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THE GOSSIP
by Pat Sellers
Soap Opera Weekly
February 28, 1995

Something very strange is going on around here.... Within a day of each other, two daytime stars told me they suspect they and their family have been cohabiting with ghosts. First to share this intriguing news was Stephen Schnetzer (Cass, Another World), whose ectoplasmic housemate resides in the 200-year-old Colonial Stephen owns in Massachusetts. Stephen bought the house, set in a quaint New England village 200 miles from New York, so that he and his wife Nancy Snyder (who played Dr. Emily Bradford on AW last year) and sons Max, 8, and Ben, 5, could have a quiet and remote retreat.

"The town has no commerce; there's just a little school, a library, a church and a town hall. Every house is white with either green or black shutters, and we had to petition the historic commission to get approval to change our shutters from black to green. We like that a lot! Life in the city is so manic, and I love that, too; I couldn't live without it. But it's great to have both extremes. Up in the country, you breathe the air, you see the sky, you look at the trees, you roll in a pile of leaves - those simple things give tremendous pleasure."

There's fishing and bird-watching in summer, and in winter, skating on the pond across from the house. Stephen splits wood and builds fires. "One night the boys and Nancy and I had a dinner; we lit the place only by candlelight and firelight, and talked about what it was like to live back when there was no electricity."

They didn't tell ghost stories, though Stephen could have offered a couple based on personal experience. "I'm not sure who the ghost is, but I've felt a presence there. It's a benign presence. It feels female to me, and it seems to come more at night. I've never had a glimpse of it - it's mostly sounds that I can't attribute to the baseboard heating, and the sense of a presence having just left a room." Though Stephen and Nancy were warned about the ghost by the previous owners, he says he hasn't discussed it much with her. "I don't want to spook her; she might not feel as happy about that as I would." As for himself, "I'm not intimidated. I have no reason to assume the worst of a ghost; why not assume the best?"

Grant Aleksander (Alec, All My Children) and wife Sherry Ramsey were actually down at their Victorian house (circa 1888) in Virginia when Grant told me about their ghost. He is a male presence, and his name is Worthington. "I just started calling him that as a joke; I don't know why." Grant says they've had a lot of interesting experiences with their ghost. "All sorts of fun stuff; nothing that's bad, just: 'I thought I closed that,' 'I thought I left this here,' 'I thought I turned that off,' kind of experiences. There's one outside storm door that a lot of times when you go out will close and lock behind you. You have to go around to the front and hope you have the key with you. Now, I've tried to open and close that door and make it lock, but it won't.

"One night, when I was up in New York, Sherry was going up the stairs and she turned around and thought she saw somebody. The next day, she was talking to her dad, who live nearby and watches out for the place when we're gone. She mentioned what had happened, and he said, 'Well, don't feel bad, I've seen him there twice.' And her dad's a real nuts-and-bolts kind of guy. That got her going, doing research on who used to live in the house, and one of them was named William Worthington! She came and told me this down at the bar in town where a buddy and I were having a couple of drinks after playing golf. We almost fell off our stools!"

But Grant says they haven't had any manifestations since he and Sherry paid a visit to the cemetery where the original owners are buried. They brought flowers. "Sherry thinks that they know we like the house and that we can take care of it, and they're happy with all that." Indeed Grant and Sherry have been lovingly restoring the place, with its beautiful woodwork and lofty ceilings. Every time they make the 350-mile trip (all of their cats and dogs go along in the van), they pick a new project to work on.

At first, Grant had some reservations about sharing his ghost stories with SOAP OPERA WEEKLY readers - he was afraid they'd sound too "woo-woo." But when I told him that Stephen, who's as intelligent and level-headed as anyone, had had a similar experience, Grant conceded: "I think most people have a feeling there's more going on out there than we have any idea of. I'm not sure what goes on, but, you know: 'All matter can neither be created nor destroyed; it just changes form.' I think that there's all kinds of energy floating around out there, and, occasionally, you bump into it."