oh boy!  yes, it's true there are even ghosts at church.  as a child of about 4-5 years of age i remember two adult men i used to talk to.  mom used to always ask me who i was talking to and kept saying there was no one there.  they were in the pew behind us. my younger brother often talked to them too.  very often while we were talking to them we'd turn away for an instant and upon looking back they'd be gone.  we couldn't understand this.  the old guys looked just as solid as we did and even pulled my braids which i put behind the pew to keep rick from pulling them.  i remember very well how the men were dressed and that the often told me what certain scriptures meant.  their clothing, although not unusual to me at that time, was significant when i became an adult.  no one else dressed like that in the 1960's.  their clothes looked like that of the late 1880's to early 1900's!  they were very nice and used to tell me they'd pull their classmates braids when they went to school and dip them in the inkwells.  of course what did i know about inkwells i was just a kid.  as an adult this astonishes me quite a bit.  we didn't use inkwells in the 1960's!  even then we had ink pens with ink already in them.  i do remember seeing some that had been put in family storage one time though.  these men were always cheerful and said they'd always sat in that same pew every time they came to church.  it was the very last pew and they said sometimes they'd sit on the other end.  from what i recall they were brothers and said they'd been with the church from "before" the building was even built.  it had been built long before i was born so i had no idea of it's true age.  in retrospect i believe i did at some time later see a very old picture of it.  another brother was doing a research report on the beginnings of sugar grove, collecting old photos from the county archives and such.  a neighbor of our's not far from our home was an old farmer.  we got alot of information from him as it was his family who were in that valley first and owned much of the land for some distance around.  they had begun the small village of sugar grove by planting large groves of sugar maples.  the trees became mature and ready for making maple syrup and sugar so they imported alot of workers to do the job.  in time the erie canal made it's way through the area which brought in even more people to serve the sugar business as well as the workers.  from there it's just a hop, skip and a jump to a full fledged city.  not only did i see the ghosts of these two men in church in that small town, i also saw a whole group of indians back in the woods from the old farmer's house.  imagine standing taking a breather from hiking in the woods with the family and just admiring the landscape.  it was beautiful back there with a large cave on one end of the horseshoe shaped area.  it had a waterfall coming over it which was alot of fun.  still as i stood there admiring all the trilliums, jack in the pulpits, woods orchids, and such i was dumbfounded to see alot of people suddenly everywhere back by that cave.  they all had funny clothes on and my younger brother saw them as well.  there was a little girl running towards us and an older female some distance behind her.  where i stood there was a picket fence not far in front of me.  the girl came to within only a few feet of me and we stared at one another and waved to say hi.  i heard the older female woman yell something strange at the girl and saw the woman's face looking very scared.  her yelling evidently disturbed the men standing up near the ridge by the cave.  they all gathered at the highest place there to look at what was happening, all looking right in my direction.  i was only about 8 or 9 years old at the time but i knew they were carrying spears, were wearing leather at their waists, breechcloths, and moccassins, but no other clothing.  they had quivers of arrows with bows over their shoulders too.  everyone in that group had dark hair including the children.  i could see these people had a garden back there which was rimmed by this rough made picket fence.  as i knew i was in trouble for being in someone else's place i leaned back and all of a sudden the scene changed just like that and was gone.  it was back to the way it looked before they just appeared there.  my younger brother wanted to know if i saw them too.  i said yes, i did.  he wanted to know where they went but i had no idea.  in time we got older and when i was about 12 we met the old farmer who owned those woods.  we'd hiked in them for many years but never had known him before that.  an older brother of mine was asking about the history of the area and the old farmer was telling him how the town grew up and such.  he had many pictures.  when it was my turn to talk to him i asked about the woods and how certain things were carved into the rocks back there, and of course the large cave in which we found flint and such.  we never suspected that indians had been living back there while whites owned the land.  he said they'd been there when they arrived there to set up house.  they figured they were there first and so saw no reason to make them leave.  i asked him about a picket fence back there.  he was astonished i knew to ask this and more astonished that they'd found these indians living back there who had a picket fence up around their garden area near the big cave.  he said this shocked them as everyone always said the indians were not cultured or civilized people.  to them this showed that they were civilized and so they showed them respect.  just after these indians back there disappeared that day i turned to go down the rise but my foot caught in something.  when i raised it i found it was wire with pickets woven into it.  it was a part of that picket fence i'd just seen standing!!  yes, i gasped because i knew i'd just been back or seen into the past and so had my younger brother.  just before they disappeared dad yelled to ask who all those people were, he saw them too.  as soon as he came around to get a better look at them they were all gone.  we all looked for tracks in the soft dirt around that cave but found none but our own.  it was very strange.  sometime later our oldest brother and one sister asked me who all those people were over at that cave that were dressed like indians.  then they also wanted to know where they went to so fast.  we all searched for them but found nothing of them having been there recently. 

so, to summarize, ghosts can be in church and also in the woods, wherever people have lived, died or been. 

patty