The Phone Phantoms

 

    

Some years ago, I wrote a blog post about a phone call my mother received back in the mid 90’s, in which she clearly heard her mother repeatedly saying hello. This would not be all that unusual except her mother had died in 1981.  

Fast forward a bunch of years and I am now living at the homestead where eerie things still occur, of course. To make up for the poor quality cell service in my area, I still have a good old-fashioned land line. There’s probably only 20 people left in Nova Scotia with a land line  and I am well aware of the fact that Eastlink is ripping me off every month when the bill arrives but hey—I need it and will keep it until I can talk on my cell without having to go outside and stand under a certain maple tree facing east in order to carry on a conversation that doesn’t cut in and out or drop altogether. 

But I digress. 

I was thinking recently that the summer months and early fall had been pretty quiet, paranormally, as not a whole lot had been going in the house. This is totally typical of my ghosts; they might make their presence known 3 days in a row, then not make a peep for 2 months. 

But then I remembered the phone calls. 

The first mysterious phone call incident happened about a month ago. I had been talking to my son, Scott--he on his cell phone, me on my (expensive) land line. We were just having a normal conversation about something when suddenly a man’s voice interjected into the conversation to say, “Well now I have to re-think my whole plan.” 

 The words were slow, like someone speaking at half the speed they normally would. I knew immediately it was not Scott. It was not his voice. It was much deeper, like an older male. Scott doesn’t speak extraordinarily slow, either. And the sentence made zero sense in relation to whatever we had been talking about. 

At that moment I knew three things:  

1. 1. That sentence was not spoken by my son.  

2. 2. Someone (or some ‘thing’) else had joined our conversation.  

3. 3. I had no idea what plan they were referring to or what this meant. 

4. 
   

I asked, “What? Re-think what plan?”  

Scott said, “What? What are you talking about?”  I told him the strange sentence I just heard clear as a bell. He stated he never said anything of the kind. To make it even stranger, he did not hear the man speaking. Only I heard it. And it was definitely on the phone, not a tv or radio or anything else in the background. It was right in my ear, coming from the phone receiver.  

We discussed what had happened. Did phone lines get crossed? Is that even still a thing these days? A quick internet search tells me it is unlikely between a cell phone and a land line, although possible between two cell phones if voice data signals should get re-routed during a glitch, which rarely happens. 

Spirits communicating through various electrical devices have been widely reported and exhaustively investigated in paranormal circles. This includes phones as a method of communication and has happened to many people. Electrical energy makes it easier for a spirit to interact somehow. 

Given that this is not the first time a spirit has made contact around here using the phone, I am leaning towards “ghost” on this one, although I cannot tell you who the ghost was or what his plan is that he has to re-think. Not sure I want to know that one. 

I sort of forgot about the telephone ghost and a week or so went by. One evening I was once again talking to Scott—same deal: he on his cell and me on my landline. 

In the middle of our conversation, I heard a female voice shriek one loud word. It was not a voice I recognized. I have no idea what the word was she was abruptly yelling but it was loud and urgent. I asked Scott if he just heard that, to which he replied, “Heard what?” I described what just happened. He hadn’t heard a thing. 

It’s hard to entertain the thought that phone lines were crossed once again between a cell and a land line, as unlikely as that is to even happen once. And most people don’t yelp wildly when they are talking on the phone. 

So once again, I am left with questions: Who? Why? What did it say?? Why can’t Scott hear it when it’s interjecting in our conversation? 

I know one thing: when my phone rings and the caller ID says “unknown caller”, I pause for a moment before answering because you just never know who (or what) is on the other end of that call. Do I want to answer it? 

Would you want to? 

Nova Scotia Paranormal Events

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

Sounds & Noises

 

This blog post is about noises. If you’ve been following my blog about the haunted homestead, you probably read the June/2023 post about the ridiculous gargantuan noise I heard in the middle of the day on the staircase, which to this day cannot be explained.

Noises seem to be front and center lately (aside from the freaky lights incident written about here):  

                                                   Freaky Light Incident

I haven’t visually witnessed anything out of the ordinary these last few months, but there was plenty of that over the years witnessed by myself and others (most of which is on the blog).

I don’t know if noises are just the preferred communication method from the dearly departed these days, or if I am somewhat becoming more “in tune” with that sense. I wouldn’t exactly say I am becoming ‘clairaudient” as I don’t really hear paranormal sounds like truly clairaudient people do. I just hear stuff that is within regular hearing ability. I am the only one in the house some days. At night, I am the last one to bed. Therefore, that leaves me alone in a large rambling (and haunted) house with lots of quiet time. The lack of visual manifestations could be attributed to the fact that I have been known to tell them that I am here working and I don’t need to see spirits drifting throughout the rooms of my house trying to freak me out. Believe it or not, this has been effective before. They are cooperative, I will give them that. I imagine them going, “Well, she said she doesn’t want to SEE us but maybe we can make some noise so she doesn’t forget we live here, too.”

When I say “noises”, I don’t mean a wayward mouse in the attic who deservedly stepped into a trap. I mean sometimes a voice….sometimes footsteps walking….and louder things that make you really stop and think of what a perfectly normal explanation for the source could be, especially when you are the only one in the house, the cat is by your side, and you very clearly hear these things.

Just this morning, I got up a half hour early because I could hear something downstairs and had to double check it wasn’t a burglar. It wasn’t. Missing out on sleep is not something I would do unless I had to, so this confirms the seriousness of the situation.

Yes, there are sounds and noises in everyone’s house --for which explanations can be found: you left a radio on somewhere, your dog knocked over a shelf, your kids are jumping on their bed, etc. This is not what I am talking about. I am talking about things like unmistakable footsteps coming down the hallway behind you when there is not another living soul in your house.(emphasis on “living”.)

I have been keeping a list of the recent events. I have written about them here in order of “Hey, that’s not THAT unusual” to “Are you serious??” and not by the date they happened. And yeah, I am “dead” serious.

In June (2023), I was in the living room and heard someone walk down every stair of the staircase (just outside the living room). I was home alone.

About the footsteps I mentioned in the upstairs hallway: It was August (2023), late afternoon. I was home alone. The cat was off somewhere in the middle of a 22 hour nap. I exited my bedroom (which used to be the most haunted room in the house) and walked down the hallway to descend the stairs. When I reached the end of the hall, I could very clearly hear footsteps coming behind me. Of course I turned to look, sort of hoping I’d see (and sort of hoping I wouldn’t see) some long-departed relative, but nope. No one in sight. You know when someone walks on a creaky floor constructed in 1871. Trust me on this.

August was a paranormally- active month. On the 31^st, I was home alone, working in my home office in the far end of the living room. The house was quiet. Winston was lounging on a chair. All doors were locked; pop-in visitors could not enter unbeknownst to me. Yet, I could hear noises in the dining room or kitchen, like something substantial being moved around. Winston became alert and stared in the direction of the noise. I took a gander for visual evidence, but nothing could be seen.

And then in the middle of September, I heard one of the most intriguing noises of all.

Once again, I was home alone, working. The house was quiet. I started hearing hammering/banging noises, possibly on the kitchen end of the house, not right near me or above me. The sound was intermittent, off and on. This went on for about 2 hours. 

I proceeded to check around IN the house and outside for possible shed doors banging or the source of the racket. Everything was locked up tight and there was nothing outside to make that noise. It sounded very much like someone working on/hammering on the end of the house. It could not have been any neighbors— they are too far away to be heard with my windows shut. I was able to record this on my phone and have played it for a couple of people who also agree it sounded like a carpenter was pounding nails for awhile.

There are paranormal occurrences known as residual hauntings which are like a replaying of events from the past. I had written about it here:

                                                                       Classifying a Haunting

It is not out of the question that this is what that was.

Back to the action-packed month of August, I was sitting at the dining room table writing a few thank you cards. It was early evening, still daylight and clear out. Suddenly, I heard the metal door knocker on the front door knock 3 times. It’s a very distinct sound. I was sitting very close to the window that looks out at that door and could see no one was there. I went out to check anyway just in case someone 2 feet tall was on my doorstep. They weren’t. I think I said something like, “Well, if you want to come in, come in. You don’t have to knock.” I returned to what I was doing but nothing else transpired. Just “someone” wanting their presence known again, I think.

Within a few days of that incident, I was in the kitchen washing dishes around 6:00 in the evening. Shaun was in the living room. I heard someone kind of far away yell, “Rebecca!” It was unmistakable. I know my name when I hear it, duh. I walked into the living room to ask Shaun what he wanted. He told me he had not called my name. Nor did he hear it. There was no one else in the house. This would not be the only time a disembodied spirit called my name.

A few weeks later, I was reading in bed and had turned off my lamp to get some shut-eye. It was probably between 12:00-12:30. The house was super quiet. I laid there attempting to drift off when suddenly I heard my mom call my name: “Rebecca!”

It completely startled me, as she died 2 months before. The familiarity of her voice surprised and saddened me at the same time. I remember sitting right up and thinking, “That’s my mom!” I had missed the sound of her voice so much and while I was very happy to hear it again, it instantly reminded me that she was gone. A part of me was super happy though, that she--my mom, the person who gave me life, the person I’ve known the longest and miss the most, was capable and able to speak to ME from the afterlife. I didn’t care that it was just one word—my name—but it meant more to me than all the other paranormal experiences put together in ways I cannot even convey.

I wasn’t thinking of her as I laid there to go to sleep, so it was not wishful thinking. I was definitely not asleep yet so it was not a dream or even one of those small pre-dreams when you are just about asleep and beginning to enter a dream state. I had been actually fully awake when I heard it. It could not have been more clear and it was 100% definitely her voice. I did not get the sense that she was in the room with me. I can only think she wanted to make contact in a gentle way. That would be my mom in a nutshell.

She lived in this house most of her life. She had more paranormal experiences than anyone else I have ever known. I know sometimes those things scared her but for the most part, she found them intriguing, as do I, and we had many, many discussions surrounding what she, and others, have witnessed under this roof. She would always tell me the latest of what she saw or heard, followed by, “You know, I can’t really tell anyone but you about this or people will think I’m crazy. But I know what I saw.” I always reminded her it is hard for people who do not experience these things to fully grasp the unknown. But we knew.

She had some kind of quality whereby paranormal activity was very easy for her to experience. I am convinced some people just aren’t capable of it. Her first encounter with this was when she was a very small child in the 1930’s and she never forgot that throughout her life.

She was not the least bit “crazy” and when she died, she was as sensible and sane as you are. She just happened to live in a haunted house. And now, so do I. 

Lastly, back to August again, I was alone in the living room one night watching tv. I got up to head to the kitchen when I heard a HUGE crash, that sounded like pots and pans being dropped (definitely sounded like metal objects), in the direction of the kitchen or pantry. As no one else was in the kitchen or pantry, one wonders what exactly could have made a noise of this magnitude. No plausible reason was ever found.

I don’t expect the sounds and noises will ever permanently stop. Imagine having to live in your house without making a single sound. Impossible. And probably someday, I will turn around and out of nowhere a spirit will manifest itself (wouldn’t be the first time) and maybe we will really look at each other and I will say, “Okay, you’re my next blog post topic. Have a seat. I have questions.”

Stay tuned for that.

Nova Scotia Paranormal Events Newsletters