The Ghost of My Ancestor from Mississippi

OOPSIE: Deleted by Accident and Reposted Immediately.

CLIENT: The True Family of Biloxi's owned and operated AirbNb Horace True's haunted hunting cabin.

CLIENT: The Veterans' food bank, coffee guidunk and Open Hands Outreach Program--OHOP--headquartered in Coolidge, Pinal County, Arizona.

PRICE: None. Community volunteerism.

MEDIA: Gesso, Liquitex acrylic paints, high-end poster paints, assorted brushes, quill-point pens, inks, office supplies, Bic pens, F&W colored inks, Dr. Martin colored inks, Prisma pencils, Crylon spray fixative, and even more acrylics.

PURPOSE: This one takes a bit of explaining: Lori was approached by the female partner of the Veteran's organization for what Lori eventually helped them to call their not-for-profit run out of a books, furniture and thrift store in the antique town wreckage that is Downtown Coolidge, Arizona. Lori first helped them to name their not-for-profit and the associated food bank as the Open Hands Outreach Program for homeless and struggling veterans--OHOP--and then she designed and launched their first web site and on-line resources program.

Next the lady director asked Lori to begin a wall mural for their veteran's morning coffee and crescents pastries "Guidunk" in the building. I horned my way in on the project after helping her to find the piece of wood that was around five foot by four-and-a-half foot that fit into this stucco niche that would show an antique Old West or New England cast iron coffee pot brewing from the grounds in the fireplace.

Lori let me design it based on my Great Great Great Grand Uncle Horace True's fireplace and cabin from the civil war era cabin that he built and maintained out in the Mississippi pine barrens northwest of Antebellum Biloxi.

In June of 2013 Lori then got frustrated with the two-month time frames I established for the project to dot-stipple the paints in order to create a photorealistic Disney-esque cabin interior with the fireplace as the sole source of light.

She took over the project and literally taught herself how to paint while completing the mural in less than three weeks. It became her first attempt at painting and was highly successful except the furnishing were too rickety for real life. Never mind. The veterans LOVED her mural.

So in 2017 and 2018, I drew and finally finished my version of the OHOP coffee guidunk as Horace True's 1860 to now cabin. Horace was killed in 1862 as a Confederate casualty of the Civil War Battle of Antietam in Maryland outside of Washington D.C.

The Civil War Battle of Antietam, also called Battle of Sharpsburg, (September 17, 1862), in the American Civil War (1861–65), was a decisive engagement that halted the Confederate invasion of Maryland, an advance that was regarded as one of the greatest Confederate threats to Washington, D.C.

The Union name for the battle is derived from Antietam Creek, which flows south from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to the Potomac River near Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. In the South the encounter was referred to as the Battle of Sharpsburg because the main fighting took place near the town of that name.

Civil War battles often had one name in the North, which was usually associated with a prominent nearby physical feature, and another in the South, which was usually derived from the town or city closest to the battlefield.

Horace's body was buried somewhere up in Maryland. His ghost however made it home to his Mississippi cabin home. All of the relatives for five generations have encountered his ghost trying desperately to obtain the fresh morning coffee brewed in a cast iron pot in the fireplace every morning.

As an AirbNb where the customer or hotel patron vacations in an authentic civil war-era cabin deep in heavy pine barrens woods with no electricity, the visitor sleeps in a plushy civil war bed covered in deer, bear, sheep and cattle skin hides. The bathroom is literally a five-star garden tub, shower, toilets, sinks and laundry--all housed in a glass rectangle a few steps behind the cabin where the foliage guarantees no "Peeping Toms."

Nearly all our family's AirbNb guests have reported classic "Poltergeist" activity, moving objects and the early morning appearance of an apparition focused on obtaining coffee. Horace's torment is that his ghostly spirit can never actually consume the coffee. He can only circulate with it's heavenly smells in the air of the room. Horace is a "Class A" and therefore self-aware apparition whose "Purgatory" is to want and not obtain the coffee.