These aren’t your typical “happened to a friend of a friend of mine” campfire ghost stories– these are real anecdotes of haunted houses, resorts, and the departed from Carleton collegiette Jessica (who throughout her narration constantly reminded me that there is no such thing as ghosts – I say she’s in denial). It’s up to you if you think these stories are simply coincidences, or if your minds are open to believe that our universe is much too big, complex, and mysterious to only inhabit the living.
Collateral Damage: Rubbing Walls and First Encounters
After my dad graduated from Carleton, he moved back home into his mom’s basement. There was a tiny fireplace, where birds and bats occasionally got stuck. One night, my dad awoke to the sound of something heavy tumbling down the fireplace. In the pitch black, he heard the fireplace doors creak open, followed by the sound of heavy footsteps. My dad had 200 pound barbells lying in the middle of his floor, and as he laid in his bed frozen with terror, he heard the footsteps bump into them, walk around them, and walk upstairs. Hoping he was half asleep and had imagined it all, he turned on the light, and the barbells had actually rolled into a different position. He ran upstairs to calm down and grasp what had just happened, when his mom (a.k.a my grandma) came downstairs from her bedroom. He asked her if she had just been downstairs in the basement. She smiled and just said she hadn’t, and asked him if he had just been upstairs five minutes ago, because there was someone ruffling the hangers in her closet.
Note: Grandma had recently been hearing rubbing in the walls and taps were turning on and off sporadically, so she hired inspection companies to search for wiring, mice and water problems. Nothing unusual found. To this day, they still don’t know what caused the rubbing on the walls or what had come down the chimney on that cold, winter night.
Eventually, my grandma moved in with my Aunt Mindy because her husband George (my uncle) had died, and six months prior his son Leo had lost his battle to cancer (but this odd coincidence is another story). For the next 6 months after George’s death, the lamp of his side of the bed would be tilted like when he was alive and would read his book at night. Every night, my Aunt Mindy would acknowledge his presence, re-adjust the lamp, and it would mysteriously tilt right back down around the same time the next night.
photo: http://www.examiner.com/article/ghosts-spirits-and-poltergeists
My mother Tammy was at their house once and swears she saw George walk down the hall and casually say ‘Ello in his jolly British accent, and then disappeared. Other relatives have also sworn they’ve felt his presence in the house. It’s important to note that my grandma and George did not get along. So during this ongoing paranormal activity, George would lock my grandma out of the house. No really – she would be out doing the gardening when nobody was home, and the locks would be turned and latches would be down when she would try to get back in the house. She knew George was playing tricks on her.
Frosty the Snowman
One day, the ‘frosty the snowman’ tune started playing out of nowhere somewhere in the house, so Mindy followed the sound and every time she would get close, the tune would stop. Eventually, she realized the noise was coming from a bag filled with old Christmas ornaments, so she rummaged through until she reached the bottom of the bag; low and behold, Frosty the Snowman sat singing. Mindy flipped him over to pull out the batteries – and there were none. She looked over at my grandma who was with her, and said with a nervous smile:
“Do you know what day it is today?” She was met with a blank look of confusion.
“Today is the year anniversary of Leo’s death. This was his favourite Christmas ornament.”
The Haunting in Simmons Homestead Inn
The summer of 2011, my family went to New Hampshire and stayed in the Simmons Homestead Inn. That night when my boyfriend and I settled in bed, we heard a little girl laughing as if she were splashing around in a pool. We didn’t think much of it, other than the concerning thought of people letting their kids stay up until 2 a.m. The next day while waiting for our breakfast, we sifted through the pamphlets about the inn, and came across a tab called ‘hauntings’. It turns out that when the place was first built as a house, the young daughter of the owner drowned in a pond in the backyard. Today, you can hear her giggling in room 6, and in the attic where she will rummage through suitcases and play with the house cleaner’s makeup. Immediately my heart stopped and I remembered the haunting echoes of the giggling from the night before. I ran up to our room, looked at the door, and sure enough: We were staying in room 6.
The Lady in White
For the New Year, my boyfriend and I decided to spend a relaxing weekend at a spa in Québec. That night in bed, I had the most vivid dream that I was in the Haunted Museum of Nature in Ottawa and a woman in a white gown was following me while whispering that it was ‘going to be okay’. I woke up with a jolt, and I felt a presence lying in bed beside me, grazing my hair and breathing ever so gently. It was not my boyfriend. Now wide awake and petrified, I eventually rolled over and pulled the blanket over my head, forcing myself to sleep knowing that someone or something was in the bed with us. The next morning I told my boyfriend about my dream and how real it had felt, and he just stared at me with a terrified expression on his face as he explained:
“Jess, there was a man standing in our bathroom last night pointing at the bed and he looked angry. Like he was ready to kill someone. I closed my eyes and when I opened them he was gone.”
Trying to convince ourselves that we were crazy, we talked to the owner of the Spa, and unfortunately there was talk that a woman on her wedding night had been murdered by her husband in that very same room in the late 1800s.
From her piano randomly playing Beethoven in the middle of the night to her mom’s hair dryer turning itself on multiple times a day, Jessica’s world has repeatedly been overlapped with the other side and the in-between. She assures me she will remain in denial of these inexplicable paranormal events, because ignorance is bliss and the truth is simply too frightening.
Happy Halloween, collegiettes!
*Names were changed to protect their identities (from spiteful ghosts, lurking shadows etc…)
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photo source : http://metro.co.uk/2010/10/26/…