“ ‘So you have a little spirit friend!’ one said triumphantly, as though she had discovered Confederate gold buried outside. ‘Tell us about your little ghost,’ said another, and when I petted or stroked Goblin while talking of him, he was very happy, indeed. He would flash on solid for a long time, and only sadly go transparent and then dissolve when he had to.

“I couldn’t have done better had I been a paid performer whose sole occupation was to increase the mystery of Blackwood Farm. And I loved it. And then the guests kicked in their support of the mythology gratis, as I’ve explained, with all their sightings of the Old Man, Manfred, scowling in a mirror, or sweet Virginia Lee, roaming from room to room in search of her orphaned children.

“I learned from all this, from the endless variety with which the tales of our house were woven, and I learned from adults how to think and feel like an adult, and Goblin fed off the easy way in which he fitted into everything. And I came to think of myself from early on as being a maverick like the Old Man.

“Manfred, the Old Man, had come out to these parts in 1881 with a new bride, Virginia Lee. He had started out as a saloon keeper in the Irish Channel but gone on to make a fortune in merchandising in New Orleans, but could find no locale suitable to his visions of splendor and so was drawn north across Lake Pontchartrain to this open land.

“Here he found a parcel of real estate that is composed of high ground on which he could build a fabulous mansion, with servants’ quarters, stables, terraces and pastures, plus two hundred acres of thick swamp in which he could hunt, and a charming abandoned cemetery with its shell of a stone church, a tribute to those whose families had long ago died out or decamped.

“Manfred sent his architects to the fine homes of Natchez to choose the very best of attributes for this mansion, and he supervised its Greek Revival style, circular stairs and hallway murals himself.

“All was for the love of Virginia Lee, who had a particular affection for the cemetery and sometimes went to the empty little stone church to pray.

“The four oak trees that guard the cemetery now were already well grown at that time, and the proximity of the old graveyard to the swamp with its greedy hideous cypress trees and endless tangles of Spanish moss no doubt added to, and adds to, the overall sense of melancholy.