Welcome to this month’s collection of readers’ mystical stories. From an apparition’s image captured on a home security camera—to a phantom telephone transmitting a warning to a worried mother—to witnessing the wonder of nature, the tales show us once again that experiences such as these can happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time.
by Dorah L. Williams
Smile for the camera
“We installed a couple of security cameras on our property after coming home to find stuff out of place, vandalized, and even vanished. Nothing major but still odd, like chairs, rearranged on the front porch, the wood pile scattered about, flowers pulled out of the garden, and our “welcome” mat and front door wreath went missing, to name a few.
Fortunately, there have been no further incidents since installing the cameras, and we have never caught anything unusual on the motion-triggered video clips. That is, until the last time we were away when my nephew volunteered to “house-sit” for us as he was coming to town and needed a place to stay.
He sent a text when he arrived at our home, and we planned on seeing him there when we returned in a couple of days.
By the following day, though, when I finally checked my phone’s messages again, there were a few very odd texts from him, such as: “Who else is in this house?!” and “This isn’t funny!!” His last message said, “That’s it. I’m out of here!”
We didn’t understand what he meant, and he wasn’t answering my messages.
We cut our trip short and got home later that day and found him gone, but his cell phone was still on the kitchen counter. No wonder he wasn’t answering. When he left the house in a rush, he had forgotten his cell phone, but why hadn’t he returned to retrieve it?
He explained what had happened when we finally tracked him down at another relative’s place.
His first day and night were uneventful. But by the next morning, he said, “the “energy” in the house had totally changed. He swore that someone kept walking right up behind him, following him around the house. He could sense them there and heard their footsteps on the hardwood floors throughout the house. At first, he thought it was a prank.
We checked the archived camera captures on my phone’s app from that weekend to see if anything like what he described could be seen in one of the clips.
We only have exterior cameras, but once my nephew opened the front door, heading to his car to leave, the security camera on the front porch, triggered by that motion, recorded not just him but also clearly caught the gray figure of an older lady, standing right behind him in the foyer by the front door.
There definitely was someone else there! In spirit form, at least. He never saw the apparition, only heard it. But the camera clearly captured that image.
Since then, nothing else unusual has been captured on our security camera, and we don’t feel uncomfortable living here, but every once in a while, when I’m alone, I feel like someone is watching me, too.”
A ringing in the closet
“In 1934, a gold mine opened in northwestern Quebec, miles from all amenities. Young couples who had experienced the Depression and were desperate for work applied for the numerous jobs being advertised. My parents were one of them. The town was called Belletiere (beautiful land) and was a true frontier-type town.
In October 1949, my youngest brother took sick. The closest we had for a doctor was a first aid man from the mine. In the meantime, my father was gone on the traditional moose hunt for two weeks. Mother was on her own. The first aid man diagnosed my brother with a case of the flu.
His fever did not go down, and he became lethargic. It seemed every twenty minutes he wanted to know what time it was. That night, as Mother got ready for bed, a telephone started to ring in her closet, but she knew that was impossible. There was no phone in her closet. The phone was in the living room. So, she went to the living room and picked up the phone, and as she did, she could still hear the phone ringing in her closet.
So back she went to her bedroom where the phone was ringing in her closet. She opened the closet door, and the ringing stopped. She closed the door, and it started again. Something was trying to tell her that she should hurry and it clicked that it concerned her son.
She threw on her coat and ran to the mine manager’s house and explained to him about her sick son and the ringing in the closet. He did not hesitate to call the company plane, and got my mother to bundle up my brother and herself, and drove her to the dock, as it was a floatplane.
A few hours later, at the hospital, the doctor told Mother that her son’s appendix had perforated and that he was a very sick boy. He suggested that she go to the chapel and pray.
Between prayer and sulpha, he came out of his coma a few days later.”
Birds of a feather
“My story isn’t paranormal but shows how mystical nature can be.
Last summer, while I was in our kitchen, a female cardinal made a beeline for the window beside me. She flew right up to it, looked directly at me, and started chirping and flapping her wings frantically. If birds can become hysterical, that is what she was.
She was trying to communicate something very important to her. I stood there frozen, not knowing what to make of her strange behaviour, and she left after a few seconds, flying off towards the back of our property.
We have an old carriage house back there, which is now just used for storage. It has a loft and a high beamed ceiling. Later that afternoon, I was out poking around in the loft, looking for something I had stored up there. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something darting up to a ceiling beam.
It was a juvenile cardinal, and it looked frightened. I didn’t know how it got in there, as all the windows have been painted shut for decades, and we are rarely out there. So, I didn’t know how long it had been trapped inside. Seeing the piles of walnut shells scattered about the loft, I thought it may have entered the same way the squirrels evidently did.
I hoped it would eventually exit the only way it could, so I kept the door wide open for the remainder of the day when I left. My husband accompanied me to the carriage house that evening to ensure the bird had flown out and to close it up again. But it was still there, perched on the same ceiling beam, chirping weakly.
Though we kept the door open, hoping it would use it, the poor little cardinal remained on that beam, high above the loft, well into the next day. It refused to budge. Outside, however, a male and female cardinal perched on the loft window sill and chirped back to the juvenile inside. They remained on that window sill the whole day, and I assumed it was the same female cardinal who swooped to our kitchen window and chirped so frantically at me the day before.
We didn’t know how to get it out of there. It wasn’t possible to reach it way up on that beam, and since it refused to move, my husband borrowed a large net with a long handle from a neighbour up the road. After many attempts, he somehow managed to get it into the net and carefully carried it outside.
Then, the most amazing thing occurred.
He gently placed the little cardinal on a nearby log, and it quickly flew up onto a tree limb. The two adult cardinals, who had never left that loft windowsill until their baby was freed, swooped to the tree limb to join it, all three chirping loudly.
And then, incredibly, a huge flock of cardinals suddenly appeared in the sky over our yard and flew in unison around our property, just above the rooftops, again and again. I’d never seen more than one or two cardinals at a time, but suddenly, there were dozens of them. They all appeared instantaneously as soon as the little one was safe.
They seemed to be rejoicing in his freedom (which may sound silly, but I can’t think of any other way to describe it). It was a remarkable sight, and I felt lucky to witness it.”
*Many thanks to those who shared their stories for this column of Mystical Manitoulin! Do you also have a tale to tell? Whether you’ve experienced a haunting, a mysterious cryptid sighting, or a brush with the inexplicable, please share it with Canadian author Dorah L. Williams at dorahlwilliams@gmail.com
Your story, too, could be featured in an upcoming column of Mystical Manitoulin!
