They say that there are ghosts within the house
This old one, built over a century past
Home to three families and, so it is said,
A secret treasure buried in the back.
My father thinks what’s there are naught but bones
And people should leave such rumors alone.

Solid advice, to leave the ghosts alone
If ghosts, indeed, still dwell within the house
And guard those possibly existent bones,
The only remnants of their lives, long past.
The heavy memories that they can’t get back
The echoes of their words, still left unsaid.

“I saw the widow” our new neighbor said
“There, in the window, standing all alone”
The one who once eloped, and ne’er thought back
Upon her old name, or her father’s house
The life she left behind, far in the past,
Even when forced to bury stillborn bones.

But such was commonplace, to bury bones
And worry not of hauntings, it is said,
Since death was commonplace, then, in the past
And ghosts would leave the living ones alone
And never think to stay and haunt the house
Just because they were buried in the back.

The ghost Gran claimed she saw was in the back
And had nothing to do with ancient bones.
It was, instead, the builder of the house
Mad that he had to sell. The one that said
“They’ll soon wish that they’d left my house alone!
Those ones who can’t let debts stay in the past!”

And it was true that in the distant past
‘Twas hard to prove that debts had been paid back
With records prone to burn, if left alone,
Or rot among detritus, twigs, and bones
In heavy storms, leaving “he said, she said”
As only way to see who owned the house.

For me, I’ve said the past is not the past
When living bones still walk throughout a house
Alone. Unearthing history beats ghosts back.