GHOST OF TREBOR LODGE HOME IN BARRINGTON RHODE ISLAND IS SCENE OF MURDERED SPIRITS!

GHOST OF TREBOR LODGE, BARRINGTON RI, RUMSTICK ROAD - JENKS ESTATE 1975!

My family moved to a sprawling house in Barrington Rhode Island in the mid 1970's. The compound my parents chose turned out to have all sorts of odd additions we'd never seen before, except in the movies and on TV. Secret doors, odd shaped windows, secret rooms seemingly built for no reason and paths that led underground and across the property to the end of the driveway where you popped up a grate behind the mailbox.

What we didn't know was that Dad's Lace company was failing and this was a last ditch effort on my parent's part to try and shore up their finances and get back to where they were. To do it, my father put his whole trust into my shifty mother, who talked him into moving to a fancy WASPY town and put on rich airs, because it was the only way they knew how to live. But as soon as we moved into the huge estate, we were cued in to the strangeness of the beautiful 3 acre property nestled in that New England town on edge of Narragansett Bay.

I still remember my father pulling up to the place. We all had quizzical looks on our little cherub faces. "Whose house is this, Daddy?" My cute pixie looking sister asked. We'd just gotten out of his Grand Prix bright yellow Le Mans. Mom stood by dressed in all white from head to toe, wearing her platinum colored hairdo like a helmet.

After taking us all on the grand grand tour, my older brothers, sister and I demanded to know the magic answer. "Whose house is this?"

Dad turned to us, a big smile planted on his tanned round face. Lately he'd put on some weight due to stress, but at that moment he was elated and relaxed. He looked like a conductor ready to start directing a symphony, but said loudly, "...this is our house!"

As we all screamed and jumped up and down, mom and dad watched the 4 of us sliding on the floors and checking out the rooms. It looked like my parents had some sort of reprieve, so they probably saw the house as a blessing, but a weird feeling came over me when I felt something lurking in the shadows watching us. The first indication of something 'witchy' going on is when I found 7 dead bees behind my toilet, which made made me shrink back as I saw them all dead in a small little circle. It spooked me.

The house was huge, like it was 4 different homes, but all connected by stairs and doors. It, at first, seemed like a huge place to play and run around and have a great game of hide and seek, which we started to play. But as soon as I hid inside this big dark cedar closet on the bottom floor near the maid's quarters, I could feel a scary feeling welling up in me.

And soon all my siblings and I felt trouble brewing like a magnet. We were excited and just a little bit nervous over the change in our lives when dad dragged us to his little apartment near his factory, pretending to be taking care of his lace business, when in reality he was transplanting us right under our noses.

I started recognizing other indications of a past creepiness about the estate when I noticed the wallpaper in one of the rooms. It had been specially made and depicted the former owner and his family having a rip-roarin' fiesta around a huge bar. It was in the 2nd kitchen at the far end of the roomy, large estate that was dubbed "The Playroom". When my father said it, he sounded like it was gong to be his new man cave. It was a huge space and was situated at the end of the home. When you left that room and went farther out, you came to another crop of outbuilding near a huge Olympic swimming pool. There was a set of pool rooms but my parents never set up the pool area ever.

"The Playroom" had shuffle board tiles on the floor, a projection room, a work room, a full kitchen with secret walls that opened when you pushed them open and many other amenities, even a separate way out to another patio. To get there, we'd walk to the far end and enter it through glass breezeway. On the far end were two huge mahogany doors leading in there.

Once inside, it was like another house of itself, even though it was connected to the main digs we lived at. The place would have been too perfect if not for what other kids told me at school when they asked where I, the weird new kid, lived. They explained with wide eyes and twitching cheeks that in the early Seventies a teenager was shot and killed at the foot of the breezeway doors when he came on the property and acted erratic. The housekeeper at that time caught him sneaking in and she knew he was definitely high on "something"..

The youngest son was home at the time. In all the uproar he ended with one of his father's guns, and before anyone could stop him, he shot the kid dead at the foot of the breezeway doors leading into the Playroom.

The son with the maid's statement said that the kid was acting combative and was known to cause trouble due to drugs. Both the maid and the son said they'd never get the image of the the high school senior holding onto the knobs of the playroom doors as he slid slowly down, leaving a blood streak against the doors. When he fell to the floor he stared at them in shock and slowly bled to death. He died in his own blood puddle. It was shocking. That was summer 1970.

One night I heard strange noises coming from the breezeway doors. My mind went back to the Trebor Lodge wallpaper in the playroom. Why would they make it to show the father and his family gathered around the bar boozing it up? And Dad said it was the house settling and not ghosts or dead kids on drugs. But my mind would not shake the comic looking images on the wallpaper that showed clearly the presences of drugs and alcohol in the home and lifestyle. I think it was a mainstay in that household.

My siblings just laughed at me as I stood there closely staring at the images on the wallpaper. I was trying to figure out which character on the wall shot the kid. I saw on little boy with little bubbles swirling around his cartoonish looking head. Could that have been him? Even the pets were pictured looking drunk! It was an expensive wallpaper, but very odd.

We wondered if the place was haunted! It sure felt ghosted as we wandered to the far end of the property and found and found a grave of a dead horse. My brothers, sister and I almost missed the over sized headstone due to weeds overgrown weeds. After that, we saw and felt while many other things while living at the place for 2 years.

I had my first friend over from school and she knew the place well and had told us that the man that built the home committed suicide right in The Playroom. It was always cold in that part of the house. I would stare transfixed at the strange wallpaper, and sometimes wander in and out of the rooms and pathways in the back looking for some lost treasure.

Then like clockwork, after those two years in the home, my father took his own life. He had fallen in love with the home and the realtors, two shifty Italian cars salesmen, tried to goad my dad into buying the place. Dad couldn't buy it, and we all knew it by then. Not only that, but I did research and found out that there was a high rate of suicides right that took place over a number of years near or on the home's property, especially by the stone steps that lead to the beach. The beachfront attached to the home boasted a long wooden dock. There were clams nesting under the rocky shore and fishing coves where a few fishermen stood with their lines in..

To name a few others that had committed suicide within 20 feet of the house would blow our minds even more. The famous reclusive author Spalding Gray, whose own mother killed herself in that area too. There was also a well known doctor's son that shot his brains out near the dock area, so i was told.

We lived at the spook house from 1976 to 1978 before my father took his own life. Afterwards, in polite conversation, my mother was told that even the first owner committed suicide at the home eventually! It had been empty for years until my family moved in. My oldest brother's name was spelled backwards if you looked at the gold sign in the dining room. It read 'TREBOR' LODGE', which was labeled on in bold letters on a plaque encased in thick glass by the entrance.

My older brother began having lots of accidents at the home immediately! Weird things happened and our father sat us down 6 months after moving in and announced, as if he'd been contemplating it for months, "I am going to be leaving you all very soon. Don't cry. No circus, no trauma, no tears, kids!" We sat there dumbfounded and began carrying on and crying about it. True to his word, 6 months later, he did it and was gone from our life forever, with the snap of the fingers, "Poof!"

After that drama, my mother moved us out of the house and down the street to a brand new one just built. It was a Colonial model looking home. From my bedroom window I could see Trebor Lodge. Another family moved in almost immediately. It should be noted that about 2 years after that family moved in, their own father ended up committing suicide too. My whole family saw that home as 'a bad luck stone!' VERY SCARY OR WHAT?

Could that land be cursed? Some kid in my math class was discussing it with other kids when they found out the 'weird girl' was living there.

"Who?" Asked one girl in the front.

"You know...," said the cute blond guy beside her. "...that strange girl with the curly hair and weird clothes," he whispered, as he looked up and saw me sitting there.

"I knew they were curious about our house, and I didn't want to talk about it, so i pretended to not hear them, and was about to get up.

"Hey Bird's Nest," someone yelled, a football player! "Why didn't you tell us you lived at the Jenks House? You dress like you are poor," he barbed loudly. It was true, I did dress like I was poor, and that had to do where we'd come from.

We were a rich Jewish family who lived at the UN Plaza, and had contact with celebrities, dignitaries, comedians, famous singers and more, but the real problem was that I wa ashamed to tell the kids at my school in New York City. They were all poor blacks and Latinos bused in from Harlem and the Spanish Barrio, so I would pretend I was poor like they were so they'd be my friend. It worked to some degree, but not quite.

But our new home was baring rich, rich, rich, and I was trumpeting 'poor, poor, poor' out of habit. The house we lived in was one of the biggest in town. But there was a stigma attached to it. The man that built it was Mr. Robert Jenks (thus the 'Trebor Lodge' sign - Robert backwards. Some said it was not right there. Things were buried around there, people were found dead there, people had sex in the tall bushes separating the property line from a party street for high school kids!

The place itself was eventually split up into other homes and tracts and a nice family still lives there touched. The great Hasbro toy maker couple moved in with big fanfare down the street and the night they moved in Mr. H. dropped dead right there in his mansion the night he moved in next door to us. Who ;lives there now?