“I love anything and everything that has to do with the paranormal,” said Rafuse. She grew up listening to her father and grandfather’s ghost stories, and she’s been telling stories since she was a teenager. “We love our resident spirits,” said Rafuse. “They’re actually on our (the museum’s) website.
The resident spirits have lived in the Queens Country Museum for a long time. The ghosts and staff share the building happily. Rafuse started working at the museum as a volunteer in the mid-1980s, and that’s when she saw her first spirit. “It was a gentleman who walked past the desk when I was out at the front desk during lunch hour,” she said.
Alone in the building, Rafuse initially thought the man was another staff member. When she got up to check, though, no one was there. Over the years, Queens County Museum staff has learned there’s a gentleman in the main gallery and young girl in the gift shop. There are also an older and a younger woman in the research centre.
“The older lady always hangs around the bookcases,” said Rafuse. Rafuse sometimes hears the spirits talking. She might be in the research centre and no one is in the gallery, but there will be two women speaking. She has also heard a man and child conversing. Sometimes, footsteps go across the deck on the Liverpool Packet. Other times, Rafuse has been in the gallery and heard what sounds like a researcher flipping through book pages.
“While I was here one day, sitting at my desk, one of the books flew out of the bookcase,” said Rafuse, who had her back to the bookshelves and heard a clunking sound. Rafuse stood up to investigate and found a book lying on the floor that had fallen from one of the higher shelves.
“We’ve lived with these resident spirits for so many years that we’re very comfortable with them and they’re very comfortable with us,” explained Rafuse. “We say good morning to them when we come in the door.”
From the Shelburne Coast Guard