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.