There Are Things Science Just Can't Figure Out About Things That Go Bump In The Night

CAN WE RELY ON SCIENCE TO TELL US EVERYTHING - EVEN WHAT PARANORMAL MEANS TO ITS MOST MINUTE PARTICLE?

OR ARE THOSE WHO STUDY THE PARANORMAL, WAY, WAY AHEAD?

     WHEN MY WIFE SUZANNE, AS A BAREFOOT, FROLICKING YOUNGSTER, USED TO TAKE HER DAILY STROLLS, AROUND THE COTTAGE PROPERTY, ON LAKE ROSSEAU, AT WINDERMERE. ON NUMEROUS OCCASIONS, SHE SWORE, ON HER DECEASED GRANDFATHER'S HONOR, THAT SHE HAD HEARD THE FAINT, BEAUTIFUL MUSIC OF THE FAIRIES IN THEIR REVELS. SOMEWHERE DEEP IN THE FERN COVER, ON THE SHADY HILLSIDE OVERLOOKING THE LAKE, SHE HEARD WHAT MIGHT HAVE EVEN BEEN THE MUSIC OF ANGELS. EVEN TODAY, SHE'S STILL OF THE BELIEF, THE MUSIC WAS NOT EARTHLY. THE MUSICIANS INVISIBLE. IS THIS POSSIBLE? WAS SHE DAYDREAMING UP A QUARTET IN THE HOLLOW OF SUMMER FERNS? MY WIFE ISN'T A DAYDREAMER, AND IS MORE PRACTICAL THAN ANYONE I HAVE EVER KNOWN. IN HER MATTER-OF-FACT DAILY LIFE, WHEN SHE ENCOUNTERS A BELIEVE-IT-OR-NOT SITUATION, BELIEVE ME, WE KNOW IT MUST HAVE OCCURRED.

     AS A KID, I SAW DEAD PEOPLE. I DON'T KNOW WHY THEY SELECTED ME AS THEIR EARTHLY CONDUIT, BUT IF WE WERE OUT FOR A DRIVE, I'D TELL ED TO PULL OVER FOR THE HITCH-HIKER IN DISTRESS, ONLY TO FIND HE OR SHE HAD PULLED A VANISHING ACT. IN LATER YEARS, I REASONED THAT MANY OF THESE ROADSIDE ENCOUNTERS, MAY HAVE HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS. THEY WERE THE DECEASED TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHY……..AND WHERE THEIR FRIENDS AND FAMILY HAD ALL GONE. THIS IS QUITE COMMON IN SUDDEN, TRAGIC ACCIDENTS, WITH LOSS OF LIFE.

     I CAN REMEMBER WAKING UP AROUND MIDNIGHT, ONE SUMMER EVENING, AND SEEING A NEIGHBOR STANDING IN THE DOORWAY TO MY BEDROOM. THE ELDERLY CHAP JUST STOOD THERE, AS A SILHOUETTE AGAINST THE BACK LIGHT, FROM THE LIVING ROOM. BUT THE STRANGE THING ABOUT THIS, IS THAT I COULD SEE HIS FACE CLEARLY DESPITE THE FACT THERE WAS NO LIGHT SOURCE IN MY ROOM. I REMEMBER THE SERENE LOOK ON HIS FACE, AND IT CERTAINLY WASN'T THE CASE I FELT IN ANY DANGER. I WAS OLD ENOUGH TO HAVE WON A STRUGGLE WITH THIS SENIOR, IF HE HAD BEEN UP TO NO GOOD.

     WHEN I SPOKE TO THE MAN, ASKING WHAT HE WANTED, ASSUMING HE WAS LOOKING FOR MY PARENTS, WHO WERE PLAYING CARDS IN A NEIGHBOR'S APARTMENT, DIRECTLY BELOW, I REMEMBER HIM SMILING AT ME, TURNING SLOWLY, AND WALKING BACK OUT THE DOOR. I GOT UP AS QUICKLY AS I COULD, AND RAN TO SEE WHERE HE WENT IN THE APARTMENT, OR IF HE EXITED THE FRONT DOOR, AND GONE BACK TO HIS OWN APARTMENT. THERE IS NO WAY HE COULD HAVE DISAPPEARED THAT FAST. I WAS PRETTY SPEEDY AT THAT AGE, BUT THERE WAS NO TRACE OF THE SILVER HAIRED GENTLEMAN. IN OUR BRACEBRIDGE APARTMENT BUILDING, IT WAS TRADITION TO LEAVE OUR DOORS HANGING OPEN UNTIL LATE EVENING. SO IT WASN'T UNSUAL TO HAVE A NEIGHBOR WANDER IT FOR A CHAT. WHILE IT WAS LATE, AND IT DID SEEM ODD THAT HE WOULD GO TO THE DOORWAY OF MY BEDROOM, I WAS MORE CONCERNED HE WAS HAVING SOME SORT OF MEDICAL CRISIS, AND MAY HAVE NEEDED HELP FROM MY PARENTS.

     I WENT DOWNSTAIRS, TO TELL MY PARENTS ABOUT THE VISITATION FROM MR. HAINES. MERLE DROPPED HER CARDS FLAT ON THE TABLE, AND JUST STARED AT ME. I KNEW IT HAD BEEN HIM, BECAUSE OF OUR MANY MEETINGS IN THE HALL, WHEN HE WOULD ASK ME WHAT IT WAS LIKE OUT, OR IF I'D HEARD WHO WON THE BASEBALL OR HOCKEY GAME FROM THE NIGHT BEFORE. HE WAS A NICE, FRIENDLY NEIGHBOR. MERLE URGED ME TO GO BACK TO BED AND RELAX, AND THEY WOULD BE UP IN A FEW MINUTES. WHEN I TURNED BACK TO ASK SOMETHING ELSE, I COULD SEE MERLE IN A SERIOUS CONVERSATION WITH MY FATHER ED, AND I PRESUMED IT WAS ABOUT MY VISITOR.

     MERLE TOLD ME IN THE MORNING, WHILE I WAS ENJOYING MY FROSTED FLAKES, THAT I JUST MAY HAVE SEEN A GHOST THE PREVIOUS EVENING.

MAYBE THEY SAW A KINDRED SPIRIT, WHO WOULD TAKE THE MESSAGE TO OTHERS…..THAT THE OTHER SIDE IS OKAY!

     She explained that Mr. Haines had died sometime earlier that summer season, and that he still had the apartment rented. It was why I hadn't seen any moving trucks. He had gone to a retirement home, after an illness. Or at least this is what she told me, and I was wary of these explanations, which at times were just tall tales, aimed at befuddling a kid. Merle did suggest, that his ghost may have been returning to see the room he used to have as his bedroom, when he had lived in that same front apartment before we moved into the building. I didn't experience a chill during the encounter, but I got one with that admission, let me tell you. For all intents and purposes, I had seen a ghost. He meant me no harm, and was just visiting his former abode. I will remember the look on his face. So heavenly calm. I guess that actuality, and the illumination of his face should have given it away, that he wasn't all that earthly at that point. I did have a few sleeping issues for a little while after the occurrence, but it was my fault for merging it with the episodes I had watched of the Twilight Zone. Hollywood makes every haunting a horror-filled event. Mine, if it was actually a ghost in the doorway, was pleasant at the time, and only unsettling when I over-thought what might have developed, if I hadn't spoken, and scared the apparition off, out the door.

     Our son Andrew had an encounter with a wee spirit that would allegedly, look in his bedroom window in the hours after midnight, when we lived in a neighborhood of cottages, across the road from Lake Muskoka. The little Dickens used to delight in rapping on the window pane, to get Andrew's attention. For months this went on, and almost nightly I'd run a check around the house, to make sure there wasn't a human source to our ongoing problems. And as he and his mother shared similar experiences, both seeing this wayward little boy at our cottage window, we took his situation very seriously. There was something strange in the neighborhood. Suzanne had seen a faceless, blond haired child, standing in the living room, while she worked at the kitchen counter in our open concept chalet. Why was this lost child earthbound? This is a more complex story, and the larger version was published in Barbara Smith's, Ontario Ghost Stories," some years back, and you can access it on my Muskoka and Algonquin Ghosts blogsite, by looking up "Herbie," and the ghosts of "Golden Beach Road."

     We were told by folks with some history in that same neighborhood, that a young boy had been killed in a car accident, many years earlier, when he drove his bike into the path of an oncoming vehicle, rounding a corner near our home. Was it this tragedy that left the spirit of the wee lad, questing for his parents, and his bedroom…..which he found to be occupied at night, by Andrew. When we didn't see the little lad, we certainly felt his presence. We shifted Andrew's room, across the hall, to co-habitat with his brother Robert. The appearances of the little boy at the window stopped at once. Obviously, the lad was contented it was vacant once more.

     Children don't rely on science to figure everything out. They let their innocent minds and green, free-flowing imagination go unfettered, and what they see, hear and experience, often seems pure fantasy….when they try to relay the encounters to us. At first, we believed that Andrew was re-creating the visitation, of Peter Pan, from the movie he had watched just prior to the incident commencing. We even tried to explain the events, as Night Terrors, because he was often so scared, he would get sick to his stomach. But when we put together the accounts of what Suzanne had witnessed, and I had felt in that cottage, of a wayward spirit, all it took was a little more attention to Andrew's calm retelling of the frequent visitations, before we understood, they were all related. On the final day, only minutes before the real estate deal was closed, I stood on the front lawn, giving one last look back at the haunted little cabin, and I felt a profound sadness, at leaving the little fellow behind. I don't really think it was what he wanted, you know. I feel he was looking for his family, but was satisfied somewhat by the folks he found living there instead. I just don't believe he wanted anyone sleeping in his old room. I felt, for those last few moment, that he was standing in the front door, looking at me, as if to say, "don't leave me alone." I can still re-live that moment, as if it was yesterday.

     He wasn't trying to scare us out of the house. He was trying to do what a ghost does…….fit in. I should footnote here, that we didn't move from the house because of our little house-mate. We just needed a bigger house. That was 1989. We moved to Birch Hollow, here in Gravenhurst, where we have lived ever-since. And it's true. We found some more house-mates who haunt us when they feel like it. We don't mind their excesses, if they don't mind ours.

      Thanks so much for taking the time to read today's blog…….written from the heart of the Gravenhurst business section…..at the old Muskoka Theatre building, where our boys have their vintage music business. Please join me again soon.