The Real Ghost of

The House on Dickinson Street

I grew up in a house at 10th and Dickinson street ..this was a house of real Ghosts.. Ascolta.... the house was build in the 1870’s replacing an older wooden structure and is close to Passyunk Avenue, which in more distance times was the Passyunk creek named after the Passyunk Natives that were the original inhabitants of this area.- you think they went to the Melrose after a big Pow Wow???
The present brick house was raised in the late 1870’s to provide permanent housing for the growing settlement of workers in the area. The area was populated mostly by Irish Catholics who also built the nearby Church of the Annunciation BVM (c.1855). By the 1910’s Italians were increasingly moving into the neighborhood and displacing the original Irish inhabitants. By WWI the house was occupied by an Irish Fireman and his family. I know this as I was told of the fireman from long dead neighbors Dolores Pinto and her sister Clara who lived next door.
The Irish firemen moved out and by the 1920’s or very early 30’s a Angelo La Greca, who was an undertaker, took ownership of the home and used the basement and first floor for his La Greca Funeral Home. He lived with his wife and four children (Maria, Angelo, Florence (Philomena), and Margie(Margaret)on the second floor. I guess he did a good business, funerals are a staple of South Philadelphia life and at this time their were lots of people in South Philly ( considerably more then today) and medical science in the 30's and 40's could not, as it does today, guarantee a octogenarian life span … So I reckon Mr. La Greca had a steady stream of customers, 6 feet under south Philly style.
By the 1950’s Mr. La Greca was dead (I wonder what funeral director he used?) and his widow, a nice lady I remember only as Mrs. La Grecca ( she died in 1968), sold the house to my parents in 1959… but that did not sever the ties with the La Greca’s- Maria La Greca married my uncle Denny Braccia and my Uncle Denny also lived in the house on Dickinson Street for a while. Soon my Aunt Maria settled into 1107 Garrett , the house where my dad was raised - and my dad moved to the Dickinson street house- the house where my Aunt Maria was raised—this is the extent of irony in South Philadelphia- you lived where I lived ,I lived were you lived, we are all the same and change means no change at all…just move the pieces around the board..
So what about the ghost… well just consider the army of corpses that flowed into 1010. Consider the innate superstition of Southern Italians… Consider the fixation about the dead and dead things in old South Philly (as this blog demonstrates) and do your need any more encouragement to believe?
When I was a child so many of the Cumare ,the ever present women who somehow had a connection with you via distant blood, origin in the same little village in Italy, service as bridesmaids, godparents etc.. , would sit in our kitchen- the heart of the home in South Philly , if I today suggest to my guests we move from the living room to the kitchen during a social visit they would really think me odd… in old South Philly if you suggested to sit in the living room instead of the kitchen you were considered both odd and a Spacone (a show off).
…. anyway ….the cumare would often sit in the kitchen and reminisce about the many funerals they attended in my living room and the quality of the corpses and the coffins and how Cumare Filamena in 1937 threw herself upon the casket of her father Didanudd with wild abandonmen.Even my great Aunt Rocchina (Connie) Mazzola ( Don’t remember her married last name) who died in 1942 was laid out at 1010. That also is South Philly irony.
So there I was an impressionably child growing up in this house of morbid memories of the dead, as well as a constant and copious amount of mail addressed to the La Greca Funeral home with all sorts of good deals on coffins, hearses, flower holders etc… (we continued to receive this mail until the late 1970’s!!). As we grew up my sister and I always felt a presence or presences in the house. But listen dear reader and envision - this house was less then 1000 sq. feet, yet contained my parents, my sister, my grandmother, my Aunt Geraldine, and myself.. as well as the cumare and family what lived close by and were frequent callers.. It must have been rather busy and noisy and the ghosts would certainly have had to compete with the living for both space and attention.
My sister and I never wanted to be alone in the house—we never could be alone -EVEN if we wanted to….Even if we tried.. that’s why we did not need burglar alarms, back in the 60’s and 70’s only houses where no one was home were robed and I don’t think that house was ever empty between 1960-1980 for more then 4 or 5 days in total. Now we never encountered any spectral appearances-or I never did.. maybe my sister did, she would-they would come to her before me….
Time did its Tarentella and we grow up and moved out.. I moved out of the house in 1983 and my sister moved in and out and in and out and finally back in, in 1987…
My father died in the house in 1988 and for months my mother, grandmother, sister and her two children told me stories of sounds , voices etc… My Grandmother swore she was once in the basement a few months after my father’s death and while moving a garment bag that contained my mother’s wedding dress , heard my father’s voice as he spoke how beautiful was the dress … Then after my mom died (in Methodist hospital not the house) my sister had a round of stories of hearing her voice….. My niece and nephews had a few stories and my niece conducted a séance, I was told, and got the name Denny…. (did my uncle who died in 1980 come by for a visit??) Ok these are expected stories from people distressed over death or adolescent fantasies…
My work took my out of the US when I moved to Syria in 1991. In 1994 following my mother’s death I took possession of the house which eventual just held my Grandmother- alone, a state she never really liked as she was always surrounded by people. I visited the house a few times a year but always with my grandmother and her friends and family in court, however in the summer of 1995 a few things changed- my Grandmother had recently passed away and the house became truly empty. My wife and I spent the summer of 95 alone in the house , I even spent 3 weeks in June 1995 totally alone as I arrived before my wife to attend to my Grandmother’s funeral … Now this is when I really did sense- the ghosts. You see all my years at 1010 I was hardly ever alone in the house! Now I was… really was… I can’t say I saw anything but heard things, like muffled sounds.. footsteps.. certainly felt like something was in the room with me.. Ok a row home in south Philly has it creaks and cracks and the noise from the street could be mistaken for all sorts of things. But still I refused to stay alone in the house and made sure the house was fill of guest or I stayed out till dawn. My wife said I was just influenced by my memories.. But she has also admitted she felt things….
My sister in law ,who knew little of the house’s pasts , and took care of the property , sometimes spending the odd night or so. This all stopped abruptly after hearing and sensing… things…and feeling the presence. She remains very convinced that 1010 was and is hunted… Also I would sometimes get emails from family and friends in South Philly who asked who was in my house as they drove or walked by and saw or heard something. But the house was empty.. Did Old Mr. La Greca’s customers come back?? Did the dead Braccias return?? Or did a substance abuser seek refuge in the shadows of empty home?
The house remained empty until 2002 when, after considering the opportunity cost of keeping the house solely as a terrestrial center for phantoms, we decided to rent it.
In 2005 I sold the house and gave up all the ghosts, at the time of the sale my sister in law had a talk with the man who was renting the house. This tenant was not from South Philly and alien to southern Italian superstitions and beliefs , but he volunteered what he felt was a secret to my sister in law. You know he said, the house is hunted. .he then told a story of strange sounds, a presence ..the sense of being watched.. Now a young family has taken the house.. in a few years I will pay them a visit and ask if they also have seen or heard the GHOST OF THE HOUSE ON DICKINSON STREET.