Spooks and thrills: Woman says house is haunted
JANETTA ROACH , For The Saratogian

WATERFORD -- After grieving the passing of her mother, Pauline Bartel,
local writer and president of Bartel Communications, based in Waterford,
thought she was finally getting on with her life when she purchased a
1930s bungalow in Waterford.
'I named it 'The Maryline' in honor of my mother, Mary, and the last
part of my name,' said Bartel.

Bartel bought the home in the summer of 2003 and spent the next two
years renovating it and restoring the house to its original splendor.
'About a month after I closed on the house, I finished my painting for
the day and went down to the basement to clean up. All of a sudden I
heard footsteps above me. I yelled up but nobody responded. I was only
in the house a month so I figured it was just the house creaking and put
it out of my mind,' Bartel said.

'Then I got this overwhelming sensation of someone else being in the
room with me. I got a vision of him being thin and short, bald on top
with a ring of hair and had the impression of him being behind me and
being very curious as to what I was doing. I turned around fully
expecting to see someone but there was no one there.'

The next weekend a friend of Bartel's was at the home and was painting
in the bedroom when he heard three knocks from the closet. This
inexplicable knocking from the bedroom closet was something that would
recur from time to time, Bartel said.

As part of an energy audit done to the home, a work crew came to
insulate the house. While there, they encountered some hi-jinx with
power cords being unplugged, adding a day to their estimated three-day
job.

'They told me there was a comedian on the crew,' said Bartel. The
appearance of an old lantern and the subsequent uncoiling of its line
while the contractor tried to roll it up made Bartel realize she had to
fess up to the possible supernatural cause.

Soon other things started happening. At Christmas a holly decoration
that Bartel had placed beside a wedding picture of her parents was
moved. There were more footsteps in the hallway.

Curious as to the ghost's identity, Bartel dug into the house's history.
Prior to her, there had only been two other families living there -- the
family whom she'd bought the house from and the original owners, J.
Edward and Margaret Burgess, who had built the Sears-Roebuck house and
lived in it for 64 years. The Burgesses had four daughters who are now
scattered throughout the U.S. Margaret Burgess died in 1992 and her
husband died a year later, two days short of his 90th birthday.

'So that left only Mr. Burgess as a deceased male associated with the
house,' said Bartel.
It turned out that Waterford Public Library librarian Daryll Cook is a
niece of Burgess and gave Bartel a photo of him taken in 1991 at the age
of 87. 'He was the spitting image of the man I saw in the basement,'
Bartel said.

A conversation with a psychic medium offered a suggestion as to how to
peacefully coexist with the spirit: Burgess wanted attention; Bartel had
to acknowledge his presence.

'One of the things you need to recognize is that when ghosts do things,
they're trying to get attention, much like a child does by misbehaving
in a room full of adults,' said Bartel. 'What was triggering his
visitations was all the work I was having done on the house,' Bartel
added. 'The fact that he built it and lived in it for over six decades,
he was connected to it. When you disturb the energy in a house by doing
any kind of home improvement, you tend to bring back any spirits
connected to it because they want to know what's being done to the
house.' Bartel said she learned to communicate with Burgess by
forewarning him about what would be happening.

'I got into the habit of talking to him in the morning, telling him
about my day and what time I'll be home. It's kind of like living with
your father,' she laughed. Since the renovations have finished, things
have slowed down.
'I figure I'm getting used to him and he's getting used to me. My
philosophy is that you have to learn to get along with different kinds
of people whether they're alive or dead,' said Bartel, who is writing a
book about her experiences.