So a Relative and Her Deceased Grandmother Walk Into a Psychic Medium’s Office…

This post is a little bit different from what I usually write about. This time I am going to take you down a different paranormal rabbit hole. You’re probably tired of reading about yet another one of the unexplained noises in my house or how I blamed a ghost for taking my belongings again.

This is not something that happened to me directly or occurred in my haunted house but I definitely need to get it out there for obvious reasons you are about to see. I have been sitting on it for about two years and only a handful of family members and a couple of close friends know what I am about to tell you.

So for those of you wanting something a little different but still related to the afterlife and the world of the paranormal, I give you the following:

I would very much like to preface this post by briefly telling you my thoughts on psychic mediums. This is integral to what you are about to read so bear with me.

There are generally two kinds of people: those that believe some people have psychic ability and those that declare it impossible. Then there’s me, who camps out somewhere in the middle of those two. The reasons I am in the middle are quite simple:

1.     I have visited a reputed real psychic two times. She was the fortune-telling kind of psychic, not the “let’s talk to your dead relatives” psychic-medium kind. The first time was purely out of fun and curiosity. The second time, because she was just that good (decades-old newspaper articles state she has helped the police solve crimes). Not only did she tell me many things about myself in the present that were true, she also told me much about my past which was also true. And many, but not all, of her future predictions about me have come true. I won’t know she was 100% right about all of it until I am on my deathbed, obviously.

2.     I believe there are people with some degree of psychic and psychic-medium ability. I say “some” because I really don’t think it’s possible for those people to be tuned in to those abilities at the rate the popular tv shows want you to believe. The Teresa Caputos, the John Edwards, the Tyler Henrys of the world are on tv for one reason: to make their networks money. The footage of them doing their thing is extremely edited for time and ratings. You may see them claim to contact people’s deceased relatives with eerie accuracy but you will never see all the times they missed it, all the times they got nowhere, all the times they struck out sitting there in front of their disappointed subjects while the crickets chirp. That wouldn’t make for a very good show (although personally I’d love to see those parts) from the perspective of the producers and networks. I don’t doubt some of those people have some ability to talk to people’s dead grandmas. I just don’t believe it is constantly ongoing for them and that they hit the mark every time like they portray or claim to be able to do. But tv shows are a big business so they have to churn out something that audiences will watch.

 The most important reason I am precariously perched in the middle of believing and not believing is because I have done it myself—had contact with the spirit of  a deceased person that is. Does that make me a psychic medium? No, it certainly doesn’t. I couldn’t be further from that, although it seems like something I would quite enjoy.

But it does prove that contact between the dead and living is absolutely possible, with or without a medium as a conduit. I have proven this a handful of times and written about it on the blog when interaction with a spirit took place, either involving myself or someone else in my house.

Which brings me to the point of this post, finally.

There are several ways a spirit can make contact with the living. I talk about them often on this blog. As we all know, they can just show up, or speak to you, come to you in a dream, or even call on the phone. It happens.

Or they hit up a psychic medium and communicate to you, through them.

 In 2023, my mother had passed away and our family members were trying to navigate our way throughout that whole process and our somewhat new lives without her.

A few months went by. As Christmas was on the horizon, my son, Scott had the creative idea to gather many of his beloved grandmother’s handwritten favorite recipes and organize them into a book, which he had printed for many of our family members. He included pictures of her in her kitchen baking and pictures of her house. It was such a beautiful idea and we all loved the finished product very much. He had given us our copies about 2 weeks prior to Christmas.

Also around this time, my niece, Emma had decided to have a Christmas ornament made for her father, with her grandmother’s picture on it. She knew he would love to have something personal and meaningful related to his mother. She had ordered it but had not received it yet. She told no one about this ornament, except her boyfriend who lived in another province.

Emma had not put anything on social media regarding the cookbook or ornament.

A short time before Christmas, Emma made an appointment with a psychic medium she had heard about. She was curious and excited about the upcoming reading as this particular lady was renowned for being accurate with an uncanny ability. Missing her grandmother terribly, she hoped she would come through in the reading and make contact. In fact, the night before the appointment, Emma talked to her grandmother and asked her if she was capable of making contact, to talk about the cookbook. Then she would know this was absolutely the real deal—that the psychic medium was genuine, and that her grandmother was absolutely making contact from the beyond. A collection of recipes bound and printed into a hardcover book is not something that anyone would just guess at.

Afterwards, Emma contacted me to tell me what had transpired.

As it turns out, when Emma sat down with the medium, one of the first things she said to Emma was something along the lines of, “Your grandmother is coming through. She passed recently.” Her presence was strong and happy, laughing and talkative.

Then the medium said, “And she loves the cookbook.”

The medium also told Emma that her grandmother wanted to mention that there was an important cake recipe that did not get included in the book.

(Later, a few us wondered which recipe she meant. She had probably hundreds written down and saved so we can’t be sure).

The medium also revealed that my mother wanted to convey that she loved the Christmas ornament that Emma was having made for her father.

Rightfully so, Emma was shocked, delighted and knowing her as I do, she probably had the hair on the back of her neck standing up as she was told all of these things.

There were other confirmed statements relayed by my mother (Emma’s grandmother) through the medium that day that one hundred percent solidified the fact that the entire session was completely legit. Emma was also told about a few other personal things concerning her nanny that very few would know and were not public knowledge, which she later confirmed with her father to be true.

This post is not to convince anyone of the validity of psychic mediums. If you want that verification, you could always go to one and see for yourself.

This post is to inform you that spirits sometimes want to communicate with us in whichever way they choose and often that means communicating through a capable third party.

It’s just that simple. Let’s not over-complicate it.

NSPE Newsletters

 

 

 

Evidence Captured

 

Often, when my mom and I would discuss the paranormal activity in the house, she would mention that she thought it occurred in cycles. That is, several things would happen for a few weeks, then it would quiet down for awhile and then start up again. This went on for many many years. And still does.

In hindsight, I doubt the “cycle” of activity is technically true and it’s probably more of a case of we, the living, not noticing every haunted event that happens. This can be for a multitude of reasons such as: we aren’t paying attention all the time, we aren’t home all the time, we aren’t in the same room or within earshot when things happen, just to name a few reasons. On the other hand, no place is haunted every minute of every day. Ghosts do what they want when they want. There is no schedule. It is random. They come and go.

Having said that, as I mentioned on a previous post, I am not noticing paranormal activity in the house at the rate I used to, most likely due to the fact that I am now home  less often. I am going to the office part time now. So while it has been quieter, ghost-wise, lately some very interesting things have happened within the last few weeks.

Also as previously mentioned, I have become acquainted with a team of local paranormal investigators. They have done a 3 part investigation at our house and shared some of their findings with us. In the near future, I will be provided with all the investigation details once they wrap it all up. This was purely done out of curiosity on my part, to see what could be captured by people with the proper equipment who know what they are doing. Of course we know the house is haunted but obtaining some video or audio footage from the afterlife was my goal. My ghosts did not disappoint on the occasions the team had visited. A future blog post will entail everything encompassing the entire investigation so stay tuned for that.

However, I do want to provide a peek into what happened when Nova Paranormal Research (Tom and Isaiah) had visited.

I want to preface this by saying it is one thing to know your house is haunted but very difficult to nail down some concrete evidence of a haunting. It is difficult because ghosts aren’t prone to posing for pictures. And if you hear one, by the time you get something to record with, the activity may very well be over. I have done it a few times in the past through photography and an accidental audio recording and the more of that you have, the closer you are to connecting with the afterlife and the closer you are to contributing to solving one of life’s greatest mysteries: what happens to us after we die? There are people who say there are no such things as ghosts, spirit activity, or an afterlife. You may be one of them. I know people who have SEEN ghosts who still shrug it off.

There is a high probability that the spirit world exists in a different realm or dimension. Why would it exist, you ask? What makes you think it wouldn’t exist, I ask.

Nova Paranormal Research investigated the house in September, October and November.

On the first visit, my pantry proved to be one of the hotspots for picking up weird things. Later when they reviewed their recordings, a conversation could be heard in the pantry between two people. Those present that night were not in the pantry during the recordings. Tom and Isaiah presented the audio recording to me on their return visit.

It is a very clear, obvious conversation, where a young female voice says, “I am done with my food.” Immediately following that, an older female voice replies to her with one word; “Good”.

Hearing a spirit say something is exciting to say the least. I’ve experienced it several times in my life. But to hear a spirit say something and then it’s followed by a response from another spirit is quite something. This is an actual conversation happening between these two. Was it residual, like a playback of a previous day that is imprinted in time when they were alive? Or was it happening the night of the investigation? Either way, that’s some good solid proof of a conversation between two ghosts.

On the third visit, the paranormal team picked up more pantry talk. A camera was rolling, capturing the kitchen, pantry and part of the dining room area. A voice recorder was also on. Some attendees that evening were upstairs doing the investigative thing while myself, Shaun and Tom (the Pro) were in the kitchen. All was quiet. Super quiet. We even removed the batteries from all the ticking clocks in the house to keep everything silent while recording.

Sitting close to the pantry, Tom asked a few questions in that direction, such as who is around, what is your name, that sort of thing in the hopes of getting a response. Imagine our surprise when his final question, How old are you?  was actually answered by some unseen spirit/ghost/entity in the pantry.

A female voice answered: “80”.

Tom looked at me and asked, “Did you just hear that?”

I told him I most definitely did. Shaun also heard it.

We paused everything and played back the audio from the voice recorder, multiple times actually. “80” was the answer over and over.

So now we had a spirit communicating directly with us. A question was asked, and she answered it. Many many times the voices that come through on an EVP recording can only be heard during playback of the audio. It is highly unusual to hear it like you would if you were talking to a live person.

Again, we were pretty excited to have captured this. I tried to think which female member lived to the age of 80 in my house. My mother was 92, my grandmother was 91. The next day, I whipped out the family tree details and discovered my great-great- grandmother, Catherine (Kate) died from a heart attack here in the house when she was 80.

The pantry has had a multitude of paranormal events in it over the years. In 2016, I had written a blog post discussing these. You can read about it here:

The Pantry

 

Not mentioned on that post but also a significant event, quite a few years ago, my mother had several guests over. The kitchen was usually the gathering place, as it was that day. The pantry is just off the kitchen. During this get together, those facing the pantry looked on in bewilderment as a coffee cup hanging on a hook in the pantry suddenly was no longer on the hook and was floating in mid-air for an astonishing amount of time before dropping to the floor.

Another incident I had mentioned on another post last year was the mysterious giant crashing sound I heard one evening that seemed to come from either the kitchen or pantry. I was in the living room but went to investigate what sounded exactly like every one of my pots and pans crashing to the floor. They all sit very securely on solid shelves in the pantry. I don’t have any in the kitchen. I looked around all the areas but could find nothing out of place.

I still can’t say that one room or area of our house is more haunted than the rest. Unexplained things seem to happen all over. However, the pantry has seen its fair share of paranormal activity.

I am very much looking forward to getting the rest of the investigation results. There could be more voices and conversations—I do not know yet. Lots of other things were also captured during the 3 times Tom and Isaiah and their impressive equipment were here. I will relay it all to you in the near future.

This blog post is just a reminder; some houses have ghosts. Yours may not but mine does. If recorded voices of spirit conversations and flat out asking a ghost a question and it giving you the answer doesn’t convince you, maybe you’ll change your mind when I report on the rest of the investigation.

I am not trying to convince you. You can believe in whatever you want. Just know that my house has turned a few skeptics into believers and has caused others to think twice about coming to visit or heaven forbid---spend the night.

NSPE Newsletters

The September Paranormal Activity and How I Got Scared Half to Death

 

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know we are rarely lacking for paranormal activity. We usually do not have long stretches of time where nothing ghostly is happening. Prior to this past June, I spent almost every day in the house as I worked from home. As a result, I was witness to whatever shenanigans the resident ghosts were up to. This made for many blog posts and updates due to their ongoing activity.

Over the summer, my days spent at home were less frequent as I returned to the office part time. As my husband was also gone to work on certain days, this only left Winston, (the cat) to keep an eye on the place in our absence. If he saw or heard anything unusual during the days he was home alone, he has not told us about it. In his defense, he pretty much only talks about food anyway.

Therefore, I don’t have the usual volume of encounters to relay to you as I was only present on the haunted premises part of the time.

But I can tell you about the following occurrences.

September 10 was a day I was home alone working. It was early in the afternoon when I heard a very loud bang. This was not a knock or rapping sound. It was quite literally one BANG and not only did I hear it (as did Winston), I felt it. This entire house shook for about 2 seconds. Of course, as usual, I got up to go investigate. If an aircraft fell out of the sky onto my house, I’m gonna need to see that. I looked out all directions of the house. Nothing was found.

You’re probably thinking ‘earthquake’. Nova Scotia does not really have earthquakes. I say “not really” because we did actually have a little tiny one on September 16 (an unusual event for our province) but I believe it was in the very early morning hours (maybe 1 or 2 a.m.) and was not felt by us as we slept. Some residents in nearby communities reported feeling it, however. And as you can see, I heard/felt the bang on September 10 and the mini earthquake was on September 16.

You’re probably still thinking ‘earthquake’—like a preceding one leading up to the positively-identified one on September 16. Here are the reasons I do not believe the bang on September 10 was an earthquake:

-I’ve seen enough movies to know earthquakes generally create a rumbling sound of varying degrees and do not make a banging sound. There was no rumbling.

.-Buildings move slightly (or completely), dishes rattle in the cabinets, overhead lights sway, that sort of thing. None of this happened when the bang was heard. It was just a loud bang on the premises and the vibration of that bang caused the house to shake for 2 seconds. There is no other way to describe it. Earthquakes don’t do that.

-There is nothing under my house except a dirt cellar and pipes and nothing on the surrounding property that could cause a sudden bang. Nothing exploded or fell over.

Conversely, here are the reasons I think it was probably something paranormal:

This is not the first time this has happened here. My mother had told me about two incidents over the years where this exact same loud bang happened and the entire house shook. Both turned out to be forerunners---which is a paranormal prediction that a death in the family would soon happen (usually within 3 days). On one of these occasions, several people heard the bang in question and they all looked around as they were sure something either exploded or a car drove off the road into the house. The source was never found. But the deaths did occur. It has been 30 days since I heard the mysterious bang and no one in the family has died, thank goodness, so while I do not believe the bang was a forerunner, I do consider it paranormal.

What do I base that assumption on?

I base it on this: Unexplained noises in our house and on our property are always ongoing. If you’ve read the blog, you know we experience knocks, footsteps, rappings, music, voices, doors slamming, just to name a few. Bangs are also part of that—big and small. Yes, once in a while a noise can be heard that we can positively identify (wind, a mouse trap in the cellar snapping shut, a dumb squirrel who needs extrication from the bay window area—that sort of thing). But the unexplained mysterious noises are part of the mix and when investigated, no logical reason for them can be found. This brings us to paranormal explanations.

This would be a good time to point out that at the exact moment I heard the bang on September 10, I was texting with an acquaintance about his upcoming paranormal investigation of our house. We were discussing the house and the details of our upcoming get together when the bang happened.

So now you’re thinking: “Okay, it wasn’t an earthquake and if you think it was paranormal, then WHY? What in the world of paranormal activity causes such a noise?”

I ask the same exact questions. I really wish I could answer them with some certainty.

Fast forward 8 days. I happened to be at the office but mid-afternoon started to feel unwell and decided to call it a day and left for home. Once at home, I thought I’d lay down on my bed for a bit, due to the aforementioned crappy feeling. Winston was laying on my bedroom floor. The house was completely and peacefully quiet. I had been laying there for about 2 minutes when I heard “something” either in the largest spare bedroom or out in the walk-in attic. It wasn’t footsteps or shuffling around or furniture being moved. It sounded like someone had picked something up and set it down again loudly. I glanced at Winston to see if he was reacting to this noise. He was---his eyes were big and his ears perked up and he was staring intently out into the hall. I decided I probably was not going to get any rest so I headed downstairs, but I did glance in those rooms on my way by in case something was visible. It wasn’t.

We were alone in the house. Well, as alone as you can be in a haunted house.

A few days later another incident occurred. This one happens quite often actually. I was upstairs in my bedroom when I heard footsteps coming down the hallway. These are 154 year old floorboards we are talking about. When someone walks on them, you hear it.  As I heard it, I wondered if it was Shaun, although I had not heard him come up the stairs but as I was pondering this, I could hear him doing something outside with his noisy aluminum ladder. This confirmed it was not him walking down the hall. I was alone. Well, as I mentioned, as alone as you can be here.

And then a few days later, I had one of the biggest frights of all. It was a Saturday and I had been hoping to sleep in but that almost never happens due to that ole pattern of getting up early every work day and your body refuses to sleep past six or seven on the weekends. But that doesn’t stop me from trying.

Anyway, I had heard Shaun come up the stairs and go out into the walk-in attic. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep so I decided to get up. I walked down the haunted hallway and stopped dead in my tracks when I was almost at the staircase, right in front of the spare bedroom door. There stood a person right in that bedroom doorway, looking at me silently. I could hardly believe my half-opened eyes and gasped. The moment I did, however, I realized that the person standing there was indeed Shaun. He wasn’t intentionally trying to scare the you-know-what out of me. He just happened to be there at that moment and decided to stay quiet so as not to startle me. That plan did not really work. You can’t do stuff like that in a genuinely haunted house.

The funny (and you might find this fact surprising) thing about ghosts and spirits is of all of the ones that have been seen on these premises, not a single one of them was ethereal and transparent. All of them appeared to be solid and life-like (except for the 2 swirly black misty shadow-ghost apparitions). But the ones who are clearly the ghost of whoever, looked just like you and me.

I was about to declare this blog entry as complete until a few days ago when yet another weirdo thing happened. And although it technically happened in October and this was supposed to be a September update, I’ll throw it in anyway. I cannot definitively say this incident is paranormal but I cannot imagine what else it could possibly be. I know every nook and cranny of this entire house and every single sound it is capable of making and what happened on this day is completely unexplainable.

Picture it: once again I was home alone. It was lunch time so I was in the midst of making something to eat when an acquaintance (Bob) stopped by to have a preliminary look in the kitchen area for some upcoming work he has been hired to do. He knows nothing of the paranormal activity that goes on here. I am also not about to tell him. He will be here working for a few days and I don’t need him fleeing the premises due to paranormal encounters.

As soon as he came through the door and he stood in the kitchen, a loud crazy noise came out of the dining room. Winston was in the kitchen with me (where else would he be at meal times?). The only way I can describe the noise is it sounded similar to a squelchy screechy interference noise, like if you held two walkie-talkies together and pressed the buttons and got that irritating feedback sound. Only it was extremely loud. There are no walkie-talkies in my house. There is an Echo Dot speaker hooked up to the stereo in a cabinet in the dining room but the stereo was turned off and the Echo speaker is always on mute, as I confirmed shortly thereafter that it still was muted. No sound could have come from the stereo.

As we were both startled by this sudden burst of noise, Bob looked at me and I looked at him, both of us quite unsure what was happening. I asked him if that was his phone making such a strange sound, even though it was clear it came from the dining room but I didn’t know what else to say. I couldn’t very well say, ‘Oh don’t mind that racket, it’s just a ghost expressing its displeasure at the work you are about to do’, now could I?

Bob said the noise did not come from him and that he had left his phone outside in his truck. Which, of course, I already knew it did not come from Bob. It definitely came from my house.

I changed the subject pretty quick and we talked about the work he was going to do and he left. I hope he wasn’t too bothered by what happened. I need him back here next week.

I took a few random pictures of my dining room after Bob left, hoping something would materialize but a review of the pics showed nothing unusual.

Again I have to reiterate, this was not really a noise I have actually heard before. It was similar to the walkie-talkie noise I described but doesn’t 100% capture how it sounded. It was definitely abnormal so it’s getting filed under ‘paranormal’ as I can’t logically explain it.

Lastly, I think it should be noted that as we are constantly renovating different areas of the house, the home office/computer area is currently being moved to an upstairs unused bedroom. Why am I telling you this? Because LOTS of times when I am downstairs, I hear noises, footsteps and movement from that bedroom. It was the room that was the source of the “3 thumps forerunner” three days before my mother’s death. It was my bedroom throughout my childhood. It was my son’s bedroom for a few years. We can both testify to the fact that lots of paranormal things happened in there. But then again, they happen in every room of the house.

I am finishing this blog post from that room, fairly late at night, lit only by a dim desk lamp. I do not scare easy.

So am I going to continue to hear things from the bedroom in question while I am sitting in it? Am I going to hear more footsteps on the stairs and out in the hall, as they are right outside the door? Is the door going to creak open all by itself?

Time will tell. You’ll be the first to know. Stay tuned.

NSPE Newsletters

Positively Identifying Our Ghosts

 

You might not be comfortable with this fact but back in the mid to late 1800s, there were no hospitals or funeral homes nearby like there are today. When any of our ancestors who lived in my house became ill, the doctor would make a house call and if need be, perform surgery right here in this house. If the patient didn’t make it—and some did not—the funeral was held in what is now my living room and home office space. This was common practice. Back then, they called it “the good room”, which was fancier than the other rooms in the house and it was only used when someone as dignified as a clergy member would come visit or you needed to have a funeral. When we visited my grandmother here before moving here, we were never allowed in the good room. Heaven forbid we disturb the pristine condition of the room.

But I digress.

So the doctor would knock out the patient with whatever he had: chloroform, ether, laughing gas, opium or alcohol (homemade moonshine comes to mind) and proceed to   lay out the victim..I mean ‘patient’ …on the kitchen table (yes the kitchen table! I guess he needed the most sturdy surface in the house and at a good height to operate from) and slice them open to attempt to cure the patient.

This horrifying set up is enough to imbed the fear and near-death turmoil into the old lathe walls, roof and very foundation of this house. And if you didn’t survive and your funeral is being set up the next day in the parlour room, that would just put the final nail in the coffin, no pun intended. The more traumatic the death, the more likely the site is to be haunted.

So that might be all the reason you need when you ask why are there ghosts in my house?? And maybe why there aren’t any in yours.

Of course, this is not the only reason for ghosts and spirits to lurk around. I would imagine there are many.

Speaking of being haunted, in addition to being asked by people if I have recently seen any ghosts in our house, I also often get asked if I know who exactly these ghosts are.

Of all the reported sightings (by myself and others) only a handful could be positively identified.

Below is a list of the positive identifications we have made over the years. Bear in mind, we can only I.D. the ones we have actually seen and cannot say with 100% certainty who is responsible for the myriad of noises (footsteps, knocks, bangs, voices, etc) that happen. Who is causing those is anyone’s guess.

The ghost seen most often is my maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Ramey (Lizzie).

 I have written about her a fair amount elsewhere on the blog, largely due to the fact of the number of times she has been seen in the house long after her death.

Background info:

She was born in our house in 1891 and lived to be 90 years old. We attribute this milestone age to a few different things:

#1: Luck. Back in those days, a bout of the flu or something much less curable such as tuberculosis was taking out people left, right and center. So the fact that she escaped all the potentially lethal diseases she could have contracted was pretty impressive.

#2. Medications. Remember the large 4 liter ice cream containers you used to be able to buy? My grandmother had one of those FULL of pills that her so-called doctor prescribed for her--even though there was very little, if anything, wrong with her. All she had to do was show him a broken fingernail and he’d shove 6 prescriptions at her. She loved it. Also, she was known to get into a bottle of brandy and her homemade chokecherry wine several times a day. I would say she felt pretty good most of the time from this combination, which possibly contributed to prolonging her life.

#3. Attitude. To say some of the Joudreys were stubborn is a bit of an understatement   from what I heard about some of them over the years. My grandmother 100% had this trait. (I may also have it). So when she insisted that she was never leaving her house for any reason, she meant it. She was completely against going into any nursing home or anything else even remotely resembling one and was hell bent on staying in her house until her dying day.

So she did manage to live in her house right up until the last few days of her life (which she spent in the hospital) and true to her word, she has never entirely left the house as she has been seen here multiple times following her death in 1981.

Number of times she has been seen: 5

Number of witnesses to Lizzie’s ghost: 3 (2 people saw her twice)

Evidence besides eye witness testimony: She showed up in a photograph taken of the outside of the house many years after her death. Her face is very clearly in a window. (see ghost #3 below)

Conclusion: Obviously, she is not here constantly. But based on the reports of her spirit seen on the premises 5 times, I can say with 100% certainty that she definitely comes to visit. In 3 out of the 5 sightings, she was interacting with the witness and not simply appearing suddenly in a residual kind of way, oblivious to her own whereabouts.

When I say interacting, this is what I mean:

Two of the incidents involved her staring menacingly at the witnesses. She could see them. They could see her; just like an interaction between two living people. In a third incident, she stood next to my aunt who was in bed and had her arms outstretched towards her, as if she wanted an embrace. Again, they were clearly seeing each other.

She has been interactive in other ways also. One time, quite a few years after her death, she called my mother on the phone. And many years ago I heard her call my name when I was in the kitchen.

Do I believe she is still here? Most definitely. I concluded that the ongoing noises in the dining room when no one is in there is likely her shuffling around and moving about because she always sat in her rocking chair in that room beside the window. It was her favorite spot. I fully expect to see her one day.

 

The second ghost we have positively identified is Willie Joudrey.

Background info:

He was the son of my great-great-grandparents and Willie’s father, Simeon, built our house. When Willie was 5, he came down with the measles and died here in 1873.

Around the year 2000, I was asleep in an upstairs bedroom when I was awoken by the bedroom door opening. When your door opens in this house in the middle of the night, you sit up and take notice. There stood a small boy. Part of me knew this was not my son, who was also 5 and supposed to be asleep across the hall in his room. But I was trying to be reasonable. And there were no other children on the premises. I was 100% not asleep and dreaming this.

I immediately got up, at which time the boy laughed and turned and ran out into the hall from the direction he had come from. I followed but found no one in the hall. I went in my son’s room. He was asleep. Sound asleep—I checked in case this was some prank by him. It definitely wasn’t.

The next day while telling my mother of this incident, she concluded it was probably little Willie, based on the ancestral tree of those who have lived and died here.

Number of times he has been seen: 1

Number of witnesses to Willie’s ghost: 1

Evidence besides eye witness testimony: Previously on the blog, I recounted the incident of mysterious child-size footprints that appeared on the living room floor mid-renovation.

Refresh your memory here:   LINK

As we know there is a child ghost in the house (because I have seen him) these footprints could belong to him. Other young family members have also died here in the 1800s so I cannot say with 100% certainty the footprints are Willie’s but it is very likely.

When my son was young, he would often refer to an imaginary playmate and sometimes wanted a place set at the table for him. Once, I heard him outside playing in the snow having a conversation with someone, but when I looked he was out there all by himself. This does not mean he was interacting with a ghost but it’s a possibility since they were, and are, on the premises.

Within the last year there was also a day when I heard little quick footsteps on the stairs, which seemed like what a child would sound like if they were going up or coming down the stairs. Once, again, I attributed this to Willie.

Conclusion:

We know he’s around ever since his appearance in my bedroom that night. He probably had a traumatic death here being sick with the measles with little to no treatment as anti-virals hadn’t been invented yet. He appeared to me once, maybe he will show up again. Let’s do it in the daytime next, okay, Willie? Unfortunately, I do not have a picture of him.

 

The third identifiable ghost is my father, Murray.

Background info:

He died in our house in 1981 from a sudden massive heart attack at age 51.

Number of times he has been seen: 1, in a photograph taken many years after his death.

Number of witnesses to Murray’s ghost: 0

Evidence besides eye witness testimony: While my father has not been seen in the traditional sense like other ghosts have, there are indications he has been around. I have included him in this post about “ghosts we’ve seen” because the picture I took of the outside of the house one day shows him clearly in the dining room window, above the ghost of my grandmother (Lizzie), who died the same year he did. That's his face in the top circle, looking off to the side, while my grandmother (bottom circle) appears to be looking straight ahead, at me. This is pretty solid proof he has been here after his death. My mother was sure he was responsible for the kitchen light coming on by itself not long after he died, although she was assuming so once again, we cannot be completely certain it was him.

The picture:

My father for comparison:

Conclusion:

The picture speaks for itself. I was innocently playing with my camera that day and decided to take a few shots of the house. When I took a closer look at my amateur photography, I was quite astounded to see my father and grandmother looking out the window. If this is not proof that these two were posing for the camera that day, then I don’t know what is. Showing up unexpectedly in a picture is the same as materializing right in front of someone. It’s still proof a ghost was here.

 

So this is three of our ghosts that we can actually put a name to. Who the other spirits are/were (and there were lots of sightings spanning many years) who like to drop in from time to time is anyone’s guess. A long list of relatives have lived here since 1871. Any one of them could come back at any time. And this doesn’t account for the 5 ghosts my mother has seen on the premises, which she could not identify. Or the one my brother saw in an upstairs bedroom in the 80’s who he could not identify. Or the one I saw in the upstairs hallway in 1996 who I could not identify.

It has been fairly quiet as far as ghostly activity is concerned over the last couple of months. As I have mentioned quite a few times, this is normal. No one has ghosts 24 hours a day 7 days a week. I don’t know why but that’s just not how they operate. Of course, they could be around more and we just don’t happen to notice. I have reminded them they better get their act together as I have blog to write so hopefully something will happen again soon.

Lastly, for those of you who aren’t aware, our house was recently written about in the book “Even More Ghost Stories of Nova Scotia” by the award-winning author, Vernon Oickle, published in August 2025. I suggest you pick up a copy of this intriguing new release as soon as possible. There’s lots of haunted places in Nova Scotia you need to know about.

LOTS.

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When The Unexplained Activity is NOT a Ghost

 

Our experiences with the paranormal are not just about ghosts. Our haunting has been ongoing for many years and the ghosts often make their presence known, but other very strange things have happened here that had nothing to do with ghosts or the afterlife. I kid you not.

The following topics were previously mentioned on the blog but they bear repeating for those of you who may have missed them or if you just need a reminder. These events actually happened. The haunting does not stand alone.

These all have one thing in common: they are completely unexplainable. We have our theories about some of them. Others, we were left forever wondering, “What the heck just happened?!”

I must advise you that the following events are super strange. I would not be surprised if you didn’t believe what you are about to read. But trust me on this…they did happen exactly as outlined below. All but one had witnesses.

 

Incident: A stranger is at the door.

Length of time it lasted: A half hour.

Creepy factor on a scale of 1-10: 9

Details:

 I had written about this first incident on the blog back in 2011. It happened a few years before that. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny September day. My son was in school and only my mother and I were home. I happened to be upstairs and I heard her calling me from downstairs. When I went down to see what she wanted, there was a man at the front door.

This would not be all that unusual, as sometimes people drop by for a multitude of reasons, except for the appearance of this individual. I have told a few people about what transpired that day and I still only have one way of describing this guy: he looked like he put on a human suit and wasn’t inside of it quite right. He appeared to be in his sixties and wore old-fashioned clothes, like he stepped out of a Sears catalogue from that same era. To be honest, I couldn’t quite believe my eyes: first, his ultra-strange appearance like he was in his body nearly sideways, and then he topped it off with that polyester outfit. It was a sight.

The second clue that something was really abnormal about this situation was the very odd feeling both my mother and I instantly got from this guy the minute we saw him. The longer we stood in front of him, the worse it became. It was the sensation you often read about where the hair on your arms stands on end and you get a prickly feeling throughout your whole body because something bad is about to happen. I have not had that feeling before nor since and have no desire to again.

I didn’t want my mother to deal with this guy so I positioned myself in front of her to inquire with this man about why he was gracing our doorstep. I asked him if I could help him. Not that I wanted to help him. I just wanted him gone but my mother raised me to be polite. He pointed to my vehicle, which was a Toyota 4Runner, and asked, “Is that your truck?”  He spoke normally. I don’t recall anything odd about his speech.

I could see past him to the road and the car he arrived in was parked on the shoulder. I didn’t take note of the make or model but it was an older car, probably built back in the days when cars were still made out of metal.

I told him it was mine and he said he ran out of gas and then asked if I would drive him to the gas station (about 2 miles away).

My gut feeling and the voice of reason inside my head and the hair standing up on my arms   warned me to do no such thing. This was going to be the part where the bad things happen. I just knew it.

I told him no. There was no way I was getting into any vehicle with this man. I then offered to go get gas for him and told him to go wait in his car until I got back. He handed me 10 dollars and went to his car. I told my mother to lock the doors and not let him in if he came back to the door while I was gone. I examined the money wondering what planet, literally, this guy was from. It looked like legit Canadian money, though.

I remember being at the pump thinking, “Just another normal day --putting gas in a can for an alien creature, nothing weird about that”. Yikes!

I came back with the gas a short time later. He was still waiting in his car. I tried to give him the change from the ten, but he told me to keep it. Okay, he’s a nice alien or creature or whatever the hell he was. He attempted to pour the gas in his tank but really succeeded in pouring about half of it on the ground, like he had zero clue how to pour anything anywhere.

He made no small talk. I tried not to stare at him but I know I did. How could I not? Then, he got in his car and drove off. It was not until this point that the feeling of being on high alert left my body.

I should point out he would have passed the gas station on his way by my place, unless he took the alternate road through the community he just drove through. But the whole thing still makes me wonder.

My mother and I discussed him after he was gone and for many years afterwards. The entire encounter was really unnerving. People we have told about this have wondered if he looked odd because maybe he was a burn or accident victim. Nope. That was not how he looked. He just looked like he was trying to dress like a human being but didn’t quite pull it off.

Our theory: We are quite sure this “man” was not from this planet and this is not because we had seen every alien encounter episode of Unsolved Mysteries. Sometimes, you just know.

 

Incident: Woken up in the middle of the night and someone from a faraway continent is standing by your bedside.

Length of time it lasted: 10 seconds

Creepy factor on a scale of 1-10: 10

Details:

As you know, I have talked and written a lot about the ghosts that have been seen and heard on our premises. You may think this next experience involved a ghost—after all, it happened in our very haunted house-- but as you will soon learn, it probably was not that.

This happened to my mother in September 1982. She had gone to bed and was asleep for quite awhile when something woke her up. My brother and I were upstairs in our bedrooms sound asleep unaware of what was taking place downstairs in our mother’s room. She opened her eyes to find a tall Asian woman standing beside her bed, staring down at her in a very unpleasant way. Until her dying day, my mother remembered vividly what this woman looked like; the Asian-style dress she had on, her features and her hair piled up on top of her head. Even though her room was dark, she could see the colors in the woman’s outfit and noted how dark and piercing her eyes were. She looked at my mother very sternly but did not speak.

My mother screamed, of course, and when she did, the woman disappeared. She had always been adamant that this was not a ghost. She had plenty of experience seeing those and felt this was something else. The fact that the person disappeared when my mother yelled out seems like ghostly activity to me but she was 100% completely sure it wasn’t that. She insisted this Asian person was definitely really standing by her bed and that she was not still asleep and dreaming. She was completely sane and did not hallucinate.

This was the only sighting of this woman in the house and no explanation of who she was,   where she came from (and where she disappeared to) was ever found. It bothered my mother more than any ghost she ever saw.

Our theory: Unsure. My mother surmised the mysterious Asian lady was maybe some sort of interdimensional being and just happened to end up in my mother’s bedroom. Seems as good of an explanation as any.

Incident: A strange shape appears overnight, burned into a bedroom carpet.

Length of time it lasted: 3 days

Creepy factor on a scale of 1-10: 7

Details:

I am thankful I had about 6 witnesses for this next one, otherwise no one would ever believe it. It was around 2003 or so. My husband and son and I were staying here for a while. I think it may have been around the Christmas holidays, which is the reason I lucked into 6 witnesses seeing this thing. I awoke one morning and after getting out of bed I happened to notice that near the bedroom door, there was a peculiar shape imbedded in the carpet.

I bent down to get a closer look. The carpet fibers were melted into the shape of a hoof.

A HOOF.

An unmistakable hoof.

This was not a case of pariedolia, where you see certain shapes or faces in innocent things like grilled cheese sandwiches or the side of a Tim Horton’s building. This was without a doubt, a hoof shape. And it was clearly burned into the carpet. Obviously this was very odd for many reasons.

1.    It was not there when we went to bed. It was very obvious. One of us would have noticed.

2.    We did not have any pets or animals at the time and certainly nothing with a hoof. And even if we did, it wouldn’t explain a burn mark in the carpet.

3.    There was only one hoof print. Not a pair. And not four like on a four legged animal. Just one.

4.    The burned hoof print shape was right inside the door, as if something stepped over the threshold with one leg/foot and made this burn mark.

5.    In my entire history of reading about all things creepy and paranormal, I have never once read about anything like this.

6.    How in the world did this get in the carpet and by what means?

I had my husband come take a look at it. He agreed it was a burn mark in the shape of a hoof and could offer no explanation for it. The next two days were when we had various family members visiting. I forced all of them to go upstairs and look at the mystery hoof print in the carpet. Every one of them was mystified. Some were terrified. Some swore to leave and never return because what the hell was going on in this house? Other than suggestions of a devil creature with one fiery hoof positioned in our doorway while we slept one night, thereby leaving an impression in the carpet, no one really knew what to think.

If this wasn’t mysterious enough, an even stranger thing happened. I swear on my life and everyone else’s life that I know that this is true: On the third day, the hoof print started to fade away. It was not as pronounced as it had been the previous two days. By day four, it was completely gone and carpet was back to normal, like nothing even happened. I had a couple of witnesses for that too and once I again I am grateful that others saw this besides me.

Our theory: A devil creature was here with one fiery hoof positioned in our doorway while we slept one night. Just standing there in the doorway, watching us sleep. I really don’t want to think this is true but I am all out of ideas.

Incident: Unexplained lights in our backyard. Two witnesses, one of which had the customary missing time problem.

Length of time it lasted: Hours.

Creepy factor on a scale of 1-10: 10+

This encounter was written about on my blog a few years ago by a family friend, who wished to remain anonymous. I will take 100 ghosts all at the same time rather than encounter anything like what happened in the story I am about to tell you.

It was the late 70’s. I was around 9 or 10 years old and put to bed for the night in my upstairs bedroom (probably scared, as usual because I knew all too well about the ghosts in the house). My grandmother and parents had bedrooms on the downstairs level but only my grandmother’s room had a window with a view of the backyard. Eventually everyone went to bed. Sometime in the middle of the night, my grandmother woke up and was startled to see the entire backyard was lit up with a blue light. There were no lights of any kind installed to shine in our backyard. Car headlights from the road that goes by our house could not possibly shine into the backyard. Plus, the light she saw was definitely blue and looked nothing like car headlights.

In the morning, she reported to my parents what she had seen. They offered no explanation because they didn’t have one. The only thing that could possibly explain it was if there was a UFO hovering out back, shining a blue light on our property, but that seemed kind of ridiculous.

In the following days a family friend (let’s call him Bert) who hung out with my older brothers, came by for a visit. He happened to tell my family, including my grandmother, the very odd circumstance that recently happened to his brother. The brother (let’s call him Ernie) had been driving Bert’s car late at night in a community quite close to where we lived. He recalled seeing weird lights in the sky and the next thing he knew, he was in a different place on the road than where he recalled seeing the lights and couldn’t quite understand what happened to him. Confused and disoriented, he continued on home but doesn’t remember any of the drive.

Bert checked out the distance driven the next day as Ernie had agreed to pay for the gas he used. Something didn’t add up, though. Several kilometers (about 7) on the odometer were unaccounted for when he compared them to where Ernie was supposed to have driven.

Ernie told Bert about his encounter and eventually fearfully admitted he had been abducted after seeing the weird lights. Several hours of time were also unaccounted for. This was the same night my grandmother saw the widespread blue lights in our backyard. Both incidents happened within a few kilometers from each other, as the crow flies and around the same time. We have zero explanation for the lights other than the obvious. Coupled with Ernie’s experience, it is pretty clear what went on here that night. Bert has told us a few times over the years that his brother was never quite the same after that night.

Our theory: An unidentified flying object big enough to shine enough lights to light up our  backyard was hovering over our house for some time on the night in question, while I slept in my bed, oblivious to everything (this is a good thing—8 year old me did not want to see anything like this). The object then moved off at some point to the nearby LaHave river area where it abducted the man mentioned above and returned him to a slightly different location some time later. I wish none of this was true but it is.

Incident: Unexplained lights in the sky above our front yard. Two witnesses.

Length of time it lasted: Minutes.

Creepy factor on a scale of 1-10: 10+

It was 2016. My son and my mother were outside one warm evening as it began to get dark as both of them had a fondness for stargazing. Scott was looking at the night sky in the direction of the road that passes by our house, going down the hill. A few lights caught his eye in fairly close proximity to our house. He stared, trying to make sense of it and pointed it out to his grandmother. They both saw 3 green lights in the shape of a triangle. It was not terribly high in the sky, about the altitude a small plane would fly by at.

It basically sat there, hovering. Scott was careful not to look away so as not to miss it doing anything. The craft was totally silent. After several minutes, the 3 green lights blinked out at the same time. The lights were just on one minute and then off the next. Where it went, or where it was from, is anyone’s guess.

I gave this incident a ‘10 plus’ on the creepy scale based on the fact that 2 people stood there and watched this unknown object right over their heads. It’s the last thing I’d personally want to see.

Our theory: If it looks like a triangle ship UFO, then it’s probably a triangle ship UFO. This is clearly our second encounter with such a thing RIGHT OVER our house, as you have just read.

 

When you consider that all of these things happened in or around our same property where we have ghosts drifting around, it leaves you with one big question:

Why?

Okay… so the house is haunted. Lots of people have a haunted house. Spirits hang around attached to a certain place or residual hauntings occur. It’s quite common. But add in the other things I just told you about and you have to wonder why so much stuff happens in one location.

I have asked myself this many times. It’s a question I cannot answer.

None of it is the unhinged hallucinations of anyone. All of the witnesses to the above encounters were (and are) completely sane and normal (with the exception of Ernie who is reportedly quite different since his alien encounter). And as I previously pointed out, all except one incident had more than one witness.

Some people theorize there are “portals” in certain locations on the earth from which paranormal or mysterious beings can come and go. If this is true, it would explain the appearance of a few of our ghosts, who materialized, but no one recognized. It’s like they just popped into our house yet they seemed out of place.

Did they come through an alleged portal?

Is that what UFOs do?

Is that what cryptid creatures do and that’s why they are so elusive?

 A great example of this is the Skinwalker Ranch in the U.S. Previous owners of that complete freak-your-freak location reported so much strangeness, they thought a portal was responsible for all of their activity. And having read extensively about that creepshow, they built a pretty strong case for it.

So there you have it. Mysterious events around our house that we cannot blame on ghosts. They do a lot of crazy stuff, but they did not do any of the events you just read about.

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