The Antique Store Shopper Who Really Wasn't
While it might seem from the plethora of gathered stories so far that our family eagerly embraces the paranormal to the point of invention, we're still not at the point where ghostly encounters have meant anything more than a slight deviation of life's normal course. I'm reasonably sure many people have had paranormal experiences throughout their lives but opted to avoid even the most basic analysis or cross referencing, in order to authenticate the activity. I'm of the firm belief many of these experiences are a long, long way from what might be considered intrusive and frightening. Most are pretty passive events and nothing more than everso delicate messages from those who have passed. We in our house tend to be more receptive and attentive to activities surrounding us on any given day. I don't sit around waiting for something paranormal to present itself but I don't run away scared if all of a sudden a smell of lilacs or a bell mysteriously ringing goes otherwise unexplained. And we don't blame everything on the paranormal and are quick to find any other source that could explain our sensory intrusion. Quite a few are accepted but largely unexplained but always welcome none the less.
I've had exposure to strange encounters most of my life, and Suzanne has had a few but none that were the fuel of public notoriety such as to facilitate the inking of a movie deal. If you have read many paranormal stories, and are familiar with ghostly encounters yourself, our stories are about as run-of-the-mill as you can get. Nothing particularly spectacular when compared to stories about haunted castles and spiritful misty moors. Ours are really what might be expected of interesting, somewhat hard to explain encounters.....none of them threatening although possibly a tad unsettling. What we do have is an open minded approach to new and interesting things in this crazy old life. We couldn't possibly rule out the existence of ghosts or Unidentified Flying Objects or for that matter goblins, fairies, trolls, and other assorted wee beasties writers have been telling us about for centuries......we just haven't worked to disprove their existence because frankly it doesn't bother us either way. If we found a fairy in our garden we wouldn't try to snatch it up as a trophy. We'd just be delighted our garden was good enough to provide habitat.
In every single encounter we have had individually or as a family, we have never been led in that particular direction by, as an example, having just watched a horror flick, or just prior to...., reading about a haunting, or anything else that would have made us anticipate something lurking in the shadows. The encounters have all been when, as they say, we would least expect anything out of the ordinary. There had not been any stimulus to invent paranormal discovery. It just happened out of the blue or the dark depending on the time of day. Each time we have had an experience we might label in the paranormal domain, or at least close, we always try to find reasons it might have been mind over matter. And we never suggest for a moment that what we have witnessed, or sensed, is clear fact the paranormal has been at work.....because as researchers recognize, it isn't that easy to bag a photo of a wayward, passing by, or lodging-in-your-house "spirit," for proof you've been touched by the paranormal. We don't as a rule hunt ghosts or try to get rid of any we do find. Live and let haunt I hear some folks say. As historians by profession however, we cross reference fact and very often find fiction lurking within, and we adore refuting long held historical claims by applying good research skills. We've ticked a few folks off in our ballywick who preferred the old and trusted histories of the region, very much disliking those historical activists who delve too deeply. Thusly, when we put forward our tales of the paranormal, they are just that.....tales, because we can not prove beyond doubt that what we encountered is the work of the spirit-kind. It would be daft to swear on the Bible that we have been intruded upon by Catherine the ghost child. We can suspect a haunting but we simply can't offer proof beyond doubt.
One such strange but unproven encounter, that developed twice (only one of us experienced the mystery shopper), occurred once again at our former antique shop in Bracebridge. On the first occasion it had been a busy afternoon with a lot of tourist traffic passing through the basement shop. It was a strange location in many ways. Our shop was situated in a modern storefront addition that had been built onto the front of a large Victorian house that had once been occupied by the local undertaker. You couldn't get into the house from the addition and the original building had been divided into apartments. The creaking and groaning of the modified building never stopped, and it was common several times a day to hear footsteps coming down the stairs only to find no one arriving in the shop. In the early years of the store our sales desk was in a larger second room to the left, a sharp turn at the bottom of the stairs, such that we couldn't see who was coming in until they rounded the corner into the main shop. If they went straight into the room at the bottom of the stairs, we might only hear the tinkling of china or pinging of crystal, as a shopper(s) tested the wares. Lots of times we would get up and actually go to the room to see if any one had actually belonged to the footfall. We just wrote it off to a settling building and the constant pounding of heavy traffic up the main street.
Late this particular afternoon, Suzanne looked up from bookwork at the counter to see an elderly bearded man in an old coat standing a few feet in front. She was about to say "hello" to the sudden guest of the shop, when the figure simply vanished into thin air. Yet she could describe his facial features and clothing, his height and expression as clearly as you would any customer who appears at your sales desk with an enquiry or a request to purchase. Several weeks later, in pretty much the same circumstance as the first encounter, Suzanne felt a presence near the counter, looked up to see if someone needed help, and saw the same gentleman standing in front as before. She thought at first that she had been too quick to judge the gentleman's visit the first time as a ghostly encounter, due to the fact he was obviously interested in something in our shop. As she pulled up from the chair to properly address the chap, still standing within a few metres of the counter, he simply turned and vanished as quietly and mysteriously as he had arrived. It did leave my wife rubbing her eyes wondering just how the lighting in the store was creating this illusion of a short bearded man in a frock. In retrospect what she did see was not a chap from the 1990's, but someone dressed characteristic of many decades previous. It had the usual trappings of "I've seen a ghost." Suzanne was looking for another sale for the day and instead got a twice disappearing customer on the cusp of something or other. She just didn't understand the message you might say.
There are many stories about the folks who used to dwell in this particular Victorian era house, one being that a sickly relative had lived and suffered from a long and serious ailment alone in the attic, over many years, eventually passing away in that same section of the old home. Once again as historians, we have not varified this claim by a former resident. Suzanne has no doubt about the man she saw but whether it was the deceased attic-dweller, we will probably never know. I never saw the chap in my days at the store but I did hear the phantom footsteps at least once every day for more than five years. Still, it was a good location for our shop and during its run we enjoyed a pretty good volume of sales. We gave it up to pursue new business opportunities in Gravenhurst, a town ten miles south of Bracebridge but we still have a soft spot for the Birch Hollow location of once.
Woodchester Villa's Storied Past - My Favorite of all Haunts
It was in the late summer of 1977, the year I graduated from York University, in Toronto, that I decided to get involved with a move in Bracebridge, Ontario, to save an historic octagonal home built by Woolen Mill founder, Henry Bird, closely following a design put forth by American Orsen Fowler.....who believed in the restorative, health-promoting, life-sensible qualities of living within an octagon. Many folks across North America did buy into his belief and designs for better living, and there were two such examples in Muskoka, one a lakeside cottage the other Woodchester Villa, or as it was better known to the local citizenry as..... the "Bird House," in reference to the founder of the hill-top estate.
I was part of the first board of directors of the newly established Bracebridge Historical Society, and I do consider myself the chap who put forth the idea to commence the group in the first place, which after a few years of hardy labor down the road, proudly opened the newly acquired museum (in the early 1980's). After a short hiatus due to out-of-the-area employment, I returned as a member of the Board a hair's breadth into the new museum's mandate, which was to both preserve local heritage and entertain visitors. I remained at Woodchester in one capacity or another for the better part of the decade, as both the Society's President and later Museum Manager during the period of the late 1980's.
I worked many long hours at the museum and each member of our family spent their summers, during that hectic decade, tied in one way or another to the site. We looked after a lot of the maintenance issues from mowing the lawns to painting the decking, weeding the limestone walkways to running educational and entertainment programs throughout the two summer months. There was a tight budget from the beginning of the museum to the time I ended my association. We had many Strawberry Socials on the lawns at Woodchester, and two sensational "Theatre in the Round" performances, thanks to the actors connected at the time to Muskoka Festival, then operating each summer from the Gravenhurst Opera House. They did the shows for free and it helped our attendance figures which were at the time failing for many different reasons. First of all, we had few if any dollars to spend on advertising. We got by each summer on the kindness of so many generous volunteers and folks who left donations to help us offset costs.
We guided many school tours through the years, and had special open houses at Christmas and then a "Christmas in July," program for kids during the summer season. We even had impromtu musical events offered by concert and otherwise accomplished pianists who would just happen by the parlor as part of the tour.....then be unable to resist tickling the ivories.....that's right....they would just start playing and a crowd would soon gather nearby. From this kind of unexpected but always welcome entertainment, we'd range upwards to hosting the full regalia, Provincial Salvation Army Band on the side lawn. We tried everything at least once, and it was particularly tough because we suffered most of the time from too few volunteers, too much work expected of us.... and we had two tiny tots to contend with at the same time. Now try to repeat that last line fast. Talk about a tongue twister but it's all true. It was a crazy time of our lives as a family and I dare say my wife was pondering the sensibility of marrying an historian. I can remember Suzanne having to hold son Robert while demonstrating butter-making for the "Christmas in July" event. In fact, I used to set up the playpen in the museum annex, for son Robert, and I let Andrew play with his toy cars on the museum floor in the restored former Presbyterian Church, while I worked from the back office. It was a daily thing. My boys grew up in a museum. It somewhat explains their interest in old stuff now, I suppose. (The former church site by the way, is now the Chapel Gallery.....of which I helped initiate to the site in the initial plan for the museum's business upgrade from poverty status to sustainability). We worked in every area of the museum and knew it incredibly well. I used to sneak folks up to the Widow's Walk, which was accessed through a trap door at the uppermost peak of the roof, where the view to the river and main street was magnificent. I wasn't supposed to do this but I did it any way! It was an insurance issue moreso. It was safe to my standard but not by their reasoning.
Woodchester Villa had its share of curious attributes. None that were particularly troubling but it was obvious to any paranormally sensitive occupant or visitor, there was an aura, an unseen energy within which gave you the constant feeling of being watched. We weren't the first to experience these sensations, as it was noted by other residents of the property from year's past, that it was a dwelling of many strange noises and curious unexplainable occurrences. While it wasn't enough to scare any one from the building there were occasions when we all would ask ourselves, "did you hear that," "who turned the light on," or "where are those barking dogs?" I seldom if ever walked up to the Widow's Walk without feeling someone was coming up right behind me. I'd even feel a tug on my ankle but nobody else was on the narrow staircase when I would look down. It was probably mind over matter in this case because it was kind of a spooky, dimly lit part of the house to traverse in all kinds of weather and times of day.
The first documented case of unusual sounds in the house, was reported by museum staff in about the second year of full operation. Several staff members told about being in the second floor curator's office, and hearing the sound of barking dogs. The windows were closed and there were no dogs barking when staff stepped out to investigate. I had heard them as well, so I didn't have any reason to doubt that they had also heard the nearly non-stop howling and barking as if the hounds were in the house itself. I never really thought about it until the young ladies on staff, started to look for these barking dogs. None could be found. If there was barking heard in the house, by taking one step out the door at the front or back, the racket would suddenly cease. At that time nobody mentioned the "barking dogs" as being any kind of paranormal encounter. It was just annoying. In the middle of book work I'd get up and stick my head out the window, like most on staff for those years, and yell "Shut up....shut up you stupid dogs!" It didn't work. The paranormal connection came a short while later, while students who should have been at work guiding, dusting and conserving, took a particular interest in the spiritual essences of the estate. They commenced an unanticipated, unwarranted and non-sanctioned exploratory adventure to determine just how many ghosts dwelled within the octagon of Woodchester Villa. I was in for a rude introduction to their handiwork when the electronic media showed up to record the hauntings which even included what turned out to be an invented murder scenario, the students believed had occurred on the estate. It was a public relations coup on one hand, because it did get us needed publicity but the Bird family was not impressed by the suggestion foul play had occurred on the upper staircase......as the spirits had somehow relayed to the teenage tour guides. It is said a guide was threatened on the staircase by some invisible entity, and told to get out of the house. It was pretty much what I told them but I wasn't a ghost....just a pissed off public relations director trying to mend fences as fast as they were smashing them down. It began as calmly as this......
It was the same year that I was working on behalf of the Public Relations Committee, that I had my first run-in with ghosts and those who wished to identify them as unique qualities and quantities of the Victorian estate. A reporter on staff of The Herald-Gazette, of which I was editor at the time, went to do a story about the alleged haunting of the Bird House. I didn't really think too much of it, until it arrived on my desk for approval.....and as content overseer, I had to weigh content and adverse impact before I passed it on to lay-out. It wasn't breaking news or anything and it seemed harmless for a page four insertion. What I assumed was to be a light feature article, and possibly a kindly bit of publicity for a new museum, had a much more dire story-line. It seemed that in response to the annoying and ongoing din of barking dogs, which lasted a few years on and off, the staff decided this time to allow Ouiji to sort it all out. One young lady brought the board in to see if the staff could make contact with the spirits, still holed-up somewhat comfortably in the century old octagonal house. Well, one thing led to another, and all sorts of weird stuff was being reported, and what was to be a one-time feature story for the fun of it, became a lengthier series of articles......because the reporter's initial interest generated more delving, questions to the "other side," and a playfulness with the television reporter who picked up the feature story and decided to approach staff directly. It was a slow news period...you're right!
As a short sidebar to this story, I let an acquaintance of mine, during casual after-work conversation, in on the most recent debacle happening at Woodchester.....she was a highly sensitive young lady with a particular awareness about paranormal characteristics and habits, and who knew all about seances, and the inherent dangers of a Ouiji Board in the wrong hands. She scolded me soundly for allowing the girls to play around with the Board, and taking a chance that every wayward spirit, good and nasty, would feel warmly at home in these new (old) digs. I happened to mention it to her just as plain old, run-of-the-mill conversation, regarding the kind of day I was having as both a museum director and editor...... being weighed down by the chores of the day. To her it was a far more serious matter....unearthly you might say. "By using that Board you've invited a lot more spirits than were probably ever lodging in that house, to come for an extended visit, and never, never want to leave," she said with unflinching confidence that we'd made a giant welcome sign to "party-on dudes." We didn't really want a sideshow up there afterall. This female friend, who shall remain nameless, told me that one of the great faults of using such a board, is that you can inadvertently invite any old wayward spirit into the mainstream without having a chance to check credentials at the door. "You can draw in a lot of spirits you don't want in your house.....and this is their portal back into our world!" I just nodded because that's the first I'd ever heard of that particular conduit between this world and the great beyond. I don't know whether she was right or not.....but life and haunting did get somewhat more involved after the board was used....moreso than just the sound of barking dogs.
I was watching the nightly news, sipping a nice cold beer, when all of a sudden a film clip appeared on-screen of Woodchester, with a story about an unsolved mystery unfolding in Bracebridge......and it may have involved murder. What staff had been up to went way beyond the Ouiji Board and the feature story we ran in The Herald-Gazette. Now staff was investigating an unresolved murder in the house and an empty grave in the local cemetery. Geez, they were hired to work as museum interpreters and now it was turning into an episode of "Murder She Wrote." What was worse is that they started naming names, and it involved a prominent family......the first family of the house in fact, and to hear about it on the nightly news didn't amuse any of the kin who caught the reference. The story was that a young family member had been pushed down a flight of stairs, probably coming from the attic, and had been killed by the fall. It was assumed the burial plot held the secret and short of digging it up, a lot of inuendo had been cast unceremoniously around town. Just the kind of slanderous stuff that can get a museum and staff into serious legal trouble, and give a public relations director some wickedly strong heartburn. I was on the phone mending fences right away. I was having lots of meetings with lots of people, and my reporter was called in to re-assess what he had helped fan into the nightly news.
We found out that it had begun when one of the staff members reported that he had been audibly told to "get out of this house,"
by some unseen entity, as he was descending the attic to third floor staircase. A little unsettled and building on a theme already stemming up from a strong root of suspicion, the next ill conceived project was to find out if the voice and a grave marker discrepency someone else had found, added up to murder-most-foul. The bottom line here, is that there was no murder, no foul play whatsoever, and we had many apologies to bestow to family .....and a Ouiji Board to remove from the house.
It took a few years for this to blow over. It doesn't mean the house wasn't paranorally endowed, and it may have even been quite honestly interpreted that an entity within wanted the subject staff member to "buzz off," but there was no murder. No mystery. Just the life history of an old house fussing up from time to time....creaking timbers and settling ground and yes a few quality moments of barking dogs from somewhere quite unknown.
One of the most significant paranormal events came when a director of the museum, a guy who wouldn't budge for any wayward spirit, got the idea to tape-record old 78 rpm records from the parlor gramaphone so that we could play them through the day by using a speaker insert in the cabinet; the recorder actually placed in an unused bathroom nearby. So instead of wearing out the needles on the gramaphone, or stressing the critical main-spring with daily use, it afforded us a great option to bring music into the parlor by what appeared to be a whirling Victrola but was actually an extension of electronics. Guests believed it was an actual record being played and seemed to enjoy the ambience it created in the otherwise stuffy parlor.
What happened was that while the records were being recorded, some curious knocking and other noises in the house were being picked up. When he played us the tape we could clearly hear the knocking as if someone was at the adjacent door....that's how clear it was recorded. Yet he had no actual interruptions throughout the recording session over several days. He often went out of the room, even out doors while the record was spinning and despite his best efforts to identify the sources of the knocking (he heard later on the recordings), he could offer no explanation for their existence. The records themselves were fine as was the machine. He listened to all the records over again and never heard problems with the actual pressing, that would have accounted for the knocking. He firmly believed the sounds to have been external and not a technical problem with either the tape recorder or Victrola. I used to play that same tape over and over during at least three years, and I always got a kick out of hearing the knocks myself. They weren't really disturbing or unsettling but it did seem to be the case something was trying to get attention on that particular day of recording.
On another occasion I intruded quite accidentally on a conversation of a young family coming down from the second floor of the museum, in a rather animated discussion about "The Room," and "Did you get that feeling we shouldn't step inside?" I asked the guide what room the family had felt uncomfortable in, and she pointed me to the children's quarters at the right of the stairs. I wandered in and looked all about, studied the period toys strewn on the floor, as if children had just been at play, and dismissed anything paranormal whatsoever. I chatted at some length with the guides who told me that many visitors to the second floor would not go into the room, despite the fact we had taken down barrier ropes during my tenure as director manager. "They find it occupied," said one of the guides. "They enjoy looking at the master bedroom and the other exhibits in the bedroom at the front of the house but they don't like going into the children's room." We decided to do a little survey. Without telling any one about our interest in the room, and why it seemed oppressive, we jotted down remarks from people leaving the museum and asked them specifically which rooms they enjoyed the most....and the least.
We of course found that a majority of visitors that summer did not like the child's room. They said it appeared "sad and lonely," the toys being unplayed with. It was my wife's own refusal to enter the room that made me ever-more interested in finding out what it was that inspired these feelings of forboding. We tried to change-up the toy display, putting some away and tidying up the floor space to allow visitors full entrance to the room. Suzanne still felt the room was occupied and suggested it had nothing at all to do with the decor. She felt there was a strong presence of a child in the room and there was no compassion to share the toys. I have stood for hours in that room on bright days, where light was brimming into the room, and on dull days when rain splashed against the glass pane.....and never, not even for a second, did I feel unwelcome in those quarters. It doesn't mean everyone else was wrong because by averages of people avoiding it, I was the one being paranormally numb-founded you might say.
My most significant paranormal experience in that house came on the day of an open house during a Christmas in July program. Both Suzanne and I were feeling poorly that day the result of the flu, or an illness from something we had consumed, and we were painfully putting together the day's materials in order that the event could run as planned. Suzanne was setting out a massive cake in the upstair's porch area, while looking after both Andrew and Robert. Staff were setting up chairs for the band yet to arrive, and I was in the downstairs kitchen making up lemonade for the several hundred guests expected. In the basement area you could hear footsteps above but not clearly. You certainly couldn't hear anything outside because the thick stone walls insulated out the noise of the neighborhood. As for the barking dogs, you could only hear them in the upstair bedroom we used in those days as the office. In the abutting open area to the kitchen we held our regular board meetings. I was stirring the lemonade when all of a sudden I could hear a child in near hysterics, crying loudly enough to be in the adjoining Victorian-era kitchen part of the original home layout. I went running over to see if a youngster had snuck downstairs and hurt themselves by some misadventure. There was nothing. Yet I could still hear the crying. I looked out the basement door and there wasn't a sound or person visible. Back through the door it was clear again. Then I felt a cold shiver when I thought of Suzanne and the boys in the porch area upstairs. Thinking maybe one of the boys had been stung by a bee, I raced up the narrow stairs, jogged through the parlor, the hall, jostling a few volunteer helpers along the way, only to find Suzanne with Andrew on a chair, Robert asleep in his stroller, and their mother cutting the cake into several hundred squares.
"Who was crying," I asked an obviously startled wife. "What are you talking about....no one has been crying....though I feel like it," she retorted. "Where did you hear crying?" she asked. "Downstairs. I was stirring the lemonade and heard a kid crying.....I thought it was coming from the next room but it wasn't." "Outside?" she asked. "No, I went out the back door half expecting to find someone with a skinned knee but there was nothing." There had been no crying child that we could find on the premises indoors or out. But I heard crying regardless. My imagination? Even when I was moving around in that kitchen, and heading from room to room, I could hear the crying. It only stopped when I put my head out the bottom door. Once inside again I could hear the same crying. When I hit the top of the stairs to the first floor, it stopped as suddenly as it had begun. This was the first serious encounter I had experienced at Woodchester. It was a little unsettling. I thought then about the child's room on the second floor, and wondered to myself whether there was indeed an unhappy child left in that house from another era.
There were many other smaller incidents of curious nature that I encountered during my tenure as museum director and then manager but nothing that would have ever scared me from my task or spending hours working on projects within. I did feel there was someone watching from that house, especially when we were working outside. While raking the leaves or grass clippings I'd often get the feeling someone was watching out over the garden, and when I'd sneak a peak back toward the upper level of the house, I'd find everything as it should have been. No wavering curtains. No mysterious face looking out. Yet it was the one constant feeling working around the property, and even inside there seemed to be a guardian of the site, possibly the spiritual aura Fowler believed would have a place in an octagonal building. I never felt bad-will at Woodchester, and I was never told by any entity to "get out our else!" I think somehow the spirit of the dwelling knew we were kindly folks, looking after its earthly haunt, and cut us a little slack. It's possible it just didn't like some visitors and made them feel unwelcome in certain areas of the house.
I adored my years working at Woodchester Villa but after more than ten years involved with the project, and having a badly neglected young family, it was time to turn over the responsibilities to another curator and guiding volunteers. All us Curries still have a soft spot when it comes to remembering time spent at Woodchester Villa and Museum. It was an important part of our lives for many years and we will never forget its strange but welcoming aura. Make it a point sometime soon to visit this charming old hillside estate! Judge for yourself whether there are resident spirits, or not!
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