The tale of "Katherine" and the legendary crooked portrait
Shortly after moving into our new and present home here in Gravenhurst, that we now officially call "Birch Hollow" (we've used this name for the past three homes but this one has more claim to the title than the others because of the birches), the strange and mysterious events of the past seemed to have hitched a ride to the new digs We didn't think it had enough history on its own, to warrant even a minor haunting. It was a newer home from the early 1980's, and to the best of our knowledge it wasn't built on a lost burial ground or place of any great historical anything. It was a typical hilly pasture for a Muskoka homestead of the late 1800's. (Of course it was part of the outer security zone of the former German Prisoner of War Camp, known as Calydor, situated on the high rocky shore of Lake Muskoka, from 1939 to 1946). The closest historical events were two German officiated funerals for two prisoners who had died at the camp during this period. Funderal processions, soldiers wearing their full regalia German military uniforms, marched up Lorne Street on the way to the nearby Mickle Cemetery. Lorne is in our backyard. But this is moot to what might foster a paranormal event in our house. In this case we believe it was our antique enterprise that may have contributed to a few extra characteristics being added to an otherwise normal family household. We aren't the first to suspect that an antique item could carry the burden of a former owner's emotional tie into a present household.
We are opposite a beautiful 20 acre urban paradise, a bogland that is full of Muskoka-style quick sand, which we were warned to be aware of on nature walks with our young lads. Apparently there have been some lost animals and family pets succumbing to the bogland's muck. We are bordered by this great natural heritage and yes we've had a few wolves and owls that added some unsettling calls in the wee hours of misty, moonlit nights. As far as a haunted house on this lovely moor, well, the only way it could possibly house a spirit other than our own, was if we brought one in with us. This brings up the point of travelling spirits inadvertently brought into an otherwise safe haven. It can inspire some strange encounters and playful actions.
As antique dealers, collectors and historians, we have, as taste would have it, always brought home curious, often grotesque pieces into our household inventory ranging from funerary pieces to old, some would say oppressively designed Victorian furniture, that always added a funeral-home atmosphere my wife Suzanne deplored. As a former Victorian musuem manager, who had to deal with oppressive feelings every day on the job, it kind of grew on you over time, and slipping down into the soft padding of an old high back chair was like dropping onto a cloud. Some people find this furniture uncomfortable but with my aching old back I found very few pieces in the museum's parlor unworthy of my much-enjoyed lounging after a long day of guiding tours.
It is known amongst some of the more paranormally sensitive antique dealers that it is possible, every now and again, to unexpectedly, get a hitch-hiker when hauling home an antique purchase. Funny thing in the fictional, entertainment department, that during the haunted house ride at Disney World in Florida,......while enroute on a track through the rooms, you will find that when you look in a mirror ahead, a wee ghostie has hitched a ride in your moving car. This is a bit of video magic courtesy the enchanters at Disney World but it's sort of what we've experienced in our years spent in the antique trade. Instead of finding a ghost beside us in the car, we usually find out later that a doll, a picture, a cradle etc., is the means of transport from estate auction to Birch Hollow.....where the fun begins in our abode. There have been many reports over the years that hauntings related somewhat to articles versus the dwelling as a source. There is what may be an urban antique legend here in Ontario, with the story often repeated in the early 1990's, about a haunted doll crib that allegedly rocked itself. It had belonged to a little Victorian era lass who perished in a house fire. When the family was being evacuated from the burning building, the little girl snuck back in and went up the stairs to retrieve her dollie. By time she got the doll and attempted to exist, the smoke knocked her unconsious. She was found in the burned-out building a few feet from the cradle which had not been destroyed by the flames. After being hauled from the ruins, the family we assume kept the piece until it finally found its way, some decades later, onto the open market. When an antique shop acquired the cradle and subsequently sold it, the small wooden piece only lasted a few weeks in the buyer's home, being brought back to the dealer for of all things....being haunted. It seemed that no matter where the cradle was placed in the home, it would eventually begin to rock as if being manipulated by the hand of a playful child. After a period of trying to find the conditions that were influencing the cradle, the family decided it was a cursed piece and something they could do without. Each time from then on that the dealer sold the cradle, it was brought back for basically the same reason.
Eventually, or so the story goes, the store owners sold it to another dealer who put a sign on the piece that it was indeed haunted but that it was definitely not for sale. Well, we think that piece continued to be sold and returned but we can't tell you where it finally wound up. Would you find it surprising that a piece of wood, the hollow of a simple cradle, could be the accommodation of a ghost? What caused the cradle to rock? Even on level ground with nary a breeze from the window, or a vibration from below to set it in motion. Well, we had our own haunted piece.......a Victorian era portrait of a little girl we named Katherine.
We had been ghost-free since our former house in Bracebridge and life in the new bungalow seemed at first to be pretty tame in comparison to the paranormal acitivities of Golden Beach. It was expected life and the paranormal mix would provide an inert situation where a strange balance would prevail, at least for awhile. We had attended an auction sale in the community of Milford Bay, near Bracebridge, one Sunday afternoon in the autumn of the year....it was probably 1992 if memory serves. It was an estate sale and there were some neat pieces. On a tight budget, everything I was interested in that day went for way more than I had to spend. Our antique business in Bracebridge was just making rent at that time and I couldn't justify going crazy on any of the items at this sale.....which were all pretty much run of the mill pictures, prints, tables, dressers, and bric-a-brack. In fact it was one of the most discouraging sales I've been to, and it didn't even help that I was good friends with the auctioneer. That should have entitled me to a few favors....for a loyal patron. He was getting big bucks for damaged items and it was obvious the visitors to the region, with deeper pockets on this day than my own, were greatly influencing the upper limits of some pretty typical antique pieces. There were about ten major items I had told Suzanne we were going to acquire, even if we had to break the bank..... and even she (the tight-fisted accountant of the family) agreed we could be somewhat flexible......we just wouldn't eat for the next couple of weeks.
I lost ten out of ten. If I bid on twenty items in that final ten minutes of the auction, I wasn't even close on 19. There was however, one break in the action, and it wasn't intentional. I got mixed up about the item being auctioned, and found to my initial chagrin that I was bidding on a Victorian portrait of a little girl "with attitude"....a pout of epic proportion captured by the photographer of the day. It was in a large plaster and gilt frame with its original glass, and it did appear to be in good overall condition. But it was not what I wanted as store inventory. I won the bid. The one thing I got all day was an item I was bidding on by mistake. Get this.....I was writing an authoritarian column for the local press about auction sales, discussing how to bid, when to bid, what not to do, auction protocol and how to weasle into the best buys for the finest items. Well sir, I was pretty unhappy about my accidental purchase, (although I never let any one know it was accidental until this revelation today) and it was a twenty dollar or so expense I greatly begrudged handing over. I mumbled and complained to myself but certainly wasn't going to admit to Suzanne that I'd goofed and bought something I didn't want. I had a parallel look on my face to the little girl I was toting. Apparently we were kindred spirits. She didn't want to sit for the photographer and I didn't want to carry home a pouting child in a frame.
She had an intense snarl etched on her face and the color enhancements applied by the photo studio did nothing to neutralize the emotion of an angry kid. With that look and the feeling of being quite stupid as a bidder, I simply didn't look at her....... and she pouted in silence for quite a few days into our impromtu relationship. Now rather than being considered a wild story teller, by confession, I have previously indicated (in other published stories about Catherine) that I very much wanted the image because I'd been short changed and beat out all afternoon at this particular sale. It was pride you see that invented that tall tale. No I wasn't interested in the Victorian portrait because I needed store inventory, and these old framed photos are notoriously hard to sell. Who wants the portrait of a kid or adult you don't even know hanging in your family room. So as far as it goes, I was stuck with the wee lady. Suzanne wasn't impressed either because money was tight then and I had purchased a DUD! nothing to help net a business profit. We certainly didn't get off on the right foot. I decided that Catherine was going to adorn an empty wall in our house in spite of it all, and it didn't matter who was unhappy about it either. Turns out the feelings were mutual and this may have sparked the incidents I'm about to relate.
Admittedly, I have a first impressions problem. I often find myself unhappy with a purchase or the quality of a piece after I've bought it at auction. I've kicked myself alot in the proverbial arse over ill-conceived purchases. After about a week of staring at Catherine leaning against the fire place, pouting defiantly back, she actually started to appeal to me....for whatever reason. After a few more days I decided to hang her above an old washstand in the area of our living room, closest to two of three bedrooms, and beside the bathroom door. We had recently purchased a nice Victorian jug and bowl set with all but one of the pieces, and Catherine's portrait above would look strikingly museum-like. Suzanne wasn't thrilled but warned me repeatedly about the importance of properly hanging the heavy frame such that no matter what the conditions nearby, whether gale-force wind or banging bathroom door, it wouldn't fall down onto the expensive jug and bowl set. Well, you know us home handy-men who aren't really all that handy at all.......being about as "handy as a foot" my wifes chortles. I believed without question the picture was up forever which is about "four weeks" for any antique dealer who changes interior decor about a hundred times a year depending on the latest acquisitions. I tested that sucker ten or more times to see if it showed any weakness on the nail pounded into a wall stud. No wobble. Perfect stability.
About a week later, when we arrived home one Saturday night after a long day at the Bracebridge shop, we found Catherine had come off the nail and wound up face-down in the middle of the floor, having missed altogether the jug and bowl set directly below. The heavy picture appeared for all intents and purposes to have been lifted off the nail and thrust down on the floor, with the portrait facing up. How she managed to fall away from the wall, with the nail still in the stud and the wire struck across the eyelits as it was when hung, is an ongoing Currie family mystery. How it then rolled into the centre of the floor is quite beyond explanation. So what does a doting owner of a Victorian portrait do? Hung it right back in the same place. A week later it fell again, this time dropping straight down onto the floor behind the washstand and jug and bowl set, without failure to either wire or nail in the wall. There wasn't even a detectable movement of the china jug and bowl set....showing no influence from Catherine's tantrum. She obviously didn't like being hung above the washstand in our living room. So how were we going to make the waif content in our modest abode?
She was thusly headed downstairs to the family room and my library-office.
A Crooked Lady and a Stint in Theatre
From the beginning of her tenure in our house, even when she was hanging prominently in our living room, she seemed determined to hang crooked in between unceremonious flights to the floor. I would straigthen our Victorian lady at least once a day if not more because she obviously knew, in a spirit sense, that I have a phobia about anything askew, from piles of books to art on the wall. I've even been known to straighten pictures as a guest in someone else's abode. So indeed it was making me mad that no matter how I fixed the wire on the back or made sure it was unmovable except in the case of earthquake, Catherine continue her taunts.
For whatever reason, and I'm not sure that it was her spirited falls that made me want to unload the picture but I finally decided to take Catherine to our antique shop in uptown Bracebridge. I hung her above my counter on the back wall of the smaller first room in the two room shop. I didn't put a price on the picture because I wasn't sure whether I should sell it, or just let her look pretty and companion the other portraits I did have for sale at the time. People regularly commented about her sad face and asked if I knew who she was, and if she had been from a local family. I had a few offers to purchase but I just could commit to a price. As I had rescued her from the auction (or at least this is what I thought I had done for a waif in distress), there was some unspecified respect and admiration for the image gained over the first year of our enduring relationship. And as I may have been on her spiritual wave length, she possessed an aura of some discontent at being on display upon a wall she didn't approve. Every morning, and I mean every single morning, Catherine was hanging crooked. I blamed the building moreso than her impish behavior because it was old and full of curious knocks, creaks and vibrations from passing traffic on upper Manitoba Street. Maybe it was moreso the vibrations of main street traffic overnight causing the tilt in her posture. Yet strangely, over the course of a business day it was never askew, as it only happened when we were not present.
After the first week, and simply adjusting the frame each morning as a matter of routine, a number of my wife's restored 1960's dolls were found toppled over when we turned on the store lights. The dolls stood on the floor, some of them being quite large, and out of ten in a line, four might have fallen-over at night. To knock over these big and heavy dolls would take a fair bit of body mass and although I suspect we had a few mice around, it didn't seem the handiwork of rodents. This went on for weeks. On some mornings there would be one or two dolls face-down on the floor, and on other days it could be five or six which would have taken a cat or larger to get behind and topple over. While Catherine remained as crooked as ever, we really didn't tie the doll incidents into the spirited child. After awhile however, with numerous investigations into what was going on here in the wee hours, we simply decided it must be Catherine crying out for attention. Once we recognized that this was a case of mischief, and asked Catherine directly why she was doing this, and what she wanted from us, the midnight follies ceased. The case of the "falling dolls" had come to an unexpected halt. Although our Catherine continued to hang askew, her activity was reduced from every day to only several times a week.
When I would answer people who asked if Catherine was for sale, I'd routinely say, "Do you want to bring a ghost into your house?" Well you wouldn't believe the offers I had to purchase that haunted wee portrait. People were mesmerized. Even when they knew it was potentially a spirit-carrying antique, they wanted to own the naughty lady. One European lady stood and stared at Catherine for a long time one afternoon, and when she turned to me I could see by the look on her face that she knew something about the child. "She didn't want that picture taken. She hated standing there. She would never look at this picture where it hung in the house," the woman whispered to me while I was adding up the price of other items she was purchasing. "It's haunted isn't it?" she asked. Even before I could respond she said "She was a powerful little soul and she's letting us know now she wasn't happy that day," which I assume was the outing to the photographer's studio. "How much do you want for it?" she asked. "I can't sell it.....I don't know why but I just can't sell it." "I'll give you five hundred dollars," she blurted, and I think she would have gone much higher if I'd given any sign of hope that I would part with Catherine. (I have never told my wife that I was offered this much money.....for fear of being fired) I told the customer the story about her little evening tricks and her falls over the jug and bowl set in our living room, and it truly pained the woman not to be able to take the child home with her. She made me promise to contact her if I ever changed my mind. She wasn't the first or last to offer considerable money for the portrait, and our store patrons seemed to quite desire a good haunting at their abodes..... instead of fearing such an netherworld intervention. I recalled how our Scottish friend had felt about unresolved, wandering spirits being invited into the house via the Ouiji Board but here were people willingly opening their homes to a spirit-child who was somewhat malevolant optioned by a host of curious tantrums. Why would they want to tend this ghost's unresolved issues? I guess it was the same as the Currie family hanging onto Catherine. There was something endearing about her pouting but don't ask me to explain.
After about six months in residence in our shop, and only requiring adjustment every third or fourth business day, Catherine had by lesser actions, apparently wound down her rebellion about choice of wall-space and company kept. A lady we knew from the local theatre company came in and asked if we would be willing, for the price of tickets to a new play being performed, be willing to loan out some of our antiques for the set of their show "Angel Street," or as it was also known "Gaslight," a Victorian England murder-mystery. It was being held in the gymnasium of a local public school, in Bracebridge, Ontario. We agreed to supply the theatre company's needs and made up a list of materials to be picked up. She asked me if "Catherine" could be part of the loan, as she would give a perfect Victorian mood to the interior design of the subject historic mansion. I was a tad reluctant but agreed on condition they looked after my precious girl. I did not mention one word about her disposition or any of her spirited activities in the past. It was Catherine's chance to travel a wee bit and get some experience-time on-stage.
On the opening night the show had run without a hitch. I am told that Catherine proved almost impossible to hang but that the stage helpers had just assumed the painting hung askew as a rule, set designers believing its askew nature looked more realistic to an old mansion anyway. So imagine this opening night scenario. At the conclusion of a highly successful first night, the cast came out to take a bow, and when one of the lead actors looked up to acknowledge the crowd, he wobbled a bit before collapsing. He had suffered a mild heart attack but survived. He was replaced the following evening by a well known Canadian actor by the name of Simon Richards. While we make no serious connection between what happened to the actor, and Catherine the portrait, it was noted that throughout the performance, Catherine was substantially askew in the facade hallway adjoining the parlor. There were doors dividing the two but when they opened by golly, there she was as crooked as a dog's hind leg. As the actor went down, there she was in the centre of attention, hanging almost directly above those who came to assist the performer. When we attended the second night of the multi evening run of the show, I was absolutely stunned when the doors of the hall were swung open by the actress, revealing my strange, curiously appointed, sad-faced little Catherine dominating the visual scene. Crooked? Of course she was!
When all the props were returned, the lady who had borrowed the pieces asked if I would consider selling Catherine. When I declined to part with her, we did have a rather insightful conversation about her difficult demeanour, not wishing to hang straight for anyone no matter how many adjustments were made to the screw in the wall or the wire hanger on the back of the portrait. She as well acknowledged that the piece definitely had some unique qualities but she refused to label it "haunted." This was Catherine's big stage initiation. There was another to come. But first, I had made the decision Catherine was going to be taken back to our home, "Birch Hollow," where we'd try to resolve some of our wall space and placement disagreements, to avoid nasty spills and pranks like hanging crooked and tossing over my wife's doll collection....which was also kept in part at home. We had already sold off the jug and bowl set so that was no longer a security issue.
The first morning after her removal for bad behaviour into my downstair archives room, there she was as askew as ever. Add to this the fact that three or so books were pulled out from the bookshelves, as if someone had been searching for a text, and just never bothered to shove them neatly back. One book had toppled onto the floor. I asked who was in my old books and of three possible perpetrators nobody had a clue what I was talking about. This went on for about a week, and there was only one day when books hadn't been similarly pulled out....close to falling but still wedged between the others on the shelf. On three occasions that week, I also had to correct Catherine's lean, sometimes to the right and then the next day to the left.
At the local department store we picked up a Ouiji Board for an impromtu seance, in part to converse with Catherine's spirit. A Scottish friend of ours, a clerk at the store, didn't really want to sell us the board, from her own fears it would bring forth some unwanted spiritual activity, and haunt us in perpetuity. It is true that Scottish lore is full of wee beasties, and ghouls and goblins.... and spirited other-sorts, so we did take her warnings seriously. But the boys wanted it, and well, we didn't really feel we could explain adequately at the time, how we could possibly be scared of ghosts......when we had stressed on so many occasions that there were no ghosts in their room or boogey men under the bed. The clerk warned us to be careful and I assumed that meant sorting the spirits, be they good or bad, before bringing them out into the world they once dwelled in life.
On our first evening in company of the board, we took it downstairs and ran a hands-on question and answer session in Catherine's honor. In fact, this is when we first found out, by the hand-spirited "guiding device" (pointing to the individual letters) that her portrait hanging askew above us, was named "Catherine." This is what the pointer identified and the name we afforded her from this point of discovery. We realized it may not have been her name at all but this is what was spelled out exactly in succession of letters. NO fudging or generalization. One letter at a time and with forceful movement.
The next morning, and for many mornings after this, the portrait of Catherine was straight and the books tight on the shelf the way I left them.
As a community historian here in the District of Muskoka, I was frequently invited to give talks on a variety of subjects at local museums. A friend who was running the Muskoka Lakes Museum in Port Carling, begged a favor when one of the planned lecturers had to cancel at the last minute. As I was writing a feature length series of columns in The Muskoka Sun about the paranormal that summer season, I suggested my topic would be folklore, ghosts etc. I decided to try something a little different on this occasion than dry old historical rehashes, and opted to take Catherine on a wee road trip to the region she was familiar....Township of Muskoka Lakes. We had purchased her from an estate auction a few miles east of Port Carling and we would be driving right past the old homestead to the museum. My wife and lecture partner Suzanne and I had a plan to set Catherine up on a large easel and cover her with a ceremonial robe so that no one could see what we had beneath. A few guests that night tried to sneak a peak prior to the lecture but we kept up security so that the unveiling would be a surprise to all.
We maintained secrecy about Catherine throughout the presentation about local Muskoka legend and lore. Every now and again I would purposely stop talking, look at the covered picture, as if I had noticed something profound happening. About the fifth time I stopped, I begged the audience to carefully watch the easel, and stop me if they saw the sheet or what was under it move. While nobody stopped to tell me it had vibrated, shifted side to side or the covering having mysteriously inflated all eyes were on that easel. When I finally ended my presentation, I asked the audience if any one had actually noticed a shift of the item on the easel or some movement of the covering. At least half those in attendance raised their hands to acknowledge something or other had been witnessed. "Well," I said, "I would like to introduce to you to an allegedly haunted portrait of a gal we call Catherine." There was one of those uncomfortable silences for any stage performer, on the verge of either hardy applause or target practice with hurled vegetables. As it turned out the audience was receptive to the story of Catherine and in fact, many folks came up after the lecture was over to actually touch the frame to make their own spiritual connection and share some of their own stories of the paranormal. It was a fascinating evening and our precious young lady once again entertained her admirers. Yet there was still some ways to go at the Currie homestead, to pacify the child spirit.
For a few weeks after her last show and tell, she would greet me in the morning a tad askew but it was down to about one day out of five and the streak grew longer. In fact it grew into years. I haven't had to straighten the wee lass in at least five years. It seems she approves of her position hanging in my history archives. I guess she's grown accustomed to her new caring family.
The story of Catherine got national exposure in a 1990's ghost story collection from Ontario, by noted author Barbara Smith. Every now and again we will get a call or letter, or a nudge from a reader on the street in our hometown, who has just finished reading about Catherine, and who wanted to let us know how lucky we are to have such an interesting house-guest.

A Preamble Tale

Our family has been Ontario's Algonquin Park campers for many years. Since our boys were in their early teens, we have canoed on many of the fabulously scenic park lakes..... but our favorites have always been Canoe Lake, Tea Lake and Rock Lake. As an ongoing researcher somewhat obsessed with the alleged drowning death of Canadian artist Tom Thomson, I have spent my vacations close to Canoe Lake (for study) where his body was found in the early summer of 1917. I believe it was murder. I will deal with this down the road in my blog collection.
One evening at Rock Lake, as my wife and son Andrew were sitting down at the campground's beachfront, adjacent to the famous Booth Trail, they watched in the low light of autumn dusk, a man walk through the shoreline area, down onto the beach, stop momentarily, and then walk into the water. He hadn't taken many steps into the lake when he simply vanished. A ghost? An apparition? A message to the living from someone who has passed? Who can say?
It was only a short time before this holiday weekend for us, that a gent had perished in a canoe mishap a short distance from this camping area, being found on the other side of the bay several days after he went missing. Could it have been the image of the chap repeating the events of that fateful night. This is an example of the kind of encounters our family has had, and never discounted, over the past twenty five years. We don't over analyze these events and we certainly aren't frightened when something similar happens in our day to day activities. We are open-minded to such interactions but we don't make any attempt to draw spirits into our domain, or hope to make any particular connections with the other side. If it happens, well, it happens, and we appreciate the opportunity to experience something a tad outside simple explanation.
Our many parallel encounters certainly won't make the next thriller movie out of Hollywood and I don't believe there's one story here that would be the spark for an author to embellish into fiction. These are just honest, non-sensational recollections of personal experiences with unknown entities that may abut or prutrude a tad into the true definition of paranormal. Yet the fact of their commonplace may validate your own encounters that you may or may not have dismissed as something unworthy of after-thought. Then this is for you......not stories to frighten.....rather accounts to enlighten. Please read on!





A belief in spirited things, haunted places and strange circumstances but always a joy to behold
This isn't much of a ghost story. In fact it's not really about ghosts at all. You won't find it spooky or a story you might re-tell around the camp fire. Possibly it will be somewhat explanatory about the contact I frequently make with the alleged spirit-kind. It's not as if I begin with this in mind, or have any genuine intent when I begin writing,..... to conger up some wayward, adrift or resident paranormal energy. Just happens on occasion and that's okay with me.....as long as I still get some work done at the end of the session. I've written in musty old attics, basements, front porches, in boats, at campsites, in environs that I believe are haunted, and on sun-drenched beaches that while fully populated by humanity, appear anything but paranormally occupied. I've penned material in canoes while beached in protected coves, and found time while running a local business to write between customers on a section of uncluttered counter. Business wasn't too good back then so I had a lot of time to ponder and compose. When you concentrate on the task yet need the inspiration of the location, I suppose the creative vortex attracts a little bit extra from any site......maybe I become a sort of magnet.....possibly heralding, attracting an unspecified potential for some "at loose ends" spirit-kind, looking for a mortal conduit to relate a story or make a connection. I'm always open to suggestion and glad to help if I can! My wife has explained to me.....and I didn't know this before.....that I become so absorbed by work that I appear to be in a trance-like state. I don't believe this but I don't dare tell her she's wrong. I don't think I'm any different than anyone else who writes, paints, composes music etc. etc. You've got to concentrate right? Suzanne believes, I think, that I'm passing through some worm hole between reality and the next dimension.....and she's not entirely wrong. I don't know how I get there.....just that I do find other portals to places I'm not familiar.....but by golly it's fun to travel on the cheap. I'm a writer with no budget!
It is about a situation, a life-long profession, about vigils and holing-up to watch the world and then write about it.....in the process seeing and experiencing many aspects of existence and the supernatural quite unintended when a session begins. These creative retreats have been conducted in the most curious places, where I might be afforded a wee bit of comfortable space and uninterrupted time to work. Like Canadian landscape artist Tom Thomson, who could be found huddled in some modest shelter of field and forest, affording a panoramic vantage point....out on the frozen Algonquin landscape to sketch the Northern Lights....., the autumn storms, the blustering, thundering, howling great winds of early spring. He placed himself in a position to watch a storm unleash on a tranquil lakeland. Thomson wanted to capture the tumultuous scene. He found it enthralling as an artist, and it is said of many of his interpretations that when one studies his art panel hung in a silent gallery.....the voyeur can still so poignantly sense the day.....the season, and feel the cold,.... hear the wind blasting down over the lakeland, and tremble in the passionate embrace of nature extended by the artist's own hand. He would be thrilled when later, someone would remark that his painting of the Northern Lights gave one a sharp feeling of bitter cold and isolation....loneliness....or that a color he had used was exactly the same as the subject plant, thusly realistic and believable as a work of art. Some believe that he knew the essence, the spirit of this land better than any one. While it is a stretch of epic proportion to position myself in the same league of creative capability as Tom Thomson, there are those who maintain that the artist (as many creators have claimed), did see beyond the reality of his subject, into the enticing abyss of the spirit world.....that he saw legend from the inside out, and painted haunted, alluring landscapes that are truly storied.....dimensional, and beckon the patron, the watcher, to question what the artist was feeling being amidst the storm and fury.
It was late one afternoon, on one of those pre-snow, dark and dreary December days, while minding our main street antique shop, in Bracebridge that I set down to write one last page of editorial copy, for a column slated that week in a local newspaper known as The Muskoka Advance. In the 1990's I wrote a weekly column entitled "Sketches of Historic Bracebridge," reminiscences of town history from its pioneer days up to my own childhood ramblings in the old neighborhoods of an interesting home town. I wasn't an authority on local history but I was curious to learn more about what came before my mid-1960's arrival here, when my family moved up from Burlington, Ontario.....a locale I also explored with great fascination as a child. I would have strange hiatus periods when I'd feel as if there were people standing at the counter. I'd look up to see if I could help them and be absolutely stunned to find no one at all. On dozens of occasions there would be strange interruptions. Someone calling my name, my wife's name, our boys....my mother. I'd smell fresh lilacs, cinnamin, and something being baked but there was never, never any substance to back up the sensory perception. I'd immerse again in my work until the next distraction, which was always completely opposite anything I was writing about. I often wondered if the spirit-kind in our quite haunted old shop were pissed I wasn't paying greater attention to their presence. When I did lock into a writing jag it sure seemed as if I was inspiring contact. It still happens today in this new house. I will all of a sudden feel a tap on my shoulder in the middle of some creative plunge, and turn as if to find my wife. No body! I do however, validate many of my friends and associates who have passed, and I just acknowledge five or six names to let them know I'm still thinking about them. Funny thing, there are subjects I'm working on, such as local history for our region, that if I get interrupted then, I can narrow down the names to one of three (all authorities on the subject when they were amongst the living) who might wish to correct my copy. I do pay attention and frequently will look back at what I've written believing that a mistake has indeed been made. Why else would Dave or Charlie be bugging me in the middle of an assignment? I know why? They're still active after all these years and it's kind of comforting. I've found more than a few gaffs and extended appropriate thanks to my paranormal proof-readers. Heck I've become so accustomed to this that now I ask in advance for their assistance. My wife and sons think I'm a bit of a cracker-jack but like the man who asked the woman if her son still believed he was a chicken.....and she said, "Well, we'd tell him he's not but we need the eggs." Like I say, I'm a poor writer who can't afford a secretary or research assistant. If my help is unearthly, so be it! I learned this from Medium John Edward who maintains the importance to acknowledge and validate those who passed....and give them some credit for being able to send messages....in a variety of forms, to the living. So I do. If I had a video recording of myself doing this....it would be pretty funny......because in a two hour writing session I probably acknowledge ten or so messengers just to cover the bases and not offend anyone dead or alive.
In the early 1980's when I became editor of The Herald-Gazette, I wanted to know a great deal more about the town I was representing. In the basement of the Dominion Street office, I spent hour upon hour going through the great piles of back issues of all the various papers and special editions spanning many decades, bound and shelved to the joist of the first floor. I was always looking for good feature ideas and it wasn't long into the piles of print that I began to find stories that commanded to be re-investigated and harvested for new feature articles in the current press. Like falling gently and steadfastly into the content of any good book, I was locked into this archive's sleuthing, and I probably created twenty to thirty meaty features published from 1980 onward that had something to do with the town's past....it's citizens and their accomplishments. There were a few murders to follow up on, and many tragedies and misadventures that caused citizen loss and catastrophic property damage. I would patiently wade through several years of copy to get as much information on an event as possible, in order to get a clear understanding how the community dealt with the issue over months and years. Major news stories were often re-visited many times years later, no different than what I was doing at present with this re-investigation of long-lost occurrences.....the life-altering ones that helped shape the identity of our community. I always felt accompanied in that basement. of the former Herald-Gazette building by the spirits that dwelled within. And yes it did seem odd when I'd return to a book of clippings, after a washroom or coffee break, and find the pages had been turned to another section. I can remember books and papers sliding onto the floor where I was working, and when I'd go to pick them up I'd find the bound copies open to a page(s) where news of a major event I was researching at the time, was dated either earlier or later than what I was reading before the paper avalanche. Coincidences possibly. Or just helpful paranormal assistants with a vested interest in some stories versus others. I didn't get much help researching hockey stories. I did get a lot of help investigating fatal accidents, murders and executions....in fact, it was in this basement in the 1930's that George Cyr was jailed awaiting his execution for the death of three alleged friends he had robbed and shot. It is said he could hear the construction of the gallows from his basement cell. After his execution he was buried only a few metres away near the top of Chancery Lane, in a pit of fast acting lime....which was supposed to diminish body and bones rapidly. Maybe it was old George giving me a hand. Odd. After a while I just took the help I was being afforded, and stopped thinking of malevolent anything. These entities were helping not hindering. I must reiterate at this point that although I believe in the paranormal none of my alleged contacts with the other side, in a variety of forms, have been unsettling, frightening or negative at all. A few repeat nightmares have made me sweat but that's a story for later. As for George Cyr, a lot of folks claim to have seen his ghostly form in this area of what is now a parking lot but I've never come face to face with the villain of the story. His gun was recovered some time after his execution, and I believe it was recovered by his lawyer.....Cyr having confessed to his lawyer of its whereabouts before he was hung. He had claimed his innocence up until this point. So they did hang the right gent. Yet I think I've met (experienced) him in another way. Possibly looking over my shoulder while I studied the mounds of clippings from that period of Bracebridge history.....down that must basement on Dominion Street. Actually the story of George Cyr was one of my most popular feature articles written back in the early 1980's. It was published in The Herald-Gazette. For history's sake, there is another body of an executed prisoner, a fellow by the name of Hammond, hung quite a few years before Cyr....and who is allegedly buried beneath the oldest section of the Court House on Dominion Street. Some say his body was removed others claim he is still very much part of the footings of the historic judicial facility.
I confess to being a tad surprised by some of the encounters I've experienced over a lifetime but nothing that left me feeling aghast or that I should run away fast (some dreams have been more aggressive and frightening)..... or that whatever had made contact was evil or hell-raising as Hollywood loves to portray the paranormal for profit. I admit being somewhat startled by these events and in a wee quandry about the message I'm supposed to receive.....and relay. I have a hard time passing on messages received human to human without screwing up a detail or more, so I apologise in advance if I've under-performed for my spirited friends from the other side. I'll try to do better in the future. That's what I promise my wife when I head off to the grocery store with a "mental" list. I just need to write these things down. Well.....truth is, this has been the motivation for writing this blog collection. I'm truly afraid of forgetting all these curious events. I'm not at all sure if anybody will care about them....., including my young lads who, I think, have already heard dad's stories a hundred times already.
Many artists, musician and writers know what it means to reach a point in creation, possibly that pinnacle of concentration, maybe on the brink of absolute exhaustion, when it becomes apparent you have arrived at a strange sort of place in the mind....an almost transcendental-like sensation of nirvana by chance......., finding what some might suggest is a portal to somewhere else. A vantage point that you kind of stumble through, with unceremonious awkwardness. Being green to the experience but willing to learn by immersion (and without booze) you begin to sense that there is a greater force and expanse of enlightenment unfolding. I can remember on this afternoon in particular, feeling quite euphoric....in an ethereal mirco-moment, where it seemed I had finally experienced my first full-spectrum spiritual connection.....with what many artists have discovered when finally reaching that portal between dimensions. It was as if my soul had taken one step through this incredible linkage, from the rub of reality toward the ecstasy of enlightenment, beckoning me to follow and fear-not the possibility of perishing within. Some would argue it was simply the clench of exhaustion and boredom....., the heavy weight of a day's work on a weary mortal. Was I on the brink of sleep? Was I refusing to surrender consciousness? Was it more likely I was experiencing one foot in Neverland, one pen outside....a sleep limbo? I have read about this ecstasy sensation amongst artists and writers, and what wonderment and visions dwell beyond. Maybe I found it, maybe not but in my own humble opinion, I was duly initiated to something wonderous just beyond.......its nature, quality and quantity, I truly could only guess. It was a writing jag I couldn't believe. For the next two uninterupted hours that day, I wrote like a man possessed. (I didn't have even one customer in my store that whole afternoon). Any way, I survived to tell about it!
There are people who claim to be historians because it suites them at the time. It's apparently vogue to be historically inclined but when I began in the 1970's, in this region, being one of the founders of the Bracebridge Historical Society, there was no real attraction amongst my contemporaries, and you certainly didn't get invited to parties because you were a professional "historian." In fact just being historically inclined (boring) was all a party-host needed to keep you on the list of "the uninvited." This has changed a wee bit today and I'm always surprised to find out who's next to don the robes of honorary historian. For this historian, well, I began by reading everything I could about local history from the first documents to the present, and there are very few books of local heritage I haven't consumed, cover to cover, over the past 30 years of dogged research. And through this research enterprise I have now developed a pretty solid opinion of what happened back then that has today....most clearly, influenced the hometown and home region we have become. When for example, I read one of the surface-tickling, ink-generous features published in the local media, by someone who is quite literally "a dock over dry land," having an untutored, under-experienced grasp of local history.... other than the popular dime-store version, I can't help ponder the fate of serious researchers in the future, one day mired down in this weak-tea, emotion-laden, fact-deficient self-blustering, to then properly address an event tied into a community's skeleton...tied into a social/cultural provenance. Stock the fish, catch the fish, eat the fish and then leave for something more exciting. That's what annoys me about so called historians who prefer only part of a story to the whole messy deal. And yes it takes a hell of a lot of time to research properly.....but you can't just look at a single event and not the obscure interconnecting cogs and pulleys of the host community. I've read many of these surface scrapings and pondered what purpose they truly serve other than to annoy folks like me who cross-reference material to exhaustion to get a story right the first time. If not, I'll write a correction and add a chapter if new information comes along. The surface renderings serve no real purpose other than to rid a few more trees from the earth and entertain some readers who care not for weighty tomes or responsible reporting.
It has been during these intense periods of research and documenting my finds, that I have had these period of glorious exhaustion, I suppose you might refer to it, yet always with an almost contradictory outcome. Instead of falling face-first into my work, tumbling down gently into a sudden unconsciousness, instead it is quite the opposite. I become rabid with desire to know more, explore deeper and write it all into the cobbles of a well laid path. This feeling of nirvana is as much about the joy of discovery as it is a physical sensation, which seems to border on the precarious zone between sleep and acute awareness about where you are travelling, why and whether it's too far to go....but possessing the strong will not surrender. This is not the way to drive a car but for a writer it's a place we really like to visit. A cheap high some will say. There's too much to experience to dawdle with enquiry!
The experience of finding this alleged portal of enlightenment, even by accident, was as much a validation of what I had always believed, by the exercise of basic intuition about life and times, the people around me, existence itself....and the many thoughts and reminiscences of friends and family who had passed. I have long subscribed to the belief that one can attain a better understanding of all life if it is sought after with sincere passion for discovery. My first experience with this portal was when I was a youngster, sitting on the peak known as Grey's Rock, a pinnacle of rough terrain adjacent to Highway II, only a few kilometres from my home neighborhood in Bracebridge. I sat on a sculpted ledge high on the bald rock, getting blasted by a cutting spring wind, and I loved it. At the time an aspiring writer, I was so bloody invigorated I could have written a new version of War and Peace on that cliffside.....as an artist, it was the vision of a Tom Thomson landscape screaming to be painted. I saw legend unfettering in that windswept field below, as if I was viewing something from another century.....as if the glaciers had just now retreated and this was the magnificent world uncovered. I felt as haunted and possessed as any watcher could..... without falling in fear and trembling about what might come next....the fist of an angry God punching down through heaven to punish all sinners. I was seeing clearly, honestly, but there was an emotional aspect I didn't understand. I had felt something beyond the living green world, felt something above the bitter cut of wind, and sensed something quite spiritual I had never encountered before. It wasn't a case of being born-again, or discovering God all of a sudden. It was discovery..... undoubtedly, I just wasn't sure of the message or how to connect what was abstract by dimension with prevailing reality. I was afterall still clinging to this cliffside, a tumble which would have meant my sure demise. I was in a euphoric state of acute awareness but a slip is a slip regardless. I did survive the climb down.
What poets and artists, philosophers and the great bards.... from all the centuries had witnessed of nature and the supernatural, was it possible for an ever-daydreaming kid, a casual voyeur, to be elgible to receive this great and life-long enlightenment? I felt it necessary to write, to paint, to talk about the experience. But I didn't. Not for many years of self imposed exile. I thought of myself as unworthy. I needed to learn more, experience and discover the dynamic of life and life beyond. At the very least, some of these early introductions, connections and fulfillments created an insatiable appetite for more. The intrigue has never waned over these many decades. I am still a wanderer of this planet, so full of enquiry and expectation.....still anticipating that at some point, some corner of this world, some strange unanticipated moment at a crossroads, my intuition will pay off and I will witness what I have expected for a lifetime.
When I accompanied a girlfriend, a number of years later, to an elevation of land near Lake Muskoka, that afforded a wonderful panorama of farmland and mist enveloped lakeshore far in the distance, I again succumbed to the sensory stimulation of wind and windsong in the evergreens clumped up the hillside. After a short hiatus hugging for warmth, we sat back and truly enjoyed the moment and a most enchanting vista of our home region. We lost ourselves in the embrace of youth and hopefulness. Yet after awhile in this isolated alcove in the landscape, there intruded a most eerie sensation of uninvited, unwelcome melancholy that we both felt.....much as if we had just then been passed over by something cold, threatening and ominous. It wasn't frightening but the mood definitely changed. It wasn't the decline of sun or the prevelance of cloud cover that altered the aura of the moment. I might best describe it as the feeling we were, by accident, sitting upon a forgotten grave.....and the history I was sensing at that moment had a distinct sepia tone, like a dog-earred photograph stuck askew in an album. It was a strange and short-lived feeling. I have experienced this sensation many times since, particularly when hiking back and exploring old homesteads in this region. Possibly it was a message coming from those who had farmed this land generations earlier. Maybe there was a grave here on this impressive hillside above the lake.
Sitting with my girlfriend on this windswept hillside for awhile longer, I felt strangely compelled to seek out what had inspired the feeling of demise and departure.....the mournful side to what had been so inspirational and endlessly joyful from the onset. I sat there for a long time trying to re-invent that shift of atmosphere which heralded reverence and remembrance for something we had no knowledge about. Why this intrusion of sadness? Was it a subtle shift of natural light we hadn't noticed? The cooler wind wavering the grasses on the slope....., a solemn, haunting refrain of air currents singing through the pinery? While my chum eventually came to slumber against my shoulder, I filled page after page of my notepad with observations about, and from this vantage point. It was at this time in my fledgling creative odyssey that I honestly believed I had come close to knowing "a portal" to somewhere beyond did exist. I knew Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven artists would have adored this place, where craggy old rocks and bent-over old trees, stumps and boulders seemed to animate in the spirit of keen observation. Such that after visiting here no painter, writer or poet could believe nature to be soul-less..
I have found many places to watch over nature that inspired generous composition. As I found even at my shop desk, in a most humble main street basement, amidst the commerce of a day, I could lapse into the strange but welcome ecstasy of creation, and truly celebrate what spirits and good hauntings existed in kind.
It has all somewhat explained, in my own mind at least, why for example, I can so clearly feel the presence of all the former inmates of an old abandoned farmstead I visit,....I am drawn to them as a moth to light.....and I find it quite a favorable and welcome experience......being appreciative of all the hauntings I'm afforded. It is a wonderful and dimensional life indeed.

A Preamble Tale

Our family has been Ontario's Algonquin Park campers for many years. Since our boys were in their early teens, we have canoed on many of the fabulously scenic park lakes..... but our favorites have always been Canoe Lake, Tea Lake and Rock Lake. As an ongoing researcher somewhat obsessed with the alleged drowning death of Canadian artist Tom Thomson, I have spent my vacations close to Canoe Lake (for study) where his body was found in the early summer of 1917. I believe it was murder. I will deal with this down the road in my blog collection.
One evening at Rock Lake, as my wife and son Andrew were sitting down at the campground's beachfront, adjacent to the famous Booth Trail, they watched in the low light of autumn dusk, a man walk through the shoreline area, down onto the beach, stop momentarily, and then walk into the water. He hadn't taken many steps into the lake when he simply vanished. A ghost? An apparition? A message to the living from someone who has passed? Who can say?
It was only a short time before this holiday weekend for us, that a gent had perished in a canoe mishap a short distance from this camping area, being found on the other side of the bay several days after he went missing. Could it have been the image of the chap repeating the events of that fateful night. This is an example of the kind of encounters our family has had, and never discounted, over the past twenty five years. We don't over analyze these events and we certainly aren't frightened when something similar happens in our day to day activities. We are open-minded to such interactions but we don't make any attempt to draw spirits into our domain, or hope to make any particular connections with the other side. If it happens, well, it happens, and we appreciate the opportunity to experience something a tad outside simple explanation.
Our many parallel encounters certainly won't make the next thriller movie out of Hollywood and I don't believe there's one story here that would be the spark for an author to embellish into fiction. These are just honest, non-sensational recollections of personal experiences with unknown entities that may abut or prutrude a tad into the true definition of paranormal. Yet the fact of their commonplace may validate your own encounters that you may or may not have dismissed as something unworthy of after-thought. Then this is for you......not stories to frighten.....rather accounts to enlighten. Please read on!

On to another old home and then on to the country
When my wife and I moved one block west, to a small two story home on Ontario Street, in Bracebridge, we fully expected there would be a resident ghost. Not because we wanted at least one at-home spirit to replace the entities we were leaving behind in our former abode but because we have always been reverent and attentive to the storied past of old houses......and the memories of those who dwelled within.....some admittedly with a little more energy than others. Frequently that has manifested with a little paranormal action.
The early 1900's home built for tannery employees, in a working-class neighborhood known as The Hollow, was our first "owned" house as a married couple. We knew two tragic aspects of the modest brick dwelling before moving in but that's not all that unusual in the history of old houses afterall, some having been the shelter where entire families and generations had passed. Just because there was a death in the house did not guarantee a ghost would be walking the halls. We didn't buy it with a ghost as a property inclusion so we weren't really expecting to take over anything but a really nice starter home. There had been at least two deaths in the house, one a gentleman who allegedly passed by misadventure, and the other an elderly female owner who had suffered a heart attack while in the bath. She had no one to help her when the attack came, and was found deceased some time later by family. We weren't daunted by this, and we didn't care at all if the bath was haunted (as long as we could get a turn using it)..... because on inspection of the house we found it a charming, expertly refurbished family home with excellent potential for the future. It was a great home for our first child then only months away. Suzanne's mother had died a short while before so it was a traumatic time with a new reality, new husband, new house and yes, a child on the way.....made fundamentally better by purchasing our doll house on Ontario Street.
Andrew was born in June of 1985 and the house became quite definitely "a home." We loved it thoroughly and it accomodated us wonderfully. It did have steep stairs to the second floor but we had it well gated. We didn't have a lot of free time in those days to focus on the paranormal qualities of the house. Suzanne was now a full time teacher and I was handling three jobs including responsibilities as Mr. Mom, as she went back to school that September. My job allowed me to work from home so it was obvious, and a little frightening that I would also look after the wee bairn. When we went to bed we were so exhausted it was quite literally possible to sleep through most neighborhood intrusions. It was a busy connecting road from uptown to Wellington Street and the plaza area. There was always traffic and our bedroom was at the front of the house so lights of passing vehicles shone-in frequently. While we did experience odd things happening from time to time in the house, it wasn't on the same scale as the other dwellings we both had resided. It was, you might say, a more passive haunting. Lights in the bathroom would flick on even after I'd turn them out, and it had nothing at all to do with an electrical short. The switch would actually be turned up minutes after turning it off. The house creaked like an old boat on a stormy sea, and it wasn't uncommon to feel the presence of something or see a fleeing silhouette cross a room one of us was entering. It was all very subtle and some of the paranormal stuff may also have come from the thousands of items we brought from our former apartment, plus the items we purchased at dozens of auctions around the area. If it has any merit whatsoever in the paranormal investigator's handbook, as it has been noted in many other cases of impromtu hauntings, that qualities and quantities of the spirit-kind can hitch a ride on and in antiques,..... this being the case, then our house was a perfect test site to prove the theory. We loaded that place to the rafters, like all our houses since, with collectibles and antiques from many, many Muskoka estates. It wasn't fair to identify the dwelling as a haunt on its own historical merity, when we kept bringing in antiques that had been associated with many, many deaths over the centuries. Like the culinary "stuffed pepper," we were filling the shell every week with everything from native artifacts and masks to old trunks and document boxes, vintage dolls to own spinning wheels and wool winders. By time we finished decorating it gave every appearance of a house possessed but it was our fault not the character of the house itself.....which was a victim of excesses.
We didn't remain in this house long in part because our wee Andrew was a runner. He didn't learn to walk first. He started to wobble, fall, and then run. He actually became quite a runner in high school where he won many first place awards in track and field. As a child he scared the heck out of us because he could squirm free away in an instant and wind up on the road,..... or as he frequently managed an escape out the back toward a commercial area where he knew there was a place to get ice cream treats. Our dog Alf used to keep him rounded up most of the time, if we dropped our guard for a second but the fact there were so many dangers on the busy street and with the steep staircase in the house, by potential disastrous circumstance alone, we simply had to look for a better place for not only Andrew but a second child on the way. From this house we officially opened our business, known as Birch Hollow Antiques, which we still operate on-line more than 20 years since commencement.
One peculiar incident did occur near the house that we still think about today, and are reminded of when we drive by the property on our frequent visits to Bracebridge. Both Suzanne and I both felt our home here was a protector. If it had spirits within, they meant us no harm and I think in some ways, embraced the idea of a young family needing its shelter. So instead of pushing us away or attempting to retain ownership by ruining our peace and quiet, at times it seemed the home didn't want us to leave. There were many times, and we can't explain it other than to say it was parental instinct but we'd be jostled to attention to attend some unknown problem with Andrew. For example, here's a case in point. As I took the role of Mr. Mom, when Andrew was just over two months old, allowing Suzanne to return to her job, I remember on that first day seeing the look of absolute fear on my wife's face as she left me standing at the door with infant in arms. She must have looked back twenty times before we lost sight of her. Maybe she had a mother's instinct something was about to happen. She would have been right. Andrew nearly lost his life being with an inexperienced father.
On my first feeding task alone, (moments afte Suzanne had walked up to the school) on only the second spoonful of pablum, Andrew started to choke. I had wrongly assumed I knew all the emergency preparations. It went from a simple feeding to a matter of life and death in seconds. How could such a routine, innocent event turn so deadly. When I couldn't get a result from any of the emergency positions and actions Suzanne had shown me, in the midst of trying everything twice, and failing, I made a strong and hearty request of God to give me a hand here......"new father.....in big trouble, please help me!" I was scared half to death myself. For a short period I didn't know if I could resolve it without calling for ambulance assistance, and that would have eaten up precious moments getting to the phone across the room.
As suddenly as it had occurred, the obstruction cleared with a loud raspy cough onto my shoulder, and the wee lad was breathing again. Now it's a pretty far stretch to say the house had anything to do with keeping us safe, or me calm but let's just credit a belief that God had a longer term plan for son and father at that moment because it all worked out. While I didn't see the fanning wings of his Guardian Angel, I was pretty sure mine....experienced as a young child, was hovering nearby. Yes, I did the right thing to deal with choking. Suzanne had grilled me on it for two months prior to my command performance. So we were prepared for trouble but I confess it was a little soon into the Mr. Mom thing to have happen. That's parenthood and sensibility. There were other dire occasions with Andrew, similar to the choking incident but then it was as if, each time, we were being forewarned subtly that Andrew was about to be in some sort of peril. Call this a parent's intuition but I'd know he was going to be stung by a bee moments before it happened. I had moved to his side, for no particular reason, just as he was stung on the mouth by a wayward wasp that had got into his pool. His face began to swell up and he was having difficulty opening his mouth to breath. In seconds we had him on the way to the hospital. Suzanne has a serious bee allergy and we feared Adrew would have the same. If I knew there was a chance he was going to be stung, why hadn't I done something to save him the injury. Frankly it was because I didn't validate it as a forewarning. I thought of it as another reason I shouldn't be a worry-wart parent thinking I could stop everything adverse. There were many small incidents where a crisis was averted within a hair's breadth of something more serious happening. Was it a guardian house, a spirit within that would jar me to react when I was in the midst of a significant event? Here was one other curious example of guardianship, coincidence of good luck or or possibly heavenly intervention.
The most significant event didn't happen in the house but a short distance away. Suzanne and my mother Merle were coming home from a walk down what was known as Tanbark Hill, where the former Bracebridge High School was located.....a steep hill that got its name from the strewn tanbark (from the hemlock species of tree) that had spilled out of toppled over wagons that didn't make it safely down steep the hill. Pushing Andrew in his stroller they were at the bottom right corner of Ontario Street at the junction with a street known as Victoria, which runs north and south, and were coming back to our home which at the time was no more than forty to fifty yards east. Ontario Street (now renamed) ran east and west. It was late spring and there was still a lot of sand on the roadway, particularly at the intersection where the rain had washed a large quantity down to the bottom-level turn of the hill. I was outside at the time and when they came around the corner I decided to walk up to meet wee Andrew. I have often wondered what inspired me to drop what I was doing and walk up the sidewalk because in retrospect they would have been home in a minute or two anyway. Whatever the characterisitic emotion or ambition at that moment, I set my sight on my family and met them promptly at the corner.
At about the same time I heard an engine roaring just out of view, from what we were about to discover was a small blue car racing down the hillside. It was at about the mid zone of the decline when I reached Suzanne, and we both raced to push the stroller onto the grass border at the corner, suspecting the driver was going to have difficulty at that speed navigating the turn if he decided to sweep right down Ontario Street. He would have rolled the car if he had tried to turn left onto Victoria. When he got to the area we had been standing, making the turn right, he hit the heavy sand at the bottom and the car began to slide. The driver quickly lost control and the car swerved sideways and actually left the ground flying about thirty or so feet down the second part of the long hillside into the Hollow.
We can't explain how it happened even though we watched it in actuality but the car dropped low over some shrubs and slammed down onto its wheels in a neighbor's driveway, on the opposite side of the road from our home. There it was, the car facing the road, perfectly planted on the driveway, as if about to exit. When the dust cleared we could see the driver with his hands clenched onto the top of the steering wheel staring blankly out the windshield. When I went over to talk to see if the young male driver was okay, and that the car wasn't about to burst into flames, I was astonished to see that the car was relatively unscathed, and outside of a few "I don't believe it tears of joy," the teenager stepped out of the car and started shaking his head about his unceremonial flight from here to there. I made sure he was okay, had someone call the police against his wishes, and asked him politely if I could administer a swift kick to his arse for nearly killing my family by his reckless driving.
So what makes this story one worth including in tales of the paranormal. Well, the car that nearly snuffed out our lives, was the first new car Suzanne had owned; the car she owned when we got married....a pale blue Ford Mustang she adored and hadn't wanted to trade in when we were negotiating on a new Pontiac. When I looked at the dusty car that had just landed in our neighbor's driveway, it did seem somewhat familiar but it wasn't the time to pursue what may or may not have been a coincidence. The car never hit the portion of sidewalk where Suzanne and my mother were standing because the momentum of the car and the sand, and the slanting of the road at the junction, pushed it to the left away from them. If they hadn't shifted from where they were originally situated when I left the house, they would have undoubtedly been hit by the car's careen. But it was as if I knew there was something about to happen, when I for no other good reason, dropped my chores to head up to the corner. Maybe the kid saw me coming around the corner, because I was definitely in the zone to get crunched, and over-corrected with his steering to avoid hitting us. It's possible. I'm a big lad with a lot of surface area to see clearly. We'll never know that of course. "I can't believe I almost got hit by my own car," Suzanne muttered for about a week after...."It was such a nice car too!"
I can remember many times at night being awoken by something long past midnight.....not from a bad dream, or a desire to go to the bathroom but instead from feeling physically rousted from my cozy bedlam.....much as an awake partner would roll a mate to get a response. I'd wake up saying "What, what, what's wrong. Why'd you wake me?" Suzanne would wake with the same words, "What? What's wrong Ted?" Each time I felt as if something was pushing me to wake up. I would get up, and admittedly on several occasions Andrew would be found standing in his crib. I don't know if this was the preamble of his planned great escape in the wee hours but because I was awake and reasonably alert, the issue never manifested as it might have. Was some entity making sure I was a responsive, alert, reactive parent? Well, I appreciated the help, and before I left that house, let me tell you.....I offered it a heartfelt thanks for all it had done to safeguard my young family. It was the only house I felt terrible leaving behind, as if abandoning kin to never see them again.
I have always felt a pang of guilt for selling-off that house....our first mortgaged nest. It cost $52,000. What a bargain. The spirit-kind we met up with, not sure how many, we now believe came with the house, and were not ones attached to the antiques we had once believed responsible. I wrote a great deal of editorial copy in that house, published in the assorted newspapers and feature magazines associated with Muskoka Publications, where I was at that time a feature editor after a long stint as editor of The Herald-Gazette. It was a wonderful place for this writer to work and its contributions are duly noted in my kept archives from those important early years....as an author and parent.
It was our next house that generated some pretty fair encounters with the paranormal, yet it would be the most unsuspecting of any house we have occupied, including a grand old family owned cottage on Lake Rosseau at Windermere. What we met up with in those few short years in residence, was re-told in Barbara Smith's book on the Ghosts of Ontario published in the 1990's....and I will summarize again in this blog series. What makes this one unusual in our family circle, is that I was excluded from the visual contact with a ghostly visitor, and instead Suzanne had two major episodes with a restless little boy who may have been looking for his mom.....being distraught because everyone had moved on except the deceased.

A VIEW OF THE LAKE - A LITTLE HAUNT WE FOUND ENDEARING
We moved into a small bungalow on Golden Beach Road that had a perfect backyard for the kids.....Andrew raring to go, son Robert just about to arrive. When we landed at the door of our home that fall, outside of the fact the previous owners were still in the process of moving which excluded us from habitating the premises, the fall colors were just emerging and it was wonderful to be able to look out of the front window and see Lake Muskoka. It was the perfect setting. Although it was budget lakefront.....we could see the lake but our access was down the road, it was still an affordable dwelling within proximity of the beach. We were planning to operate our small antique business from the garage. It wasn't the greatest house and it did need some upgrades but the cottage-like property made up for any other deficiency.
Robert arrived shortly after Thanksgiving and it was a Christmas to remember. The only thing that caught us off guard was the wicked heat loss due to crappy insulation and cheap windows that produced huge icicles around the house. We didn't know about the limitations of the septic tank and couldn't quite believe it when the bath water wouldn't empty because the tank was full to overflowing. Then there was the time the waterline froze, and I nearly did the same trying to install a wrap-around heater in the crawl space at minus 30. All in all, we still liked the place in the country but it was obvious our enthusiasm for the property was out of proportion to what we should have been examining....such as the old windows and water marks that were clearly visible on the ceiling tiles. I found those when I started changing light bulbs in overhead fixtures. Oops!
It was into our second year in the house and all seemed to be going pretty well. Of course, when the wind blew hard the walls used to shake, and when it rained heavily, well, sometimes we got wet inside. Still it was a good shelter most of the time. What happened after our settling in period was quite unexpected and a wee bit startling. We got an explanation but I never bought it entirely. The family doctor ruled that Andrew's frequent bouts of late night illness, were the result of a common childhood event known as "night terrors," which we had never heard of before the general diagnosis. When Andrew was put in his own room, opposite ours and facing the back of the house, he would awaken at night, always around 1:30 to 2:00 a.m., scared out of his wits about something or other which had occurred on one side of the room and most often involving a vision at, or outside the window. He could be sick to his stomach on occasions. The room was fine during the day and he frequently played there for hours on end but he did not like to sleep there. We wondered initially if it was the blackness of the rear of the house and dark band of forest that seemed threatening when he looked out....carrying that fear into slumber. The room he had been in at first, had better illumination especially if we left on an outside light. It was happening alot and we were getting worried that there was something more significant at play than simply being frightened of the dark.
One of Andrew's favorite childhood movies was Peter Pan, the one starring Mary Martin, that we had recorded on the VCR when CBC had aired it one Easter. Andrew had seen the movie numerous times and we wondered if he was worried about an imaginary Peter Pan visiting in the wee hours, to spirit him away to Neverland. When we enquired about the movie and if it in any way it bothered him, he told Suzanne about the little boy he would see when he looked out the window at night. We think now that the apparition may have even appeared in his room, and may have woken him up. He wasn't unhappy about the possibility of running into Peter Pan at all, and if fiction became fact, he probably would have gone quite willingly to the land where no one ever ages....and fun and play bloom eternal. This was different. He couldn't identify what the boy looked like but it had nothing at all to do with Peter Pan or Wendy. He could not describe a face or much in the way of physical attributes other than to say it was the form of a little boy.
We don't know how many times this event happened in succession but it was substantial. We decided to move him to the room across the hall and the night terrors ceased at once. Son Robert stayed in a crib in our room and then they co-habitated later in the same room which looked out onto the front part of the house. There was a street light at a nearby intersection that afforded a wee bit of illumination into their room. We always kept the hall light on to facilitate quick and easy access to their room and the bathroom. So it was never a totally dark house even when Andrew was in his first bedroom. We put a television in the "haunted" room for the boys during the day. After that it was used only as a guest room but never as a full-time bed quarters. The night terrors were gone simply by changing rooms. This isn't odd I suppose from a scientific point of view. Obviously there was something in the small room, the view from the window, a frequent creaking or settling noise, or a strange aura that bothered the wee lad.
There were many other occasions in this abode when it seemed the paranormal was quite normal under the circumstances. On one memorable occasion, while out on the front deck (facing the road), supervising the boys and the family pets all basking in the sunlight, I decided to take a few photographs on a new camera I had purchased for Suzanne. Moments after I had finished taking the images, I asked the lads what they were looking at, as they both stood staring in the open door. When they didn't answer I just assumed it was their mother coming out the door with some beverages as she had promised earlier. Then suddenly they went back to their respective enterprises of play with toy cars and toy shovels, oblivious to the question I had just asked..... and not being too concerned about mother in the house. A moment or so after this, Suzanne came to the door, poked her head around the corner and asked, "Please tell me that one of the boy's was just in the house?" "No," I said. "I was just taking pictures of them and both are in exactly the same places they were before. Why?" "Because I was just staring at a little boy in front of the kitchen counter," she responded, pale as the ghost she may have witnessed. While we have had plenty of paranormal encounters, some that we believe were transported with the antiques we buy and sell, this young chap did inspire a minor amount of fear initially. It may have had something to do with Andrew's night terrors as well but that was a long-shot. Please read on.
Suzanne had been preparing some food items for dinner when she felt someone was watching her. When she glanced up from her vegetable cutting, she saw a young boy, quite small, wearing shorts, no shirt, with long blondish hair. She could not remember any features of the child's face. Now while neither of our boys had long hair at that time, she thought by chance it could have been our youngest son Robert making a sudden appearance. Yet Suzanne couldn't explain the fact the wee child had no distinguishable facial features, and had vaporized when she went to come around the corner of the counter. Robert, outside of the fact he hadn't moved from where he was playing, was also wearing a shirt as was Andrew. We went over what she had witnessed for several hours that day, and the facts, as sketchy as they were didn't change. I did however, let her know that moments before she had her visitation, I had asked what the boys were looking at through the door, and noted that our dog Alf was also looking in the same direction. This is why I assumed Suzanne was about to emerge. Did the boys and the dog see the ghostly visitor enter the house? They never said so if they did see something, and with the night terror incidents and the little boy sightings previously (at the window of a rear bedroom), we decided it was best to keep the matter to ourselves. I spent the next several days and nights trying to catch a glimpse of the tiny intruder but there was no sighting.
It wasn't too long before Suzanne had another visit from the lost boy, witnessed once again standing in front of the counter, in the large open kitchen/livingroom at the front of the house. It was about mid afternoon as it had been on the first occasion, and this time she took a good long look at the youth. His hair was a dirty blonde and it covered over most of his face. Still Suzanne could not see any identifying physical characterisitic of mouth, nose and eyes; rather there was just a blur with uncombed hair fallen down in front. The lad was still shirtless, wearing shorts but she couldn't see if he was barefoot or wearing shoes. Once again, as she moved to get a closer look, and talk to the child, the image disappeared just as mysteriously as it had arrived. Without a noise, without even a faint footfall he had simply vanished. After this sighting, Suzanne was understandably upset because it was definitely the wandering spirit of a child, possibly having had a link with this house some time in the past. At the time of this sighting, the boys and I were in the backyard, and nobody from our party of three entered the house at the time she witnessed the apparition. While at first I was a little sceptical I knew my wife was not one to put imagination ahead of soundly reasoned logic and reality. I knew that before she told me the story she had already analyzed and cross referenced how the vision might have been created by a reflection, a spray of sunlight bouncing off some decoration near the window or a moving shadow that just happened to look like a wayward child when she looked up from her counter work.
For several weeks after this, which was now mid summer, I attempted late night vigils, afternoon watches, morning surveys, you name it, so that I could witness the lost boy for myself. As a family of historians, and avid researchers, we have always employed a critical approach to all information gathered, and never miss an opportunity to challenge even long accepted fact. We did more to disprove the encounters and find sensible explanations. Sometimes there just isn't anything to add. If it was a figment of imagination, by golly, it was a worthy repeat performance.
One warm evening late in the summer, I had encouraged the boys to take a little nap after dinner, promising to read them a couple of their favorite story-books. As generally was the case, I read half of one book and fell asleep mid-sentence. The boys knew how long to let me drift off before sneaking out of the room. The safety net of course was that Suzanne always knew I'd falter from story telling into slumber so she'd catch them making the great escape. On this occasion she took them out the front to play with their plastic riding toys,...... and I did awaken briefly and noted my friends had split, and that they were outside with their mother's supervision. I could hear her so I dropped my guard into a full, head buried in the pillow, sleep-time.
I must have been dreaming, or adversely influenced by something at that moment, because only a few minutes into what could have been an all-evening nap, I heard the most horrible sound of screeching tires on asphalt and crashing of metal.... as if just then a vehicle had just run over a bicycle. It was so clear and real that I jumped out of bed in a cold sweat, my heart pounding in my chest, calling to Suzanne....."What happened, what happened?" "What are you talking about.....nothing's happened," she yelled back from only a short distance away from my bedroom window. "Where are the boys," I demanded. "They're right here, can't you see them," she said. "Then what the hell was that crash out here.....didn't you hear something getting run over?" "No....I didn't hear anything," came the response. "You must have been dreaming." Let me tell you, this was a vivid, full sensory nightmare. I got up, tromped outside in a stupor and hugged both those kids. I thought I'd be calling an ambulance. What in the world spawned that sudden and dramatic night terror for an aged man.
It was later that night when I said to Suzanne, "I think our little visitor wants us to know something about his death. I was dreaming that a little boy was riding his bike on the road and was hit by a car. The sound of that crushing metal was so clear and loud (in a dream sense) that it woke me up....at first I could hear crying and then yelling as if someone was calling to the little boy." From the pages of a story book about trains, before I fell asleep so peacefully, to awakening to what sounded like my own son(s) being hit by a car, was too wide a stretch not to be taken in context of other "small child" visitations that year. First the sightings at the window, when Andrew told us he had seen a little boy looking in, to the two sightings Suzanne had witnessed in the front room, and on to this incredible sensory experience that seemed so far beyond even the most realistic nightmare. To this day I can still replay that moment of half slumber, and recall so clearly jumping up to that window, expecting to see carnage on the roadway. It was the last time we had any paranormal incident in that house. We moved shortly after not because of the ghostly encounter but because we wished to purchase a newer, larger house for our future needs. We weren't chased out of the house by this apparition and we did feel a little pang of guilt leaving the wee child without the closure he obviously needed. Considering we haven't had the same visitations in our new digs, he obviously didn't catch a ride in any of antique possessions taken to our present home. Just thought I'd mention it because I do have some stories coming up about the spirit-kind occupying antique trunks, cradles and old pictures, that survive periods of transit, quite prepared to carry on the hauntings in new quarters.
Although I have not done the conclusive research necessary to prove it was the ghost of a child, killed in a traffic accident, I did hear stories about a child run-over in the vicinity quite a number of years earlier...., and yes while riding a bicycle. If there is a parallel, it is then obvious to us that he was trying to send a message about not only his circumstance but possibly offering a warning to us about our own children playing too close to the road. A short time after this our dog Alfred was run-over by a car at the mouth of the driveway and survived. On this occasion, Andrew was following the dog toward the mouth of the lane.....we caught our son but couldn't stop the dog from running out in front of the car rounding the bend in the road. After being tumbled beneath the car, avoiding being run-over by any of the wheels, Alf ran into the woods at the rear of the house and wasn't seen for three days. All of a sudden he turned up on our porch one evening, scraped and suffering minor cuts but still very much alive.
In a few short years of lakeside residency in this humble cottage abode, this had been an eventful period in a young family's existence, in what we now believe was a storied, unusual, unique dwelling place. It was a house with provenance you might say.

A Preamble Tale

Our family has been Ontario's Algonquin Park campers for many years. Since our boys were in their early teens, we have canoed on many of the fabulously scenic park lakes..... but our favorites have always been Canoe Lake, Tea Lake and Rock Lake. As an ongoing researcher somewhat obsessed with the alleged drowning death of Canadian artist Tom Thomson, I have spent my vacations close to Canoe Lake (for study) where his body was found in the early summer of 1917. I believe it was murder. I will deal with this down the road in my blog collection.
One evening at Rock Lake, as my wife and son Andrew were sitting down at the campground's beachfront, adjacent to the famous Booth Trail, they watched in the low light of autumn dusk, a man walk through the shoreline area, down onto the beach, stop momentarily, and then walk into the water. He hadn't taken many steps into the lake when he simply vanished. A ghost? An apparition? A message to the living from someone who has passed? Who can say?
It was only a short time before this holiday weekend for us, that a gent had perished in a canoe mishap a short distance from this camping area, being found on the other side of the bay several days after he went missing. Could it have been the image of the chap repeating the events of that fateful night. This is an example of the kind of encounters our family has had, and never discounted, over the past twenty five years. We don't over analyze these events and we certainly aren't frightened when something similar happens in our day to day activities. We are open-minded to such interactions but we don't make any attempt to draw spirits into our domain, or hope to make any particular connections with the other side. If it happens, well, it happens, and we appreciate the opportunity to experience something a tad outside simple explanation.
Our many parallel encounters certainly won't make the next thriller movie out of Hollywood and I don't believe there's one story here that would be the spark for an author to embellish into fiction. These are just honest, non-sensational recollections of personal experiences with unknown entities that may abut or prutrude a tad into the true definition of paranormal. Yet the fact of their commonplace may validate your own encounters that you may or may not have dismissed as something unworthy of after-thought. Then this is for you......not stories to frighten.....rather accounts to enlighten. Please read on!

A newly married couple and the spirit that hated change
There are a plethora of ghost stories gathered, rather harvested, and jammed into a wide assortment of paranormally themed books each year, where only surface attention is given the alleged haunting-encounter-event. While in this blog collection you will eventually read about more historic ghost encounters in Muskoka, long before my time (where my research assistants have had to do many hours of book sleuthing and cross referencing to varify), I believe it is more honest and intimate when you can use first person accounts. This is why I have finally pooled all my brief but interesting experiences together.....not to re-tell tired old stories about the same paranormal event(s), for the sake of another book on the subject but instead to offer a sincere glimpse into some in-person events about curious activities you haven't already read and re-read. I am a great admirer of the research work of well known Canadian paranormal sleuth/ researcher, John Robert Colombo, who uses only first person accounts as submitted by contributors. I would rather put my self in the way of ridicule, and present what this historian vouches were at the very least, unusual and unexplained events of an interesting nature, than rehash a tale that has been re-shingled a dozen times by many untutored, naive authors who at best only scuff the surface of the real story. And although I expect to have some of my work borrowed by writers wishing a short cut to profitable publishing, this material is offered here without cost....without the necessity of purchasing a book.....with no future book planned. These stories are at the risk of my reputation, so you can bet they're as honest and straight-forward as any recollection can be.....because as an historian of fair accomplishment, I' m not about to risk integrity by grandstanding, just to record more hits than the next author who claims to offer the best of the best in the paranormal repetoire.
When my wife and I lived as newlyweds in a Victorian era home in central Bracebridge, it soon became obvious that either I had transported the ghost(s) from the McGibbon homestead, to our new digs in an old house (also divided into apartments), or we had opened the proverbial Pandora's Box, agitating the resident paranormal entities already in residence, with our personal and decorating activities.
The residence was only several blocks from my former apartment, and it was just the right size to keep us comfortable....and allow for a few excesses of antiques and collectables. Suzanne had her apartment modestly appointed with just the right amount of furniture, the perfect number of lamps, ornaments, books and shoes situated inside the door. Then came the master hoarder, collector, antique maniac, and what was spartan existence, and a happy decorating plan, evolved into a nightmare of clutter. I offer my sincere apology three times each week for complicating her idea of sensible proportion, with my obsessive need for more stuff.
In terms of prevailing aura, this home was much less accomodating. At first I didn't feel comfortable, or welcome I suppose you might say, and as you've probably gathered so far, as a writer this impression weighs heavily on output. I'm sharply aware of the prevailing atmosphere in the place I work. You can probably relate to visiting a home and feeling something or other about the mood within. Sometimes its the furnishings and wall decor that sets the appeal. Other times its the aroma of vintage wood, the darkness of rooms or the ceilings that affect sensory awareness. This abode was Victorian in influence and very lightly illuminated by daylight. Even with the lights on it seemed darker than it should have considering the bulbs blazing.
After several months of loading in massive numbers of old books, flat-to-the-wall cupboards, chests of drawers, more tables, paintings, sculptures and so much more, the place seemed a tad more pleasant. When we added my cat Animal (the ghost whisperer) and a stray who used to sleep in my hockey bag left on the porch, named Tommy, it was somewhat easier to forget about the essence of the quarters and the adverse character of the house itself. Then stuff started to happen. Not serious intrusions but ones that let you know the feelings you had about the digs weren't far off base.
When Suzanne and I would head off to bed, it wasn't uncommon to hear wind-chimes but only for a short time. We'd both sit up in bed and listen to the glass chimes tinkling together in the wind. One of us would get up to investigate. No wind. No wind-chimes anywhere. There wasn't a wind-chime on any house in that section of the neighborhood. We couldn't even find two glasses vibrating together in the cupboard. Nothing existed to make that sound. We checked thoroughly. There was a connection with the time of day, in and around the 11 p.m. to midnight period but the chimes never sounded when we were in the small living room or the kitchen. It only ever happened when we were in the bedroom but then never during the day. So we wondered if there wasn't some vibration that caused something crystalline or other to connect in the kitchen cupboards. They were torn apart to find the loose glass pieces. Nary a trace of any connecting glass, pottery or silverware. We tried to explain the sounds by researching every possibility first, before calling in the ghost busters. There could not have been any physical intruder because the door into the main house could be bolted shut on our side and the door outside had inside bolts as well. There was never any sign of a break-in. But then how many wind-chime pranksters exist out there anyway.
Then over the next couple of months, we started to experience some kitchen area disturbances such as the stove burners shutting off by themselves beneath a pan of boiling vegetables for example. We would awake in the night to find lights on, the door of the bathroom hanging open with the light left on, the refrigerator door open and articles out of place from where they were left. It went on and on and like the McGibbon house, we just fixed what was out of place, and anticipated the sounds of chimes where there were none, and got on with our lives in the relative comfort of the small apartment. There was one significant exception.
One early morning, and I'm not too sure anymore just how long it was past midnight, Suzanne and I were awoken by the sound of chimes which we know for fact was long past its usual period of mysterious play. It was much louder than the many times before and it persisted longer, or so it seemed at the time. It was enough of a stir to get me out of bed to have yet another look, to see what else was manifesting in the haunted old digs. As soon as I got to the doorway of the bedroom, the sound of tinkling glass ceased as was typical. I smelled something hot and I yelled to Suzanne to get her coat and shoes on, and prepared myself to exit the building with one cat under my arm. I knew the trace smoke was coming from the door to the main part of the house, and I could hear the landlord thumping down the stairs on the other side. When I yelled at him through the still-sealed door, he let me know there was a fire somewhere in the basement and that we should exit the house. I managed to unlock the door between because I figured the fire department would need to access all areas. On the way out I phoned the fire department, and within minutes we had the brigade on our doorstep.
We wound up on the lawn with some of our easily rescued antiques, personal papers and pets under our arms, and half expected the house was soon going to be engulfed in flames. The good news was that the fire had started in a failed component of the gas furnace, and it was easily extinguished by firemen. The worse part was the fried electrical aroma that lasted several days after the near disaster. No lives were lost, no cats injured, or antiques destroyed. What we were thankful of (and to this day), was the kindly spirit of that old house, which had apparently warned us with the sound of glass wind-chimes at the most critical time, to adopt a get-out-of-the-house-fast strategy. The fire could have spread if we hadn't got to it within those critical moments when it was more of an unpleasant aroma than a full fledged fire. It was the last time we heard the wind-chimes. The switching on and off of lights and opening of doors, in and around the kitchen, were still in full paranormal play but we just accepted it all as the patina of this unique house.
It was told to us some time later, just before we moved to a nearby home we had just purchased, that a former resident had committed suicide in an upstair bedroom many years earlier. This we believed was a moot point. The unfortunate occurrence of suicide in any location doesn't, by tragic circumstance alone, guarantee a paranormal host of events. The news related to us later may have had something to do with the perceived negative aura we felt at times, in an otherwise congenial, long-serving and comfortable family home. As well, somewhat in the fictional characterization of "Beetlejuice," in the movie of the same name, possibly, and with a long and really unwarranted stretch of the imagination, the deceased former owners of the Victorian estate....simply didn't like the way we were altering the scheme and theme of their afterlife haunt. Maybe they were unceremoniously surprised that new owners were moving their stuff into their not-quite-vacated digs. So they rebelled and through trial and error, engaged in various forms of haunting the house in order to scare the intruders away. It didn't work if that was the case, and it actually became an endearing quality especially for a couple of eager historians, fully appreciating all the lives-lived within, over the sheltering decades of this unique Bracebridge home.
When Suzanne moved in to the house with a modest number of personal items and furnishings, the paranormal events were modest and far between. When I started jamming the small apartment with an entire antique shop, stuff began happening with substantial rigor such that you couldn't mistake that something or other wasn't happy with the new arrangement. Also keep in mind, that in ghost examinations from decades past, it's not uncommon at all to find haunted articles, from trunks and beds to books and cradles. Later in this collection I will relate a couple of stories of these allegedly haunted articles. Is it possible we brought a wee traveller into the house inadvertently. We had old rockers, vintage silverware, wooden trunks, Victorian photo albums and lots of other items that a wee whisp of the paranormal could hitch a ride. Possibly by buying a lot of the old furniture from area auctions, we were relieving one homestead of its ghosts and introducing them into another abode. Now imagine the resident spirits recognizing that an interloper spirit-entity has made it past the regular-inmate threshold.....ghosts trying to out perform each other for residential superiority! Who really knows?
As I have noted earlier in this collection of stories, my wife and I accept that there are qualities of life and onto the great beyond we simply don't understand.... but by golly, we're willing to learn by immersion. This was just one example of meeting the spirit-kind in the heart of the home....the kitchen, and trying to figure out what we had done specifically, to annoy them one and all. We were sorry to leave the apartment even though it was not initially the friendliest of accommodations.....by first impressions at least. Yet our lives may have been saved because we paid attention to these paranormal interventions. As medium John Edward always reminds the living......validate those who have passed. We always have and it may explain why we're continually it seems, in their strange realm of company-kept.
I used to sit in the tiny parlor of that Bracebridge house, and write at the window-side table long into the night; much as I had worked in the McGibbon home on upper Manitoba Street. It afforded me great inspiration in those months of residency. So while we do still think of the abode as having been quite haunted by something precariously balanced between commonplace and unearthly, we're not sure, .....we are indeed quite positive it was the kindly, embracing place that afforded our marriage a happy and successful beginning, and where our family was truly initiated, son Andrew officially on the way....and all my memories of this shelter on the hill....are of a sweet kinship of life and times and somewhat beyond.