The Haunted Aldrich Farm House
The Polite Poltergeist
A 1910 census of Neoga indicates that the 19-year-old Rufas Bland was living at the Aldrich Farm House. Rufas Bland's father came from North Carolina; his mother came from Indiana. He was working as a picker in the orchards and was described in a work journal as a “handsome and serious lad with formal manners” who was oddly happiest “amongst the strapping and boisterous young Cumberland County men who pick our apples.” A letter from Rufas’ parents to Henry Aldrich came a bit more than a year after the census. “Why does our Rufas not write to us?” they ask repeatedly. “It is most passing strange to his mother and me that he should not send us any word.” No other records have been located. Rufas’ fate is unknown.
But guests who sleep in the 3rd floor bedroom may still have a chance to meet him. “I was half asleep when I felt like I was being stared at,” recalled a Greenup man staying with the current owners. “There was a man dressed all in black who reached out to shake my hand. I was scared because I knew he weren’t a real person. I got the hell out of there.” The Greenup man vowed never to spend another night in the Aldrich Farm House, and he kept his word.
Retired school teacher and local psychic [name withheld] spent a night in the room in 1976. “It was a young man named Rufas who I met in the night,” she told the Neoga News. “He was there to meet someone important, someone who never showed up. He was very polite but he was very sad. So sad.” The mystery of Rufas Bland endures.