The Oaken Snuggery Part 27

Photos by Suzanne Currie

THE OAKEN SNUGGERY - PART 27

BY TED CURRIE

     Have you, in recent memory, or have a little something from your own family antiquity, that comes eerily close to the domain of the paranormal? Can you remember a time when you were residing comfortably in your abode, and suddenly detected the faint scent of a long-ago perfume like the one your grandmother or aunt may have worn? Or the wafting aroma of a freshly baked apple or blueberry pie that your mother, or father may have been making, in the good old days, but unexplained on this occasion seeing as your parents have crossed over? Can you recall feeling something different in your apartment, house or cottage, giving the voyeur the opinion of not being entirely alone, despite the fact no other humans are in attendance? Have you ever distinctly heard someone calling your name, yet no one is in the vicinity? Can you remember a time, when, for example, you were out for a drive or a country walk, when without warning, you feel as if you have just gone back in time, and are re-living the exact moment that was important to you say twenty or thirty years earlier? You fully understand the present, but your heart strings play a song from the olden days, and you might come to expect family members and friends to all of a sudden appear, either in the passenger seat of the car, or coming from a crossroads just down the lane where you’re headed? Who is baking grandmother’s banana bread? Why do I smell father’s aftershave lotion in the bedroom? Why do I feel compelled to look out the window just now, because I hear old and familiar voices, as if a family barbecue is about to happening, as it did when your parents were alive?

     Suzanne will often say that she caught a whiff of her mother’s favorite cologne, known as “White Shoulders,” at a time and place in our house, when there is no apparent source of the wafting aroma. I have heard my dad’s voice a hundred times since he passed away, and in all the places where he attended during his life, and that I still visit. I’ve had slaps on the back from invisible entities, and smelled fresh-from-the-oven bread that my father used to bake as recreation, and have looked pretty foolish arriving in the kitchen ready to cut off a couple of pieces. Suzanne not smelling baked bread at all. Maybe it is just the quirks of an over-active and sentimental imagination, that inspires these gentle intrusions, that are mostly pleasant and reminiscent of many good family times. Both Suzanne and I used to get a little choked up when these interventions would occur, making us think of our grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles, who had in the recent past, crossed over. But after awhile we ceased to mourn them, and slowly learned to appreciate them as casual reminders of what we both recollected as precious moments, and instead of being upset by them, actually looked forward to their arrival, bringing warm sentiments instead of cold realities. Have you ever wondered if you might become a ghost yourself when that times comes? Who and where would you select as your favorite haunt, and what might you get up to, in order to arouse the senses of friends and family who may or may not believe in the after-life? All I know, is that I would like to sit in my favorite place at Birch Hollow that I have since we moved here in the fall of 1989. Those who come after me might well decided to get rid of my favorite chair, but I will still lay claim to this special place at hearthside, where I have officiated the living room activities for long and long. I’d even assure the family that I wouldn’t moan or drag chains about the house, or cause any kind of mayhem, if that is, they would permit my weary but liberated soul, to have a little slice of the good old days, to serve me in the afterlife. There are however, a few adversaries I would like to haunt, possibly with the occasional cream pie in the face, or subtle kick in the ass when opportunity presented. I must now get on with today’s story for gosh sakes. 

     This afternoon I enjoyed a long walk around the property here in the ghost hamlet of Rose Hill, Ontario, the home site of the Bed and Breakfast known now as The Oaken Snuggery. It was on this gad-about, along a few of the interconnected country lanes, and old road that has overgrown on this property, that I felt the presence of the girls once again. Cynthia and Francis, the daughters of homesteader Alfred Smith, and his wife Mary, had been identified according to census records dating back to the late 1860’s. Not much was known of the family from those times, as there was no mention in the regional histories written in this neck of the woods, although Suzanne was on the trail of some other census records beyond this period, including looking up any death certificates that were available. She was going to call me as soon as she uncovered some more information about the family, who owned the land grant acreage that was situated kitty-corner to the present Bosevelt farm, of which I am a guest writer this month. Each time I wander these winding dirt roads, and overgrown country lanes that once served the homesteaders needs, I have felt very much in company of the two children, who allegedly, at least according to a psychic, Angela Collins, who had stayed at the B&B a week ago, are fully engaged in haunting the farmhouse for reasons unknown, and the proprietors are concerned about the damage ghosts could cause to future bookings at the newly opened accommodation. I am just one of the options they have been pursuing, hoping that I might be able to make some sense of the paranormal activities, as a longtime hobby ghost hunter. Mostly, I think they hope that my research over the months staying at The Oaken Snuggery, will produce, at the very least, a manuscript about the haunting, that when published, will be available to guests, to at least attempt to explain the interesting goings-on, and assorted bumps in the night, manifesting in the early 1900’s house when truly most inconvenient. There is a story here and with the help of my research assistant, and life partner Suzanne, working from home in Gravenhurst, the employment of ancestral materials has already improved our understanding of the mortal realities of the persisting entities at present. Before they were ghosts, you see, Cynthia and Francis Smith, were frequent visitors, as wee lasses to this homestead, now The Oaken Snuggery, where they attended initially non-denominational church services conducted each Sunday by a traveling preacher from Rosseau. They also enjoyed the topography here as well, based on Angela Collin’s assessment, especially playing down around the pond, which is the central feature of the back acreage of the former farmstead. It is a beautiful location set in the pine hollow of pasture only a few minutes walk from the back deck of The Snuggery.

     Since arriving at the inn around the first of April, I have seen many strange things here, and they are in fact, too numerous to repeat here, for editorial efficiencies. There is little doubt that the spirit-girls have a reason for haunting this beautiful place, both at the inn and out here, in the sprawling pasture and nicely treed hillsides, but thus far we are still dealing with too many fragments of what come closest to facts, mixed with speculation, and conjecture, but nothing to create a significant representation of what these unhappy spirits want of us mortals. Particularly the Bosevelts, who are quite sensitive to the paranormal situation unfolding almost daily, yet continue to be frustrated by the frequency of ghostly mischief, now beginning to influence guests to end their stays after only one night of interrupted sleep. I have tried talking to the girls and made a sincere attempt of finding out what they wish to occur, at the inn, to satisfy their immortal dissatisfaction, whatever that might represent to the crank waifs.

     The strongest feeling on the property, as a whole, is the negative aura that seems to ring the hollow where the pond is located, quite contrary to the picturesque quality of the acreage, giving, from a distance, lending heartily a most positive and beckoning allure, if only to pick out an armchair that is situated to afford such a panorama from the Snuggery’s Great Room. It was in this location, that I had initially decided that there were three distinct spirits at work here, yet it wasn’t the same once in the farmhouse. Then the paranormal presence clearly represented two entities, at least two that were intent on being recognized. There may be more admittedly, but they are contented, like the old woman in the rocking chair witnessed knitting while rocking in a chair, to make cameo appearances when least expected. At pond’s edge there is definitely a feeling of one other participant in this Muskoka haunting, and I have a hunch it is the immortal remains of a former playmate, who at some time in the past, played with Francis and Cynthia in this hollow of farmland, and possibly got the occasional soaker, throwing sticks and stones into the pond, that according to the Bosevelts, was much larger even forty years ago than it is today. It’s difficult for me to describe with anything more than what comes to me as sensory perception. I just can’t help feel that there was a tragic circumstance attached to one of these spirit-kind, and I don’t believe it meant that one or both girls died accidentally here on this property. I am suspicious someone else did, who was connected, as a playmate most likely, on a particular day when misadventure claimed a life. Now proving that will be difficult even for Suzanne, but we’ve already set the wheels in motion, and our combined research may well out-last my stay at the Snuggery. I can’t very well ask the Bosevelts, who have been more than kind, and generous, to extend my residency by another week or two, on the hunch more information with be forthcoming. It may take years to put this story to bed, so to speak, meaning a finished product, that is readable in a semi-factual way. That’s the way most writers handle ghost issues, as often there is no hard evidence to offer to identify the cast of characters in a typical haunting. This story may never elevate from what may only be an interesting bit of local folklore and nothing that serves to do anything more than add color to a black and white image, or better stated, dreamscape. I’ve already had three distinctly influenced dreams that seem to have been infiltrated by these two lasses, determined to keep me focused on their spiritual maladies, that I didn’t at first appreciate ghosts could suffer from over an apparent eternity. The Bosevelts have only had a short stay at their newly refurbished country inn, and the girls in that short time, have put on quite a show here at The Snuggery. So what did they do here before the Bosevelt’s arrived, and saved this house from being demolished? As it was an estate, evidence has probably been taken to the grave, because I can’t believe that with their interventions at present, they were quite five or twenty years ago, having the same grievances about mortals and their unwillingness to take the dead more seriously.

     I have just talked to Suzanne again on the phone, making three times today, asking her to re-investigate some of the local histories, one that even her uncle wrote for the Township of Watt, nearby, looking for any reference to an accidental drowning that may have occurred in this general vicinity, late in the 1800’s. Surely an accidental death would have made news here, and been the subject of an article in the Bracebridge newspaper. This is of course, the needle in the haystack, because we don’t have immediate access to old newspaper files, and unless there was a sentence or two in one of three local histories, it would obviously come down to months of archives digging to potentially come up empty in the end. I risked a mild scolding giving Suzanne so little to work on, as a hunch inspired by a paranormal twinge, but I’ve been re-educated many times during the past three weeks, by entities unknown and only partially seen.

     Suzanne phone me just minutes before midnight. Mrs. Bosevelt had to call me to take the land-line call in the hallway of The Snuggery. “Sorry to get you out of bed Ted, but I’ve got a lead for you on that possible drowning victim,” she reported with a tone of vigor and accomplishment ringing in her voice. “Are you ready for this,” she asked. “Of course, let me have it,” I replied with electrified interest. “Thomas Tucker was drowned in a local pond on April 30th, 1873, after having fallen through the late spring ice, while trying to cross with two friends. The young man was pulled from the water several hours after disappearing beneath the surface. He could not be revived. He was the son of Charles and Anne Tucker of Rose Hill, Ontario.” There was a pause on the phone, after she finished reading the short news piece which had been published in one of the histories she had been reading through after talking to me earlier. “Ted, are you still there,” she asked, wondering if I had hit the floor unceremoniously with this somewhat shocking revelation. “My God, that’s got to be part of their mission to engage us; Cynthia and Francis had something to do with that boy drowning, and I’m pretty sure they are suffering an eternity of guilt, and the welded together crucifixes are right at the centre of this story, so my dear, the puzzle is finally taking shape. Thank you for finding this link for me. It’s going to connect a lot of other pieces from this point on.”

     I retired to bedlam on this night, feeling, for the first time, that I was going to be able to offer the Bosevelts something more than an apology for my inability to close the story with tangibles. Tomorrow was a new and important day as far as this research is concerned.

     I wonder if I’d make a good ghost? I’m certainly not angel material, if that option was presented. Maybe there’s some wiggle room if I negotiate with the Boss, about the range and capabilities I can pursue, on the other side, without, you know, going to the penalty box. I really would like to know what it’s like to be a ghost, but I don’t like the requirements to try-out for the team. Good night finally.