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

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

Ghost Voice Captured on Video

 

When you have lived in a haunted house for most of your life, one of the hardest things to do is find evidence you can present to people. Like any other mystery, people want proof that what you are telling them is true, especially with something as unusual as a real true full-on haunting.

Our house has been haunted from at least the 1930’s, as my mother often told me about her experiences in the house from the time she was a little girl. If there was paranormal activity before that, she (and I) were not aware. Who’s to say when it all started and what the very first incident was? My mother’s mother never reported anything prior to that so it is really hard to say when it all began. On the other hand, just because something was never talked about, didn’t mean it wasn’t happening.

If you’ve read any of this blog, you are well aware this house has all of the typical characteristics of a haunted house. Ghosts/spirits (and a few other paranormal oddities) have been seen, heard, and felt. We’ve also had phone calls from ghosts. We’ve had things disappear into thin air. We’ve had things return again, usually in very strange places with no explanation. We’ve also had atypical things happen, too, such as phantom cars in our driveway on several occasions, children’s footprints on floorboards when no children lived here, mysterious lights in the backyard and even a visit from a very strange individual that I am convinced was not from this planet. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Please read back through the blog if you want to get a good picture of what has gone on here throughout the years.

 One of the most interesting aspects is that I am not the only person to have experienced the paranormal on our property. There have been plenty of other family members and friends who have had the crap scared out of them here. A few were innocent children who knew nothing about our paranormal history. A few were level headed adults who are still afraid to visit. There are several who would never stay in this house alone for even five minutes, or spend the night.

So I am not alone in experiencing this. I am completely thankful that a lot of other people also experienced some of the same things that I did. Even though I spent most every night of my childhood from the age of 5 on afraid to go to bed because I never knew what was going to transpire that involved the afterlife, there was some relief in the fact that I was not singled out by some weirdo ghosts or entities. Was I glad others saw and heard ghosts? You’re damn right I was. Even a few skeptics turned into paranormal believers after spending some time here.

Another interesting point is the fact that even though most of our family members have experienced some ghostly activity here at some point, there are also a couple who have never encountered anything. There is also at least one person in the family who never experienced anything until last year.

This brings us back to the ‘maybe everyone is not ‘open’ to the whole ghost concept’ theory. I don’t necessarily believe in that. I have known a few people who would give their right arm to encounter a ghost in my house (although I have tried to dissuade those people from offering up any of their favorite appendages just to see my dead grandmother come waltzing down the staircase late at night). I also know believers who have never experienced anything paranormal and it is not for lack of trying on their part. I know believers who were total skeptics until they had an encounter in my house. And I know the few who say, “There are no such things as ghosts”.

To those people, I say, with all due respect: Then what have I been living with (minus the twenty + years I lived elsewhere) for most of my life? What have my siblings, their children, my child, his wife, my mother, my assorted relatives and friends exactly been experiencing under this roof since at least 1930?

As mentioned on other blog posts, they attribute it to 1 of 4 things usually:

1.The house settling.

2. The wind.

3. Vermin, such as mice or squirrels.

4. A wild imagination.

I have written about these, and explained why these are never the reason.

You can re-hash that here:

LINK

 

So back to the point of this particular blog post…

A few months ago I wrote about a very mysterious encounter I had while home alone one day. You can read it here:

LINK

To sum it up, I was home alone working. The cat was asleep on a chair near me. The house was very quiet. The windows were not open. Suddenly, I heard what sounded like hammering on the far end of the house. I went to check it out but could find nothing responsible. Luckily, I recorded it with my phone because I figured very few people would believe me.

A few days ago, completely on a whim, I replayed those videos (there were 3 as each one only recorded for a short time). I wanted to upload the first video in a family Messenger chat so they could hear the mysterious hammering but Messenger was being difficult and would not load the video. I decided to record on my phone IN Messenger from the original video on my computer (by hitting record in Messenger and putting my phone near the computer speaker while the video was playing).

I figured this could shorten the duration of the video somewhat, and I could post it in the Messenger family chat. This was successful. However, when I listened to the playback of this new recording (of the original recording) I noticed a voice just before the end.

A VOICE.

A voice that did not belong to me or the cat and we were the only ones here.

To quote ghost hunters everywhere, I believe my reaction was, “What the f*$# was that?” I replayed it and replayed it and replayed. I pointed it out in the family chat and to a few others I knew who would find this particularly intriguing.

It seems to be a man’s voice, sort of whispery. He seems to be saying, “Listennnnnn”, or possibly some other word followed by “Listennnnnn.”

The voice is NOT on the original recording. This means when I recorded from the original video a few days ago, whoever or whatever, was standing very near to me while I was recording and decided to speak up.

Here is the audio clip—the voice chimes in around the 20-21 second mark. Turn your volume UP and make sure you are in a quiet place:

LINK

 

There is lots of background recording (white) noise because once again, this is a recording of a recording and that is just the nature of attempting to do that. When I made the original recording, the house was very quiet except for the hammering. When I recorded the second recording the other day, again all was quiet in the house. I was home alone at the time. Earlier that morning, Winston and I both heard a couple of noises in the dining room but we shrugged it off thinking it was probably something ghostly, as usual, and didn’t investigate. If I investigated every single noise I hear, I’d never get any work done.

Right at the beginning of this audio clip, you can hear the hammering/banging. Yes, it is similar to someone knocking on a door but as I have mentioned, I went to the door and even outside around the house and no one was there. Also, it went on for HOURS. In the 3^rd video (not converted to a shorter vid yet), the hammering really gets going and you would swear someone was building an addition on the other end of the house. Yet, in real time, nothing was visible.

Does the voice freak me out? Not really. I find it intriguing. I consider it further proof that spirits and ghosts exist. How is it NOT proof? The thing spoke right into my phone! I would really love to know who it is.

 I consider myself lucky for being able to amateurishly investigate ghosts AND capture a ghost voice on a recording. This is not something that is easily done. Most ghost hunters spend countless days and nights with crazy amounts of equipment trying to achieve what I just did by accident with very simple and basic gadgets. I can’t say if the places they visit have real ghosts or not, but I can say with 100% certainty that my place does.

File this under Proof That Ghosts Exist.

Nova Scotia Paranormal Events Newsletters