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.