Attempt to Capture Ghost Voices

Background:

Even though I grew up in this house and visit often, I have never before attempted to record any disembodied voices. Only on rare occasions have voices from "the beyond" been heard in the house. It is not as common as noises, smells, apparitions, etc.

 With a regular tape recorder and a brand spanking new audio cassette tape, we decided that since we were going to visit my mother on this particular day anyway, we might as well try to capture some evidence on tape.

And somehow I got it into my head that while this was going on in an upstairs bedroom, why not whip out the Ouija board downstairs and really try to contact someone on "the other side"?
Important to Note:

I realize there are 2 sides to the Ouija board argument so to speak...my mother has always had one and we have messed around with it over the years. There have been some intriguing and scary results, but never anything "evil". Please respect the fact I have on occasion used it, and I will respect your side of it if you are anti-Ouija board for whatever reason. Not long ago, I lost all faith in the Ouija board due to a blindfolded experiment; however, after today I may have to re-examine all of that. You may think the Ouija board is just a game, downright evil, the scariest thing on the planet, or the dumbest thing on the planet. The point of this piece you are reading is not to determine what it is. I just want to relay to you what I experienced today. Conclude what you will.

What Happened:

We began our recording in the living room. The house was quiet. My mother had reported that nothing out of the ordinary had been happening lately, except for a few bumps in the night sometimes but she cannot say with certainty that it wasn't one of the cats.

While recording in the quiet living room, I asked (out loud to no one in particular) if there were spirits among us, could you please let us know you were there, what is your name, please say something...that sort of thing. After a little while, we stopped recording (not knowing if we captured anything--we would discover the results later during playback). We then proceeded to the upstairs spare bedroom that is known to have paranormal activity in it. Incidentally, we sat the tape recorded on a very antique rocking chair--the very same chair that my mother used to hear rocking by itself, nearly 70 years ago when she slept upstairs and the chair was downstairs in the kitchen. (Sidenote: my parents thought it would be a grand idea to put this rocking chair in my bedroom when I was a kid. How I ever slept through a night waiting for the thing to start rocking by itself, or worse, waiting to see a ghost rocking in it, I'll never know, but I digress...)

So as I was saying, we started recording and asking the same sort of questions we did downstairs. After a while, we stopped recording, and took the tape player downstairs to listen to the playback. To my surprise, there were no EVP voices, just mine on tape. This brings us to what we in the investigation world like to refer to as Plan B.

Plan B was to leave the tape recorder recording in the haunted spare bedroom by itself (Creepy, isn't it?!!) We recorded for about 45 minutes while we were downstairs and it was about this time that I had the grand idea to try to contact someone on the Ouija board. When you use a Ouija board, it can be very fickle. Sometimes you can't even get the planchette to move, other times you can hardly keep up with it. I suppose I expected to get the attention of a spirit who I might be able to coax into speaking into my tape recorder. Hey, it was worth a shot.

The first "person" (and I use the term lightly) I believe we might have contacted was an elderly man who used to live there in the house when my mother was a child. He revealed his name, his nickname, and games he played with my mother when she was young. He told us a little bit about his past, which confirmed to us who he was. We then asked him if he had any messages for us. He spelled out the following: WE MUST NOT PULL STUNT WTMOWRM.
What we assume this means is "We must not pull stunts with mom." The reasoning is my son Scott has this lovely habit of sneaking around our non-haunted house and jumping out at my unexpectedly, thereby scaring the living crap right out of me. It is lovely... NOT!
I am assuming the contact on the Ouija board was handing out advice to an otherwise fine young man, suggesting he stop doing that to me. This is my interpretation, as Scott really doesn't pull any other "stunts".

Suddenly, in the middle of this, the contact spelled out "Murray wept." This is interesting as my deceased father's name is Murray. The planchette began to move faster around the board from what it had been, indicating perhaps we were with a different contact. I asked the name of whom we were talking to, and it spelled my deceased brother's name. The "Murray wept" would be a confirmation that he did indeed weep when his son died.

I needed more proof. I asked where I had been this very morning in relation to all of this. The planchette spelled "wreath". We had been to my brother's grave this morning to remove the Christmas wreath we had put there. Okay! Now we were getting somewhere!

I asked if he could speak into our upstairs tape recorder. He said no. I asked for a sign he was with us in the room. A few moments later we heard a thump on the side of the house, of which no other source was found. I am not definitely saying it was my brother communicating from the other side, but I AM definitely saying no other obvious source for the noise could be found.

We asked my brother if he had any messages for my mother (who was there with us). The answer was "Am ok." I asked what it was like on the other side. The answer: "other world". I asked him what kinds of things he did there. The answer: cubs, boy, work. When he died he was a cub scout, which he loved.

At this point, I left the table but remained in the room to cook dinner. (we were at the kitchen table) My son and my mother continued to use the Ouija board, maintaining contact. After just a few moments I walked into the nearby pantry to get a measuring cup. In those few steps, I suddenly smelled a very obvious scent of roses, like I was suddenly in a blooming flower garden.

 Concentrating on my recipe, the smell didn't even register with me at first. I walked back to the stove to cook. My son got off his chair, stepped toward my mother, then toward me. He asked, "Don't you smell that perfume?" At which point I realized I had indeed smelled it. We discussed the scent, which had dissipated at that point, but we both agreed it was a rose garden smell. No one present was wearing perfume. This was further confirmation to us, because we had asked for a sign. The other two in the room did not smell anything (other than the spaghetti).

On the drive home, we popped the tape into the stereo and listened to the recording we had made. After about 5-10 minutes of silence, you can very clearly hear a knock on the tap recorder. We had placed the recorder on the bed in the spare room before leaving the room. The noise is very obviously a tap or knock against the tape recorder itself, like someone rapped on it with their hand or an object. It is the only odd noise we captured on tape. Remember, no one else was in that room and the door was shut tight. If someone had decided to go in during taping, you would have heard the door opening. It is impossible to open the door and enter the bedroom silently.

Someone or something hit the tape recorder. Unfortunately no voices came through, though.

Result and Conclusion:

The Ouija board is not proof of anything paranormal but while I can't prove it is concrete evidence, no one can disprove it, either. Also, something hit the tape recorder. It could not have been a live person. This concludes me to believe it was possibly a spirit. I did not necessarily need this to happen to prove the house is haunted...remember: I grew up there. Many people in my family and even visitors have had paranormal experiences in the house. We could fill a book. Hey, what a good idea! A book!! 

Want to read more about Ouija boards?
Ouija Board Info

Need the link to our paranormal newsletters?

No sign-up required.

Nova Scotia Paranormal Events Newsletters 

How Many Ghosts Have We Actually Seen?

 

The question I get asked the most (besides, “Is that your real hair color?”) is, “Seen any ghosts lately?” Sure, I get the usual, “How are you?” “What have you been up to?” And ..”Where is it you work again?” But the most often asked question is- if I have seen any ghosts recently. In my entire life, I have actually only seen three ghosts in our haunted house (plus two ghosts captured in a photo taken by me). One was in broad day light, another was a cliched middle-of-the-night encounter, and there was also a weird black shadow ghost, which I will recap below. Considering the number of years I have lived here, I, too, am surprised the number is not higher. 

I have heard a lot of unexplained, crazy, ridiculous things starting when I was little kid, and still do to this day, but actual sightings are few and far between unfortunately. 

But I am not alone in this. 

I’ve tried to determine the number of people (not to be confused with the number of incidents) who have either definitely seen or heard a ghost in our house or saw some anomaly happening at a specific moment that could only be attributed to spirit interaction. The magic number is 14.  This includes family, friends and visitors. There could be more that I am not aware of. 

Fifteen may not seem like a lot but it’s not like this place is a Halloween fun house with non-stop paranormal activity. It happens when it happens. You can’t make it happen. You can’t wish it into existence. The ancient Ouija board that we kept in a cupboard with the Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit games cannot conjure up the dead. Well, most of the time it can’t. 

Regardless, I wanted to reiterate that I am not the only one to have seen and heard things. And while hearing ghosts in various areas of your house can be startling, seeing them is on a whole different level entirely. 

My mother, who had lived in the house longer than any other family member is the one who saw the most. We don’t know if she saw the most because she just could, or because she spent the longest amount of time in the house.  

She also often heard unexplained things, saw doors slam shut, saw doors fly open, saw things disappear and reappear in odd places, saw strange lights (attributed to the phantom car—look that one up on the blog if you haven’t already), smelled unusual things, and received a phone call from her dead mother, just to name a few.  We discussed it a lot over the years, examining the topic from all viewpoints of why doesn’t everyone see or hear ghosts and can one person be more susceptible to it than others. We theorized a lot on this topic but of course, could not definitely say one way or the other. Our discussions usually ended with one or both of us saying, “Well, we’ll all find out someday.” 

By the time we find out the real answer to this, we’re already in the afterlife. 

The following is a compilation of actual real ghost SIGHTINGS in our house, in case you have wondered how many times one has appeared. 

The compiled list of ghosts were determined to be REAL ghosts and not something else that could be more easily explained. The witnesses were 100% sane, sober, wide awake, completely alert and sensible. Incidentally, people who have been in the house and were NOT 100% sane, sober, wide awake, completely alert and sensible never reported seeing anything unusual pertaining to the paranormal realm. 

Ghosts Seen By My Mother 

The Doorstep Ghost: One summer day a few years back, she was sitting on the doorstep in her lawn chair. She insists she was wide awake and had not dozed off. Suddenly a man appeared on the lawn a few feet from the doorstep. He just simply materialized out of thin air. He came walking towards where she was sitting and sat down on the doorstep very close to her. She did not recognize him. She noticed he was wearing a red and yellow Hawaiian shirt and a ball cap and was smoking a cigarette. He did not say anything to her but he looked up at her and smiled and shortly after disappeared as quickly as he had appeared. 

The Soldier Ghost:  She had also seen a man dressed in an old soldier's uniform appear in the living room. His uniform was dark blue with a bit of red on it and he also wore gloves. He looked straight at her and smiled before fading away. 

These are two great examples of an “intelligent haunting’, in which a ghost/spirit will directly interact with a person; in these cases, looking at and smiling at my mother, as if to greet her or acknowledge her presence. It is pretty rare as most ghosts stick to being residual, which is more of a playback of a ghost appearing and not paying any attention to you. 

The Ghost Girl in the Pantry:  Another time, while sitting at her kitchen table, she happened to look up towards the pantry, which is just off the kitchen. There stood a little girl with blond hair in a little dress. The child paid no attention to my mother and after a moment faded away. 

The Ghost Lady in the Living Room: One night while watching tv in the living room, a woman in an old-fashioned house dress suddenly materialized near the tv. My mother reported that this lady just stared off towards the wall, again not interacting with her in any way. Like the others, she quickly disappeared. 

As previously mentioned, the girl in the pantry and the ghost lady are classified as residual hauntings. They appear as if you are seeing them in a playback of a time gone by. They may not even see you looking at them and are possibly showing up as if it is imprinted in time. Neither of them spoke or made a sound. 

The Shadow Ghost: Once again in the pantry, my mother watched a large black shadowy mass standing there for a few minutes. It made no sound and disappeared after a short time. These are known as ‘shadow people’ or ‘shadow ghosts’, for obvious reasons. They generally do not have faces and limbs and do not resemble humans very much. They are reportedly common. 

Ghosts Seen By My Son 

Scott’s Great-Grandmother:  When Scott was around the age of 15, he spent the weekend at the house with his grandmother (my mother). He was in an upstairs bedroom using a computer one night when he heard pacing back and forth just outside his door in the hallway. Knowing no living person was walking around in the hallway, he realized what it could be, given the history of the house. He attempted to ignore it but the pacing on the old creaky floor continued. He looked towards the partially opened bedroom door and saw his great-grandmother (Lizzie) standing there staring at him hatefully. She died in 1981. This sighting happened approximately 2010. He described her appearance as a dark figure with a lit-up outline. He had seen enough pictures of her over the years to know who was standing before him. Naturally freaked out, he once again looked back at his computer screen. When he looked back at the door again, she was gone. Shortly after, he went downstairs to inform his grandmother that her mother was upstairs a few moments ago. 

Sidenote: the hallway pacing has also been heard on two other occasions; once by Scott’s girlfriend/now-wife, and once also by me. It’s creepy as heck and tends to go on for several minutes. 

Scott’s Great-Grandmother Returns:   A few years later, Scott was living at the house to help his grandmother out and also because he worked in a nearby town. One particular night, he had worked a night shift and arrived home just as dawn was beginning to break. He pulled his car in and parked it facing towards the house as he usually did. He glanced towards the house and could clearly see a woman in the kitchen standing near the fridge and then she moved towards the pantry. Assuming his grandmother was up, although it would be odd at that hour for her to do so, he unlocked the door and entered the kitchen. No one was there. He checked on his grandmother who was sound asleep in her bed. As the ghost he had seen looked like an older lady, we assume it was likely his great-grandmother (my grandmother, Lizzie) showing up yet again. 

Ghost Seen By My Aunt 

Lizzie Strikes Again: For many years, I had an aunt and uncle who spent their summers with us. They always slept in the spare bedroom. Incidentally, this was the bedroom with the most paranormal activity in it. Such activity included the bed continually messed up after making it and re-making it, bangs on the wall that adjoined to another bedroom, the locked door becoming unlocked, etc. 

My mom always warned my aunt and uncle about this but they didn’t seem to mind sleeping there. They never experienced anything out of the usual until one night, sometime during the ‘80s. My aunt got up one morning and told my mother she woke up in the middle of the night and much to her surprise my grandmother (Lizzie), who died in 1981, was standing by the bed with her arms outstretched towards her. She appeared solid, like a living person and did not speak. She faded away after a few minutes. My uncle slept through the whole thing. 

Ghosts Seen By My Nephew 

Lizzie, Part 4:  One of my nephews was visiting one weekend when he was about 5 years old. I do not think he was aware of anything paranormal in the house as we did not talk about such things around children in the family so as not to scare them. Only my nephew, his father and my mother were in the house. He came down from upstairs and asked my mother (his grandmother) who the old lady was upstairs in the spare bedroom, sitting on the bed petting the cat. My mother showed him a picture of her mother (Lizzie) and my nephew stated that was the lady he just saw upstairs. 

Another Bedroom Ghost: On another occasion when my nephew visited, he was sleeping in another upstairs bedroom. He was about 5 or 6 years old. He remembers he woke up and there was an old lady standing next to the bed. He blinked and then she was gone. 

Sidenote: My grandmother was born in our house in 1891 and spent most of her life in it. She was very adamant about never leaving it, confirmed by the fact that sometimes she is still seen on the premises. 

Ghost Seen By My Brother 

Ghost Girl in the Bedroom: My brother reported this to my mother at the time it happened. He was a teenager hanging out in his bedroom and saw a girl with long brown hair. She did not  interact with him and disappeared into thin air. Of my three brothers, to my knowledge only this one has actually seen a ghost in our house, although the other two have had other paranormal experiences here. 

Ghosts Seen By Me 

Another Shadow Ghost: When I was about 17, I was in our living room and happened to look out into the hallway. It was early evening and still daylight so everything was well lit and visible inside the house. In the hall at the bottom of the stairs, I saw a large shadowy shapeless black figure.  I can’t say what it was made up of, but it looked more opaque than a smokey substance but not solid like a person. It did not have the shape of a typical human. It made no noise and did not interact. It was there only briefly and disappeared after a few seconds. 

Above, in the section of what my mother had seen, she also reported a Shadow Ghost many years after I saw this one. 

Dude in the Upstairs Hallway: Quite a few years ago, I was wallpapering the largest bedroom upstairs. In addition to my work items constantly disappearing and reappearing during that endeavor, I also had the pleasure of a ghost watching me work. On one particular day, I was about to clean up for the day. The door to the hallway was open and I was in the bedroom admiring my work (hey, it looked damn good!) when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. There was a man standing in the hallway looking into the bedroom. 

 Normally this would not be a big deal as I was married at the time. However, my husband was away and only my mother and I were in the house and she was downstairs at that moment. I was completely taken aback and I think I even gasped. The man appeared solid and alive. He was standing staring intently at me with his arms crossed. He had dark hair, probably middle aged and wore a white shirt and dark pants. He made no sound. I looked at him for a few moments and then he was gone. Did he like the wallpaper? I have no idea. 

The Ghost of Willie: We lived here in the year 2000 for a few years and the re-wallpapered bedroom I just mentioned was my bedroom. My son, Scott, slept just across the hall in a   smaller room. He was 5 at the time. Scott’s dad was away for work. This particular night, I had been asleep for awhile when the action of my bedroom door opening awoke me. Thinking it was Scott, I turned my lamp on and asked what he was doing up. In the somewhat dim light, I could see it was not Scott.  

The child in question giggled, turned and ran back out into the hall. Still trying to convince myself it MUST be Scott because no other children lived there, I quickly got up to follow him as the top of the stairs was only steps away and he could go tumbling down in the dark. 

Once I was in the hall, no one else was visible. No children. No giggling. Nothing. I stepped into Scott’s room where he was still fast asleep. And yes, I checked that he was actually asleep and not trying to pull a prank. 

I am pretty sure this was Willie. Willie was an ancestor who died from measles in our house at the age of 5 in approximately 1873, just a few years after the house was built by his father, Simeon Joudrey, my great-great-grandfather. 

So those are our 14 real, actual ghost sightings. My grandmother (Lizzie) dominates the scene as you can see but there were lots of others, most who remain unknown to us. 

When I get to 15, 16, 17 and so on, you’ll be the first to know. 

Nova Scotia Paranormal Newsletters

The Phantom Car Rides Again

The Phantom Car Rides…Again! 

Last month I was there visiting and was going to stay for a few days. A hurricane was bearing down on Nova Scotia so I decided to stick around. If the power goes out, and weather is wild, it seems like a perfectly good time to get the Ouija board out, if you ask me, but that is a different story for a different day. (insert evil laugh here).

It was late afternoon and I was expecting my son and his girlfriend to arrive home from work at any time. Their dog was there with me and my mother was having a nap. All was peaceful and quiet and I thought I’d brew up a pot of coffee. It was a warm day and the window screen in the door was up.

Just as I was sticking the pot under the coffee maker, I clearly heard a car drive in the driveway. The dog whined a little as she heard it, too and I assumed my son and his girlfriend had arrived. I thought it was odd I hadn’t heard his car before he actually pulled into the driveway, as he has a type of muffler that makes the car sound slightly louder than normal and you can hear him before you see him.

I looked out and there was no one in the driveway.

I marched right out into the middle of the driveway, looking up towards the neighbor’s place, as he also uses the driveway but there was no vehicle or sign of anyone having just driven past.

All was quiet again. My son and his girlfriend arrived home about a half hour later.

You can imagine my excitement at possibly having encountered the phantom car once again.

I kick myself now for not grabbing my phone and snapping a few pictures of the driveway at the time of the sound. You never know when the unexplained is going to show up in your photos.

Here are links to our other phantom car experiences: 

Phantom Car 1

Phantom Car 2

Phantom Car 3

Nova Scotia Paranormal Events Newsletters

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!

Need the link to our paranormal newsletters?

No sign up necessary!

Nova Scotia Paranormal Events Newsletters

The Noises Continue

 

Back in January 2024, I wrote a blog post about the noises during the last year that have been clearly present in our house. Plenty of things have been heard, mostly by me (except for that one time I had a witness other than my cat—hold on to your Ouija board, I am getting to it).

Couple of things to consider with these noises:

1.  I haven’t actually SEEN anything strange within the past year. I have only heard it. That doesn’t mean it isn’t visual, but maybe I am just not in the same room when something is going on and therefore I am only hearing it.

2.  Maybe these entities are preferring to just make sounds and noises and can’t be bothered to materialize.

3. I am alone often during the day so there is usually no one else here to hear the noises.

4.  It is possible I have become more in tune with the clairaudient side of things. I have no idea why or how.

I can’t say for sure which of these is the explanation or if it is a combination of things, as I have been able to record some noises—not sure you can do that if you are experiencing the sounds through clairaudience through your own personal hearing ability. However, I have been in a room with someone else when noises were clear and present and only I heard it.

5. The source of the noises described in the previous blog posts and this one have been ruled out to be anything sensible and easily explained. Trust me when I say all have been investigated and found to NOT be: rodents, squirrels, chipmunks, the cat, birds, bats, and my all-time favorite from the skeptics: the house is “settling”. It’s an old house, built in 1871. It’s completely settled.

  I know what every single thing listed here sounds like, unfortunately. When you hear pots and pans crashing to the floor in the pantry at ten o’clock at night, trust me when I say that it is not caused by any of the things in this list. To put the proverbial nail in the coffin (see what I did there?) on that as an explanation, when the pantry was investigated, not a thing was out of place. Therefore, my cat and your alleged mouse were not having a wrestling match in the pantry and knocked ten stainless steel and aluminum pots to the floor. This goes for all the other unexplained sounds and rackets. If you read the blog, especially the posts about unknown noises, you can easily see for yourself that animals  is not the answer. Any time an animal was the answer, I did not write about it here because duh, the blog is about ghosts, spirits, and entities and not about animals in houses.

The reason we KNOW there are ghosts in our house is because over the years many different people (myself included)  have seen, felt, smelled, photographed and heard them. Name a form of communication and we have received it from these ghosts. It has been ongoing for generations and so far, is completely harmless.

Some additional auditory incidents have occurred within the last little while:

 

The Music

About 2 months ago, we were having supper in the kitchen. The house was quiet; no appliances like washer, dryer or tv were on. We hadn’t  been at the table long when behind me I suddenly heard music that seemed to be coming from one corner of the kitchen. It sounded kind of far away but still within earshot. I’d like to say it was something good like Aerosmith or Van Halen but no—it was soft orchestra music. I turned my head and concentrated on listening  to be sure I was hearing what I thought I was actually hearing. I was. Shaun was also at the dinner table and when I asked him if he heard it, he said no, pausing to listen closely but could not hear a thing while I continued to hear it. No, I don’t have ringing in my ears. There was definitely music there and after a minute or so, it stopped.

Fast forward a few weeks, same scenario: supper at the table. The music started again, soft and faraway but definitely there. I asked Shaun again if he could hear that. This time he said yes. We listened for a minute and it eventually stopped. Neither of us have any explanation for that.

Side note, and written about elsewhere on the blog: my mother always told me the story of the time she was a little girl in this house and one evening her father suddenly stood up, stating he could  hear music coming from upstairs. He proceeded up the staircase, with her on his heels and then she also heard the music and became terrified. They did not have a radio or anything similar that music could be played on. It was the mid 1930’s. Halfway up the stairs, the music stopped. My mother’s mother had been with them when the unexplained music started but she never heard a thing.

 

Maybe You Need Cough Medicine? Try Mucinex.

It was June 11, 2024. I was home alone working. The house was quiet. I gotta have it quiet when I am working. Winston the cat was nearby power-napping. I had a kitchen window propped open but the main door was locked. I was working away doing some complex math formula thing from my office in the far end of the house when I heard someone cough. Based on the sound level of the cough, I would guesstimate they were likely in the dining room. I paused what I was doing and listened. Winston became alert and popped his head up off the chair because he was aware it was just him and me in the house. There was no more coughing after the initial outburst, but I did get up to look in case someone could have had their head close to my open/screened kitchen window and coughing. No one was there. No sign of anyone outside or inside. It was definitely a man’s cough, as it was deeper than what a woman would normally sound like. Maybe my long-departed father was inhaling one of those unfiltered cigarettes he was so fond of? I guess whoever it was just wanted my attention. Okay, you got it. Now what?

A Familiar Sound

Not long after the coughing incident on another day when I was home alone working, I heard a very interesting sound from the kitchen. Again, the cat was in his usual spot on a chair near me. The house was quiet. Suddenly from the kitchen area, I heard a noise. Shaun had left a few minutes earlier to go to an appointment so I went to check if he had come back for something. I could see through the dining room windows that one of our vehicles was gone, so I knew he hadn’t returned. I went into the kitchen to have a look when it suddenly and clearly dawned on me what the noise was I had heard: It was the unmistakable sound of the woodstove door opening.

I have heard it millions of times over the years; the metal handle turning and the door creaking open. Nothing else sounds like that. My mother used to put wood in that stove continually, even in the summer if she considered it cold out, which was most of the time. She did this right up until she moved to a nursing home in 2022.

Normally, the sound of the woodstove door opening  would not be concerning except on this particular day, the woodstove was not even in the kitchen anymore, plus I was alone in the house. We had moved the stove to a location in the back porch a few weeks earlier because the kitchen floor is undergoing repairs.

The weather was sort of damp, yet humid and muggy on that day, and if my mother had been here, she definitely would have had a fire going in that stove, and said she was cold while the rest of us died from the heat.

I guess she was throwing another log on. “There’s nothing like wood heat”, she often said.

I actually rather enjoy the fact that this incident happened, knowing my mom might possibly still be around at times. I miss her immensely.

I’ve heard nothing unusual since that day but the ghosts come and go so there’s no predicting when the next incident will be.

Nova Scotia Paranormal Events Newsletters

Pennies!

Last year at my work, I began finding pennies in the strangest places.

Sometimes single ones, sometimes 2 or 3 together. They would be on shelves, on floorstands in the store, in my locker, the lunch room table, on the floor...really in odd places. Even on my doorstep at home. And I would find maybe as many as 10 in one day. At first it was sporadic---One day I'd find some, the next day, none, then some more the day after that. 

Eventually, it increased to where I was finding them every day. I didn't specifically look for them...they were just popping up wherever I was. 

These places might not seem that odd to you, but they seemed to be penny-free one minute and then the next I looked, there'd be a penny there.

I know in the past I mentioned on here that I did not really believe in the powers of the Ouija board anymore, but one day just for fun at my mother's house, we were messing around with it and right away it started talking about the pennies. To make a long story short, my brother who passed away when I was a baby, indicated that he was the one leaving the pennies around for me.

I thought a lot about this and so to "test" this theory, I asked out loud one evening that if he were truly leaving pennies for me, could he please leave a large amount of them, like piles of them, and then I would know that this was probably true.

About 2 days later, I was at work, but in the back stock room when my manager called me out front. She said a customer came up to the counter with a bag of pennies, saying she found them out in front of the store. Not knowing what else to do with them, she brought them in to us.

(Who would do that?? If you find money like that, wouldn't you either just keep it or leave it alone? I don't think I would turn it in at a store---after all, they are just pennies, not hundred dollar bills.)

My manager alarmingly handed them to me (I had been telling her for weeks about the penny thing happening to me). There tied up in a small clear plastic bag was about 50 pennies.
I still have them...and I have thanked my brother!

P.S. You may think my manager was playing a joke on me and she brought the bag of pennies herself, but she believes in all things weird and strange, plus she did not know I had asked to receive a pile of pennies. She was beside herself with bewilderment when a bag of pennies showed up!

Need the link to our paranormal newsletters?

No sign-up required.

Nova Scotia Paranormal Events Newsletters