I wrote a song a few years back about a haunted house I visited when I was a kid. It was on someone’s property like an aunt’s father’s big brother’s Papaw or something like that. The property was very close to the Gulf of Mexico and when we drove down the little dirt path to where a bunch of kids was going to party in a cabin in the woods I could smell the salt air. It was a hot summer night in deep south Mississippi…air still, and the sweat laying heavy on the skin even with the windows all open blowing the leaden air.
Someone told about the cabin where the party was happening. It was ancient. 
They say “built in the 1600s maybe” and there were spirits haunting the place, according to legends. It was down a dirt road, then a trail, across some creeping sandy loam and then to a little clearing in a copse of big trees. It was late and full-on dark when our headlights lit the clearing and there stood a hut. It was a log cabin. but really small, though inside seemed bigger somehow. We were partying of the psychedelic sort and I’d been on the rise for a minute or fifty, everything starting breathe and get fluid like they do. There was a group of people already there and with the four or five I came with, we had a full-blown party going.
They say “built in the 1600s maybe” and there were spirits haunting the place, according to legends. It was down a dirt road, then a trail, across some creeping sandy loam and then to a little clearing in a copse of big trees. It was late and full-on dark when our headlights lit the clearing and there stood a hut. It was a log cabin. but really small, though inside seemed bigger somehow. We were partying of the psychedelic sort and I’d been on the rise for a minute or fifty, everything starting breathe and get fluid like they do. There was a group of people already there and with the four or five I came with, we had a full-blown party going.It was one room and was lit by a platoon of candles and a low fire in a fireplace on one side of the room. The floor was hard-packed dirt and the walls were a mud spackled finish to the logs that made them. It was musty as well as misty so with the acid the fog was palpable and warm. We all sat around on the floor playing stoner games like Buzz and mind tricks, drinking beer, and I would suppose smoking and generally being teenage hippies.
I felt a presence the whole time I was there, nothing frightening and nothing threatening…just something. It mixed well with my trip and I was in full bloom. We had no music, just the laughter and yelling, and kid noise. And the party eventually spilled to the outside. I stayed inside with a few others and I went to visit places in my mind.
The sensation of the extra presence became stronger, still no menace, but reaching out to me. And I saw a misty man. He was covered in rags that seemed gossamer wings. There was a hint of chains hanging from him, but I didn’t think of them as malevolent chains, just part of his countenance. And I could hear him as he moved, the chains rattling softly and a seeming breeze blowing his cloaks making swishing sounds. And suddenly I couldn’t see anyone else in the room. I don’t think everybody left the room, I think I was no longer in the same plane in the room. It was me and the ghost.
He stepped into the fireplace. It seemed to open to accept him and he slid up the chimney and with a final swoosh, he was gone, I was back with the other friends who had been there before in the soft light of the candles and the almost extinguished fire. No one seemed to have seen what I’d seen and I never said a word. I don’t think seeing my ghost actually surprised or baffled me. I wasn’t worried about him, he seemed to be following a mission of great import. He was looking for a treasure, and in the end, isn’t that what we all do? No reason to believe that search ever goes away even after we cross over.
You can hear the story in song. Bag Of Treasure. https://www.reverbnation.com/mandolinavenue/song/4354158-bag-of-treasure