The Oaken Snuggery Part 28

 

Photos by Suzanne Currie

THE OAKEN SNUGGERY - PART 28

BY TED CURRIE

     When you refer to a place, whether a cottage, home or apartment, being “haunted,” it is automatically linked by drama, to Hollywood movies such as “The Changeling.” Frightening dramatizations of ghosts and their attention-getting antics, in locations that simply have to be haunted by appearances alone. The old farmhouse here in Rose Hill, Ontario, is hardly a poster dwelling for anything to do with “haunting” or “haunted.” It’s a beautifully situated former homestead, and it has been tastefully decorated and modernized for comfort’s sake. If any place might play host to a resident ghost, or in this case, several, it just wouldn’t be a place like this. It is far too lively and luxurious for a country place, with bright colors and soft cushions, and well, a lot of attributes a typical haunt wouldn’t possess. It is by far a cheerful positive place to reside, even for a short term, and I would think that most ghosts would feel it was too happy to be fertile enough to get a good solid haunting off the ground. It’s not that the girls here haven’t selected a neat place in which to occupy themselves, from a nether world perspective, but that it doesn’t blend well, in order for it all to be taken all that seriously by any one. Indeed, they have startled some of the guests here and that was understandable. But generally, pulling books off a shelf and knocking over collectable dolls belonging to the owner, is moot even in paranormal circles, and it has made the wee lasses somewhat more endearing to us, now that we understand part of their ambition, to remind us of the past, as it was important to them. I think this place would be seriously lacking now, without these resident spirits who have made it all the more contenting, even if their ambition had been to scare us from under its protective roof.

     By noon the next day, Suzanne had driven out to the Bosevelt’s farmhouse intent on taking me to a community cemetery situated next to a small Victorian era church only a few meters off the roadway. By checking out death certificates in the family of Alfred Smith, she was able to find a number of family documents, but of particular importance were the death records for Francis and Cynthia, his two girls, the ones we believe are still very active, haunting The Oaken Snuggery, for reasons unknown. I simply had to see the gravestones for the two lasses I’ve come to know posthumously at the old farmhouse, where I have been a lodger since early April. Suzanne couldn’t find the death certificate for their young friend, Thomas Tucker, who had drowned while in their company, on April 30, 1873, after falling through the thin spring ice on the Bosevelt’s pond. I’m sure she will find where the lad is buried sooner or later.

     There are only sixty or so cemetery markers in the modestly proportion churchyard, and at least half of this number are obscured by moss and by the erosion of the centuries. The only reason we closed in on the subject plots, was due to the fact there was a large marble monument for the family of Alfred Smith, who died, himself, in 1875, his wife passing five years later. After brushing off the natural growth on the faces of a couple of nearby stones, we were able to find, first, to Alfred’s right, the grave of Francis Smith, who died in the same year as Queen Victoria, 1901. It took us a while longer to find the badly obscured and fade name of her sister, Cynthia Smith, with the date of death imprinted, October, 1912. From what Suzanne retrieved from ancestry records, and death certificates, both girls remained unmarried as no other names are referenced, or any indication they had offspring. No causes of death were revealed on the documents or on the tombstones. Brushing the dirt of our knees, having been on the ground for some time attempting to clean-up the inscriptions, and wiping the dirt from our hands with the paper napkin Suzanne carries around in her purse (a habit of being a parent herself), we both stood silently for a period of time, trying to appreciate all that was going on here, and of course at the Oaken Snuggery, where the earth-bound spirits of the lasses were causing dismay for the Bosevelts, who were trying to run a ghost-free Bed and Breakfast, called The Oaken Snuggery. Why were Cynthia and Francis unable to leave the old homestead property; an acreage by the way, they had never lived on, or resided for any great length of time, during their lives here in what is now the ghost-town of Rose Hill. How ironic. Much of this story is ironic and strange beyond the paranormal occurrences which were, in all honesty, more of an inconvenience to the Bosevelts than reason to pack up and move away. The guests were frequently caught off guard, and mildly frightened, but it wasn’t as if the girls could be heard crying through the night, or could be seen as Hollywood type ghosts, in their white gowns, floating through the hallways, and declining the staircase for the benefit of an audience. Although there had been sightings of the girls, especially noted by a former guest, also a psychic practitioner, who made a visual connection of the wee waifs as they were seated comfortably in the hallway of the inn, on the day she and her husband checked in to The Snuggery. I had seen wafting vapors while out in the pasture on one occasion, and I had experienced some of their mischief, especially having been able to not only steal the welded together crucifixes in  my room, but penetrating my evening dreams on several more occasions. But they were not malevolent, in any way, and meant no harm to anyone at the old house. Yet, they had a story to tell, and Suzanne and I were getting some ideas on what may have happened, over time, to make Francis and Cynthia suffer from life-long guilt, especially in the connection to the death of Thomas Tucker.

     Suzanne suggested that we should head back to the Bed and Breakfast because the search for the boy’s tombstone was proving impossible. I stood in the nicely treed border area, near a half fallen length of old fence, and couldn’t help but notice a toppled marker that had nearly been consumed by Mother Earth, it had been grounded for so long. I asked Suzanne to help me right the stone, just in case it was the Tucker stone. It was the most astonishing find, being the Tucker family plot marker, being the graves of the boy’s mother and father, Mary and Charles. After considerable cleaning and scraping off the debris of the ages, we found that both parents had died in the same year, being 1883, ten years after the drowning death of their son, with the words, “Died the Result of Diphtheria.” This was what ended Mary’s life, Charles passing away seven months later, but no cause was provided. There must have been a separate stone for their son, but we couldn’t find it, except to have located two other badly crumbled markers moved back to the fence line by the cemetery caretaker. We could only assume that he was buried here as well, and most likely, having been the first of the emigrant family to have been buried in Muskoka, a sad beginning to the homestead adventure.

     It was most definitely a haunting moment standing in the pioneer cemetery, thinking about the two girls I had come to know in the most abstract way possible, in the paranormal grand scheme of things, and then having accidentally, at the last moment, finding the approximate location of their friend’s final resting place on the opposite side of the hallowed ground. We didn’t feel their presence, and we certainly didn’t sense that Thomas Tucker was reaching from the grave to offer his spirited point of view. It was just a beautiful and warm spring day, with an afternoon illumination of sun that was dazzling here, blotching on the ground where the evergreens didn’t block out the glow. The very light wind was just enough to sing-song through the overgrown pine boughs, falling low over the far west side of the cemetery. Yet in the mortal sense, Suzanne and I did feel that we had brought a new profile to this historic haunting, realizing finally, the girls must have lived gravely for so many years of their lives, believing that they had caused all the mayhem, by stealing the two crosses from a church meeting, held in a pioneer cabin that had once occupied a small parcel of land, where The Oaken Snuggery, the former early 1900’s farmhouse, stands today. Suzanne and I had been wondering aloud, as we walked back to the car on this day of great discovery, whether the girls had been suspected of the thefts of the crosses, possibly set aside by members of the congregation, on that day, for reasons unknown, and been told that there would be “hell to pay,” for those who perpetrated the crime of stealing icons celebrating God. Maybe they had the intention in the weeks that followed, to return the crosses without anyone noticing their actions, still having to endure the inquisition from members of the multi denominational pioneer prayer meeting, and most likely from their parents, hoping against hope that the theft couldn’t be attributed to their two fine daughters.

     Before they could slip the two crosses back where they had found them, on the day they went missing, an accident in the building, that saw the pine floor collapse, and the lit-stove topple into the crawl space of the building, also ruined their chance to be anonymous. The newly constructed pine shanty caught fire and burned down because of this unfortunate event. Although there were no lives lost or serious injuries beyond sprained ankles and wrists, from the fall, the makeshift church and pioneer homestead was turned into ash by a wind-fueled fire. Is it possible the girls considered this an act of God, punishing them and the congregation for the theft of the crosses? And then, only a short time later, when a second shanty, of larger design, was hit by lightning, only moments after the last few neighbors had come indoors out of the storm, which may have been the sisters with crosses in hand, a bolt of lightning hit the large lilac cluster directly beside the log building, also setting fire to the bottom logs, sending thick smoke into the interior. Those who had come to pray were forced out into the bad weather, while the cabin burned to the ground. By the fact the crosses were found in the exact area where the cabin had been situated, close to the roots of the lilac cluster that still bloomed every June, before it was removed by the Bosevelts to improve the pathway to the farmhouse. The crosses, when they were pulled out of a puddle by a passing guest heading to the entrance of The Snuggery, it was noticed that they were welded together, yet both showing the clear integrity of the cross, obviously fused by the intense heat of the cabin fire on that day back in the 1870’s.

     If then, while playing on the ice of the pond, with their neighbor friend, Thomas Tucker, on that fatal day in April 1873, when he crashed through the thin ice into the six or so feet of frigid water in the pond, did the girls immediately believe this to be the handiwork of an unhappy God, still punishing them and the people around them, for having stolen the crosses, a sin never to be forgotten. How did they cope with the loss of the little boy, and did they ever consider confessing what they had done, previously, and what it may have caused since? How would they have reacted when their parents died still relatively young, leaving them to fend for themselves, having hurt many through one act of self indulgence, stealing crosses of unfathomable influence on the living and the soon to be deceased. Is this, asked Suzanne, “what the girls are looking for; forgiveness for what they perceive was a giant trespass of Christian faith and responsibility?” How would we find this out? Why haven’t we experienced any spiritual entity representative of Thomas Tucker? It would seem that by his sudden tragic passing, he would have most definitely met the requirements of becoming and earthbound spirit, looking for validation as a victim of misadventure? Suzanne and I talked all the way back to The Snuggery, where we cozied into the arm chairs of the Great Room before dinner, of which she had been invited to join, discussing various situations that might at some point down the proverbial road, settle this haunting once and for all. The issue was how to prove to a couple of ghosts, that they weren’t in any way responsible for the two fires, the death of their friend, who had willingly gone onto the ice undoubtedly warned about its thin condition, and certainly they could not be held accountable for the deaths of their parents. Maybe they were threatened with “hell fire” when they were considered thieves, but it wasn’t a holy verdict of punishment cast down upon their mortal existence, or to damn them for eternity. This was going to be a tough sell for a couple of hobby ghost hunters who had never really spoken to those who had crossed over. A sighting and paranormal experience isn’t the same at all, as having a conversation with an unknown entity, or two, and making a good job of it!