Woodchester Villa was a marvelously adorned haunt at Christmas-time

Shortly after graduating York University (circa 1977) with a degree in Canadian history, I moved back home from Toronto with the intent of opening a small antique business in my hometown Bracebridge. I anticipated getting involved in local heritage conservation in my spare time. I just didn’t think it would be the case I would get myself hooked into every project going....up to my eyeballs in community volunteerism. I never do anything half-way which according to my wife is also my downfall...... good in many ways....not so good in many others. She’s an expert on this because everything I volunteer for involves her......because I apparently don’t mind imposing my conundrums for her to solve. I believe in sharing, you see!
At the same time I began a column on antiques and collectables in the newly launched Bracebridge Examiner, and within months I was the project leader of a Muskoka heritage project for the local Board of Education....where we gathered interviews on tape of many of the district’s oldest citizens who had deep roots in our region of Ontario. It was a great job and the tape resource collection is still being used today as a teaching tool by the Trillium Lakelands Board of Education.
Another way of using my interest in Canadian history came in the form of the first ever Bracebridge Historical Society, of which I was a founding director, and then the restoration of the former home of local woolen mill founder, Henry Bird, the late 1800's octagonal estate on the hillside overlooking the rapids above the Bracebridge Falls. This Victorian era house based on the model set forth by Orsen Fowler, was by its octagonal nature supposed to enhance the lives of residents by promoting good health, efficient household management, air circulation, heating and of course spiritual well being. As we have heard about the healing and spiritual powers of the pyramid for example, the octagonal design was supposed to possess similar qualities and quantities. Did it? Really don’t know! But it is a spiritually enchanted dwelling place whether it is the result of a compelling design or just that it falls into the category of a regular old haunt from the Victorian era.
Later in this collection of blogs I will have much more information on my years spent operating this unusual community museum that was quite haunted but acceptably so.......having spent many, many hours alone in this house in the 1980's at all times of day and night, there is no doubt in my mind the house was occupied spiritually yet it was never prevailed with any discernable negative aura. Sometimes visitors would say they felt a presence in one particular room but it wasn’t enough to have them fleeing the site because of some horrible occurrence. I will deal with this in depth in a future column in this series of Muskoka haunts.
In the mid to late 1980's, during my term of presidency of the Historical Society, and then as an operations manager in the late years of that decade, we never let a Christmas season go by without an open house, where guests were invited free of charge to enjoy a Victorian celebration in one of the few remaining Fowler homes in North America. In retrospect it was a great commitment of time and personal effort for our family and the few hardy volunteers who would show up regularly for on-site events. Yet there was no way we could let the house down.....and this is exactly how we felt.....by not having a Christmas celebration within. It could be so easily transformed from a dark and melancholy vestige of another century to a twinkling, happy and inviting Christmas venue....with only a few trimmings of evergreen boughs and bows tied to the stair railings and door frames.
What makes this story interesting to me.....a regional historian who has had contact with many spirited places and circumstances, was that Woodchester’s unknown but active entities were pretty influential for most of the rolling year......accept at Christmas. If I was raking leaves on the sprawling grounds in the autumn, I always felt as if someone was watching me from an upstairs window. If I was making lemonade for a summer social, I’d hear a baby crying when there was no one else in the house, and in the late afternoon I could hear a kennel full of dogs barking yet when I’d step outside, nothing at all could be heard. I would be downstairs in the tiny staff kitchen and hear footsteps in the parlor above and on the staircase to the basement. No one would be there when I’d go up to check if a visitor had come early or a volunteer had entered the building. Nothing and no one! After years of this I just took it all in stride that the unexplained intrusions were simply the character of a grand old family home in the heart of beautiful Muskoka., living-on regardless of the modern day conservators. I left employ of the museum because I couldn’t stand the town’s indifference to the site not because the place was haunted that’s for sure. I would gladly take the spirit-kind over my ill-prepared, "never on the right page" managers.....who wouldn’t step foot on the museum property unless it was for a grip and grin photo for the local press.
At Christmas this beautiful old home was at its most congenial, quiet and peaceful time. On one occasion I decided to play the audio from the movie based on Charles Dickens book, "A Christmas Carol," starring Alistair Sim, and we placed the tape recorder in the small bathroom off the parlor and had a speaker in the cabinet of the old Victrola next to the grand piano. I let it play while I tended a few additional decorations my wife Suzanne had sent over as last minute inclusions to what I thought was now becoming a seriously over-decorated homestead. About ten minutes into the recording, I just had to sit in the parlor and listen to the dialogue. If there was any moment above all others at this Bracebridge landmark that was truly remarkable, it was at this point...which was by the way the last Christmas event my wife and I held at Woodchester. It was as if all at once the spirits and the lone human had settled for this gentle moment in time, strangely appreciative of each other’s company, as a general peace and calm prevailed.
I anticipated that the resident spirits of the house, which were as much its historic patina as the aging of the woodwork itself, would let me know whether my decision to run the script was in good taste or unacceptable. It was quite the opposite. I sat there in one of the big Victorian chairs, and listened for more than an hour, and felt a great peace come over the place. Whether the old haunt was satisfied with this interpretation of Dickens great work, or that we were on the cusp of another public open house to recognize its period elegance in this festive time of the year.....I don’t know.....but it is a feeling I have held these many years since....that it was a home that very much appreciated hosting events and the local citizens.
The event as usual drew several hundred visitors over the course of that afternoon, and all the cookies, the cakes and candies had been happily consumed by what I perceived had been an entertained audience. Just before I closed the front door for the last time before Christmas, knowing I wouldn’t be back until later in January, I offered my thanks for once again welcoming our event......and it’s true that I wished it and its inmates a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I felt a contentment doing so and that was all that mattered at that point in time.
It wasn’t long after that I decided to resign my position and move on with other professional challenges in Muskoka history and conservation. I did so with the same feeling of connection.....and on that last day, I slapped that front porch that I had painted and re-painted many times.....and thanked it for many wonderful years of friendship. Although I have no doubt in my mind, and by experiences accumulated over the years, that Woodchester has resident spirits.....never once did this patina of past lives make me feel uncomfortable or unwelcome. In my years of tenure I accepted them, even verbally addressing them when I sensed they were in an active state for whatever reason, and they as much accepted me as their protector for that period of our relationship. It was a haunt I learned to love and it was painful having to walk away.
I would like very much to wish all my friends and colleagues who visit this site, a wonderful winter holiday, a Merry Christmas, a safe and Happy New Year. From our homestead here at Birch Hollow, to yours, best wishes of the season. Please join me for more tales of Muskoka and regional hauntings upcoming in the new year.