Little Boy Lost

Many people have passed through the old Fowler Funeral Home building on their way to eternal rest. However, some have stayed on in this old brick house. Some of those spirits calling this building home are a curious little boy, a few confused ghosts, a loving mother and a grumpy old man.
In a canal town such as Brockport accidental drownings were commonplace, especially those involving children. Those deaths were more tragic than all the others. Little Louis was a darling little boy about the age of three with black curly hair and big green eyes. Like most children that age, he was full of mischief. Louis was not one to hang on his mother’s apron strings, much to her dismay. She had been widowed for less than a year, and Louis was her only child and link to her dead husband.
Louis had a habit of wandering from home at any hour of the day or night, often returning home at the end of a neighbor’s arm. On one such occasion, in the wee hours of the morning while his mother slept, Louis stood on a chair and unlocked the front door, eager to explore the outside world. Barefoot and in his nightshirt, he walked out into the dark.
As the sun was rising, his mother woke up to start her daily chores. Immediately she saw the chair and the door ajar. In a panic, she looked for Little Louis, running from room to room, knowing all the while that he would not be found inside the house. She ran outside calling his name. Instinct led her toward the Erie Canal. To her horror, she saw a barge man pulling something out of the water, his shoulders shaking as he sobbed. In his arms was the lifeless body of curious little Louis.
His mother became uncontrollably insane with grief. Louis’s body was taken to the funeral home and laid out for burial. Little Louis’s curiosity may have gotten the best of him in life, but not in death. In the early hours of the day, the sound of little footsteps can be heard in the hall of the old funeral home, followed by a chair being dragged across the floor and the lock tumbler turning.