More Unexplained Weirdness

Does this look too long and you don’t want to read it? You wouldn’t say that about a Stephen King book. “The Stand” was over 1,100 pages but you had no problem cruising through that, did you?

While putting this blog post together, I wrote and re-wrote several times until I arrived at the finished product below. It’s lengthy, I admit. I tried a shorter version but it wasn’t quite right, in that I couldn’t make all of the points I wanted to without all the necessary information. Therefore, it turned out kind of long. Just think of it as a chapter in a poorly-written paranormal autobiography that you’re getting for free. I know you like free stuff.

The ghostly activity in my house is sporadic. I’ve mentioned several times on this blog that the ghosts aren’t actively doing stuff every single day. Or are they and just no one notices? Events can occur on one random day or over several days in a row, then maybe nothing happens for weeks. However, it is helpful to me to keep a list of the unexplained events as they happen, so when I throw a blog post together, like right now, I have the ‘when’ and ‘what’ to easily reference.

As previously mentioned several times, I cannot and do not think every little weird thing that happens in my house is a ghost. Some of the time, it’s something else. Take those squirrels two years ago, for example. When they raced around the bay window area like they were in the Indy 500, did I think they were ghosts? No I did not. Because ghosts and squirrels sound nothing alike. Birds, squirrels, chipmunks, mice (eww--gross), my cat, the wind and any other excuse you can throw out there to try to explain what is clearly a real haunting (since at least the 1930’s, I might add) really don’t make the sounds that are often heard here.

We already know the place is haunted, based on plenty of eyewitness testimony spanning many years. I tell myself it’s no big deal, but it IS a big deal on many levels, which I am sure I do not have to explain. Does it bother me? No. I actually quite like it for the most part. Scary stuff keeps you on your toes.

People want proof. I get that. I want it, too. Luckily, I have a little. I have witnesses (there’s a long list of people who experienced unmistakable paranormal activity in my house), I have a photo of 2 ghosts that showed up in a picture I took of the house, and I have perhaps the most undeniable proof of all—the audio recording where I accidentally captured the voice of a spirit. I don’t scare easy but that was pretty spine-tingling.

It’s here, if you missed it:

 Ghost Voice Captured on Video

The two biggest incidents within the last two months could be attributed to ghosts. I cannot say with 100% certainty but I am certainly leaning towards this as the answer, which I will explain.

This house has always been in our family, built by my great-great-grandfather. My mother inherited it at some point along the way. She, as well as quite a few others, was born right here in this house (in what is now my laundry room). It was 1931. Women had their babies at home, delivered by the local doctor, who had to be fetched via horse and wagon (think Little House on the Prairie days). She grew up here, moved a short distance away after getting married and then eventually moved back, with my father and me and my brothers. I seem to be following in her footsteps as I pretty much did the exact same thing. Luckily, as she aged, she was able to continue living in the house that she adored (she loved the fact she had a few resident ghosts living with her) until it was no longer safe for her to do so due to mobility issues. The point of this super long historical paragraph is to drive home the point that my mother, like her mother before her, never wanted to leave the house. The day she had to move into a senior’s residence was probably one of the hardest days of her life. I will forever acknowledge how brave she was during that transition. That was my mom…rolling with the punches once again, quickly becoming content and adapting to new situations gracefully.

The house is very homey, comfortable, and welcoming so I can see why both of them had originally planned to just stay here until their dying day. It did not work out that way for either of them. My grandmother died in the hospital in 1981 and my mom slipped away one early summer morning in 2023 at the senior’s home. However, just because they did not die here in the house, does not mean they haven’t come back to visit.

If you’ve read other posts on this blog, you know my grandmother has been seen several times in the house since she died. My mother has not been seen in the house after her death, but I have most definitely heard her voice here and attributed a few other incidents to her possible ghostly presence.

Which brings me (finally) to the incident on Mother’s Day recently. I should preface this by admitting that I will sometimes talk out loud to my mom, telling her it’s okay if she wants to come by. I’ve seen 2 very real ghosts in this house over the years. So naturally, I wouldn’t mind if my mom just materialized. We have done lots of renovations here, which are constantly ongoing (some days I swear they may never end), and I know my mom would be very pleased to see things being upgraded and improved upon. So sometimes I tell her to come check it out.

The Chairs

May 11 this year was Mothers Day—my second one without my mom, which to be honest felt just as horrible as the first one without my mom. Regardless, I think I once again told my mom I missed her and would love for her to come by. I remember the weather that day. It was slightly windy and sunny and warm. Nothing out of the ordinary happened until late in the afternoon.

We have two plastic Adirondack-style lawn chairs positioned under one of our large maple trees on the front lawn.

Shaun and I were both in the house tidying up before supper, when he said to me, “Look at the lawn chairs.”

I looked out through the dining room window and saw that both chairs had been flipped completely upside down, in the same exact positions.

We had both been outside just prior to this and I had sat in one of those chairs for quite some time. When I got up to come inside, both chairs were in their normal upright positions.

I found this quite unusual but Shaun flipped the chairs back to their normal sitting position, we had supper and I began to clean up and wash the dishes. About midway through this chore, I could clearly hear someone overhead (in the large walk-in attic) walking around, the floor boards creaking with every step. I was pretty sure Shaun was not up there so I checked in the living room and sure enough—he was in there with a coffee and the news on and assured me he had not just been upstairs. Winston, the cat, was with me in the kitchen the whole time as he would never take the risk of leaving the kitchen area during meal time, lest he not get fed. However, what I heard were steps the size a human would make, not a cat.

This was not the first time I heard footsteps up there when I was in the kitchen.

And it was not the last time there was an incident with the lawn chairs.

One day recently, I once again mentioned out loud that it would be nice if I could see my mother. Nothing unusual happened throughout the day. My work day ended and I decided to go out and water the flower gardens. It had been a nice warm sunny day with a bit of wind. I stepped out on the doorstep and immediately noticed one of the lawn chairs flipped completely upside down again, exactly like the previous time.

Notice I mentioned in both of these chair incidents that it was a bit windy out. Because that is going to be your (and mine) first assumption as to how these chairs got flipped upside down.

I’ve thought about this extensively. Here are the reasons I truly don’t think the wind was responsible: 

1. We get wind, like everywhere else, ranging from a very slight breeze to all out raging hurricane-force winds that can bring down cranes in the middle of Halifax, move boulders and destroy roads and pavement. The wind on the day of the first chair flipping incident was quite mild. Certainly not enough to flip a chair over, let alone two. Nothing else on my property was disturbed by wind that day. The wind on the day of the second chair flipping incident was stronger, but still doubtful it could have upturned a chair.

 2.   Even if the wind on either of those days could have flipped chairs, what are the chances it would flip them over into positions identical to each other? Slim. I could see a strong gust knocking them over, even with their low center of gravity, but it is more likely they would fall on their side or even flip and roll a bit. To have both chairs just flip upside down and both land in identical positions seems like an extraordinary feat.

 3.   It has not happened before and the chairs have been sitting outside starting in April until November for the past two years. In that time frame, we have had many windy days and nights. MANY. Yet not once have those chairs budged from where they sat throughout many varying wind speeds. (During tropical storms and hurricanes, we had removed the chairs to a more secure space).

 I could be wrong, of course, but I am leaning towards paranormal activity to explain the flipped chairs. Should there by further incidents with the chairs, I will update you.

 Unusual Noises

On the same day of the second lawn chair flipping, there were some strange noises. It was around 11:30 p.m. Winston (the cat) normally hangs out with me in the living room in the evenings but recently his favorite evening place is on a mat in the dining room. So on this particular night, I was in the living room with the French door closed. I heard activity against the door, assumed it was Winston asking to be let in, as he often does. However, when I went to the door, he wasn’t there. Nothing visible was there. I shrugged it off and closed the door again. A few minutes later I heard a fairly large bang from the dining room area. I listened intently trying to figure out what it could be. A minute or two passed and I heard it again. Was Winston chasing a moth or bug maybe, thereby causing a banging noise somehow? I opened the door to look. He hadn’t budged from his mat.

Within about 15 minutes, I headed upstairs to read for awhile before going to sleep. Shaun was still awake reading. I told him what I had heard. He had no explanation and assured me he had not made any sounds like what I reported. Plus, I could tell the bangs were downstairs and not overhead in any of the bedrooms.

We read a short while when the same bang noise happened again. This time we both heard it. And this time it was definitely upstairs with us; not in our bedroom, but definitely in another upstairs room. He got up to investigate, looking in every room and even outside. No source could be found. We went back to our reading and it happened one more time. Same noise and still sounding like it was upstairs. Once again, he looked everywhere and came up empty handed.

Now common sense will tell you this is not something falling over in the house. One bang could possibly be that, but four of them? Sorry. The same item cannot fall over four times. Plus, the first bangs were definitely downstairs and the last two were definitely upstairs.

It was really windy outside this night but this does not solve the mystery. It was not a window rattling. It was not something banging against the house. Shaun thoroughly investigated the next morning outside and found absolutely nothing that could make a banging sound. Besides, once again, I assure you the bangs were happening INSIDE the house. And moved from the ground floor to upstairs.

We leave this filed under “unknown”.

Oh and by the way, as I mentioned-- the wind picked up considerably the night of this occurrence. Did my lawn chairs flip over? No, they did not. They did not move even a tiny bit. Take from that what you will.

 Voices and Knocks and Footsteps

About a week after the first lawn chair flipping, I was home alone working quietly when I heard a male voice yell out something from another room, possibly the kitchen or dining room. It was one sentence but because it was a considerable distance from me, I have no idea what exactly he/it said.

Another day, while working, I heard a couple of knocks from the same area. It sounded like it was in the house, maybe on the dining room door, and not on the main kitchen door. I went to check it out in case an actual person was at the door. But nope. Of course there wasn’t.

Two weeks later, I heard more footsteps overhead in the attic area when no one was up there. This is happening quite a bit lately.

 More Phone Shenanigans

Once again, about a week ago, while talking to my son on the phone, a woman’s high pitched voice screeched out two unintelligible words in the middle of our conversation. If you have read the blog, you will know this has happened 2 times before; once was a man I could completely understand, the second time was a woman exactly like this incident.

Immediately I asked my son if he just heard that..? He said, “Heard what? The line just went dead for a couple of seconds.”

Not on my end. On my end, a female voice screeched out two words.

We have no explanation for this. People will tell you a phone can pick up baby monitors and other interference signals. I have written about this before and also the reasons I am not convinced this is what’s happening. The last time it happened, Scott heard it. This time, he didn’t. That makes no sense if a baby monitor is the source. Second, if it was a baby monitor, why didn’t the last two incidents sound like a normal voice? To be honest, it’s a voice straight out of a horror movie.

This will also be filed under “unknown”.

Regardless of whether or not the lawn chairs flipping and the mysterious phone voices are paranormal related, lots of stuff that happens in our house definitely is, which leaves us with this question: why do ghosts do these same things over and over?

You may think it is unusual for a ghost to repeatedly do the same things, like flip chairs upside down, make banging noises, take your stuff into another realm or dimension, knock on doors, walk around in the upstairs of your house, butt into your phone conversations or say things out loud for you to hear. However, based on many years’ experience, I can tell you that being repetitive is one of their favorite things to do. I can only assume it is because there is only a short list of things they can (or want) to do so when they figure it’s show time, they don’t have a lot of options. They figure they can walk around in your attic or interrupt your phone conversation fairly easily but it would take them much larger amounts of energy to rearrange the dishes in your pantry or do the laundry. Of course, this is only my opinion and I could be way off, but none of my ghosts have ever laid a finger on my bottle of Tide.

Lastly, I would like to update you on the disappearing coffee cup and hairdressing bag that went missing on February 18, 2025.

To refresh your memory, you can read about that here:

If You Could Just Return My Things from the Afterlife

As of today, neither of these items has turned up anywhere in our house.

Side note: as I type this, the lamp behind me is blinking on and off for no apparent reason.

 Oh well…it’s just another regular night in our mysterious house.

Nova Scotia Paranormal Events Newsletters

 

What Does It Feel Like When a Ghost Touches you?

 

It has been just over a month since I have written an update on the paranormal activity in our house, which was the previous blog post with the pretty creepy disembodied voice accidentally captured in a video. Here is the link to that post. Have a listen if you haven't already:

Ghost Voice Captured on Recording

Only one unusual thing has transpired since then so I was pretty much waiting for more incidents to happen so I could provide you with a nice tidy report on more than just one thing. However, ghosts are flighty and unpredictable and have not done anything else in that time frame besides the one thing I am about to tell you about.

Okay, admittedly, there was the incident last weekend when two lawn chairs freakishly overturned on the lawn into identical positions without human or wind intervention and then just tonight an upstairs light mysteriously turned off all by itself; and yesterday I could smell my grandmother’s perfume throughout the downstairs for about an hour  (which was especially strange as I am currently under attack from a ridiculously horrible viral infection and can smell pretty much nothing—not even an onion I was chopping) but I can’t say with 100% conviction that these more minor incidents are of a paranormal nature. I am pretty sure they are as there are no other logical explanations for any of them but “pretty sure” is not 100%, so I digress.

It is not unusual that the paranormal incidents are sporadic. I’ve witnessed unexplained occurrences many days in a row, then nothing for weeks. Having said that, though, who really knows how often things occur and it just so happens that no one sees or hears it at that time?

So the voice on the video recording happened around April 9^th. I can shrug off most ghostly encounters after a day or two but this one stayed with me longer than that due to the fact that it was very clear to me that something I couldn’t see but was capable of speaking into a recording device, was in very close proximity to me, and communicating with me by telling me to pay close attention and listen to the recording (for reasons which are still sort of unclear). It is one thing to know you have ghosts/spirits/entities that come and go, but it’s quite another to have one standing next to you while it talks directly to you. I am happy, however, that its voice is on the recording because that is solid proof I can present to whomever wants to hear it.

About a week after the ghostly voice recording, something else unusual happened.

I was in bed reading around 10:00 p.m. Shaun was asleep. Winston, the cat, was downstairs asleep. The house was very quiet. As I was laying there reading, I heard a noise like something moving in the room. I thought maybe Winston had come in, although he usually walks quite silently and you only know he’s there when he hops up on the bed.

I had left the bedroom door ajar a few inches so I glanced towards it but it hadn’t moved. I concluded it was not Winston and dismissed it and continued reading. A minute or two later I heard the same noise again in the room. I cannot say what the noise was exactly. The same sorts of noises happen in my dining room a LOT but they are hard to describe. It sounds like things being moved around or set down on a table or other hard surface. I looked around the bedroom (lit by my reading lamp) but couldn’t see anything moving or happening to account for the noise. I was hoping that this would be my chance to see a tv remote, perfume bottle, hair brush, anything at all, hovering in the air, seemingly all by itself but in reality would actually be a ghost messing around with my stuff. More than anything, I want visual proof.

But no---nothing was physically moving. I went back to reading again. A minute or so went by and I inexplicably felt a very noticeable cool breeze across my left arm. I would estimate it lasted about 5-10 seconds. I looked at my arm while it was happening, unsure of what I thought I’d see (but hey, the house is haunted so you never know).

It felt like the window was open and the wind was blowing in. I knew I had not opened the window, but to rule it out, I looked to check and sure enough, it was closed. There were no fans on. There are no other sources of wind or anything in the room that could make a breeze.

Still hoping to visually witness something to account for this, I continued glancing around my bedroom after the breeze sensation stopped. Nothing else odd happened. It was over as quickly as it began. I read a few more pages and then turned out the lamp for some shut-eye.

If an entity was responsible for the breeze on my arm, I can’t help but wonder if it is the same one in the audio recording. The incidents were about a week apart. I don’t know much beyond the facts that there are ghosts here, they come and go, they speak, touch, make noise, sometimes you can smell them, and sometimes they materialize.

What does a feeling of a breeze on your arm mean, anyway? Was a ghost touching me? Was that its hand reaching out to get my attention?

I cannot say for sure but from all my paranormal research and findings, it certainly could be that. Many people have reported feeling cold sensations when in the presence of an entity. For reasons we don’t understand, this is often how they present themselves: a sudden intense cold spot in a room or a chilling feeling throughout your body if the spirit is close enough to you. However, I personally know a few people who have been in very close proximity to a ghost (myself included) and no cold sensations were detected.

But this was a cool breeze. On my arm. I have absolutely no other explanation for it.

This is not the first incident in which someone in this house was touched by a ghost. Perhaps the most unnerving occurrence of this was during a family dinner in 2011. We had about a dozen people at the dinner table. My mother was sitting to my left and my teenage niece to my right. Suddenly and with no explanation, I could feel someone touching my left thigh. It felt exactly like if someone pressed their finger into your leg and was moving it upward. It wasn’t a light touch, either. Whatever was responsible wanted to be noticed. I lifted the tablecloth so I could see what the heck was happening but nothing was visible, yet the feeling of an unseen hand or finger was still there.

At the exact same time, my niece announced that something was moving the chair she was sitting in, in the space between her and me. This lasted several seconds and then both the hand on my leg and the movement of her chair abruptly stopped. The cause of this bizarre activity could not be determined, even after several visual inspections underneath the table. My mom spoke up to tell us she was not surprised because several nights before when she was in bed, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She lived alone in the house at that point. Well, except for the ghostly residents.

In summary, a ghost can touch you if they want to. And from personal experience, believe me when I say they can talk to you. They can sit or stand right next to you. In fact, I am pretty much of the mindset that they can do just about anything.

Except housework. Not once have they ever done that.

Come on you guys…fold a towel. Put dishes away. Clean the bathroom. I know you are perfectly capable.

I leave you with this side note, which I am being reminded of while pondering why ghosts won’t do housework. In the nearby town of Liverpool, Nova Scotia, I once read in a true ghost story book that one of the residents happened to have his winter firewood stored in his basement. It was just sort of thrown in there, not neatly piled as he hadn’t gotten around to it yet. He lived alone except for his resident ghost, which he was well aware of. One day he went out somewhere for a short time and when he returned home, he went into his basement for something. Imagine his surprise to find his firewood stacked up. And not in the normal way one would stack firewood---his was piled up in an intricate, almost impossible fashion. No one had access to his house. And the amount of time it would take a human to pile wood into the design in which he found it, did not even come close to the short amount of time he was gone.

This proves they can do chores. I can unequivocally tell you however, that mine do not.

Nova Scotia Paranormal Events Newsletters