“Sometimes I kind of wish I grew up with a ghost in the house,” a friend said to me the other day. I didn't quite know what to say in response, because—and I know this sounds nuts—I did grow up in a house on Dryman Bay in Osprey that was haunted by a ghost, a friendly one. In fact, it still is. We call her "Vi."

We built our family home in the early 1990s on the Intracoastal, across from Casey Key and just four or five houses south of Blackburn Point Bridge. Although I was only 7 years old when construction began, I always felt a paranormal presence when we visited the site of our future home. Once we moved in, I was terrified to sleep upstairs alone and would often end up sleeping on the floor of my parents’ bedroom.

As I aged out of early childhood timidity and moved upstairs, I still always felt like I was being watched. When I installed a plastic glow-in-the-dark beaded curtain (courtesy of Spencer’s at the mall), the sound of the beads clinking together, as though someone was running their fingers through it, would wake me in the night.

The curtain was not near an air vent.

Also, at least weekly, the bathroom sink faucet would turn on in the middle of the night and wake me up. It was difficult to fight through my fear, throw the blankets off and get up to turn off the faucet. When I returned to bed, I would inevitably pull the covers up over my head before falling back asleep.

Somehow, as I aged into my teenage years, Vi became more of a comfort than a menace. I, and every other member of my family, would occasionally catch a glimpse of a young, long-haired woman in a dress turning the corner to go up the staircase. Occasionally, we would catch a glimpse of her on the upstairs balcony that overlooked the pool. You could never see her straight on, but we’d celebrate those quick peeks.

One morning, as I sat at our bay window eating cheesy grits for breakfast, I watched the tire swing in our backyard begin to sway. It didn’t move as though a breeze was pushing it, but instead like someone was in it—yet it sat empty. I hollered for my mom, who was at the stove, and she rushed to the window to see. She watched as the swing arched upward and then came to a quick halt like someone had physically stopped it from moving. We gasped.

But who was this spirit? My mother was friends with the Blackburn family, who originally settled in Osprey as homesteaders in the 1860s, when John S. Blackburn and Belinda Fields Blackburn (an alleged heir to the Marshall Field's fortune) moved there from Iowa. Our home was less than a quarter mile south of some of the remaining Blackburn land, much of which had been sold over the years. My mother loved to explore and never met a dirt road she wouldn't drive down, so she would frequently poke around in the woods near the Blackburn property. That's where she met the primary owner: John Henry Blackburn, John S. and Belinda’s direct descendant.

John Henry's homestead was located outside the boundaries of our subdivision, which was called Southbay, but he had a reputation in the neighborhood. My mother says he never wore shoes, even to the old Winn-Dixie, and was always in coveralls, sometimes with a shirt underneath, but more often not.

One afternoon, when some bored Southbay HOA ladies crossed the border to Blackburn’s home to complain about a rooster crowing in the early morning hours, he grabbed his shotgun and eliminated the rooster. “That better?” he asked before walking back into his farmhouse. The women were left standing on the front porch, dumbfounded.

That sort of behavior may have intimidated some of the more genteel Southbay residents, but my mother was intrigued. After meeting and befriending John Henry, she would make it a point to walk down to the property to explore and sit with him to hear his stories. She’d often bring my sister, who inherited Mom’s curiosity. (I was more of a homebody.) On one visit, my sister was walking by a little white cottage when my mother witnessed a flower pot fly off the outside ledge and land squarely on my sister’s head. Was there another spirit haunting the Blackburn property? Or was this also an act of our ghost?

After doing some research, we learned about a woman named Effie Elvira Blackburn, commonly known as Vi. While the exact family tree is difficult to parse, Vi was likely John and Belinda's niece. She died in her mid-30s, and the descendants of the Blackburns who still live in the area tell stories about Vi's ghostly presence—she's a prankster—and about catching wafts of her perfume fleetingly passing through the air.

“I was going to live in the white cottage there on our property,” one of the modern-day Blackburn cousins told my mom, pointing to where the flower pot had victimized my sister. “I moved all my stuff in, then I moved Vi’s fur and laid it on the bed. When I came home, it was back in the closet. I didn’t sleep there that night and I didn’t come back.”

We also learned from John Henry’s sister, Mary Deans, that our home was built directly over John S. and Belinda’s original homestead. Mary walked our property with my mother and pointed out the family’s artesian well and boat ramp, both located near the south end of an undeveloped adjoining lot.

That was how we connected our ghost to Vi and began to refer to our spirit by her name. (That said, I did have a dream one night in which the ghost insisted that she was not Vi. I have since written off that dream and decided to believe that our ghost is Vi, and I won’t change my mind.)

Our family still owns the home on Dryman Bay, and though my mother has moved to nearby Bay Street, my stepfather still lives there. Over the last few years, we’ve brought up the ghost to him and his new partner, a physician. She hadn’t heard the stories about Vi, but she immediately believed them, despite her science-minded practicality. Turns out she, too, had witnessed strange occurrences.

Last Christmas, as our family gathered for the holiday, I caught a glimpse of long hair turning the corner up the staircase and couldn’t help but beam. Vi may have left her earthly body, but she remains a fixture in our lives.