As we once again celebrate All Hallow’s Eve, let’s gather about the virtual bonfire, pass around the candy corn, and enjoy these shared mystical experiences:
THE SHADOW
“I was excited to get my own place after starting my first full-time job after graduation. It was just a tiny studio apartment in an old building that needed many repairs. But I felt proud to host a housewarming party shortly after moving in to show my family and friends how independent I now was.
My cousin brought me a tropical-looking house plant as a housewarming gift, and it added a nice touch. I didn’t know much about plants, but she gave me simple instructions for its care, and it continued to thrive for several weeks in its new home.
I worked long shifts then, so I wasn’t home much besides eating and sleeping, so maybe I missed earlier signs that something wasn’t normal in that place. But one day, about a couple of months after moving in, I was sitting in front of the TV watching a show as I ate my dinner.
I noticed something slowly moving along the wall out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head to fully face it. It was a large (shapeless) shadow, slowly edging its way across the wall on my right-hand side, just a few feet away from where I sat.
I froze. I had no idea what was casting that shadow onto the wall. But it moved slowly enough that I could get a good look as it edged its way across my small living area.
When it reached the corner where my new houseplant had been placed, it slowly turned into a black fog-like mass and disappeared. I remained frozen in my seat as I watched the plant suddenly jerk back and forth as though something had just banged into it. Its leaves were still fluttering when I bolted out of the apartment and spent the night at my parents’ place.
I was still scared the next day, so my dad went back to the apartment with me. He didn’t believe in ghosts or anything like that, but he could see how rattled I was from what I witnessed the night before. I felt safer having him with me when I returned, but then I saw the look on his face when we walked through my front door.
I think he was even more startled than I was. In the corner of the room, my once healthy houseplant now was just a shrivelled mass of dead leaves. It looked like it had been dead for ages when it had actually been fine until the shadow figure passed by it the night before.”
THE BOY WHO WAS NOT THERE
“Maggie and her friend had been away on holidays.
Coming home late at night, Maggie saw a young boy in a parka at the side of the road. It was early spring, still cool. She recognized him as a boy who lived on her street.
Her friend commented, “What is that boy doing out at this time of night?”
So, Maggie backed her car up to see if he was okay, but he had disappeared. She could not understand what had happened. One minute, he was there and gone the next.
When she got home, she told her Mother about it. Her Mother said, “That can’t be him; he was killed on that street last week crossing the road.”
They felt his parka had obstructed his view as he crossed the road.”
DISEMBODIED
VOICES
“Our family had some strange experiences when our kids were younger. Nothing has happened for a number of years now, though, so is there possibly a connection there? Could all that young energy have somehow fuelled it? I’ve read that it was a possible theory for poltergeist activity, but I’m no expert on the subject. I’ll just describe my family’s personal experiences, and you can be the judge.
There was no rhyme or reason for the activity. Sometimes, we’d go for months without a peep and hope it was finally over. But then weird happenings would start up for about a week straight before letting up again. We never discussed any of this outside of our own household. We all kept it private, to ourselves. I’d like to share a bit now, though:
Our kids and my spouse saw a few different spirits at one time or another over the years, ranging from very young to very old. They would describe them so vividly that it actually made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I didn’t doubt them then or now, but I never saw anything like that myself.
But what I did experience, along with everyone else, was hearing disembodied voices. Clear as a bell.
When I arrived home after work, I often found myself calling to a family member upstairs after I heard them call down to me, only to later discover I was the only one in the house.
At other times, our kids would hurry into a room I was in to ask what I wanted. They had heard me calling for them from that area of the house. But I hadn’t said a word or heard a thing. They insisted it was my voice that called them. It wasn’t.
This happened too many times to just be easily dismissed as imagination. We all would distinctly hear a specific family member’s voice calling when they were either not even home or hadn’t said a thing. But not one of us ever heard our own voices calling. Always another family member.
The mimicking of our voices felt like a weird practical joke was being played on us by an unseen prankster, and I guess it probably sounds relatively harmless as I’m explaining this now, but, at the time this kept happening, it gave us all a pretty creepy feeling.”
BANGS AND KNOCKS
“On a cold wintry morning, Mom and Dad were fast asleep.
Three sharp knocks woke them up. Dad went to the door. Not only was nobody there, but there was not a track in the newly fallen snow. They were the last house on a dead-end street. The road had not been plowed, as it was only 6 am.
Later, at about 7:30, the phone rang as they were having breakfast. It was Mom’s cousin’s husband. He called to let her know that her best friend and cousin had died at 6 o’clock that morning.”
GRANDPA’S PIPE
My grandfather was a great guy. He was always there when you needed a good laugh to brighten your mood or a strong shoulder to lean on in tough times. He died a long time ago, when I was in my early teens. I have great memories of our times together, but something I didn’t give much thought to remembering was the ever-present smell of pipe tobacco whenever he was nearby—until I smelled that distinctive smoke again decades later.
Many years after his death, my grandmother died at a very advanced age. Throughout the rest of her life, she talked about my grandfather quite a lot after his death, but in her final days, it was constant. When she spoke directly to him, we thought she was hallucinating due to her condition and the strong medicine she was receiving. But she insisted her late husband was by her side, and she was very much at peace when she passed.
A young nurse, often on duty in those final days, became agitated during our final visit because she said she could smell someone smoking nearby, which was strictly forbidden. No one else could smell anything unusual at first, but she claimed the smell was almost overwhelming and tried to figure out where it was coming from.
I was in her room with other family members when my grandmother died, and I had mixed emotions. Relieved she was now at peace but sad at our family’s loss. I hoped she was now reunited with my grandfather, who she’d always called “the love of her life,” but had assumed her words, on that matter, near the end, were due to delirium.
Until I smelled the smoke, too, at the time of her death. I noticed the young nurse, who was in the room too, take several sniffs and slowly look around, again searching for the source, as the smell became apparent to me, too. It wasn’t cigarette smoke, though—as soon as I got the first whiff, I immediately recognized it as the smell I knew so well in my childhood. It was definitely the strong scent of my grandfather’s favourite pipe tobacco that had always accompanied him everywhere he went.”
Many thanks to those who shared their experiences for this month’s 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!
by Dorah L. Williams
