The Rocking Chair

In my mother’s large country house, there is a particular piece of furniture that, for lack of a better word, seems a little haunted.

It is an old wooden rocking chair painted white that my great-great- grandfather brought to the house in the 1870’s. Although the house contains a lot of antiques, this chair is definitely one of the oldest things in it.

I suppose other pieces of furniture could potentially be good places for a ghost to sit on, and although there is another rocking chair in the living room that was my grandmother’s, the chair in question is the only one in the house that rocks all by itself (as far as we know).

As previously mentioned in this blog, we moved into the house when I was five years old in 1975. I don’t know whose idea it was to put this ancient rocking chair in my bedroom. Maybe it was already in that room and no one thought to move it. I really don’t remember. What I do remember is my mother always telling me the story of how she heard it rocking by itself when she was a little girl.

Her experience with the chair is detailed in this post:

"My Mother's Experiences" <--link)

I also remember that because of that story, there were plenty of nights as a child (and later a teenager) that I went to sleep with that chair at the foot of my bed, praying I would not hear it creaking back and forth, or worse, SEE it rocking in the middle of the night. Mostly, I think I would have heard it, if anything, as at night in that house it is so pitch black you can’t see your hand in front of your face.

In all my years of having that chair in my room, I never once saw it or heard it move on its own. However, there are a handful of people who have.

A family friend spending the evening once, claims to have heard it rocking upstairs when no one was up there. There have been a few friends over the years who also claimed to have heard it rocking on the creaky old floorboards. And of course, my mother, who knew what that chair sounded like once it started rocking.

Is there more than one spirit who likes to sit and rock on a 150 year old chair? Or is it just one who doesn’t want to give it up?

Currently, the haunted chair is in the even-more-haunted spare bedroom. The occasional guest stays in there and there have been no recent reports of the chair rocking on its own. But who knows what goes on when there are no witnesses. As you read this, that chair could be slowly creaking back and forth in that pitch black spare bedroom which is known to have a lot of paranormal activity in it.

                                                         

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What does a ghost have to do to get a cup of coffee around here?!

Yesterday we visited my mother’s house, the one this blog is written about. My mother, my son and I were sitting in the kitchen having a discussion about a vehicle my son wants to buy. The pantry is connected to the kitchen. It was daylight, sunny and everything in the pantry was clearly visible.

I was facing the direction of the pantry. My son sort of had his back to it.

Suddenly, we heard a noise in the pantry. I looked in there, and Scott turned around to see what was going on. There is a shelf in there with hooks attached underneath which holds coffee mugs. There’s probably twelve or so. The hooks are very sturdy and the mugs have hung there for many years.

When Scott and I diverted our attention to what was happening, we clearly saw the mug on the far left in mid air, on its way to falling to the floor. It hit the shelving unit underneath it, then hit the floor.

No other mugs were even moving. The mug that somehow jumped UP off the hook did not even collide with the others that are very close to it. A mug moving upwards (with no human intervention) to come off of a hook is not an easily explainable event. Skeptics could argue the hook was loose and the mug just fell but that would be impossible as the mug handle rests DOWN onto the hook. And the hook was still well attached when I inspected it afterwards.

Scott and I just stared at the scene unfolding, thinking “what in the hell just happened?” I think my mother saw what happened but she doesn’t get too concerned over this stuff anymore. I picked the mug up and put it back on its hook.

What’s even stranger is this exact same thing happened many years ago when relatives were visiting. They were in the kitchen and watched this same event unfold, as a mug came off its hook and ended up on the floor.

Of all the weirdo stuff that happens there, I get most intrigued by these events that I see happen when there are witnesses. And yesterday, there were two.

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My Mother's Experiences

My mother has included the following in a written account of our personal family history. While much of what she has experienced while living in her house has been reported in other posts on this blog, the following may be of interest. These are her words and she often tells these tales when we discuss unexplained occurrences:

My first experience was when I was probably no more than two or three. It is one of my earliest memories. I remember being in the kitchen and suddenly a big, round ball of light rolled out the dining room door into the kitchen. No one else saw it but me, but I still remember this.

Then, when I was five or six my mother moved me upstairs to the large bedroom. There was a washstand in the room with an old-fashioned basin and pitcher set on it. One night the sound of those dishes rattling woke me up. I “knew” that it was a mouse and I also “knew” it was going to run across my face, which it did! I can still recall how it felt when whatever it was passed over my face. I began screaming and my mother ran upstairs to see what was wrong. I was practically hysterical and told her a mouse ran over my face, but of course there was no mouse. She had to spend the rest of the night in my bed because I was so frightened.

One of my most frightening experience happened when I was a teenager. My mother and father slept downstairs (in the room I now sleep in) and one evening my father had gone to bed and mom and I were still up listening to the radio. Suddenly, music started to play, sounding like it was coming from upstairs. I remember being very frightened and screaming, “What’s that?!!” and my father got up and came out (in his long-johns which he slept in) saying, “I hear music!”

My mother didn’t hear a thing. It sounded as if the radio, which was upstairs in my room, had come on, although there was no way that it could have. Mom and I started to go up the stairs to check on it and when we were half way up it stopped just as suddenly as it had started. That was the first time my hair stood on end! Whenever anyone would mention it for years afterward, I would get chills up and down my spine. I do not know if they were forerunners, but there were two deaths in the family within the year—my grandmother, Sarah, in April and Lilie, who lived here, in July.

There is a rocking chair in this house which, when I was a little girl, used to be in the kitchen. It is very old and my mother told me that her grandfather brought it with him when he moved from Lower Northfield in the mid 1860’s. I woke up one night when I was a small girl and heard this chair rocking slowly, as it creaked when you rocked it. The next morning I innocently asked my mother if she didn’t sleep well the night before. She said she had slept fine and wanted to know why I was asking. I replied,” Because I heard you up rocking in the night.” At this, she became very upset and said that was her grandmother’s chair and she used to rock very slowly in it, the same way I had heard it. Growing up, I heard it rocking “by itself” many, many times.

Many years later when my son was in his teens, he slept in that room and awoke one night to see a girl with long brown hair leaning over his bed. A few years earlier my other son was alone in that same room one Sunday afternoon, lying on his bed reading a comic book, when the door on one side of the room opened and closed and a few seconds later the door on the other side of the room opened and closed. Someone passed through, although he saw no one.

The spare bedroom directly above the living room seems to be the scene for most of the unexplained activity. In summers past, when relatives were visiting from Ontario, they would sleep in that room. One of them told me she awoke one night to find my mother standing at the foot of the bed. I have also heard footsteps and sounds of floor boards creaking from that room when no one was occupying it. Rebecca’s bedroom shared a wall with that spare bedroom and there were many nights as a child and teenager when she would hear noises, knocks and mysterious banging coming from that room. My grandson also saw my mother sitting on the bed in that room, petting the family cat.

There have been numerous times when there is an overpowering smell of perfume, which I associate with my mother. Every year when I do my spring cleaning and wash all of the good dishes in the china cabinet, most of which were Mom’s, I am sure to smell perfume. She loved her dishes and up until the last few years she lived, she washed them herself. She would get me to carry them to the sink and back in to the cabinet after they were washed and dried. Every year I do this and can smell her perfume and I know she’s there. Also, sometimes there is an unpleasant smell that Rebecca refers to as “old people smell”. My mother was born in this house and lived here her entire life (91 years) so it must be hard for her leave, which is why we know she is still around.

About a year after my husband died (1982), our church held a Memorial service to honor members of the community who were no longer living. Members of the congregation were asked to come forward and light a candle in memory of a family member, so I lit one for Murray and Ricky, and Rebecca lit one for her grandparents. That night while we were in bed I awoke to find the kitchen light on. I laid there for a few minutes thinking that one of the kids had gotten up to go to the bathroom, but I didn’t hear anything so eventually I got up and turned the light off. They both told me the next morning that neither of them had been up in the night. The following night the light came on again and after a few minutes it turned off. I told my brother about this a few days later and he said the switch was probably worn out so he took it apart to check it but found nothing wrong with it. My theory is that since we lit candles in church in memory of our loved ones, they did something similar for us!

Perhaps the single most terrifying experience I personally have ever had occurred on Sept. 26, 1982. I know the exact date because I told relatives about it as I was leaving their house the next day after their daughter’s first birthday party.

I was in bed and had been asleep for a while when something woke me up. There was a tall woman standing right beside my bed staring down at me. It was dark in the room but I could see her perfectly. She had very pale skin and dark hair which was piled up high on top of her head, and very dark piercing eyes which were staring at me. She was dressed in a long loose dress or robe, and it was pale green and pink in a damask pattern. I remember I screamed when I saw her and she immediately disappeared. The strangest thing about it was she seemed to have Chinese features and it was certainly no one I had ever seen before. I slept with my light on the rest of that night and for weeks afterward, but I never saw her again.

One night quite a few years ago, my nephew’s daughter and a few friends were here at the house and they wanted to play with the Ouija board. They lit candles and went to the living room with it. During their ‘session’ a plant stand in the corner fell over. I had been in bed but awoke to them screaming. The next morning, the phone rang. I answered it and said “hello” and an old woman’s voice said “hello”. I said “hello” again and so did she and then the line was full of static and I couldn’t hear anything so I hung up. I pressed “star 69” to identify the last caller but I got a message saying the call could not be traced. I am convinced it was a caller from the Great Beyond, possible stirred up the night before by the Ouija board session.

One afternoon I was expecting my son and his girlfriend to come visit as they usually did on Sundays and I heard a car drive in. I looked out and saw their car backing into the field on the other side of the driveway. I went on with whatever it was I had been doing, expecting them to come in at any moment. After a bit, I wondered what was taking them so long and when I looked out again the car was gone. I supposed they had forgotten something and left and gave it no further thought. A half hour or so later, they did come in. I asked them why they had been there and left earlier and they looked at me in astonishment and asked me what I was talking about because they had just left home for the first time. However, I had seen them before!

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The Bedroom

The following post has been kindly written by a guest blogger who wishes to remain anonymous. His experience took place not far from my childhood home.

My birth home is located in a port town on the South Shore of Nova Scotia. To be fair, in my sixty plus years, it has never been known publicly as a hot spot for paranormal activity. In fact the only paranormal activity I know of is personal and centered in a downstairs bedroom of my childhood home.

The original house was built in the early 1900’s. A concrete well cover bears the date 1921. An extension was added following World War two. This allowed two extra bedrooms including the one in question. One might jump to the conclusion that a grave may have been disturbed as family plots on private property were common in those days. This not the case here as there is only about eighteen inches of gravel on top of cliff rock where the foundation is.

In the winter of 1963, I was a boy of seven years. I lived in the upstairs apartment with my parents and brothers. It was a typical family scenario of the day with my hard working Dad providing for a growing family with a stay at home Mom. We were typical boys going to school and doing what young boys do best. Mayhem often reined but there were also strict rules because my Father’s mother lived downstairs. That winter something was to happen that followed me and others for years to come.

“Nanny” was a respected school teacher and icon of our local church. A very capable woman in so many ways. Just before my father was born, she lost her husband to a visiting ship borne outbreak of influenza. She found herself working and raising three children by herself in the early 1930’s. She was a very proud woman and refused any welfare or hand-outs. She did everything she could to provide. This included all of the physical labour on the property she herself grew up on. A large tract of land that had two large gardens, an orchard, a very long driveway and lawn. Boy was there lawn. I can attest as I spent many hours behind a power mower cutting it, she used a push reel mower.

She was a well-built woman, not that tall but stocky with a full figure and muscles that belied a lifetime of hard work. As kids we use to get her to make a muscle with her biceps because hers were bigger than Dad’s. Built on top of her physical strength was a pillar of faith. A devote Christian woman that believed as strong as any person I have ever known.

She sang in the choir, taught Sunday school and served on the church council. She was a person not to be challenged on her faith and not much else either. She was very no nonsense but at the same time had a very nurturing and caring side as well. She made sure we always had a wealth of books and activities to keep us occupied. All of our bikes and tricycles were given to us by her as Christmas presents as Dad just didn’t have the money. She also schooled us on her faith at every opportunity.

I paint this picture of my grandmother to help understand what happen that winter and for years to come. I think of that one particular day often. It has affected me greatly in my life’s course. I gave up believing in religion because of it. Instead I started believing in something else. The true core of what makes us humans and individuals.

Early in 1962, Nanny started having health problems. She was stubborn and delayed seeking help as one often does. She was diagnosed with bowel cancer and was then on a voyage to the end of her life. Back then the course was much the same as today. Surgery, chemo, radiation. She ran the whole gambit. I can remember her and my mother joking about her coal black wig they gave her when her hair fell out. She never complained and always declared she was in God’s hands.

Before the Christmas of ’62, her cancer was back and taking a huge toll. Still she dragged herself through all of her usual seasonal traditions. Once it was over she went back into hospital. She was not there long and returned to her home to die. Her bedroom was to be her last place on earth. It was not long after that we were forbidden to even go downstairs to visit her.

Her once robust frame was reduced to a shrunken shadow of the woman she used to be. My Father use to lament about how she was nothing but skin and bones when she passed. This always puzzled me as that young boy because it was not the same woman I saw the day before she died. In fact I still question to this day what it was I did see.

It was a typical winter’s day when we got home for school for dinner. Dad was not home yet and Mom was getting dinner on the table and acting as referee to my two younger brothers who were fighting. It had been months since we saw Nanny. I looked at my other brother and he looked at me. Next thing we were sneaking downstairs and entering her bedroom.

We crawled on our hands and knees. I stopped at the foot of the bed keeping my head down. My brother when right up beside her and started to speak. “Gee you look good Nanny. Are you getting better?” he said. I looked up not quite prepared for what met my eyes.

For there was my grandmother, propped up on pillows with her still well-muscled arms by her side. Her full face and hair were glorious with what seemed a glowing aura around her. I could not remember seeing her looking any better as was immediately puzzled as to why we were not allowed to see her. She was smiling and very much at peace.

She reached over and took my brother’s hand. She replied “I will be much better very soon. Now you better go before you get into trouble.” My brother and I snuck back upstairs unnoticed and never spoke of what we did for fear of punishment. The next day, as I came home for dinner, I met my visibly shaken Uncle on the back steps. “She’s gone.” was all he said as he swept by me.

The story does not end there.

Fast forward to 1975. I had just met a girl from out of town and we started dating. On the day I took her to my home for the first time, I naturally showed her around the place. My Grandmother’s bedroom had been transformed into a music studio complete with instruments stands, amps, speakers, and the whole nine yards. She took one step across the threshold and immediately jumped back with a startled cry.

“What’s wrong?” I said. “I can’t go in there, somebody died in that room”. She was much shaken and required consoling. All the time she was in that house after that, she never went into that room again. In our years together after that she showed other signs of heightened sensitivity but that’s another story. We went our separate ways years later.
Again going forward to 2007, my present wife stayed at what was now my Father’s home. My Grandmother’s room had been switched back into a bedroom and it was the first time for her to sleep there. She described to me being awaken in the middle of the night by someone in the room. In the light from the street light outside she could see a woman standing at the foot of her bed looking at her with a peaceful smile on her face. She described the woman to me. It matched exactly my Grandmother. I had never told her of my Nan or what happened in that room……………..

As I said earlier, I have no faith in religion. What I do believe is that there is a life force in us that makes us the individuals we all are. Set free by death, it reveals itself from time to time. Is there a God? Do we have souls? After I saw my Nan laying there on the bed, I grew older constantly questioning my “faith”.

There were other things that happened to me. I seemed to be receptive to certain happenings which were at first troubling and strange. Today, much older and wiser, I look at this objectively and accept that there must be something other than out physical bodies that make us who we are and probably will be after we die.

                                     

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Launch of the Newsletter

The first official newsletter for N.S.P.E. was launched on October 1, 2017. Many of you, my eager readers, received it and so far the feedback has been encouraging.

Why make a newsletter, you ask?

In that first edition, I answered that question.

The blog itself was created out of a need to record events, happenings and unusual activity in an old creaky house that is just shy of 150 years and luckily, has stayed in my family for all of those years. I would never want the memories to be gone and forgotten. Therefore, this blog you are reading was born. Plus, it opens the door for intriguing discussions on various paranormal topics. We all want the answers to what goes bump in the night.

So then it occurred to me that an informative, yet succinct newsletter with a creepy topic sent out to subscribers would also be a great way to introduce things that may be of paranormal interest, but aren't covered in-depth on the blog.

 So the first edition was born.

I aim to keep the newsletter fairly simple, yet interesting and hopefully encourage people to think just a little bit more about an unusual topic they otherwise wouldn't read about every day.

Naturally, you go to your favorite news websites for daily updates and to Facebook for social online interaction. I want the Nova Scotia Paranormal Events blog to be the place you go for all that is weird and unexplained or you just feel like you want a good case of the "heebie-jeebies".

We have changed our distribution of the newsletter as of December 2017. 

Currently, and going forward, the newsletters will be posted to:

The Nova Scotia Paranormal Events Newsletter Blog. <--link

Please join us there regularly to keep up with informative, paranormal subjects!

When Your Grandmother Comes to Visit

Most people like when their grandparents visit them. Who doesn’t love hugs and homemade cookies from their “Nannies”? The problem begins when the visiting grandparents should NOT be there….because they died many, many years ago.

The house described in this blog is where my mother and son now live. My mother was born there. My grandmother, Elizabeth (“Lizzie” as she was known by), was also born there. And so on, back to about the 1870’s. She died in 1981 at the age of 91. However, I am not sure she got the memo about how you shouldn’t hang around your former residence after you pass away. There have been plenty of signs over the years that she is still there.

Firstly, people have seen her. My son was upstairs in a bedroom using a computer when he was about fifteen. Suddenly, he could sense someone peeking in the partially open door from the hallway. When he looked, he saw an old lady standing there, sort of glaring at him. He was stunned and looked back at the computer and then back to the doorway but she was still there. She stood there for several minutes.

Scott looked away from her again and when he looked back she was gone. He had seen enough pictures of her over the years to recognize her. Gathering all his courage, he bolted from the room and flew down the stairs, waking his grandmother with the story of what had just happened.

We suspect this is not the first time Scott’s great-grandmother has visited him from the great beyond. When he was younger and we lived there for a while, he clearly remembers on several occasions, someone creeping into his room after I had tucked him into bed for the night. This “person” would usually sit down on his bed and lay their hand on his back for a few minutes. He was terrified so he never took his face out of his pillow to see what was there but it wasn’t me or his grandmother and we were the only other ones in the house. We cannot ascertain for sure that it was his great-grandmother but it certainly could have been, given her history.

Secondly, my nephew also had a sighting of my grandmother in the house. When he was about seven or eight and visiting for the weekend, he came in the kitchen one day to ask the family about the old lady he had just seen sitting on the bed in the upstairs spare room petting the cat. My mother asked him what the lady looked like and he described Lizzie perfectly. She had been dead many years at this point.

I had an aunt who visited every summer from Ontario and she reported that one night while sleeping in that spare upstairs bedroom, she awoke to find Lizzie standing right beside the bed with arms outstretched, like she was reaching towards her. Again, the woman had been long dead.

She also seemed to manifest herself in other ways. My mother often reported smelling a sweet perfume in certain areas of the house that she associated with Lizzie. And she is quite convinced that Lizzie even called her on the phone one Easter Sunday many years ago. When she answered the phone, she could hear a lot of static and a far-away woman’s voice saying “Hello? Hello?”, which she is certain was her mother.

Lizzie was an interesting old lady, to say the least. She was perpetually cranky, had her favorite relatives and shunned the rest. We moved in so my mother could look after her when I was five years old but she did not interact with us grandchildren the way most grandmothers do. I don’t remember a lot about her but I do know she was rather fussy and set in her ways. always had a crock pot of her homemade wine brewing and she wasn’t the easiest person for my family to live with.

But she loved her house and was adamant about never leaving it. And I guess she didn’t.

(This is not a true representation of my grandmother

but you get the idea)

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Who Are These Ghosts in My House and Why Do They Never Bring Us Breakfast in Bed?

If you have read any of the other blog posts here, you will recall that some of them contain the true accounts from various family members who have reported the materialization of a ghost/spirit/dead person right in front of their eyes, myself included.

After spending the last couple of days at the house, the conversation I was having with my mother turned to the afterlife activity in the house, as it almost always does. Side note: During the two days I was there, nothing out of the ordinary happened. But that is the nature of the paranormal world. They do not materialize on command or on a regular schedule. They do what they want, when they want.

It is important to note that aside from a little boy ghost and the ghost of my grandmother that have been seen over the years, most of the other apparition sightings in the house, are/were (?) people that we have no idea who they are. If they are long-gone relatives, my mother cannot figure out who they are. So yes, they seem like random people just showing up. If there is such a thing as a portal to someplace else, are random ghosts from “the other side” going through it and ending up in the house? I have no idea, it’s just a crazy theory, but I can tell you the sighting I am about to describe is also a ghost who had no ties to the house or its property or the inhabitants of the house.

This sighting occurred just two weeks ago, in July 2017. My mother was happily enjoying the afternoon sunshine in her lawn chair on the doorstep. Very suddenly, a man came walking across the lawn from the direction of the driveway towards the doorstep where she was sitting. She watched him intently and he sat down on the doorstep, VERY close to her. No words were exchanged. She could see his face but has never seen him before in her life, as I previously mentioned. She said he was wearing a Hawaiian-type shirt which was yellow and red. He also wore a ball cap and had curly grey-ish hair. He was smoking a cigarette and he smiled at her. Then in the next instant, he was gone.

If you are reading this at night, and you are alone, and you hear a door creaking when it shouldn’t be or feel like someone is watching you (they probably are), don’t say I didn’t warn you.

                               

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