As children, my cousins and I were absolutely terrified of the basement, but on occasion, the door would be open, and being curious and probably bored, we'd sneak in just to see why the door was open.
There were actually two basements separated by an old stone wall; one was very tiny and all dirt; the main basement was larger with a stone wall and concrete floor.
Originally one of the houses—the one that burned or the new one—had at one time a coal-burning stove because there was a coal bin just off the door.
Often times, if you looked in the coal bin, there would be a little African American boy about 4-5 years old floating on the air, sitting with his legs crossed.
I assume now that I'm an adult that he was sitting on an invisible coal pile.
He was not brown; he was very black-skinned, and I'm sorry if that's politically incorrect, but I'm doing my best to describe what I saw.
Because of his skin color, he somewhat tended to blend in with the blackness of the coal bin.
He was not see-through; he was very much a solid little boy; he had on worn bib overalls, no shirt, no shoes, and an old ratty straw hat.
We'd stare at him—he'd stare at us, and then he'd grin really big and gradually just fade away.
We wouldn't say a word; we'd just run out of the basement and keep on playing.
I mean, they taught us to ignore, ignore, ignore.
This is as close as I can get to what we saw.
