The Oaken Snugger Part 11

 

Photos by Suzanne Currie

THE OAKEN SNUGGERY - PART 11

BY TED CURRIE

     I was sitting by the huge windows that afford an amazing panorama of the Rose Hill property, feeling, at this moment, quite fortunate as an old writer, to be basking in this rural luxury at the Bosevelt’s “Snuggery”. Even if the mission here was to uncover the earthbound spirits residing in the farmhouse, it was still a very comfortable platform from which to conduct my research. I was thinking back, cup of tea in hand, to the first apartment Suzanne and I shared, while living in Bracebridge where we were both employed on the same block. I was the editor of The Herald-Gazette, at the intersection of Dominion and Quebec Streets, and she was a rookie teacher at Bracebridge High School a short walk in the opposite direction. When I moved into the apartment in the Victorian house, the resident ghost or two didn’t care for my intrusion, or the fact I used to leave my wet hockey equipment on the porch after games. I brought quite a number of antique pieces into the marriage, including a large number of old books, and what had been a nicely arranged and perfectly decorated apartment, thanks to Suzanne, became unfortunately for my dear wife, a holding zone for our eventual antique shop still several years done the road. Whatever entity haunted that apartment, of the Victorian house, it appreciated Suzanne’s “less is more” decorating concept, and very much disapproved of my hoarding of old stuff. So much so in fact, that it created a stir through a number of interesting interventions in an otherwise quiet one bedroom unit. The first spirited event was the nightly performance of windless wind chimes, that tinkled away without actually being anywhere in the building or outside. There were no chimes in fact, but we could record wind chimes in spirit. Then there was the many incidents of opened cupboard and refrigerator doors each morning, including drawers in the kitchen counter being opened as if someone had been busily working in the room. If the drawers and cupboard doors weren’t open, then the lights in the kitchen and bathroom would be switched on each morning, as if someone had just finished ablutions and forgot to extinguish the lamps. It wasn’t frightening stuff that’s for sure, but it was pretty clear, that unless someone else was using the apartment when we went to bed, there had to be a nocturnal resident who wasn’t paying their fair share of the rent. There were other intrusive situations in the apartment, but nothing that we couldn’t handle with conversation between the living and those who had crossed over. We explained to them that we had no intention of forcing them out, or holding an exorcism to expel them the hard way, as long as we could respect each others right to enjoy the lodgings for as long as we shared the same space. It didn’t stop the late-night activities, but we learned to get along with our apartment mates, by simply enjoying the wind chimes, closing the cupboard doors and switching off the lights whenever we happened to get up, even in the middle of the night. We worked around their schedule you might say. 

     Several days went by at the old house, without much happening in the way of spirited interventions. Nothing the voyeur would attribute to the paranormal, or I dare say, the supernatural. The guests have now left after having two days of relative harmony, and peacefulness, as The Oaken Snuggery and the Bosevelts met every demand of accommodation, keeping up their standard of hospitality. I have done little more than wander through the house, when it was vacant of occupants, and wandered the property on numerous occasions from sunrise until the lamplights switch on a dusk. Even then I have found reason to amble along the stone pathways to the hillside overlooking the pond, thriving with sound at this rejuvenating time of year. If this property and this old farmhouse are haunted, the past few days and quiet evenings have shown little to be concerned about, in terms of the spirits eagerness to take over its occupation from the proprietors. Even when there is a prevailing sensation of paranormal activity, it is of a gentle influence, that is strangely passive, as if one could chastise whatever perpetrates an unwanted visitation, and demand they vacate the premises, and thus abandoning would be done with acute haste. But I have not tried this, and feel it would be regretful not to, in some equally passive way, to validate their purpose here. As I am confident these roaming, mischievous spirits, possibly of children, have an interest in making the present owners appreciate their inhabitation. Nothing presumably fostered with fear, although the Bosevelts have reason to worry, as the incidents have been increasing since they opened the Rose Hill Bed and Breakfast.

     The fused metal crosses discovered by a guest of the Snuggery, during the heavy rains of the other night, connected with a rather violent April storm, are still in my possession, now resting on a glass tray positioned beneath the office lamp on a corner table beside my bed. I have studied it carefully, in lamplight and natural light, and it is most definitely a curiously connected piece, welded together presumably by high heat, yet both crosses maintain their integrity, joined at the middle, both upright yet angled slightly apart, giving the appearance of actually having been made that way which is highly unlikely. They are different crosses in size and design, and both have an opening at the top for the insert of very light chains, to be worn around the neck. The chains were missing when the fused crosses were located in the puddle of run-off water, following the heavy part of the storm which had obviously eroded a goodly section of the walkway at the front of the house, near the main entrance. The illumination from the porch light caused a faint reflection in the tarnished silver, enough to catch the eye of the passerby that evening. It has been the talk of the household ever since, but I have maintained it in secret since Mrs. Bosevelt handed it to me, the next morning. Is it a sort of missing link, to explain the hauntings of The Oaken Snuggery? If only there were inscriptions on the backs of the crosses. Just some tidbit of information that could be used to get a hold of this story I know out of immense frustration, is yet to be told.

     The first good news of my stay came from my wife and research partner Suzanne, who phoned to tell me that she had uncovered some formative information about the Rose Hill property, from the first emigrants who took up the free land grants that were offered in the late 1860’s. She couldn’t find anything about the family that would be particularly helpful, other than they had come from Liverpool to Canada in 1867 originally, to Muskoka two years later, but who abandoned the property only two years after arrival at what was to become known as the hamlet, Rose Hill. This was not uncommon in Muskoka, and there were many turnovers of property in the first ten years of occupancy, when settlers discovered by trial and error, just how many impediments there were going to be, in order to pull in a successful harvest from rocky and stump filled acres, and how unlikely they would ever be able to make enough profit to support the homestead expense, and their family’s sustenance. Many of these early homesteaders had to supplement their incomes by being hired-on by the lumber companies, at their winter camps dotted throughout the district and beyond. It meant that the men of the family were employed elsewhere, during the winter and spring log drive, leaving the women and children to manage the home in the wilds. It was often enough hardship, heaped upon privation, to convince settlers to move on to more hospitable futures, not in Muskoka where the growing season was short, and the topography was not best suited to agriculture. As compared, of course, to other homestead grants being offered in other parts of Ontario and in the west where a trans continental railway would one day connect, ocean to ocean. There were no shortages of opportunity, but there was to be limited success in both south and north Muskoka, and only the hardiest of homesteader could make a go of it in the rural clime of the region. Homestead abandonment was common, in short, and as it turned out, there were quite a few more inhabitants of this acreage of the present Oaken Snuggery than the Bosevelts were aware of, garnered from some in the neighborhood how offered what amounted to as protracted hearsay. A little more like folk lore than an honest chronology of ownership, that would be helpful in this present quest, although it is quite a stretch to attempt an identification of garden-variety ghosts, to the fifty to a hundred former residents, who called this acreage their own since 1868, when the forest that reigned above, was toppled unceremoniously to herald civilization, letting the sunlight beat down on a landscape held in the shadows for centuries.

     While I sat in my window-side chair, earlier this evening, watching the fading sunlight of what had been a most engaging spring day, warm and alluring to the countryside wanderer, I held that fused piece of metal in the palm of my hand, and tried to assess how such a thing would have happened naturally, or why it would have been welded together on purpose, although I very much doubted this had been crafted upon two delicate, beautiful crosses, that probably meant a great deal to whoever had owned them in the past. I was fascinated by the situation of the crosses, and the reality they still possessed their original integrity, and ability to sparkle in the light, even after many years, if not decades, being buried at the side of the front yard pathway. It’s surprising to me how the piece wasn’t dug up when the pathways were installed by the Bosevelts two years ago, or so they tell me, but then the fact that they have been dislodged with this latest rain, pretty much indicates the digging nearby partially liberated the buried icon, such that such a natural event would reveal it to the open air sooner or later. I fail to find anything sinister or of significant meaning to the welded crosses, but I do believe there is reason to suspect that they were fused together by heat, from a man-made or natural source, such as having been damaged in a fire, such as the common knowledge here, is that there were two dwelling places destroyed by fire before the turn of the 1900’s. But where had these shanties been situated on the property? Did any of the occupants of these cabins perish in these accidental fires? Are there the remains of fire victims buried in the unmarked cemetery on the hillside above the pond? And what, if anything at all, do the deaths that occurred on this property, since 1868 have to do with the most recent string of ghostly visitations and paranormal activity experienced by the proprietors and guests of The Oaken Snuggery? I suppose the only way of finding out is to ask those who have perpetuated the hauntings, to come clean about their mischief, and to provide reasons for their unwelcome intrusions. Rather than exorcise them into their own ethereal eternities, I wanted most of all to communicate with these entities, because I believe there are reasons for their spirited communications. We just haven’t been speaking a common language thus far, but being honest with them might be a good place to start learning about one another, the mortal and the immortal who have conflicting claims to full occupation of this historic property in rural Muskoka.

    In retrospect, I was also thinking about the first house Suzanne and I purchased, only one block from where we had been residing on Quebec Street. We were at the foot of Ontario Street, below the High School, in a small two story brick facade house built in the early 1900’s as a cheap house for town tannery employees. It wasn’t long into our period of residence, with a child on the way, when we discovered this house also possessed a little something extra, that we hadn’t bargained for when we inked the deal. At first we wondered if one of the ghosts from the apartment, (of which we believe now there were two) had come with us inadvertently, to once again, play with the light switches. This time, the preferred place to frolic, was in the small downstairs bathroom. It didn’t matter how many times we corrected the situation, turning off the ceiling light, a half hour later, it would be switched back on once again. It was kind of humorous because we had gotten used to the ghosts of the apartment, that did some of the same things, potentially to get us to move our stuff out, and leave them to haunt at their leisure. What we found out after our first year of switching off lights in the old house, was that the former owner, who lived in the house just before we arrived, had passed away while having a bath. We supposed she was pretty keen on keeping the light on, and following this revelation, we would offer the woman our apology for switching off the lamp, based on the fact we were a young couple without a lot of money, and we couldn’t afford a big hydro bill at the end of the month. The incidents switched down to half from the way it had begun. Still, we found the haunting to be mild in every way, and hardly the kind of paranormal situation to write a movie script about.