When I was in high school I would spend some weekends at the rule Ranch on the Northern California coast cleaning up for my Dad who managed the ranch. Bruce Nikolai would join me and together we made up a work and clean up crew. One winter we were dispatched to burn rubble left around from a century of farming. We spent several weekends burning all wood and debris in and around the barns and out buildings scattered around the property.
The views were amazing, 300-500 ‘ above the Pacific Ocean just north of the town of Jenner. This is where the Russian River meets the ocean, on a clear day you could see 20 or more miles into the Pacific. The original Farm house sat up on the hill above the barns and protected by an old cypress hedge. The grounds of the house covered over an acre, it was a Victorian style house, tall ceilings and quite prominent. Local stories told of the ghosts that frequented the house, articles were written about the Haunted house on the hill above Jenner. Bruce and I were clueless.
After cleaning and burning most everything outside, dad set us on cleaning out a part of the old house which had been abandoned many years prior. We burned what we could and took the rest to a dump a couple mile away. On Saturday afternoon we dug to the bottom of a room that had been filled to the ceiling with junk. So much stuff you could not open the door, so we took most stuff out the window. Underneath it all was a coffin. We did not open it, finished up for the day and went to dinner. We called my dad to ask what to do, he said take it out of there and burn it if it’s empty.
So Sunday morning we drove back up the hill and got our burn pile going, about mid-morning we looked inside and found the coffin empty. Just some old red sheet and linens in there, we hauled it over to the burn pile and set it ablaze. It burned hot. We finished up that day, drove home and i did not give it much thought after that.
At College later that year I found out the house was no longer haunted, then a few weeks later that big home burned to the ground. Coincidence? No, I believe we let those ghosts free and they came back and did to the big house what we did to the coffin, set it ablaze.