GHOSTS AND HUNTING THEM IS QUITE A CAPITAL-RAISING ENTERPRISE - WRITING ABOUT THEM SELLS BOOKS - BLOGGING ABOUT THEM? NOT SO MUCH!
I DON'T GO ON GHOST WALKS OR SLEEP-OVER IN HAUNTED HOUSES TO WRITE ABOUT THEM FOR PROFIT
It might seem odd, that a fellow who has written hundreds of stories, and feature articles, about ghosts and their kind, would admit to never once being on a for-profit ghost walk. I have never been inclined to join a seance for promotional reasons, to support either another author's work, or to bolster a promotion with business backing. I wouldn't feel right about asking the ghosts in this neighborhood, or region, to dance for patrons, so that I can pad my pockets. My relationship with ghosts is much more passive and non-material, and I don't make a dime writing about them. I trust they will remember this the next time they're scheduling haunts and who to haunt. This is a situation that has been addressed by many haunted inns and estates, that while legitimately spirited, the ghostly inmates have been showing up late for work; and this upsets tourists looking for a paranormal experience, supposedly included in the price of admission. Can't have disappointed visitors can we?
I don't care about authors who write copious stories about ghosts, spirit encounters, and even Muskoka's ghosts, some of the stories being filched from my previously published stories, without, I might add, my permission. I don't like the practice but as long as credit is given, the transgression can be forgiven. I only co-operated with one author in this regard, because of his enormous reputation as a scholar, poet, historian, and exceptional writer, and the fact he wanted to use one of my published stories in his compilation of Canadian ghosts stories. I would help John Robert Columbo no matter what his subject of interest happened to be, because of his body of work, especially in the field of paranormal representation, which has given our country a bank, and overflowing archives, of folk stories about ghosts and related bandy legged wee beasties, dating back to the earliest settlers of our fair land. The only other time our family co-operated with a writer working on such a project, regarding the paranormal, it was based on a request by author Barbara Smith, who treated us respectfully, as the story tellers. As a result of her sensitive approach, and perfect handling of the information provided for the book, we allowed publication of Suzanne's paranormal account, of having several visits with "Herbie, the child spirit". We still get comments every few months, about our contribution to her book, which was mostly on the part of Suzanne, who had actually seen the faceless child twice, standing in the livingroom of our former Bracebridge house. The book of "Ontario Ghosts" is still available for sale, or at least that's what we're told by those who have just read the story, and wonder whether we are the same Curries as identified in the story.
I have never pursued ghosts, and their stories, as a means of making money. I have not been paid for any of my, or our submissions to these authors, and although my first major ghost-related piece was published in The Herald-Gazette, back in the early 1980's, I was only being paid to fill the paper, and that's what I did. What management was most concerned about, was that my full page feature story would offend readers and advertisers. It never happened. In fact, the papers were flying off the corner store news stands, and for a week after, people were contacting the office for any additional copies we had obtained from returns. We only had a few left, which was pretty nice for me, because my job had been put on the line, by taking the paper in this direction; something we kept on doing from time to time in a number of our papers, because readers seemed to have an appetite for folk stories of this nature and character.
I believe in ghosts, as my family does, because each of us has had encounters, that qualify as the paranormal. My own experiences go back to my angel-dream of childhood, and early encounters with people who shouldn't have been visible to me, because they were deceased. I wasn't scared of these curious encounters, because, as was the case, I didn't know at the time, they were deceased; when I would ask my mother, for example, why the old fellow from the apartment next door, had been standing in the doorway of my bedroom late one night. I could see that there was something more to add, by the troubled look on her face. She had quite an expression of shock on that occasion, because he had just died in a nursing home hours before I had seen him hovering in the silhouette made by the hall light. The man had lived previously, in our apartment, and would have stood, in real life, many times, in exactly the place I had seen him on that night. Even then, I wasn't frightened when I was told I might just have seen a ghost. I've never really been scared of ghosts, other than to admit they have unsettled and startled me from time to time, appearing where they are least expected, at the strangest of times. Ghosts don't have watches to time their visits to suit mortal protocols.
My mother Merle, who was highly superstitious, told me she had seen the ghost of both her mother Blanche, and father Stanley, only moments after they had passed away. Her mother, a tiny wee soul, was sitting at the bottom of the bed in the middle of the night, and had somehow nudged my mother to wake up. Merle sat up, saw her mother, and thought it was a very real dream she was having. Blanche looked at her, smiled, and then vaporized, possibly feeling Merle would then cease to mourn and be pleased to know about the existence of the afterlife; and comforted that she had crossed over peacefully, and was doing okay. Her father appeared standing in the doorway of her bedroom, and despite the darkness, she could clearly see his face, illuminated by a distinct, but soft white light. He did roughly the same thing, as his wife Blanche, and smiled at Merle, and after a few seconds vanished into the darkness of the room. I grew up with these stories, so when I started to see people who shouldn't have been in human form, because they were, afterall, deceased, I had lost any fear I might have had otherwise; because I did watch movies about ghosts, as represented by Hollywood writers, which by the way, were never, ever, experiences that I had with those of the true spiritual essence.
The one that was most enlightening, was a tape recording made at Woodchester Villa and Museum, in Bracebridge, by volunteer, Ted Williams, a bookbinder friend of mine, that picked up some sound extras which weren't supposed to be there. We wanted to create the Victrola experience, without damaging the original one we had in the parlor of the octagonal former home, of local woollen mill founder, Henry Bird. So Ted decided to put some old 78 rpm records on the wind-up Victrola, and place a recorder at the speaker to capture the original sound the unit provided. He sat there for a whole day, making numerous recordings so that we could use them, when tours were coming through the house. The player was set below the Victrola so that it would be out of sight. It would seem to visitors that the Victrola was playing, when in fact it wasn't. Neat idea and it worked like a charm.
There was one glitch and it was a small one that only Ted and I shared. When he had been making the recordings that day, what he didn't know at the time, because he couldn't hear anything else but the music, was that many other sounds were being picked up in the room, and house, by the microphone, not part of the orchestration on the record. He asked if I would mind listening to the completed recordings, as he had, in order to check the quality; and as it was, to find out, if I could also hear the strange interventions in an otherwise quiet estate; which by the way, hadn't yet opened for the season. There was no one else in the house at the time of recording, and Woodchester was a fair distance from local residences. There were sounds of opening and closing doors, footsteps on the nearby staircase, rapping at the windows, when nobody was around, barking dogs, which was a familiar sound heard frequently by staff (where no dogs in the neighborhood were barking), and human voices mixing in with the instrumentals on the record. It was a little unsettling when I first heard it, but Ted was quite pleased I was able to corroborate what he was hearing on the finished cassette tapes. As most of us, who worked at Woodchester, had experienced these interruptions in the past, working on and in, the newly restored house, during the launch of the museum in the early 1980's, it wasn't all that surprising these noises had been audible on the tape. We were well aware of the bumps and knocks and sometimes voices arising from what could only be called thin air, but it wasn't anything one would be frightened about. Thoughtful, yes. Shivering with fright, not at all. I played those tapes Ted had made for me, over and over for the next three years, until they finally gave up the ghost, so to speak, which coincided with my last days as operations manager of the property. Was it the case the spirits of Woodchester had simply wanted to be recognized on the tape recordings? They must have been somewhat contented then, to have been audible for so many hours, during those three summer seasons, when they could be heard on the Victrola recordings playing in the parlor.
There are a lot of stories about nasty spirits haunting the houses they once dwelled as mortals. I've read about these, and I can appreciate what the contemporary residents experienced; yet most I've read about, were really just jazzed-up occurrences from what I've been experiencing for most of my life. I've just never had reason to fear these strange interventions, that come without warning, and vanish as suddenly as they arrived. I haven't been harmed by any of these spiritual entities, and in many ways, I've always felt my life experiences were enhanced as such, because they have added a unique dimension to my otherwise quiet existence; which, truth be known, represent huge potentials for the realm of the "other side." Writer C.S. Lewis, the creator of the Narnia series of books, for children, believed that heaven, or the "other side," as some call it, was accessed as one might open a door, to another room in a house; it was closer than one imagined heaven to be; not beyond the clouds in the sky as my mother used to tell me as a kid. "Heaven is just up there Teddy; look way, way up where the planes are travelling. It's just beyond them." I have my opinion on the matter, just as you do, so we won't delve into this issue as such. I don't know what Lewis's opinion was on the existence of ghosts, but I don't think he would have been frightened by them either.
Suzanne and I, as you may have read in previous blogs, used to live in an early 1900's house where there was a suicide and a natural death in a bathtub. The bathroom light was turned off when we left the room and the light was turned on again a few minutes later. We had the switch checked and nothing was wrong with the electrics or the actual on-off switch. There was a strange aura to the house that I felt after the first couple of months living there, and as newlyweds we tried to be cheerful and optimistic about how our little house was going to make a nice family home, as son Andrew would come along soon. I tried to like the house, I really did, but it was one of the poorest places in which to write, that I have ever lived. It wasn't the case there were ghost sightings or visual encounters of the former owner of the house, bobbing in the bathtub. But it was a sad house, and although I never really explained this to my wife, it was a house I knew I couldn't live in for very long. I have lived in three houses where this was the case, each that had some misfortune attached, two being the residences where suicides had occurred in their respective histories. At that time, a big part of our income came from my ability to write. At the point we lived in the house with the light switch ghost, I was working at home and it just wasn't happening for me. It wasn't the case I was scared of what was bumping around the interior in the form of paranormal entities, just that it wasn't the karma I needed to write large amounts of copy over five days a week. I am very fussy in this regard, and that's why Birch Hollow and its view over The Bog, has become my paradise of good cheer. It's bright and the view is a panorama of a most beautiful lowland with all its creature inhabitants. We have a few spirited pieces in our stash of old stuff, that have caused us a few anxious moments, but over the years, we've learned to respect one another's personal space. If we do happen to show up home with a piece that may have a hitch-hiker attached, the essence of a former owner that is a little playful with the new owners, we will have a period of strange occurrences from books hitting the floor, pulled from shelves, and lights being switched on and off in rooms, where some entity is objecting to the influx of newly acquired antiques. Seems crazy but it's been happening to us in the antique trade from the beginning. I'm not objecting, because it makes day to day business so much more animated and interesting.
As I wrote about in yesterday's blog, I plan to write a month long series of stories, of a fictional nature, generated by the spiritual energy I feel is stored-up, in a small wooden, fold-out laptop desk, dating back at least several centuries, that son Andrew gave me for Christmas this year. I have always wanted one, the older and more storied the better, and although this box comes without much in the way of provenance, except initials on a brass shield, set into the woodwork of the desk top, it has a fascinating aura attached; that like the smell of an old pipe that lingers, enabling one to smell the tobacco that burned in the bowl, even a hundred years after it was last used, the essence of a former owner(s) of this desktop, is still apparent in the right hands. Being mine at the present time. So much so, in this case, that since I received the gift, it has been drawing my attention almost constantly, sitting here in my office working on this electronic laptop. Almost as if speaking to me in a whisper, that it has a project for me, and that I should switch the computer off, and take up pen and paper instead, to write upon its beautifully aged wood veneer. The box we believe, could be from the early 1800's, or as late as the 1880's. The lock and key have been removed, which would have more accurately dated the piece. Boxes like this were used in the military encampments from the War of 1812, to the American Civil War, by official army secretaries, all the way up to Generals, writing dispatches to fellow commanders; and yes, keeping journals for post war publication. These desks were used by all those who had writing to do, in their line of work, or cultural recreations, such as authors travelling abroad, to use as a matter of convenience, and a reminder of home comforts. Bringing forth a convenient relic from their home writing rooms, of which they were most comfortable and amply inspired.
The mission for me, beginning on Monday, of this week, to run on the Currie's Antiques facebook page, is to compose a different piece every day, that in some way is inspired by the desk more so than anything else around me. If there is a spiritual energy ingrained in this wonderful little antique desk, I want to harvest it's inspiration, and put it into words. Sort of like an "improv" performance, on the main stage. I have the folding desk, a fair amount of historic patina within, and the willingness to let it dictate what kind of story I will come up with, on any given day, depending on a plethora of curious influences, from the weather outside, to the illumination of where I have set down to study the box. The music playing? What is it? What vintage? The bigger issue here, is that I'm a crappy writer of fiction, as a past record, meaning the box will have to carry me most of the way on this project; and give me the capability to present my thoughts in such a way, that of course, makes it a worthwhile story to read. Not just a jumble of words and thoughts, without a solid story-line. There are a lot of risks here for me, in terms of credibility, because this could fail miserably, and I might even drop the whole thing after a few failed stories. I'd have to wear a bag over my head for the next six months to protect my identity. I have confidence however, that this small, very old, nicely aged desk, will take me to places I have never been, and allow me, as if walking through the wardrobe, to seek out a magical place like Narnia; or to visit the past in a most fantastic exploratory way. If anything, it will demonstrate whether or not my old imagination, a little thread-bare in my elder years, might still be useful in creative enterprise. If the box turns out to be spirit-free, well, it won't take long before you know that I bet the wad on a dead horse. It's just one of those challenges we have to impose on our comfortable selves, from time to time, to get the juices going. No juices, oh, oh! As I have always been an optimist, and have never feared a challenge in my balliwick of profession, this is going to work out just fine. But then, you're the judge, not me!
Hope you will give me a chance to impress upon you, why some antique and collectable relics are considered "enchanted." Please visit Currie's Antiques facebook page on Monday at 7 p.m. to catch the first story. These will be archived so you will be able to catch-up if you miss a few.
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