My photography teacher, Mr. Heller, told me this story about his friend who lived in an old house and his friend would frequently lose things like his keys or sunglasses or stuff like that and he would run around looking for them. And what would happen he would go to the center of the house – after he had exhausted all his other options – and like say, “This is what I’m looking for and could you help me find it” or something like that. Either they would show up in the middle of the house or he would remember where he put it even if he’s already looked there. Another thing that would happen would be that in the middle of the night, he would wake up and the house would smell like someone had been baking in the kitchen. And he’s a single guy. Obviously it wasn’t baking in the middle of the night, but it would be like cookies and stuff. Later, he was like remodeling the house and they tore up the floor and found a gun and spent bullets from the Civil War in the center of the house where he would go and ask for help.

Jill’s tenth grade teacher told her this story during class at her high school in the suburb Frederick, Maryland. It was just a conversation among Jill, her teacher, and another student while the other students were working on their individual photography projects. The three of them were talking and the topic of ghost stories came up, which is why Jill’s teacher retold this story for them. This story can be considered a FOAF legend or a friend of a friend story since it invites discussion about belief and supposedly happened to the teacher’s friend. Jill thinks that although the story is hard to believe, she does believe it to an extent because of the way her teacher presented the story. Jill explained that Mr. Heller was completely serious while telling this story despite being a funny, humorous guy. Also, during that particular conversation Mr. Heller was revealing many things about himself, which makes Jill feel like the story is more sincere and convincing.

Another thing that made the story more credible was the area’s close ties to the Civil War. Jill lived in a suburb that was about forty-five minutes away from Gettysburg and that was located very close to many Civil War museums and battlefields. Therefore, it was not an extremely odd and random occurrence that the teacher’s friend found a Civil War gun underneath the floor. However, individual listeners must decide for themselves whether or not they believe that there was a friendly soldier ghost that really helped the teacher’s friend find missing objects.