My first encounter with the other side - Angel of Mercy, Angel with a Mission
My life partner Suzanne and I frequently reminisce about our respective childhoods. We agree our play-days were pretty good as childhood goes, and we both enjoyed any opportunity afforded us, to disappear deeply into the haunted woodlands for an untold number of adventures of the fantastic. She grew up in the community of Windermere, on the shore of beautiful Lake Rosseau, here in the picturesque heartland of the District of Muskoka. The Stripp family operated the Windermere Marina, in the mid sixties to mid 1970's, and owned both a house in the village and a cottage a short distance away. She had a splendid childhood amidst some of the most beautiful forest lands in the entire region, particularly at the cottage tucked beneath towering evergreens. When we compare notes about the paranormal, she has frequently told me about the times, near the peak of hillside rising from the lakeshore, when she could hear a faint, pleasant music, as if the orchestrated fairykind were somehow responsible. It was farm pasture on one side and pinery on the other, and despite the proximity to other cottages, the music couldn't be heard even a few steps away from the particular site. There was no radio in the vicinity, and it was unlikely any of the cows grazing were responsible for the joyful melody. Suffice to say, she allowed the fairies their revel, and to this day believes it wasn't a case of an over-active imagination. For her it was a very real experience. If you related this same story in Ireland, Scotland or England, initially, and by today's standards of non-belief in many of the old legends, it might be suggested you were thusly quite mad as a child......while at the same time agreeing that some of their own family members had also, decades back, reckoned similarly with these creatures of shadowy forest-lands. If you've ever had a similar experience, of hearing for example, voices and or someone calling your name, when in fact nobody is within earshot anyway, then you will appreciate how hearing music in the midst of a thicket, is just as confounding to the rational mind. Books on paranormal experiences are loaded with similar references.....hearing something that apparently doesn't have a normal, understood source.....are these the voices of the wee folk, the deceased, or the strange harmony of an over-active imagination.
Take for example, voices that have been heard by many passersby, generating from within the woodlands that rise above a fast water section of the Muskoka River, known as Balsam Chutes, near Port Sydney, where many folks and neighbors claim to have heard cries and words spoken but have never come upon the source. The local lore suggests that there are native gravesites on the property, holding the remains of men who challenged the rapids as proof of bravery, only to have perished trying. This is the grandest, widest measure of hearsay, yet the same could be said of my wife's claim to have heard music in the midst of a rather dense woodland. I have been on the spot of the alleged challenge of the rapids, and supposedly the grave sites, and I can add my name to those who have claimed to have heard voices. Whether it is the powerful thrust and wash of the water over the rocks, creating a strong undertow which has claimed many lives in the past, or the wind rushing through the evergreens along the shore, it is an eerie location, that does play on the mind..... most likely because of the folks, even in recent history, who have perished in the deadly current. It's one of few places that almost seems to repel a percentage of hikers, canoeists and sightseers, who quickly sense it to be dark and oppressive, while to the photographer being a most beautiful cascade of water into the black, reflecting pool at the bend in the watercourse.
I have spent many years enjoying the woodlands of Muskoka and Algonquin Park, and there are few places that make me feel as an intruder. I did have a similar feeling once however, while visiting the rapids below the Tea Lake Dam in Algonquin Park, where Canadian landscape artist, Tom Thomson used to fish. I was at the park to get some actuality for a series of articles I was writing about Thomson and his mysterious death while canoeing on nearby Canoe Lake, in July 1917. I am a lifetime subscriber to the murder theory, versus alleged accidental drowning to explain his sudden and tragic death. The drowning scenario was initiated by a provincial coroner that same July, suggesting simply.....a long-long way from foul play..... that the slightly tipsy artist fell out of his canoe while urinating, hitting his temple against the gunnel on the way down into the water. While no biographer or art historian will deny Thomson liked his spirits, it wasn't his usual launching beverage in preparation for a long paddle with numerous portages. To urinate mid-lake in daylight, with a lot of folks around at the time, seems quite unlikely.
While wandering the picturesque shoreline of the river at the Tea Lake Dam, and listening to the constant wash of water over the rocks, it seemed as if I had company though nobody was at my side. My wife and children were up on the dam site at that point. It was as if I was standing beside Thomson, as he was throwing out his line into one of the dark pools between the rocks. Every now and again, just when I'd swear this time someone was coming up behind me, there was nothing but forest and wildflowers wavering in the light breeze. Not even a deer. Or racoon. Considering that I have been researching the Tom Thomson mystery for well more than a decade, and having always felt Thomson's spirit was willing to give a helping hand to encourage more research, I guess it wasn't all that surprising to feel his company then.....considering dozens of other coincidences that occurred during this time period. Suzanne used to say that, "Tom must want you to identify his killer." Later in this blog collection I will let you in on the plethora of coincidental events that occured during the most intensive periods of research into the death of Tom Thomson, that don't by themselves validate paranormal intervention but sure make you ponder just what the other side does for kicks. I've often kidded my contemporaries, friends and writing associates that if we talk about Thomson, his work, life, demise, I will guarantee that they too will experience some of the same coincidences I've enjoyed these many years. And it does appear, and I've told this to more accomplished Thomson researchers and writers than me.......that he wants a resolution to the story of his misadventure; that it be known and re-written in future biographies, he was murdered and..... we should do what is necessary to vindicate and correct misinformation about his ability as a canoeist.....which by most of his mates was competent canoemanship.......putting to rest the theory he was stupid enough to relieve himself in mid-lake when he was only minutes from shore. As much his challenge to those paying attention, is to reveal without doubt, the name of his murderer. Which has been somewhat established and will be detailed later on in this blog site.
Angel or Something Out of the Ordinary - A Dream? A Fantasy? Why has it stayed with me all these years?
An impromtu meeting with an angel! It was my own first experience with the so called "other side," or "heaven" as we have come to think of it in a variety of forms and dimensions, depending on your expectation or tutored anticipation of what is "heavenly" and "divine" of believed afterlife. While my parents have never suggested I was a sickly kid, I did manage to catch most of what was coming down the pike, and there were very few creature discomforts of childhood illness that I didn't have before my first teenage zit. In one particularly bad bout of unnamed sickness, I suffered weeks with a cough so bad it made me vomit during each lung wrenching jag. I used to sleep upright in a big chair with a plastic pail at my side because sure enough, once I started to cough it was going to end badly. The doctor who saw me through the ordeal didn't call it whooping cough although I heard my mother wonder aloud several times that it probably was....'cause it sure sounded like a "whoop" whenever I tied into another breath-chasing cough. I didn't know what that meant other than they talked about it with a serious tone, and I didn't like the tone of the whispered suggestion, "what if it is actually whooping cough?" That sort of left me hanging in the balance, wondering if my life-expectancy was in the "if" zone......listening attentively to my own cough, to determine in first-person if there was indeed a "whooping" sound just before the end-of-cycle wretching into the yellow pail.
I could only sleep for about 15 or so minutes without interruption and I know that with fever and disgust for food, I was getting pretty weak and wondering what was to become of me, as I felt the force of coughing was literally turning me inside out. One night after about a week of this hacking and vomiting, my mother was tending a nasty bout of fever, and I had to keep an ice pack on my forehead and one weighted down on my chest. It was in the wee hours of that same night, I suppose at a time when the fever likely abated, when I had an encounter with a heavenly messenger. It happened thusly. The location of said experience was a three level apartment building in the City of Burlington, Ontario, my first home turf. A great place for any kid to live. A big bright backyard with a magnificent cherry tree in the middle, a ravine and babbling creek thriving just below the apartment parking lot. It was a clean and secure building run by a kindly family. It wasn't haunted I can tell you that with confidence. As for angelic visitations. I'm not sure but here's my story anyway.
I know it was a dream. There's no doubt in my mind because in my condition I couldn't have walked down two flights of stairs in the multi level apartment building, (the way I was confined to this chair), and then while coughing myself into oblivion, navigated another section to the laundry room where the strange encounter took place. At the time I was probably six or seven years of age and didn't leave the apartment without express permission from my mother. In this dream I am wandering down the marble hallway, and without going down any stairs whatsoever except in the final steps of this fantasy encounter. I wind up at the door to the laundry room, open it, and climb down the ten or so stairs to what was basement level but only slightly below ground floor. I can remember it all so clearly even though it was so many decades ago.
When I stopped at the bottom, and looked back toward the door that had closed slowly behind me, I was absolutely consumed by the vision of an angel hovering above a table to the right of the stairs. I was as spellbound as the burl of a maple is hard, and I stood silently gazing at this magnificently glowing winged creature, with such a beautiful face and kindly expression, so brilliantly white and soft in appearance, looking down at me as if I had been on time for my pre-arranged appointment. When I tell this to people I know, the automatically think, "the kid was delusional, that's all....his fever was breaking....it was a dream, nothing else!" I can't say I blame them. But it wasn't the vision as much as the feeling that has preserved the significance of the meeting for the better part of 53 years of otherwise rational behaviour. There was such an invasive feeling of peace and safety in her presence, and it very much felt as if I was also floating and hovering as was my angel companion. And while one would have expected from the encounter, some sage advice from angel to witness, not a single word was spoken....not one advisory from God. Yet I was full of the message of its shining goodwill, and in all these years I have been able, at will, to recreate the image of the heavenly visitor, and the lightness and sheer power of her aura which haloed around her head. It was as if I was parachuting down to earth, being unconcerned at that moment whether the chute had actually been deployed or not. It didn't matter. There was no choice but to give this creature my full attention. I have read a multitude of books on angels and mortal encounters with these divine creatures, and they very much parallel my own experiences during that brief evening - early morning visitation.
When Suzanne, one day, pestered me to provide a more accurate word to describe what it was like to be in an angel's company, I thought for several moments, ruling out many inadequate descriptive words, until final deciding it was more like "ecstasy" than say "happiness" or "contentment," for example...or at least it was my perception of the moment. I pretty much had the full range of sensations expected from a mere mortal, who finds oneself plunked unceremoniously.... the selected guest of heavenly company. For the time I was in the angel's presence, there was no discussion but many mindful messages received. It was the true and honest beginning for me, for a liftetime believing in the existence of the "other side,"......the truth about heaven you might say having been wrought into belief by a guardian angel about to spare my life.......although admittedly my understanding of the afterlife may not be the same as those who have studied its existence by references in the bible, and discussions at the church representing their faith.
In the last moments of my encounter, I recall so clearly the peaked senses in my body, feeling warmth yet a comfortable chill, as if sky-diving through a canopy of clouds. I believe it was an introduction to my guardian angel and it has been a frequently recalled experience at times through life when I have become disenchanted and frustrated, pondering what the point was, of marching on toward more of the same. It doesn't take more than a few seconds to relive the same sensations, of safety and inspiration, a touch of nirvana in the embrace of a most glorious trust and enlightenment. And the task and drudgery of survival becomes more palatable. I have always felt fortunate to have been able to draw upon this alleged visitation, and never once has it let me down over the largest part of an active lifetime.
I wasn't scared to be in her presence but at the same time, it did remind me of stories my parents had told me about death and transformation to the realm of heaven. Was it my time? Was this my guide to heaven, sent upon news I would succumb to my ailment? If so, it was only momentary. In support of the delusional theory, I woke up later that same evening, sweating buckets, being tended by my mother Merle, who I overheard whispering to my father Ed, "I think his fever has finally broken." It's the only other thing I remember about that night, other than of course, being in the company of an angel. Obviously I survived my nasty bout with the flu or something similar, and it was the first and last time I've dreamed about being in company of an angel. Keeping in mind, I really didn't have too much information about the work and follow-through of angels on the job, in order to make a "what I knew before and what I know now" distinction about paranormal visitations. The only angel image I'd ever seen to that point was on a Christmas card my parents received.....nothing at all that would have helped me dream up such a compelling vision of heaven on earth. If it was only a dream, it was an academy award winning dream. If it was a heavenly intervention, then I must have been precariously balanced on the rounded, slippery point between survival and succumbing....and this beautiful and gentle creature appeared to let me know, by sensation alone, that Heaven wasn't quite ready for me yet. And no, as some of my family members have wondered, I have never in my mortal days, experienced anything, anywhere that could compete with the power and invasive qualities of my guardian angel. I have never witnessed any shade of white being as brilliant as the gown and wings she was gloriously attired. For a dream it was a powerful, life enhancing experience....one that has held me in good stead ever since. The recognition it was a dream and not an in-person, "mortal to spirit-kind event", doesn't diminish the impact one bit. When I'm asked whether I believe in heaven, or generally the after-life, well, I've got enough information to answer affirmative but it has nothing at all to do with what my religious faith, and a host of ministers over the years have tutored me to believe.
Despite feeling dreadfully ill and exhausted from the ordeal, the dream was a most pleasing escape from what prevailed on the wee body even when asleep. It is I believe rare to remember a dream over decades and in my case it is coming close to fifty years. It was a doozy. It's one thing to be able to recall the dream itself but quite another to remember so vividly, with such sensory awareness, what the dream felt like....what the witness experienced beyond the vision of an angel. Such that today I can sit here and so clearly recall the feeling of being suspended in the air, amidst the mist-like, cool, illuminated from within, cloud-like sensation of the atmosphere yet the warm and comforting aura of what I can only explain as eternal guardianship. And coincidentally, my fever broke. There isn't a single sensation however, that can't be related to a caring mother with a cold compress, in a compassionate chairside vigil. I've always thought it was a kind of partnership that got me through this childhood ailment anyway. I don't expect I'll ever resolve this vision any further along than I have related now, and I fully expect on my deathbed to mercifully recall it again.....and if this time I'm not to be spared, I will understand of course.......at least I will go along hand in hand, comforted by the knowledge there's a wonderfully soothing and joyful enlightenment yet to come.
Now how has this alleged connection with heaven and a guardian angel influenced all of the other paranormal experiences over nearly half a century? If anything, my dreamland encounter has influenced me against making rash judgements about anything that is not immediately identifiable or justifiable. Some critics might argue that having had an early experience with what could be called supernatural, would tilt the balance such that anything falling into the mysterious and unexplained, would be validated as paranormal in my mind. As a career historian and fairly accomplished researcher, adament about the critical approach to understanding any event(s) in history, I simply couldn't live with even trace ignorance muddying perception. I am always challenging presumed fact. In my home ballywick I'm famous as a "disturber of historic fact," because I have disproven numerous long-held, widely accepted records, that contained fundamental errors and broad stroke, misinformed generalizations. If I get to the stage of any research, when I am prepared to go public with my findings, believe me, I'm ready for the fall-out. That means being able to defend the position taken, and support the new and often contrary facts revealed. Admittedly, there are folks in these parts who wish I would stop correcting what they believe to be the truth of already written community history. So folks, when I pass on a tale about a haunting or spirited encounter, I've already beaten it up and then some, to make sure what was experienced, witnessed and thusly researched is as accurate as possible in the re-telling. I wouldn't publish this personal collection of stories if I wasn't satisfied with their accuracy according to the time and place of specific encounters and experiences. I have cross referenced many of my own recollections with the paranormal experiences of others throughout the world.....and there are many common threads holding our observations together. My encounters are quite common in fact which doesn't mean they're above being contested......and proven matters of mind over matter. Telling them in this blog site....I'm really....at best, putting my own spin on stories lived quite honestly by others on this planet in the past (what I thought were extraordinary were not).....which by the number of well documented, parallel human encounters with divine intervention, gives some validation to the possibility angels do exist, and voices from beyond do call out to us when we need a serious, resounding reminder about something important or other. Not really scary stuff at all. But interesting. The memory I have of a guardian angel is precious to me.....as I think it was intended to be!
In this collection of stories we place ourselves at the centre, and we refrain from re-telling experiences with the paranormal which have happened to others. We might on occasion, visit an old haunt when invited but our pursuit is to provide "actuality," as we have come upon curious supernatural conditions and circumstances. From childhood, I have trundled through life quite open-minded about the existence of strange entities and things that go bump in the night....or scoot across the sky in the blink of an eye. Still, I haven't left any abode, any safe haven from my former digs up on Alice Street, in Bracebridge, to our present home here at Birch Hollow, in Gravenhurst, looking for the paranormal to "give it to me." I've not once sat by the hearth in any of my wonderful former homesteads in the District of Muskoka, expecting to be haunted by a deceased house-mate, or scared half to death by what Ebeneezer Scrooge witnessed of Jacob Marley's Christmas Eve rant and rave, courtesy the legendary Charles Dickens, in his book, "A Christmas Carol." If however, something odd did occur, I was eager to capture as much of the event as possible, versus running and hiding from a mysterious vapor....which on a few occasions was the result of an ember from the fire landing on a nearby rug. I was curious as a child and that has only intensified over the decades. Yet I don't get up in the morning, grab up a notepad, and anxiously await the first weird thing of the day. Well, around here, with a houseful of musician, poets country philosophers and pets, there's always weird stuff going on but it would be quite wrong to attach the word paranormal. "Ab-normal," yes. Just not out of the ordinary.
My first paranormal episode in my new hometown of Bracebridge, wasn't all that strange when it occurred but for a number of days after, the event gained substantially more substance and intrigue. We lived in a third floor apartment on Alice Street, owned by Hilda and Wayne Weber, nice folks who lived in the small brick home next door. The bricks of the building were scavenged from the torn down former public school on McMurray Street, which was replaced by a new two story building with a gymnasium. Most people in the building were friends and it wasn't uncommon on weekends in particular, for apartment doors to be wide open, and a trail of residents wandering in and out of each other's units, some participating in card parties, others watching ball games, a few just discussing the current events and work related stuff over a few pints of cold ale.
So it wasn't uncommon to have folks rap on the door and then walk into the apartment. We lived like weird but interesting relatives all protected under the same roof. My parents weren't really "joiners" as such but even they got into the commune type spirit of things. I was probably about 13 or 14 years of age, and my parents this particular evening were playing cards in the apartment directly below ours on the third floor. With the door open I could hear them and everyone else in their respective get-togethers, and I didn't bother to close the door when I finally decided to go to bed around 11 p.m.
I was pretty much out when, for what ever reason, I opened my eyes and saw a man standing in the doorway. Illuminated from behind, I knew from the physical stature that it wasn't either of my parents or anyone else I recognized from the building. It was the form of a small, older man, slightly hunched over and after standing in the doorway for a few seconds, I watched him take several steps toward the bed, then turning to look out the window, and then slowly turning and walking back out the door....casting one look back as he exited. He definitely saw me curled up on the bed although he didn't see me move....I was mildly aghast at someone going to the extent of walking into a bedroom when nobody appeared to be home. I think at first I thought it may be someone looking to steal something so I just remained as still in the dark as I could. When he approached and looked out the window, I did see his face clearly in the dim illumination coming from the door, and the halo of streetlight which shone through the window at night. I knew the man as a neighbor in the apartment on the same floor but I had never seen him without a family member helping him walk. This gent was walking just fine and without a cane. As he walked out the door, I waited a few moments, thinking that I would hear his footfall out the apartment door. When I didn't hear a clear exit, I jumped out of bed and headed into the living room, and to the kitchen, and then out to the third floor landing where I expected to see him trail into his apartment or be standing where I could get a better look. The gentleman wasn't all that scarey afterall, and I'd spoken with him many times in the past, during impromtu meetings in the hallway. But now, as I expected to see the man in the light of the staircase there was not a trace. Nary a sound. Not a silhouette, a scent of another mortal, the whosh of wind when a door closes and the curtains move in reaction.
As it was someone I knew from the three story apartment complex, it was still pretty much a typical event up at the Alice Street residence. Nothing to get alarmed about. If it was our kindly old neighbor, well, he must have just assumed the wide open door was an invitation to visit.....no harm done really. But when I told my mother Merle the story the next morning she looked at me as if I was an alien intruder. "What did the man look like," she asked? When I said it was the neighbor in the back apartment on the stair side, her chin nearly hit the arborite table top. "Teddy," as she used to call me. "That man hasn't lived here for six months, so how could he have been in our apartment," she said, suggesting that I may have been having one of those vivid dreams.....like the one about an angel. By the way, as a point of reference, I have never spoken to my parents about my guardian angel experience, and I don't think I would have mentioned the visit from our elderly apartment mate if I'd known it would inspire ongoing parental doubts....which of course lingered whenever I told a story that touched on the fantastic. When several days later, our landlady was telling my mother about the same gentleman's sudden demise at the home of a daughter, the same night I saw him in my bedroom, well sir, it's the first time my mother introduced the possibility (to the landlady only), "Teddy may just of had a visit with a ghost." Imagine my surprise to then find out that this same deceased bloke had once occupied our apartment, before moving to one at the rear overlooking the hillside gardens. Gads, is it possible,..... as they say happens to the newly deceased, when the departing spirit visits the places it once occupied in its human form? Was he simply looking out of a window he had enjoyed in life, his spirit dusting everso lightly upon the mortal world of once.
As a kid always a taker for new adventures, this was a milestone in my short life. I didn't know much about paranormal anything but I knew quite distinctly what I had seen in that doorway of my bedroom. To me, it wasn't a ghost. It was a man. An elderly man who studied the room, walked over to get a glimpse out of the window, then turned and walked away.....casting a final look back, which I guess from a spirit's perspective, was the grand finale, a contentment to fulfill these final earthly visitations.
Although I wasn't responsible for cross-analyzing the event, and breaking down each detail to confirm whether or not it was a paranormal experience, or just a shallow dream about an unidentified intruder, the accompanying details were enough for me....the man was dead at the time he was standing over my bed. There's not much more to say, the only doubt being whether I could have mistaken him for another resident....except for the fact that he was the only small statured, older gentleman among the ten families residing in the building at the time. I did see his face clear enough to judge age and identity. And I did chase behind and wind up on the landing in bare feet so I do know I was fully awake. I remained up watching a late movie until my parents arrived back home, thinking it best to avoid another impromtu visit at bedside.
I have had numerous alleged paranormal experiences since, that also involved the spirit-kind reclaiming some of its past, in my impromtu, "I can't believe it's happening again" presence, and you will read about these in several upcoming editorial submissions. When I think back to the visitation from the old chap, I can tell you honestly that the only time I felt a tad nervous was when my mother jokingly referred to my "ghostly visitor," assuming as well that it couldn't have been anyone else in the building, and the reality, "dead men tell no tales" If he was deceased at the time of his alleged visit, it certainly meant he had to come via ghost-kind. I didn't feel any panic being in its presence. Of course that was before the word "ghost" and "death" were bandied about. It was as if he had no idea I was in that bed watching. There was no eye contact whatsoever, despite the fact I studied him up and down because I wanted to know why he had taken liberty of walking so far through our apartment. When he turned back through that door, with one wee look back, he vanished into thin air with great speed. I should have been able to catch a glimpse of him before he got to his apartment door.....oh, that's right,....he didn't even live in the building at that time. Had he been amongst the living, having to step down two flights of stairs on a crippled leg, I'd surely have caught a full view of the interloper somewhere in that building. There was nothing but a memory of what had occurred. But it was a very real experience and another that has imprinted for life. Ghost sighting or not, this was a memorable event.
The only other incident while living at the Weber apartment, was a most peculiar event that occurred late one hot summer evening while I was coming home with two neighborhood chums. We had just left the wooden stoop of the corner store, where we had been enjoying a cold bottle of pop as we did just about every summer night back then, when we all got the impression something or someone was coming after us. We could all hear a distinct heavy footfall but nobody was behind when we stopped to look back. Now you know kids? Know how they can take a small event and make it huge and threatening to the planet? Well, as a post mortem to this encounter, we tried our best to minimize it and put real-life into the mix versus judging it solely on the handiwork of the supernatural.
It was just after 10 p.m. I believe, and it was so hot and humid that no amount of cold pop could do anything more than offer a few moments of relief. When we first heard the footfall we stopped and looked back into the area the sound seemed to be coming from, and there was a lamplight on the corner of Toronto Street that should have clearly exposed our pursuer, if as we were hearing there was one at all! When the footsteps got faster and louder we stopped trying to research the situation, and opted instead for a subtle bid to gain a little distance, at first with a gentle trot up the street toward our apartment on Alice Street. Looking back occasionally, there was nothing coming yet the sound of shoes hitting the tarmac from behind was more than just slightly worrisome. We were rapscalions and had more than a few enemies so being chased wasn't all that unusual. But we couldn't see a thing. When we finally rounded the corner on Alice Street, the footfall was right behind us, and at any moment we expected a hand to catch one of us on the shoulder, or to be tripped-up by our assailant. There was no voice, nobody yelling commands which we were used to....like "Wait till I get my hands on you....." or something like that. Whenever we did look back there was nothing but thin dark air. Who belonged to the racing feet behind us. We just didn't think we should take a chance stopping. So we ran faster and the footfall kept pace. It was taking on a great deal more urgency because there was no identification about the type of danger we might be in, should the pursuer finally catch-up. Once again, with quick glances back into a well illuminated intersection with Alice Street, there was no body connected to the sound of running feet.
Damned near dead of exhaustion, the three of us hit the lawn of our apartment with what could only have been several metres of distance between the good guys and our challenger. Who other than someone with ill intent, would want to hunt us down in this fashion? It was payback for some misdeed earlier in the day, the week, the month. When we hit the front door, almost at once as a threesome, it was a mutual fumbling tug on the door handle in the quest for safe haven.....but nobody under the drastic circumstances could have sensibly pre-arranged the one outstretched hand to pull open the door; so we arrived as an out of breath, half-falling, staggering scrum under the front canopy, all grasping for the door at the same moment. We miscued, smashed ourselves with the heavy outside door, and momentarily surrendered to the fact at least one of us wasn't going to make it through the doorway in time. We turned to meet our attacker face to face. But there was no one there. Not a person, a dog, or an image of anything at all. Yet all three of us heard the footfall right up to the cement pad of the building's porch. Just as suddenly as it had begun, while we were standing outside the corner store, for once minding our own business, it ended without exclamation. Out of breath yes! An answer, there was none.
I can hear it now just as clearly as it had been on that crazy summer night. Whatever had decided to take chase was not of this world. We had a number of theories about it being the footfall of former chums we had known, who had succumbed to sickness and tragic circumstances over the years of our residency on Hunt's Hill, on Bracebridge's east side. We never came up with anything better than educated guesses and we never once suggested to our "day to day" mates that we'd been chased by a ghost. I can tell you here and now that whatever chased us on that night, was something fantastic....something stranger than fiction and it was what it was......a frightening encounter! We survived. In retrospect, maybe we should have stopped and contronted the pursuer but at the point we knew we were being chased, and knowing our list of enemies was about fourteen feet long, the risk of getting blindsided on a darkened street, seemed somewhat unhealthy as compared to a speedy retreat over what was a short distance. Considering we had many mortal pursuers each day of our lives, we were of near Olympian stature when it came to exit capability.
While it wasn't one of those supernatural encounters that can occupy the better part of a chapter in a book on ghosts, it was an event that has led up to many other experiences with somewhat more substance and dynamic. It was another example of paranormal encounters coming quite unanticiapted. I've tried many times to disprove these incidents having any attachment with the paranormal or supernatural, and at the end they've all been banked under the category "unexplained mysteries" to be reviewed at another time. Welcome to "another time," folks! Maybe you've got some insight to share about the "invisible pursuer" and the "curious bedroom visitor." Stay tuned, there's more actuality to follow.