Hi Nicole,
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I wrote general posts, so what I wrote was for you as well as for anyone else who might be interested. In this case I wrote
what I have learned about strange phenomenon because you opened the subject and
caused me to think about it again. This isn't something I usually spend much time thinking about, but over the years, having lived in the "haunted house" it has given me the incentive to try to understand unusual things such as came up in
replies to your post about fortune tellers.
Incidentally, this is a fine subject for this time of year because Hallowe'en will be celebrated on October 31. :-)
You asked if I "born the same feelings towards these things before your closefriend proved to you, or before being a Baha'i. The answer to both of these questions is yes. Neither had any influence on me in this regard.
I believe that it is hard for you to accept that we lived in a "haunted house."
Nicole, and I don't blame you! It is almost as hard for me to believe it. We have never lived in another or had any similare experiences to what that house could produce.
It may seem surprising, but I wasn't afraid of the footsteps upstairs when no one was home, the terrible feelings brought on if you spoke of the spooky things that happened there while you were inside the house, the cold drafts on hot, humid nights, the poltergiest effect, the shadow behind the door and on the floor in
the dining room at night, the strange and spooky areas. I just went about my life and didn't let any of it bother me. I didn't think whatever it was could do
me any real harm, so we lived in that lovely old house quite happily for about
four years with our three young children who also saw things where nothing was to be seen. We didn't want to scare our kids so we didn't tell them anything about this stuff, but they saw things anyway, some of which were evidently scary and some that they smiled and waved to.
So many varying kinds of things happened there, and so many people who had been
told nothing about the house experienced strange things for themselves that theyasked about later, that I can only conclude that the house was in some way
inhabited or marked by something. I truly can't say what could have caused it except that I did find out that the brother of our landlady had committed suicide
in the house because he was about to lose the house to a tax sale and his adopted sister, our landlady, refused to lend him the tax money when asked, and bought the house at the tax sale after his death. We wondered at the time whe showed
the house to us why she lived in the house she did, when this lovely one not far away, was for rent for an unusually low price. The story we learned later seems to explain that puzzle.
The house is old by Canadian standards. The oldest part was built of sandstone
about 1788 about the time of the American Revolution when British Loyalists fled
to Canada leaving all their possessions behind, often only escaping with their
lives as I much later discovered, happened to some of my own ancestors. The newer part was built of beautifully dressed Queenston limestone in 1808, by the same
man, a Scottish stonemason from Fifeshire, Scotland, whose tombstone and that of his wife and young daughter stand against the wall just outside the dining room window. They were probably salvaged when the rest of the land was sold to be
turned into a subdivision full of new homes. Likely their graves were lost then
and only the tombstones were saved.
This was one of the first houses built in Upper Canada. It is a large and quitebeautiful house, and it was an important house historically for many reasons.
It is written about in a current book about historic old houses of that city, but I noticed that they only have a partial description of it, and at least four important features were not described, so I don't think they've been inside this
private home.
The house probably sheltered Loyalist refugees from the American Revolution. It
also was probably a site of early Masonic meetings as evidenced by a very old cement hitching post bearing Masonic symbols.
As I previously wrote, it was built along an important ancient native Indian trail that was regularly used to cross between the two Great Lakes for, who knows how many, millenia. When the house was built the early pioneers had built what is known as a "corduroy road." This is a road of parallel logs placed close together across the trail. It was built so that the settlers' ships could be pulled
along the road on skids from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, or vice-versa. Now the Welland Ship Canal, part of the great St. Lawrence Seaway System accomplishes the job most efficient.
The house I'm talking about is a fine old limestone building with walls about
three feet thick and would have sheltered its owners from attack by Indians or by the Americans who later invaded Canada in 1812. It was built to do so as it has musket loopholes in the upper stone walls. There is a huge stone fireplace in the basement, literally big enough to roast an ox. (At that time the kitchens
of great houses were in the basement.) There is also a fine old bake-over with
a vaulted ceiling in one wall down there, which is still floored with fine white
sand. A beautiful old stone well lined with white stone was discovered underneath a first floor kitchen added much later when it was torn down. At the end of
the 1800's the house was also renovated. The roof was raised then, and an intricately designed Victorian upper storey was added.
I had an opportunity to meet the second to last owners, a prestigious physician
and his wife. I made sure not to indicate anything in particular when I asked the wife at her door if they had had "any interesting experiences with the
house." I was careful not to influence her reply in any way. She asked what I
meant, so I repeated the question in the same way, whereupon she invited us in and took us away to the back of the house "so the children wouldn't hear," and then she told us that they had discovered the skeleton wearing Indian beads, and that she had seen faces at the dining room windows at night before that. My children saw faces at windows looking in, too. They regularly used to wave to a lady looking in the very high bathroom window inaccessible from outside. I thought
it was children's fancy until I learned that adults had seen faces at windows,
too. The dining room windows overlook what is left of the original orchard. Her
husband, the doctor, laughed at her for seeing the faces, but he stopped laughing and believed her when they found the skeleton under the beaten earth cellar floor.
I was interested to know if anything had changed in the house, because renovations and the changing of door steps is supposed to stop spooky happenings in a "haunted" house, but in the case of this house apparently nothing changed. That family have moved on, and another physician and his wife now live in the house and
I don't know how they're making out.
I can't explain this situation any more than you can, Nicole. I tend to think
that a lot of things happened over the years that were very emotional for the people involved. The area has a damp climate because of Niagara Falls, whichacts like a giant humidifier. As I mentioned in the first post most "ghosts" are seen in areas where the air is humid. I suspect that souls who are veryinvolved with places here and can't detach themselves may stay around the places
that meant so much to them. That is possibly the source of some of the phenomena. For some reason it is common knowledge here that disturbed native Indian graves rouse some kind of influences. The native people do their best not to distub them, and if disturbed they hold a ceremony and put things right again. But that grave wasn't even found until many years after we left. One man killed himself because he was going to lose his house. Maybe somehow such events caused a
number of kinds of imprinting. I don't know any more about it than you do, Nicole, but you can't deny that it is quite a story. I could tell you more that is even more astonishing so far as I'm concerned. And you can believe me that it's all true.
Best wishes, Mary
