The Oaken Snuggery Part 8

 

Photos by Suzanne Currie

THE OAKEN SNUGGERY - PART 8

BY TED CURRIE

     In the past decade I have read a hundred or so books on the paranormal, supernatural, spirits, ghosts and all other entities that can rankle the complacency out of a household, and in fact, making day to day living a tad unsettling. In this same time I have read many conflicting opinions that remind me how difficult it is to be a ghost expert. I didn’t know that a spirit wasn’t a ghost, and a ghost wasn’t a spirit. Apparently, the two are quite separate and like it that way, but from my perspective, and the opinion of the Bosevelts, owners of this fine old farmhouse, it doesn’t really matter unless there are specific wants of each paranormal quality and quantity, so they can barter for some peace and quiet at the inn. I have never once felt scholarly enough in this enterprise of documenting ghosts, and related phenomenon, to haul myself upon a stage, waddle over to the podium, clear my throat, and give a dissertation about such post death activities of either spirit or ghost. Let alone trying to analyze something that is largely invisible, acts like a public school prankster, and topples books for sport onto the floor. Oh yes, and likes to scare the guests of this Bed and Breakfast for, let’s say, spirited recreation. I think if I read a thousand books on the subject of ghosts, spirits and their ilk, I would still wind up sitting here, babbling like an idiot, when one or other paranormal entity might sit upon my lap to make its presence known, first of all, and comfortable, as a secondary consideration. I am a writer and not a theologian, and I’m as far away from earning my stripes as a professor of such studies, as to feel quite out of place squaring off against these mischievous waifs, having their way around this place at all hours of day and night. I’m probably more proficient as a parent, having been a Mr. Mom for our own lads, than being an expert on ghost and spirit identification, as if bird watching or insect hunting. I have known quite a few ghosts and such in my years of wandering about local haunted buildings, houses, commercial enterprises, including train stations, theaters, opera houses and lakeshore cottages and boathouses. Instead of cataloguing them, for posterity, I have written about them, as a sort of peace offering to quell their agitated characters, letting me tell their story, if indeed, this is what would satisfy and validate their spooky activities. I don’t think I’ve satisfied them all by any means, but their intrusions, for whatever reason of recognition, have been duly noted and placed in my ongoing journal documenting the enchantments of many local haunts.

     As far as taking a forensic approach, I don’t think it would be as much entertainment, and in a way, fulfillment, as writing a story about living with them, and experiencing their ghostly points of view, emotions, and in some cases, malevolence. The angry impatience of not being recognized sooner by the living. But then there’s the scholarly perspective that the ghosts of mortals who met sudden tragic ends, are unable to communicate, and just go about the daily routines they knew in life, before the tragedy struck. I have never once felt that I was encountering a ghost or wayward spirit that wouldn’t communicate if given half a chance. The first step is to validate their present situation amongst the living, by acknowledging their presence, and carrying on a conversation, if without speaking, such that a relationship is established, and they, the entities, know you’re aware of their presence and wish to know why they haunt the place of residence. No, it’s not the scholarly approach, but I’ve had a pretty fair amount of success thus far. The Bosevelt’s wee ghosts are proving a little more evasive than I’ve experienced in the past, but I do get the sense they aren’t displeased with my intervention, as the story seeker, and the eventual story teller. With this reality, they might come to feel their story will be told, and their burden, carried to the grave, may finally be lifted and heaven, I suppose, forgiving the sins of a past mortal existence.

          “I shall never forget that trip from Gravenhurst to Bracebridge. The scenery was glorious, and as we would our way in and out among the islands and up the sinuous river, I really felt as if earth could not exhibit anything more wonderful. There was not a ripple on the water, the reflections of rock and woodland and sky were perfect. Occasionally a small cottage was to be seen peeping from the dense foliage, but for the most part, on all sides was primeval wilderness. The handiwork of man was hardly to be seen in the way of clearings or buildings. We passed immense booms of logs tied to the shore, the sole guardians of which appeared to be judicial looking cranes which stood gazing soberly into the water, waiting for a swift peck at some passing fish, or stalked in a solemn manner up and down the logs like wary sentinels. Now and again a loon would bob up unexpectedly near the boat, give utterance to its weird cry, and dive out of sight, or a flock of gulls would rise in a body from some rock and follow in the wake of the steamer in search of stray fragments of food thrown out from the cook’s quarters. The river was as beautiful as the lake, and all along the shore could be seen immense groups of ferns of the stately Osmunds regalia variety. The bayous and reaches were filled with lily leaves and shoots of the strange water-plant, the Sagittarius latifolia showed their heads above the water presaging a wealth of color in the works to come. The trip was all too short but quite long enough to imbue me with the feeling that what my uncle had told me was true and that the land to which I had come was indeed a sportsman’s paradise.” (The passage was written by emigrant farm hand, Roger Vardon, from his famous journal dated 1878,” which was published as “English Bloods,” as a first edition hardcover, by the Graphic Publishers Limited in 1930)

     I am nosey as a rule, having been an investigative reporter and news editor for a number of local Muskoka papers, over forty years of dabbling in the print media, and of course, being a bibliophile of equal weight to the historian bound-up in my psyche, I had not choice but to examine closely the Muskoka books kept in the corner book shelf of the great room, by the Bosevelts, proprietors of the Oaken Snuggery. I was surprised to find a first edition copy of Roger Vardon’s well known journal, “English Bloods,” because it is one of the rarest of all the Muskoka themed histories published since Thomas McMurray’s guidebook, “Muskoka and Parry Sound,” which is most definitely the most difficult to acquire in readable condition. It was reprinted a number of years ago but as I admire first editions, I will be satisfied to own a rather ragged copy that was presented to me by my wife’s mother Harriet, a descendant of the Shea family, who pioneered in the hamlet of Ufford as early as 1862.

     There are the typical “coffee table” style picture books, that certainly fit into the decor and mood of a tourist operation, including this handsome Bed and Breakfast establishment, situated on a former pioneer farmstead, that as well, dates back to the 1860’s, in and around the period when free land grants were being offered in this district to encourage emigrants to Canada from Europe. Of thirty Muskoka themed books, Vardon’s book was certainly out of place, and rather precariously lumped in with the other less valuable texts that could be replaced if damaged. Vardon’s book is worth up to two hundred dollars in good condition. The other Muskoka books were valued as used books, so a coffee cup stain on the cover wasn’t going to devalue them further. I made a note to mention to the Bosevelts that “English Bloods” should be put in a special case with a glass covering, and loaned out for consumption on the understanding of its heritage value.

     The most relevant content of Vardon’s book however, is not how beautiful and tranquil the scenery of Muskoka appeared during that leg of his trip into the interior of the district. If one got past the glowing review, it would become evident slowly but profoundly, that hardships multiplied substantially once the picturesque qualities were witnessed, and set to memory as the best part of the long trip into north Muskoka. The journal profiles the immense difficulty of travel on pioneer roadways, full of ruts and remnants of stumps, complicated by the corduroy construction, meaning felled and de-limbed logs were laid down side by side in the Muskoka mud, in order to make them even halfway passable to horse drawn carts. Work on the pioneer homesteads clearing the timber and building the first dwellings was back breaking, and had proven deadly many times in those first thirty years of the government plan to settle what had been not much more than wasteland prior to the 1860’s. Life was difficult and dangerous, and the story of Vardon’s experiences working on such a pioneer homestead, clearly demonstrates just how much suffering had to be endured to establish even a modestly successful homestead and related farming economy. It is relevant to the Bosevelts, because their Bed and Breakfast business, is located on a property that had experienced all types of hardship and untold suffering, as the first two log cabins, were destroyed by fire shortly after being constructed. The farmhouse used by the Bosevelts for “The Oaken Snuggery” was built early in the 1900’s, I’m told, after a lengthy period where nothing else was built on the homestead acreage, following the second fire. The dreams the emigrants had, when registering this property for their homestead, turned to nightmares, as tragedy replaced the romanticism of the new country, the free land, and the bounty of a thriving wilderness. I wondered how much local history the Bosevelts really knew, before refurbishing the old farmhouse on this multi acre parkland, that appears so heavenly and full of promise at sunrise.

     Following dinner that evening, I had a chance to chat with Mrs. Bosevelt, about what she herself had experienced in the way of the paranormal, although she had confessed early-on, in our preamble arrangements that brought me here in the first place to investigate reported ghost sightings, witnessed by several guests in the previous month. She had been reluctant to talk about these in the past, because she quite honestly didn’t believe in such things as ghosts, but felt the guests were being straightforward about what they had seen trespassing in their rooms late at night. She told me that on more occasions than she could count, the spirits, if she could call them that, contented themselves with acts of mischief, more than what one might expect of a ghost trying to get validation. Books would be pulled off the shelf frequently, when no guests were in the house, and her vintage doll collection would be knocked over, or toppled onto one another at least twice a week. She couldn’t figure out how the old Oaken Snuggery cat could have energized itself all of a sudden, from its usual perch on an old quilt top, on the Windsor chair near the kitchen, to dart in and out of the dolls to make them collapse into a heap, or lay face down in a row along the bedroom wall. In the kitchen, after the couple had gone to bed, cupboard doors would be opened, including those on the fridge and stove, and even the cutlery drawer. All left closed when the lights were extinguished prior to bed time. She didn’t think of these happenings as a significant haunting, especially in light of patron claims that a ghost had actually been witnessed in several rooms and a hallway on the second floor of the old residence. One guest claims to have seen an old woman, wearing Victorian era clothing, to have been rocking in an old chair in an open room, noticed when the individual walked by on the way to the bathroom to get a glass of water. When it was checked out later by the woman’s husband, there was nothing to see, the apparition having disappears, is that is, it have ever been there in the first place.

     “Oh, yes, and then there are the wind chimes we hear every night at around the same place,” said Mrs. Bosevelt. “What’s odd, is that we don’t have wind chimes anywhere in the house or in any of the other outbuildings on the property. But we can hear them, glass crystals, chiming away as if they are hanging from the verandah. It’s where the sound is coming from, and when we open the door to check it out, to see if we can determine where it’s coming from, the tinkling stops. We even thought it was something to do with the closed verandah door, so we’d position ourselves inside and out, with the door closed as it was when the chimes began, but nothing could be heard, not even faintly.” “And we’ve heard feet coming down the main staircase since we moved into the house, and at times we’ve gone to check it out, expecting that someone had broken-in, and was about to enter the room where we were sitting, or sometimes dining. Then it just stops as if the person has arrived at the bottom and just positioned themselves there waiting for something or other that never happens. The footsteps never go up the stairs,” she added. “Always down, and then suddenly stop where you would expect them to, and we’ve counted the steps compared to how many are required to come from the top down to the rug at the bottom, being the first floor. We were told by the people who did the renovation work, that the noise in the staircase had more to do with the way the house was originally constructed, air currents above and below, heat, cold, humidity, and other details relating to the settling of an old house we all hear about but only partially believe. So we just never worried too much about the sounds, whether footsteps or chimes, because there was never anything bad discovered, and we never witnessed what could be called a ghost. Nothing. But I suppose, with all that has been going on around here in the past year, we probably should have told you about these intrusions to go along with the other reported sightings. Sorry about that!”

     This new information definitely added to the adventure of discovering what entities, real or paranormal, were causing the disturbances, and contributing to the feeling of unease permeating the old dwelling place, cheerfully enhanced as a popular Bed and Breakfast business, situated in the picturesque former hamlet of Rose Hill, Ontario, north of Bracebridge on the northern-most boundary of what can be considered the region of South Muskoka. What was going on within the building, and for that matter, on the property as I had experienced on my walk-about, and how was I going to identify who was responsible for the haunting, and why it was becoming so active in the past year. The Bosevelts had lived here for a number of years while reconstruction was underway, and Mrs. Bosevelt told me that it wasn’t a concern whatsoever, until the past year, when the Bed and Breakfast had finally opened on the property, the fulfillment of years of planning, as their retirement business. They had expended a considerable amount of money in doing so, and she admitted to me, that if the haunting continued to chase away guests, leaving before their booking was up, with of course the bad publicity that could spin out of the events, they might be faced with a severe financial hit, thusly bringing a nightmarish scenario to what had been a romantic dream of operating an history B&B. I had my work cut out for me, and I wasn’t at all sure where to start, and just how many pieces were going to be involved in the so-called bigger picture of The Oaken Snuggery puzzle.

     When I first began documenting ghosts, wayward spirits and haunted homes, cottages, buildings and open spaces, I got a pretty substantial number of confidential tips, but ninety-nine percent of the informants didn’t want to be identified or their building locations published for obvious reasons. There was one late Victorian era house in Bracebridge, that I was allowed to visit, on the promise I would never reveal the address or the owner, that had the ghost of an elderly woman, who only had one position as part of her haunting inhabitation. In the late evening or early morning, the woman dressed in turn of the nineteen hundreds attire, would settle on the same stair each time, and just sit there staring down the rest of the stairs, and through the front door window, which framed a small portion of front yard and sidewalk, illuminated by the town street lamp on the roadway. She didn’t wander the house, rap on the doors, jiggle the door knobs, appear in other rooms, or make any other disturbance, than to thwart the owners of the property and their children from going up and down the stairs at certain times of the day and night. She was a frequent stair dweller, but she only appeared to those preparing to go up and not down, where, of course, the resident would have noticed her back instead of her front. She was always encountered staring down at those trying to climb up, and as soon as a foot hit the first riser, the old woman would vaporize, leaving nothing to recall of her than a see-through image. Not a scent, or feeling of cold air, or anything that would suggest the woman was willing to haunt the whole house. She was the only ghost I’ve run into, in about forty years of being interested in such strange events, that was so habitual and near stationary, other than for the fact she would disappear if approached. My associates in this story moved some years later, but until their last evening, the ghost still made its appearance as usual. I wonder how the new owners treated the old girl, or if she decided to give up the ghost, when my friends moved onward. I’m told by these folks that she definitely didn’t travel to their new house with them, thankfully of course. I don’t suppose the real estate agent, who sold the house to the new owners, mentioned the ghost, probably because the former owners never offered up the information, which, obviously could have killed the deal. Ghosts and their declaration can become a stick issue if known and not reported prior to a sale, although I’m sure this situation is conveniently bypassed for obvious reasons. The Bosevelts for example, may have a difficult time selling their restored farmhouse, if and when we come out with this story after my stay here at the Snuggery. Unless we find Casper is living here or Slimmer!  It’s yet to be determined but so far, it’s been a tricky project, but the Bosevelts are patient with the spirit-kind and the writer currently in residence.