The Knitting Ghost of Spanish Town

By Dez Crawford

Several years ago, I was sitting in a coffee shop one fine weekend morning. My hobby is hand-knitting and I always carry a small project in my tote bag - usually a pair of socks or a hat.

I pulled my current project out of my bag and began knitting. I was working on a pair of thick, warm socks for my elderly Dad, enjoying the feel of the soft, blue lambs wool passing through my fingers, when I felt myself being watched.

I glanced at the next table and found that a woman seated there was watching my hands. This, in itself, is not all that unusual. People sometimes are curious as to what you are doing when you bring your needlework in public. But, this woman's gaze was intent. She was so focused on watching my hands manipulate yarn and needles that she wasn't even aware that I had noticed the fact that I was being observed. I continued working. After a few moments, she glanced at my face. I smiled and nodded at her and continued working. She continued to watch.

Finally, she said, "Excuse me... but what are you doing with so many needles? Is that knitting or crochet... or what?"

I said, "I'm knitting a pair of wool socks. Want to see?" I held out my work for her to have a look.

She leaned over and inspected it carefully. "You have four needles there. I don't know anything about knitting, but I've always thought you knitted with two needles."

I said, "That's usually what you see in the movies. If you're making a flat item like a scarf, you use two needles. To make a seamless tube like a sock, you can either use a modern circular needle or four needles like this - the old fashioned way." I demonstrated how the stitches were spread out over three needles and joined into a tubular shape while the knitter worked around the tube with the fourth needle.

She was silent for a moment, then said, "Okay. There's a reason I was asking. You'll probably think I'm crazy, but..."

During the 1970's when this woman attended Louisiana State University, she rented a small apartment in the old part of Baton Rouge known as "Spanish Town." The apartment was located on the second floor of a rambling, elderly house which had once been a grand home but had been divided into apartments sometime in the 1930's or 40's.

One winter night, the woman woke up huddled under her blankets. The room was freezing and she could hear a faint ticking or clicking sound. The apartment was heated by old radiators and the sound made her suspect that the radiator had gone on the blink.

She rolled over an opened her eyes. There, just a few feet away, standing at the bedroom window and gazing out toward the street, stood a pretty young Caucasian woman wearing a pale dress in the style of the early 1900's. The figure was illuminated by the streetlight coming through the window. And... she was knitting a long sock or stocking.

The witness was too frightened to make a sound. She lay there, motionless, and watched for what seemed like several minutes as the young ghost gazed expectantly through the window and knitted round and round on the stocking she was making.

I asked the woman to describe the ghost's handiwork in detail and this is what she said: "It was a long, white sock or stocking. It was hanging from the needles upside down with the toe end up close to the needles. There were four or five needles sticking out. She was using really thin yarn - almost like thread - and she would knit for awhile, then she would take an empty needle out and turn the work a little bit, and put the needle back in. She did this maybe half a dozen times. The needles were longer than the ones you are using - really thin - and they were a shiny silver color."

The witness went on to say that the ghost appeared in great detail from the knees up, but seemed rather foggy or transparent from the knees down. When the apparition ended, it simply faded out.

After the witness collected her nerves, she jumped up, inspected the window, searched the room for an intruder, and checked the radiator. Of course no one was there. The radiator was working and soon the room was warm again.

I was stunned. As an avid knitter and ghost hunter, here I was being told a story containing a considerable amount of detail as witnessed by a person unfamiliar with the craft in question. While I will not say that it was "impossible" for the woman to have made this story up, I will say that it was highly unlikely for a non-knitter, with no interest whatsoever in handcrafts, to have somehow absorbed by accident such detailed information about an archaic method of knitting.

I assured the woman that I believed her and asked her a lot of questions. I believe this woman's encounter was authentic for the following reasons:

1) The witness had no friends or relatives who knit and could not recall ever having observed anyone knitting up close before. She did not engage in any handcrafts herself and said, "I can barely sew a button on my shirt if I lose one."

2) She had only seen people knitting in the movies. Movies typically portray knitters working back and forth on two needles, and Hollywood often shows someone who does not know how to knit simply wiggling the tips of two needles around in a pre-knitted prop.

3) She had seen commercial yarn and needles in stores like Wal-Mart or Hobby Lobby, but she had never been inside a specialty yarn shop in her life. At the time I met this woman, fine sock yarn and wire-thin needles were impossible to find at large retailers - one had to use a catalog or go to a yarn shop for these items. Due to the popularity of quick-to-finish items, large retailers stocked only worsted and bulky weight yarn and sold needles no thinner than a pencil.

4) The technique she described was absolutely accurate. When working on a tubular item with a set of four needles, the knitter works for awhile, removes an empty needle from the work, shifts to another needle, and continues working. Her account that the ghost repeated this action half a dozen times suggests to me that the apparition maintained itself for approximately two minutes.

6) In addition, most Americans and Western Europeans knit socks from the cuff down to the toe so the stocking would have appeared to be hanging "upside down" from the needles. We always think of socks right side up, so I suspect that if a non-knitter were to simply imagine or hallucinate someone knitting a sock, her mind would automatically put the sock right side up.

Interestingly, the Spanish Town section of Baton Rouge is home to a number of ghosts including a weeping woman who appears in a house on North Street, and an unseen ghost in a house on Spanishtown Road who pinches young women's fannies. I have heard rumor of "a woman who knits" in a house on Sixth Street, but had never heard an eyewitness encounter. I feel fortunate that the witness was so observant and recalled such a level of detail.

Sadly, I have long since lost track of the slip of paper bearing the woman's phone number. I think it was a happy twist of fate that this woman who had wondered what that ghost was doing for so many years, ran across a knitter who was interested, not only in historical handcrafts, but in ghosts as well. Her detailed description convinced this ghost hunter that her experience was highly verifiable, and she left my company with the knowledge that she could not have imagined or hallucinated a knitting ghost with that level of detail if she was not intimately familiar with the craft of knitting.

I believe this chance encounter was one of the most remarkable instances in my lifelong hobby of collecting ghost stories.