{A mysterious mystery}

Last weekend I went to Ohio to visit my paternal grandparents.
I was looking at family photographs.
I was curious about the back of a photo of my great-grandmother Marit Reitan, from Norway, so I took it out of the frame and discovered..
a mysterious mystery!

Her photograph doubles as a postcard.
It was taken in 1917 at
Hudson Photo Studio
123 Washington St.,
Hoboken, NJ

Also on the back are quite a few shorthand characters.
I've asked around and apparently the 3 characters in the lower left hand corner are Gregg Shorthand,
while the rest on the right side are Pitman Shorthand.
As my great-grandmother was from Europe, is is possible that some of the markings may have more than one sound!
Figuring out what this says is proving very difficult!!

 

{A ghost story?}

This lady's name is Beulah Olsen.
She sold my parents her house in 1990.She was 80 then and had lived in the house since the 1950's.. used it as a boarding house.
She moved to Canada and used to send a Christmas card to my family every Christmas.
One year it stopped.. I suppose that she died.
The house wasn't in great condition then, and my parents restored it to it's former Victorian glory.
2 stories tall, basement and 2 attics, bathrooms outfitted with clawfoot tubs.. I miss it.
There was a large furnace in the basement that fueled the floor-grate heater.
I used to love going down in the basement and sit in front of the furnace, pretending that I was a bum who had found a temporary warm place.

Once I was digging in the backyard and I found a turtle shell and a few bones..
Obviously someone's pet that had died and received a burial.

She left many things at the house including this photograph, a fountain pen, x-rays (she used to work at a hospital), furniture, chandeliers, books..
so many things from the past century.
The room that I grew up in.. well in the closet was the entry to the big attic.
I liked my closet because it was narrow and had a window that looked out into the street.
I was told that a french guy used to rent my room.. I even found a french coin in the closet once.
I used to play in the attic often.
One day climbing up the ladder I noticed some writing in the corner of the closet's ceiling.
I looked closer and realized that the writing was not in English.. French I think.
Not wanting to get in trouble, I quickly erased it.
Sometime later I went back up to the attic.
I glanced at the corner and saw something there.. the writing was back.
Not sure if I really erased it completely the first time, I erased it again and continued playing.
A few days later I went back and.. the writing had returned.
I stopped trying to erase it.

My mom told me that at least one person had died in the house.. I don't know the specifics though....