Whether it was my early-in-life angel dream, or whether I was just born this way, I have been connecting with entities of the so-called paranormal all my life. I never really thought it an odd attribute for a kid, but a little more cumbersome as a teenager, and a lot more intrusive when I became a twenty year old junior staffer at a Muskoka newspaper, and I wanted to write about ghosts and the stuff that goes bump in the night. My editor and publisher at the time wasn't all that receptive to the far-out paranormal story ideas, although honestly, I have never really felt that it was the sign of weirdness to be an advocate for "those who have crossed over," sharing their rather interesting messages. I again remind you that I am not a psychic and I don't channel anything more than a robust imagination and keen interest in sensory perception. It is the one freedom I enjoy most in this life, and it is the total liberation of imagination. I pity those who have constrained their imaginations, and mired themselves in everything of stress in this wild and crazy world, including most recently, the obsession with someone else's planted conspiracy theory, that like dandelions in the spring, multiply exponentially. And this is troubling. I don't believe anything these days without a rigorous amount of cross referencing and due diligence on my part, to make sure that I'm not heading down those deep rabbit holes of deception. I can't believe how many victims these conspiracy theories have consumed, and who knows how they can be deprogramed back to a more hinged way of looking at the details of the reality they seek most to understand. It's troubling, that's for sure, and the consequences are severe and we have seen them play out in unwarranted violence that accomplished nothing but deep suspicion and ongoing deceptions on the part of those who seem very competent planting the seeds.
When I consider what I benefitted most from my particular childhood, which was unusually unrestrained until I got into trouble, it was the reality I wasn't brow beaten into submission, with my parents way of thinking. If they had serious beliefs in anything but working five days a week to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads, I never really heard these values expressed. Merle and Ed were pretty straightforward with their plans for me, and it could be summed up in a few short words. "Let the kid enjoy life." I didn't leave our Burlington apartment, on the way down to play by the sparkling water of Ramble Creek, carrying the burden of their beliefs, personal or religious, and outside of my father's passion for sports on television and the nightly news, and my mother's insatiable appetite for classic music, I didn't have my sensory perception hindered whatsoever. I was given the freedom to not only explore that marvelous ravine near the shore of Lake Ontario, my joyful freedom to imagine all kinds of neat stuff happening in that natural paradise was up to me, and the juice I infused inspired by their sense of trust. As you have read earlier in this manuscript, I was no angel, and it was very much the case that I would come to need the assistance of my own Guardian Angel a few times when adventure got out of hand as I played near deep water.
The fact that I was given so much freedom, and the privilege of an unencumbered imagination, I never felt compelled to report to either one of my parents that I had most likely had an audience with a ghost or wayward spirit while walking in the shadow of a looming old house that sat so hauntingly below the venerable old hardwoods and chestnut trees of Torrance Avenue. I liked to access the property as a curious six year old, from the ravine, up the grown over pathway and terraced lawns of a once grander, and more prosperous time. I was very much ahead of myself in the matter of what is now called "witnesses of history," which for me at the time, were just relics and assorted interesting artifacts found in these abandoned places facing their own demise by wrecking ball. For example, a witness tree on a Civil War battlefield is historically significant because it was there when the fighting began and finished, often with evidence of having been hit by gunfire and related human carnage. My witnesses pieces were of course much less significant and valuable, but none the less, they told me something about the past in these once gracious homes and out buildings. I should note that from an early age I did visit abandoned houses whether in the urban setting or in the countryside after we moved to Muskoka in the mid 1960's.
It was in these old residences and barns where I most frequently found myself sensing the presence of something or other that was quite compelling, that could infiltrate my thoughts at that moment, as if a whisper from someone hiding in the long grass of a retired laneway, or from behind the half fallen barn, or the robust spring wind that inspires a mournful refrain, as if this lonely place cries out for its own history for the voyeur to reckon with; stepping along the same beaten pathways as generations of former residents and visitors made their way around this storied place. I have continued to be the recipient of these subtle and haunting vibrations, whenever I visit such heritage places, feeling as if the sudden scent of cinnamon or cloves, the permeating aroma of baked bread or steaming pies that may have cooled on those now paint-less window ledges, askew and without glass to reflect my gaze within.
I have never once seen a ghost in any of the hundreds upon hundreds of old homesteads and farmsteads formerly visited in this region and beyond. Although I may not have witnessed a white mist or suddenly emerging human form of a former inmate, I can also honestly say that I have never visited any of these forgotten abodes, in various states of dilapidation, that I didn't sense the presence of earthbound spirits, and ghostly entities, that were watching my travels, and offering whatever paranormal vibration they could, to let me know the history of the particular place was still guarding those thread bare memories. I never felt threatened or that I was passing into the kind of Hollywood version haunted house that meant me harm in any way. I will confess however, to feeling sad in most of these home thresholds, and privileged to the many times the residences were showcases of family celebrations, and joyful special occasions, just as I was to feel that these remaining walls and uneven floors and fallen ceilings, had cradled those souls with broken hearts when tragedy and death had to be endured, and hopelessness for the future consoled and faith restored. Why wouldn't there be a residue of past lives experienced here. Surely there must be a spiritual ingraining in these hard realities of the witness boards, cupboards, broken chairs, shattered window panes and smashed dishes on the rug-less floors.
Of course I shouldn't have been in these places. I was trespassing. But I did so with heightened respect, and didn't swipe anything I found inside. I might have taken a shard of old and interesting pottery, or a tea pot lid, all that was left of a thousand social occasions, but nothing of value. The real value was to be part of that last testament of a rich but short life as a shelter. A shelter once of so many spent emotions, from joy and excitement to fear and loathing about the influences of the world and social / economic realities, that made home life either rich or poor, restorative or destructive, and all emotions in between. These old homesteads were fountainheads of untold stories of which I felt privileged to know about, if only from the strange but lively vibrations I felt as a perceptive voyeur, getting a tour from those who had crossed over; but who were still the ambassadors of goodwill, serving a place that had once protected them from the intense summer storms, the autumn gales, and the winter blizzards that covered over the home landscape until the onset of warm spring winds that returned gentility back to the setting of soon to bloom lilacs and wildflowers that waver amongst the tall grasses of now wild places reclaiming the heritage of the hinterland.
I was given the gift of acute perception and over active imagination that often concerned my teachers at school, and my employers in the print industry later in life. As it bothered famed author, Washington Irving, author of famous tales such as Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the botanist's dissection of natural things, plants and flowers of the most beautiful and prolific variety, he worried as a lover of strange fictions, how dreamers and creators would get along if all the secrets of life were revealed in the most microscopic fashion. Such that the belief in the magical entities of an invigorated imagination, such as the existence of fairies, and such events as fairy circles from their dances amidst the tall wavering ferns, would be forever destroyed for those who enjoy such possibilities and potentials of nature and a natural life. I have long concurred with the good Mr. Irving, and I too see the danger of an overburden of magnification on life, when it threatens the freedom and liberation of countryside wanderers, who thrive on the vibrations and assorted sensory perceptions that science has yet to fully appreciate and understand. To say we are wrong and misguided when we tells our stories of paranormal activities and communication with those who have crossed, is in reality, to pronounce with total assurance and conviction that there is no such thing as ghosts. There are no fairies, hobgoblins, trolls, leprechauns, ogres or bandy legged wee beasties who dwell in the thickets of the forests and river banks. There are still a few of us who have no reason to challenge the science of discovery, and the fiction bashing of investigators of life's mysteries, but who care less about convincing others of the expert class, who are seemingly void of that precious imagination and intuition, that restores our faith in the magic of this world; and we are happy to remain loyal to what some call fiction, but we recall as a privilege of creative liberation to live and let live.
It doesn't matter where I go, whether out antique hunting or taking a motor trip through the region, I am always a willing voyeur and an eager listener, even though I might not be able to see who is giving me the pleasure of their company, helping me better relate to what I happen to be witnessing at the time. It would be a great sadness to me if I should ever be compromised in this regard of keen sensory perception and ever active imagination.
If I go down any rabbit hole it will be to follow the white rabbit as Alice did in her Adventure in Wonderland.
No conspiracy there! Just innocent fun. And we sure need more of that these days.
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