At first, I heard the noises at night — a stairstep creaking, the rattle of a window, soft skittering across the floor. In bed, I would lie awake in the dark, listening to noises until I finally turned the light on. I was sure there was a ghost living in my house.
My house was a raised ranch close to downtown Laramie, Wyoming, built in 1919. I had never thought I would buy a house by myself, but when I was in my 30s, with no husband or kids in sight, my grandmother left me some money. This was years ago, when buying a house, especially in Wyoming, was doable for people of modest means. And, crazily, I didn’t set foot in the house until the day I closed on it. When I saw it online, I liked its red door and trees. I was teaching down South that summer, so I sent my parents to go look at it.
The location was the only thing I cared about. This house was walkable to both downtown and the university, where I would soon be starting a new job as an adjunct. And, honestly, there were only a handful of houses for sale. I thought of winters living at 7,200 feet and was happy that I wouldn’t have to drive much; I could walk everywhere.
But when I first stepped inside, I burst into tears. The house was too big for one person.
I was sure there was a ghost living in my house.
For months, I didn’t unpack. I lived among boxes, sleeping on a mattress on the floor. I collected sagebrush on the prairie and dried it, then lit it in my kitchen. Instead of smoking away any spirits, I set off my fire alarm. The whole house felt uncomfortable.
I went to the real estate records office inside the courthouse and asked if I could find out about my house. I wrote down my address on a Post-it. The clerk looked me up and down and asked why I wanted the records. I decided not to mention the ghost.
“I just want to find out if anyone has … died in the house? Umm … I am interested in its history.”
She pulled up the records, which were in a big book, and then sighed.
“Don’t look up who lived there. Your house was built in 1919. Someone will have died in it. People used to die at home.” But she let me copy down the names of all the owners — there had only been four families before me. I went home and immediately began researching and found out that the first owner was a train switchman, and that later, a yardmaster had lived there. Which seemed right: So many towns in the West are framed by train tracks. In addition to my ghost, I heard trains while lying in bed at night, the distant sound of a whistle punctuating my dreams.
WHEN I THINK about the West, a few images immediately come to mind: sagebrush, immense horizons, blue skies, mountains and trains. Along the interstate, the trains are sometimes your only companion, their rectangular boxcars like a dotted line across the prairie. When I first left home for college in the 1990s, I took the train from Laramie to Union Station in Portland, Oregon. I had two suitcases, and I liked the fact that, unlike when traveling by plane, I had plenty of time to say goodbye to Wyoming. The pace was slower and allowed me time to adjust. I’ve always been a little nervous about transitions.
As the train chugged along I-80, I said goodbye to Wyoming every 100 miles, town after town (they’d been spaced 100 miles apart for the railroad’s convenience). I watched the landscape change, and as we drew closer to my destination, I marveled at the Columbia River Gorge. By Christmas break, passenger service across Wyoming would be discontinued, and I would have to fly home. But on that journey westward, along the overland route Amtrak called the Pioneer, I told myself I was a grown-up. In Utah, hours into the trip, I started to feel that I was more than a grown-up. I felt like a pioneer going West to Oregon to start a new life.
But soon after I started college, I used a phone card to call my parents, crying. I didn’t like all the green and trees of Portland. I missed being able to see for miles. I had a sprig of dried sage I kept on my desk, and whenever I missed home, I crushed a leaf between my fingers. The pungent, peppery smell made me tear up. I was desperately homesick. My mother told me I would learn to be away from home. She reminded me how I had picked out the duvet for my bed, hung pictures on the wall and had framed photos on my desk.
“You’ll settle,” she told me. And she was right. In a few months, walking by the Willamette River and the currants and dogwoods of the city became as familiar as rabbitbrush.
I had a sprig of dried sage I kept on my desk, and whenever I missed home, I crushed a leaf between my fingers.
AT THE LARAMIE courthouse, I spent hours reading census records, looking to learn more about everyone who lived in the house. I learned that the switchman had been transferred to Colorado. I only found one person who had died in the house: A 93-year-old woman named Minnie. Born in 1893, Minnie had lived in the house with her bachelor son and daughter beginning in the 1960s. She had been a farmer’s wife and then a widow. For some reason, I didn’t think Minnie was going to menace me. But I did walk around the house talking to her at times — when I got a leak in the sink, when I couldn’t open the old single-paned windows. Sometimes, while I cooked, I wondered if Minnie would like the curries I was making, the house rich with the smell of garlic and onions.
When I first left home for college, I didn’t know that I would make a home many times before buying that house in Laramie. In dorm rooms, in apartments with no heat, with roommates and alone. I lived in India in a house that flooded every time it rained. It wasn’t the stuff or furniture that made a home. It was the people — even the ghosts — that I welcomed and talked with. The people with whom I shared meals and laughs.
Over time, the house that I thought was too big became full. Friends came and stayed; my dining table always had people around it. I planted tomatoes and hollyhocks and set out a bird feeder. Later, a family of raccoons would menace me, and the backyard, stealing my vegetables. I met my husband, I married, got a dog. Both my children would know that house as their first home. I thought about Minnie from time to time. But one day, I felt like she was gone. I still heard the train shout and whistle; its wheels against the tracks. But mostly what I heard at night was the sound of the house settling.
And like the house, I was, too. Like the towns along I-80, I came to see I was connected to something bigger, that I was never truly alone. I have now left that home in Laramie for another in Colorado. Here, there are no spirits that I can sense. Now, the noises I hear at night are my girls, giggling and whispering under their covers, and I assure them that there are no ghosts here, that they are safe. Making a home has taught me that living in the world means figuring out how to take care of your surroundings, to tend to the things you love.
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This article appeared in the April 2025 print edition of the magazine with the headline “My house of spirits.”
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