Ghosts - 1

"We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are!"

- Anaïs Nin

Picture this: the high plains of northeastern New Mexico in the winter of 1920. A primitive western ranch straight out of a Zane Grey novel. Two young children are tragically lost in a house fire. They were Johnnie William and Mary Mae Lawrence, aged 3 1/2 years and 20 months, respectively. They were the children of my great-aunt Molly Lawrence and my great-uncle Charles Lawrence.

My grandfather, Emery F. LeCrone, worked on the Lawrence ranch as a teenager in the mid 1920s. When I was a kid, he'd tell the story from time to time about how he and Uncle Charley used to see a white horse come walking up out of the high plains near the house with two children riding it. This happened several times. They could see that the two kids on the horse were Johnnie and Mary Mae. In those days everything was done on horseback, so Emery and Charley would jump up on their horses as soon as they saw the apparition and give chase. The white horse with the children would saunter away over the top of a hill just before the two men got to it. When Charley and Emery got to the crest of the hill, the horse and the children were nowhere to be seen.

Here is a picture of Molly and Emery and Molly's daughter Lethia who was born exactly 6 months to the day after the deaths of her older siblings.

Slim, Charley Lawrence, and Emery F. LeCrone on the Lawrence Ranch northeast of Clayton, New Mexico.