Mount. [Following is an account by one of its tenants,] Andrea Haring, an actress and voice teacher.

"It was in the winter, about 1979. We had had a meeting, and a lot of feelings had come up, and people were really excited and disturbed. I went up to Edith Wharton's writing room because a couple of people were having a discussion in my bedroom. There was an extra mattress in Edith Wharton's room, and I thought I'd just lie down till they were done. I stoked up the wood stove in the room so that it would have stayed warm until about noon the next day. This was around midnight. I slept till about four in the morning. Then I drifted awake because it was very cold in the room. My eyes were still closed, but I was awake, and I sensed there was someone in the room. I opened my eyes and saw three figures in the room, and where the room had been bare of furniture there was now a small divan and a desk with a chair. I thought I must be dreaming, but I sort of pinched myself and slapped myself, and I thought, No, I'm awake; I must be seeing ghosts..."

Read the rest here: https://archive.org/stream/B-001-014-072/B-001-014-072_djvu.txt