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.

NSPE Newsletters

Lights Out

 

Over time, our ghosts have done some ultra freaky things. Things that make your jaw drop or send a shiver down your spine when you read about them. You probably know this, having read the blog faithfully. But our ghosts also do your typical paranormal activity, too. They have been known to knock on walls and doors, walk up and down the stairs and materialize right before your very eyes. You know---“the usual”. And let’s not forget about the lights. They love those, too.

So let me ask you this…Have you ever been sitting in your house—or any house for that matter—and a light just turns off or on by itself without any human intervention?

I am not referring to any type of electrical fault like a bad switch, loose wiring/connections, voltage fluctuations, power surges, overloaded circuits, failing fixtures or bad bulbs. If these were to blame, your light would have an issue pretty much ALL THE TIME until you had it repaired. Remember this part as you read on.

I am referring to incidents where none of the above was to blame and your light turned off when it was on or turned on when it was off and you know for a fact no one had touched the switch.

There have been several incidents involving lights that happened in our house over the years, of which no explanation could be found. I have written about them before on the blog but they were included in posts about other paranormal events, so today I thought I would round them all up together. I will attempt to keep the re-telling on the short side (yes, ME--known for making a short story long) since they are detailed elsewhere on the blog.

First incident: My mom and I used to talk about everything under the sun, including our earliest childhood memories. One of her first memories is of being a very small child, around the age of two or three, in her playpen in the kitchen of our house. (I STILL have that playpen—it came with the house. You haven’t seen creepy until you’ve seen a 1930’s homemade wooden playpen.) She vividly recalled being terrified at seeing a large ball of light come out of the dining room and into the kitchen. I know what you’re thinking—how does anyone remember something from when they were two or three years old? It happens. I fell down a flight of stairs at 9 months old and I still remember bits and pieces of that tumble.

The ball of light my mother described was quite a strange thing for a child to see, but freaky enough that she retained the memory and never forgot it. In later years, she asked her mother about it. No one else had seen the ball of light on that day. Although this has nothing to do with lights turning on and off by themselves, it is an unexplained event in this house and the source and identification of that light remains unknown.

Second incident: It was 1981. My father died unexpectedly and about a week later my mother saw the light in the kitchen come on after everyone had gone to bed. She was in her bedroom, which was not far from the kitchen and could clearly see it. It stayed on for a few moments, then went out again. She knew for a fact no one was in the kitchen. She had her mechanically-inclined brother check out the light switch, wiring and fixture. He found nothing wrong with any of it but replaced the switch for peace of mind. I believe it happened 2 more times after the first night, which just so happened to be the evening she had lit a candle at church in his memory. She was convinced it was my father playing with the light switch to let her know he was still around.

Messing around with lights is a very common activity in the paranormal world. Experts think it’s because ghosts and spirits find it relatively easy to manipulate electromagnetic energy because they are made of energy themselves. Therefore, turning on a radio, tv or a light is easy for them to accomplish. They don’t necessarily have to physically move the position of the light switch to turn a light on or off.

Further proof of this is the light in my upstairs hallway. There is an on/off switch at the top of the stairs and also at the bottom. Recently, within the last few months, on a few occasions, I had purposely turned this light on with the downstairs switch, confirmed it had indeed come on, went  into the kitchen and when I had come back moments later, the light I had just turned on was now off. The first time, I assumed I had just thought I turned the light on when maybe I actually didn’t. The second and third times this happened, I began to think a ghost was to blame. I mentioned these incidents to my son, who lived here for some years with his grandmother and he reported the same thing happened to him on many occasions with that same light. There is nothing at all wrong with the light switch or wiring.

Second question: have you ever witnessed (aside from a horror movie) the extremely fast flickering of a light that had no known cause? This is a classic horror movie effect, the intention of which is to make you feel something supernatural is causing it, distorting your vision of the scene and making you feel very uneasy. You just know something terrifying is about to happen. It’s super effective. This exact thing happened in my very own kitchen two  years ago to 2 lights at the same time, witnessed by me and my son. Watching it unfold, you would have thought you were smackdab in the middle of a John Carpenter movie. But nope, it was just my kitchen which happens to be in my pretty haunted house.

I had written about it on this blog at that time. Here is the post in case you missed it:

LINK

 Nothing was wrong with either light fixture, the bulbs or wiring. It has not done it again since that day and had not done it before. We just shrugged it off as another encounter with one of the entities.

 Other than lightbulbs being paranormally manipulated, other unexplained lights have been seen on our property. We refer to this freaky encounter as The Phantom Car. 

Three separate times, the phantom car was outside our house. 

How do we know this? Because when it happened at night (it also occurred in the daytime), it shone it’s headlights in through the windows. Plus you could hear it. 

How do we know it simply wasn’t a real car? Read the blog posts (links below) where it is all explained. It is also probable there was a 4^th time involving this that my brother and I encountered together when we were quite young. There is a short list of paranormal encounters at my house that actually sort of alarmed me to any extent. This is one of them, due to its multiple “appearances” and plain ole creepiness.

They have been written about on the blog previously:

LINK 1

LINK 2

LINK 3

LINK 4

 

I started writing this post one late afternoon before supper. I then went to eat and while sitting at my kitchen table, facing the pantry, the light in there blinked out for a micro second and then came back on. I have sat there countless times, often with that light on, and the light has never gone out. Pretty big coincidence that it happened on the day when I was talking about and writing about lights going out for no reason.

Before moving back to the homestead 2 years ago, I lived in another non-haunted house for about 20 years and a couple of other places before that. The number of incidents of lights turning on or off on their own or flickering at horror-movie speed in those other locations was zero. Not once was there an occurrence of anything like this happening. Yet in my haunted house, it has happened a lot.

It’s not rocket science. It’s just some ghosts. They are able to turn a light off, so they do. They can also, speak, make noise, touch you, move things around and take your belongings. Basically, they are roommates who don’t pay for anything or do any chores. But hey, they were here first so I guess that’s fair.

The Curious Incident of the Rushing Air

Over the past month or two, it has been fairly quiet here on the paranormal front. Not a whole lot has transpired. However, there was one incident I wanted to mention. It is not enough for a whole blog post on its own, so I will just include it here.

I was nearing the completion of a renovation of our downstairs hallway and applying a primer basecoat to the walls. It was a fairly hot July day and very still outside with no wind. I had a fan on nearby but it was not aimed directly at me. Suddenly, I heard a bang from the direction of the dining room, which I had clear sight of from where I was working. The cat, incidentally, was nowhere around. I stopped what I was doing to have a good look in the direction the noise had come from to see if something had fallen over somewhere. Everything was where it was supposed to be and I could not see the source of the noise I had heard. While I was standing there looking at my dining room, I felt a fast rush of air come right over me and sort of through me. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I have no other accurate way to describe it. I also know it sounds like a cheesy haunted house movie scene, but again, it is what actually happened. I stood there, paintbrush in hand, thinking, “Woah..what the hell was that?” I have never felt anything like it before. The only source of anything closely resembling a wind was the fan I had on nearby. It was on a low speed but could not have been the source of what I felt. What I felt was very sudden, very fast moving and felt like it moved over and through me. I did not perceive that it had any particular temperature to it (you know, like on Ghost Hunters when they encounter a freezing cold spot or burst of air) and it did not do anything to me, like cause an electrical sensation or send a shiver through me. It was over in a few seconds.

As previously mentioned on other posts, sometimes jokingly or not jokingly I will say out loud to my mom (who passed away two years ago) something like, “Okay mom, only a months’ worth/weeks’ worth/ a day’s worth of work left and this hallway will be done. I sure hope you like it!”  I had said this very thing about an hour before I heard the mysterious bang and felt the rush of air. So maybe it was her, letting me know her opinion of the work being done. Maybe it wasn’t her. I don’t know. There have been many different ghosts here and they come and go whenever they want. I can’t say for sure 100% it was anything paranormal but I’ve experienced enough in my lifetime to tell you it was abnormal and not wind from outside or from the fan. There are no other plausible explanations.

Update on the missing coffee cup and hairdressing bag

Back on March 8/25, I reported in another post that these items mysteriously vanished into thin air. As of this writing on August 4/25, the cup and bag ( and its contents) are still missing.

Nova Scotia Paranormal Events Newsletters