Going Back to the Hometown

Post by Sharon

At some point, most of us head back to the hometown to see how it's changed, trek along our old pathways, and meet up with folks we knew. 

In 2014, I headed back to my hometown of Fairfax, Virginia with my best friend and fellow Groovy New Life founder, Julie Ferguson. 

I grew up in an estate called Aspen Grove. It was built in the 1700s and during the Civil War it was taken over by the North to use as a field hospital and they built a fort on the property too. Then, later the South wrestled it back to use for the same purpose. Both sides died there. The hauntings at the estate are what spawned my #1 ghost hunting blog - Ghost Hunting Theories. 

It was an interesting upbringing on the estate that back then housed a few carriage houses, barn, stable, orchards, formal boxwood gardens, and a tributary of the Potomac called Pohick Creek. 

Nothing stays the same, though. Fairfax has become a disgusting sprawl that has bulldozed its manor homes and historic sites for townhouses for the DC crowd. It is dirty, crowded, and nasty. Even the estate now was bulldozed to put condos around the historic house. 

I was pleased to go to the Fairfax Museum and see upstairs a display for the estate. My mother was an historian who worked hard to be sure it was recognized for its history. 

I'm the baby in this pic above - two siblings on the right have since passed on

on the visit without the sibs

I got to meet up with my childhood friends. Funny how it feels so natural and so easy.

I wrote an award-winning 5-star book about my family's ghostly experiences in the house - GROWING UP WITH GHOSTS.

Then, we trekked down the Chesapeake to Southern Virginia to Mobjack Bay and our family's summer home in New Point, a quiet inlet off Doctor's Creek.

I loved the summer home with the cabin cruiser and Victorian house near the graveyard more than the main house. No radio, no TV, just crab traps and an abandoned lighthouse. I actually cried when I first caught sight of the New Point-Comfort Lighthouse.

Although the hometown of Fairfax was fraught with grief, New Point and the Chesapeake Bay were like coming home. I can truly say as an adult, I have never been as happy as I was there where I felt so very alive, so very much like I was coming home.

I wrote the 5-star book VACATIONING WITH GHOSTS about the interesting and unusual hauntings in the quiet inlets. 

Sometimes home is just an attitude - it's what made an impression on your every interest, obsession, and spirit. 

You look at the Bay and look at my paintings and fashion choices and it makes utter sense why I was so joyous there.

Home is a set of senses, memories, textiles, colors, scents, feelings, visions that all come together into a framework for your soul. 

You can go home again but then you realize - home is inside you!