The Oaken Snuggery Part 12

The Deer Trail Through The Woods
Photos by Suzanne Currie

  

The Oaken Snuggery Part 12 By Ted Currie

My mother thought I was a strange kid, for any number of reasons I suppose, but mostly because of my penchant for old discarded stuff that I routinely hauled home to our Burlington apartment. Car parts, shiny things, smooth rocks, and jagged ones that showed the sparkle of fool’s gold, and a wide variety of items I bartered for from school mates, from pocket knives to tadpoles in Mason jars. I seemed to Merle, undoubtedly, a peculiar child who was destined to become either a mad scientist, a Beatnik poet, artist, or author of stories right out of the Twilight Zone. It was my favorite television show, when I was given the pleasure of staying up later in the evening to watch it on our ever-failing black and white RCA. I can’t remember how many times I was within earshot when Merle would call me an “old soul” in a child’s body, but let’s just say, she felt it necessary to point out that I was a tad touched this way, but in a good way I think. What my mother never knew was that I had experienced an angel dream as a child, and potentially two or three more just not quite as memorable, and that I often felt as if I had been reincarnated, at a time when I didn’t understand the word. I knew the feeling of having lived before, but for the life of me, I thought it was normal human stuff.

     One morning here at Birch Hollow, I had just sat down for a beverage, after writing for several hours. I prepared a pot of tea, set out a few biscuits for myself (Suzanne and the boys were at school), and had an Enya CD playing. I love Enya, and I often relax after writing jags with CD’s my family got me for Christmas and birthdays. I was enjoying the morning break and allowing myself to relax to the very brink of slumber, when all of a sudden, I had this necessity to look up at the living room wall where I have my favorite paintings hung. Within the frame of one landscape, that used to hang in my parents apartment, way back in our Burlington days, I saw the image of my Uncle Jack, who had died a few years previous. Jack and I got along famously, and it was customary for us to get together, at family gatherings, to enjoy a wee shot of brandy to celebrate Robbie Burns, and the more shots we’d have, the more difficult it was for me to interpret what he was saying. He became distinctly more Scottish as the evening wore on, and we’d both start laughing to the point we’d hurt our stomachs. He was a charming fellow, and on this occasion, I was just a little shocked to see him staring at me, with about the same animation of his face as I remember from those social events. Without actually speaking, he let me know that everything on the “other side” was fine, with the family members who had already crossed-over, but that my mother was going to suffer a serious set-back, but would survive the bout of poor health. Of course I rubbed my eyes, and tried to re-focus but his face was still impressed in my mind. What did he mean about my mother. Now at the time Merle had been having some serious problems with her bowels, and a re-activated hiatus hernia, and in her eighties it wasn’t looking good for her, as far as a trouble-free future.

     The short version is that Uncle Jack was quite correct. Within days my mother had to be taken to the hospital, and during an operation to remove a bowel obstruction, she suffered a heart attack and a stroke. She wound up for the next month being on a breathing device, and had to be flown by air ambulance to Toronto, to be weened off the machine. It was likely she would never be the same, and shortly thereafter, she was admitted to a nursing home, where she survived for more than a year, but did succumb shortly thereafter. Was Uncle Jack for real? Truthfully, it is exactly what Jack would have done, and the fact that it was his face and not some of my other relatives, made acceptance of the situation much less aggressive and unsetting. Jack had a way with words, and a few of them I even understood. On this day, I understood very clearly, and although I didn’t quite believe my senses, it happened just as he predicted. Do I believe mortals can be contacted by those who have crossed over? Yes indeed. It’s why I agreed to participate in this paranormal research project at the Bosevelts Bed and Breakfast here in the ghost hamlet of Rose Hill.

     I returned to my first floor room / office shortly after enjoying a lovely dinner with the Bosevelts, the owners of this fine establishment, here in the centre of the former hamlet of Rose Hill, and it came as some surprise to me, even knowing the old farmhouse to have a plethora of situation-hauntings, to have heard the voices of children singing beyond the heavy oak door. It was also the case the light was switched on in the room, because I could see it through the bottom crack on my approach. I stood for a few moments to ascertain what the music was, where exactly it was coming from in my room, and wondering if there was a radio I hadn’t yet found during my stay, how then had it become engaged in the short while I was having dinner with the proprietors. I didn’t want to open the door at that moment, in order to gather as much information as possible, about a haunting that was fleet footed and evasive as an ever moving vapor in a spring wind.

     It sounded distant and there was an eerie aspect to coming upon this scene, hearing this strange child-like singing, in a room that I occupied only an hour ago, without any sign of sensation of a paranormal intrusion. I did not recognize the singing but I would have bet the voices I heard through the door, belonged to two young girls, probably no older than ten to twelve years of age. The voices were not in harmony, and one was higher than the other, and seemingly faster with the words, making it sound very much childish, two youngsters singing while occupied at another recreation. Certainly not singing as a performance piece, but as a recreation for the moment. I fully expected to open the heavy oak door, slowly with the idea of catching two interlopers jumping on my cot, or playing a game on the oval braided rug over the hardwood floor. But from the moment my hand touched the door handle, the voices became thin and distant, and when I was able to look within, through a tiny crack between the door and the jam, the light in the room had been switched off. When I was able then to enter the room, the singing had stopped entirely, and when I did engage the lamp, there was no evidence whatsoever, that there had ever been anyone else in the room since I left it to attend dinner precisely one hour and ten minutes earlier. The bed covering wasn’t ruffled or showing that anyone had been sitting or jumping on the surface, and there were no leftover game pieces from child’s play left on the carpet, and whoever was in my room had been able to tidy up, disengage the light, and walk through the wall in less than five seconds. That is, between the time I put my hand on the door latch, and physically opened it to peer inside. Well, this was another of the strange occurrences at The Oaken Snuggery, the Bed and Breakfast offering guests a little more than food and accommodation. This place was haunted. Not in a frightening way, if you’re used to living in a haunted dwelling, but in a perplexing way, as you try to figure out who and what is behind the, at times, subtle events and intrusions, that obviously have a purpose even for the dear departed. What messages are we to gather from these disturbances? I’m now more than a week into this investigation, on behalf of the Bosevelt family, who would like a resolution soon, and all I’ve been able determine, is that the mingling of spirits and mortals, is more of a mischief / victim kind of relationship, without a shred of ill humor or anything resembling old fashioned Hollywood malevolence.

     I sat in the arm chair by the window, for a few moments, to contemplate what I may have heard, or thought I heard, and if there was a pattern showing itself with the other chance encounters I’ve had since arriving here on Easter Friday, being the start of the first weekend in April, 2018. Along with the other details of past intrusions by something or other, offered by the Bosevelts themselves, it was becoming clear that this haunting was with purpose, and seemingly the handiwork of more youthful spirits possibly, when at a young age, with plenty of vim and vinegar as they used to say, having lost their lives to some serious illness, accident or misadventure, more than likely occurring in and around this property. Might they be buried in the family cemetery located on the pine hillside just above the pond on the back acreage of this property?

     There was a perfume scent permeating the closed atmosphere of that room, so much in fact, that I had to get up and check outside my door, to see if the Bosevelts were in the vicinity, or had been using scented candles or an interior fragrance of any kind. I didn’t bring any cologne or even after-shave with me, for this particular visit, so I knew it wasn’t coming from my lone bit of luggage lodged in the small closet across from the bedstead. It smelled like lilacs of which I am a minor expert, seeing as we have two major areas of lilac bushes on our property in Gravenhurst we call Birch Hollow. But the lilacs, because of the long and cold winter, are still a long way from blooming, possibly not until early June. Besides my window isn’t open even a crack, so the perfume is coming from somewhere within this small domain in the old farmhouse. I didn’t think it was connected to the singing I had heard earlier, and if it was a paranormal sign, or a vapor that had not yet entirely dissipated from the space, I must have been preoccupied otherwise to give it the notice it most likely deserved. I was too focused on the fact the fused metal crosses that had been left for safe-keeping in a glass dish on the table, near the window, was now missing and presumably removed by someone who had an interest in the strange icon, which had been found in a puddle along the front walk,  by a guest entering the house through the main entrance. A violent wind and rain storm had just blown through and it is expected the heavy run-off eroded earth along the newly installed brick pathway, freeing up the buried crosses, locked together as one piece, minus the chains that apparently had corroded away in its years below ground. I would have to ask the Bosevelts as soon as possible if either one of them had been in my room in the previous hour or so, and having removed the welded-together crosses that Mrs. Bosevelt had given me to examine shortly after it was discovered and turned in by the newly arrived guest.

     It was then I heard a very faint but familiar laughter coming from just outside my closed bedroom door. I had heard these voices before, in laughter, and in song, and I was quick to rise to the mission of opening the door to uncover the mischief makers. They were making quite a fool of the ghost hunter, because by time my hand hit the door handle, the laughter suddenly stopped. In the open hallway, which was well lit and free of furniture clutter, offering no place for rascals in play to hide-out, there was nothing to be seen or heard. The exception was the very much stronger aroma of freshly picked lilacs, but that was impossible in actuality. As for paranormal circumstances, well, that was markedly different and apparently quite possible. Did the waifs of the spirit-kind belong to the pair of tiny metal crosses welded together, and taken them from the glass bowl on my table-top. How did they make a solid, tangible icon disappear into thin air, along with themselves, though highly capable of singing and switching on a lamp. Maybe I was getting close to a theory about the perpetrators of the seemingly purposeful visitations and apparent mischief. If it was the ghosts of over-zealous children, who may have lived on this property some time in the past, would they be satisfied now, having retrieved these formerly lost and buried crosses, fused together as possibly these young ladies were in their own mortal existences? I had way more questions than answers, but I do believe there is a story building here, that may have a much more interesting drama attached than I could have expected from what I was given as a little more than a crumb when I agreed to pursue the mission of whether The Oaken Snuggery was haunted or just a place for unrelated manifestations to call home. I need to talk to Suzanne, my research assistant currently working at home, to find out if she has uncovered any more information about what may have occurred on this South Muskoka property dating all the way back to 1868 when the land was given out to an emigrant family as part of a free land grant of one hundred acres. I don’t expect to fall asleep easily tonight, with these rascals determined to get, and keep my attention.

     When Suzanne and I operated our first antique shop, as a couple, in a Victorian era house, modernized into a storefront, on upper Manitoba Street, we both had many paranormal experiences, from heavy footfalls on the steps down to our basement shop, to the disappearance of customers within our book shelves, who we later came to call our dead beat “phantom” shoppers. Suzanne remembers the day she was tending the store, while I took the boys out for an ice cream cone, uptown in Bracebridge, and she had reason to rise up from her chair to greet several customers who had just then come into the store. She talked to them for awhile about sundry things and the weather outside, which was particularly hot and humid, and after she sat down, and began more work on our accounting, she felt a strange presence looking down on her from the other side of the counter. Looking up she noticed a rather portly small man of elder years, and wearing a curiously appointed uniform, standing with his arms at his side inches from the sales counter. Suzanne, as she does with every guest to our business, said hello to the well dressed gentleman, all the while trying to figure out what the uniform represented. He wasn’t wearing a cap and there was not distinguishable badge or stitched insignia on the jacket. The man didn’t acknowledge her welcome, and after a few seconds, turned and walked away without ever once saying anything, eventually disappearing behind some shelves in the middle of the room, to never be seen again. In order to get out of the store, the man had no choice but to walk in the open space to the small hallway, in clear view of the shop clerk. He never left that day, except by vaporizing. We think it was probably related to some demise in the old house over the previous century. It had once been a funeral home and furniture shop operated by the good Mr. W. Kinsey, a well respected businessman. Was it he who visited that day? It will of course remain a mystery in the Currie family history of which there are many, many similar personalities, who have stayed a while, but never a long time. We’re hoping for better luck at The Oaken Snuggery.