How Jackie Kennedy’s Cousins Became America’s Most Famous Recluses

Big Edie once told friends she stayed in Grey Gardens partly to “keep ghosts company.” She said it with a straight face, leaving listeners unsure whether she was speaking literally or poetically. In either case, the comment fit perfectly with the house’s atmosphere — a place frozen in time, full of memories and remnants of a vanished life.

To her, the past was not something to leave behind but something to live alongside. In that sense, the “ghosts” she referred to could have been both real and metaphorical, a blend of spirits, memories, and the life she refused to abandon.