Do you believe in ghosts? How about in the lasting legacy of history’s secrets? Not just buried figuratively, deep within the fabric of our society, but literally, within one’s own property?
During the 1920s and into the ‘30s, Prohibition laws led to a rise in bootlegging in the US and Canada. I’ve had more than a few people share personal reminiscences, or passed-down family stories, related to the local lore of this topic. However, historical records are understandably scarce for such a clandestine industry. Some locals may have made and sold moonshine, but the organized crime rings, in both countries, were the genuine concern. In that long-ago era associated with infamous mobsters like Al Capone and his ilk, smuggling contraband alcohol across the border could be perilous.
The following narratives occurred decades apart yet are linked to the same period of history. Of course, exact settings are always omitted here for privacy. But when I was told the locations and realized the close proximity of these different recollections, I wondered about their connection to bootleggers’ secrets in hidden places. Not just storing the artifacts of a notorious past but their energy too.
How much history is buried right in front of us? It’s an intriguing thought.
Back in my younger days — so, long ago — some family members bought a 19th-century building that had once been used as a lodging house but had fallen onto hard times over the years. I wouldn’t say it was dilapidated, but some TLC was needed. It had great bones, though, and it was nicely restored with many people’s help, including mine.
I did odd jobs to help out when I could, but it often felt like someone or something unseen was watching me while I worked. I turned to see who was there whenever that feeling came over me, but no one else was ever around when this would happen. That gave me the chills, but I just tried to ignore it and not let it slow me down.
The oddest thing, though, looking back on this now, was how much their dog hated being inside that building. Hated it! It refused to walk inside on its own. Whenever it was carried in, it became really frightened, especially near the first-floor stairway. It would cower in a corner, tail between its legs. Weirdly out of character for that friendly little dog, to say the least.
One day a false wall near the staircase was demolished to gain extra floor space. We couldn’t understand why it had ever been put there in the first place. It served no purpose. Or so we thought.
Once we had made a sizeable hole in the wall, we looked inside the cavity and were amazed to see what had been hidden in there for all that time.
Rows of antique liquor bottles, all covered in dust. A few were damaged, but the rest were in mint condition! It took us a moment to realize what we were looking at. All those whiskey bottles had been sealed up behind that false wall. From the look of it, and my grandfather’s stories, we assumed it must have been a bootlegger’s stash. But why hide it away in a sealed-up wall like that? That never made sense. Constructing a wall just to conceal that booze seemed like a lot of work. There must have been a strong market for it during Prohibition. Why not sell it? Or drink it? But instead, it was deliberately hidden inside that wall until we found it ages later.
That discovery was incredible, though. Picking up those bottles was like holding history in your hands. Made all the old stories about bootleggers seem more real because this was something tangible.
I have no idea what became of that stash of bottles after it was removed from the premises. But I remember something really interesting occurred once that false wall was demolished, and all that whiskey was taken out of the building. There was a completely different feeling, and everyone noticed it. No more chills, sensing you were being watched, or creepy feelings. It just felt normal after that.
And their little dog, who was like a barometer of the building’s atmosphere, finally acted like himself again and was calm and happy. A 180-degree difference in its behaviour when in that building from that day on.
As we wrap up this first tale of spirits, both the liquid and spectral kind, one thing is already clear: disturbing the past can have unexpected consequences! But, as the next experience shows, it may be best to leave some secrets buried.
After settling into our first home in the 1990s, I dug in the yard one day, making a garden bed. I kept unearthing large shards of old glass and was getting quite a collection for my next mosaic art creation.
Then I hit something hard. It was a small, primitive-looking wooden box, the size of a shoe box, buried down about a foot. When I got it out of the ground and opened it, I found two scraps of withered paper and a couple of really old liquor bottles. I’m sure they must have been fine when first put into that box and buried, but unfortunately, the bottles had broken at some point over the years, and the notes’ faint scribbles were now barely visible and impossible to read. So nothing was salvageable except for the box itself, which needed a good cleaning.
I put the broken bottles in with the glass collection for my art project and disposed of the old papers. But I thought the box was a cool antique, so I brought it inside to show it to my partner. Big mistake. That’s when the weird stuff started happening. Fortunately for my sanity, I wasn’t the only one seeing and hearing this.
Keep in mind our place wasn’t old by any measure. So this wasn’t like a stereotypical old-looking haunted house scenario. Just an ordinary modern house that suddenly seemed to become haunted.
We started to hear loud heavy footsteps in the hallways. Doors didn’t just close but slammed by themselves. Creepy shadows kept appearing on our walls and ceilings. It felt like someone was watching you when no one else was around. Our cats were acting very disturbed, angrily hissing at something overhead. And the tv, and the kitchen radio, turned on and off on their own, just to name some of the scary events that happened after my garden discovery. I still get goosebumps recalling all of this now, just as I got goosebumps then every time I looked at that box. I began to worry that I ticked off something when I dug it up. I know how silly that sounds, believe me. But there’s no other way to describe this.
I showed my cousin the box I’d found — but didn’t mention feeling haunted. He was immediately interested in hearing about this and asked questions about the bottles I’d found inside it. He suggested that our house could have been built on land bootleggers once used while smuggling liquor on and off the Island during the Roaring ‘20s. So it may have been one of those rumrunners, as he called them, who had hidden that box for a reason we’d never know. What seemed obvious to me, though, was that something certainly didn’t seem to like me messing with it, no matter why it had been buried.
So, I retrieved the bottle pieces from my artwork’s glass collection and returned them to the box. But, the discarded papers, with the illegible writing, were already gone, so I couldn’t re-bury them too. Then the small box was replaced back into the ground exactly where I’d found it.
And once I did that, the haunting activity in our house soon stopped, with no other strange experiences frightening us for the rest of the time we lived there. This all may sound like an overactive imagination, but it was not. My memory of this is as clear to this day as though it had happened yesterday.
What was it about those old forgotten bottles that seemed to stir up such strange reactions from restless spirits? Was it the ghosts of the bootleggers themselves, angry that their long-forgotten stash had been disturbed? Or was it something more benign — a caution about the dangers of illicit activities? The stories of the restless spirits connected to 1920s liquor bottles are a reminder of the turbulent and dangerous times that marked the era of bootlegging during Prohibition.
But they also show that some secrets never die, and some ghosts never rest. So, if you, too, ever come across a hidden stash of century-old bootlegged whiskey, beware. You never know who might be watching and waiting to reclaim their lost treasure.
Do you also have an exciting and mystical tale to tell? Whether you’ve experienced a haunting, a mysterious cryptid sighting, or a brush with the inexplicable, share it with Canadian author Dorah L. Williams at dorahlwilliams@gmail.co Your story, too, could be featured in an upcoming column of Mystical Manitoulin!
