The Ghost in the Cap'n Brown House - Open Response

In this story, Harriet Beecher Stowe touches upon the believabilty of fantastic stories. In most "ghost" stories, the credibility of the character that has seen this supernatural creature is received in two different ways: people believeing that character and other people who do not believe anything he says. This is no different in the "The Ghost in the Cap'n Brown House". In the story, Sam, the storyteller of the ghost "sighting" reasons that, "You look at the folks that's allus tellin' you what they don't believe-they don't believe this, and they don't believe that-and what sort o' folks is they? Why, like yer Aunt Lois, sort o' stringy and dry. There ain't no 'sorbtion got out o' not believin' nothin'." His main point is that whenever someone says that they don't believe in supernatural elements, that person cannnot be fully taken as correct. Sam is shown to be on the fence with believing the ghost is actually real or not. Later on in the story, two people, Cinthy Pendleton and Aunt Sally Dickinson, who have seen the "ghost", tell two different tales of their experiences. Cinthy claims that she saw a ghost in her bedroom, "white as a sheet" and having "black eyes." Meanwhile, Aunt Sally contradicts by saying that while looking out her window, she sees a real, live woman come out of the Brown house. Sam clarifies that both women are people that can be trusted and have the same background saying that Cinthy is a "good pious gal" and that Aunt Sally is a "good woman and a church-member". The main point that Stowe is expressing about believability in this story is that there are so many different accounts of seeing an actual ghost. Different people have different takes on what they see with their eyes. The credibilty of a ghost story will always be in question because of the many different view points of the "sighting" by all the characters in the story. This is a compelling concept that is a good middle ground of the conflict of believing a ghost stroy. Stowe recognizes this and expresses this effectively in the story.