In memory of Murphy, forever my good dog.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
The Etobicoke Poltergeist
The Haunted Camp
Skeleton Park
The Drowned Man
The Hilltop Grave
Never Ever Come Back
Fright at the Museum
Bear Attack
Phantom Flight
The Headless Ghost
Child’s Play
The Death Mask
Voices in the Vaults
The Screaming Doppelgänger
The Shadowy Figure
Death in the Dining Room
Mandy Lives
Something in the Walls of Vengeance House
Follow the Light
Moving in with the Dead
The Body in the Brook
To Die in Durham
Secret Room
Also Available
About the Author
Photo Credits
Copyright
INTRODUCTION
When I’m writing a new volume of the Haunted Canada series, it’s hard for me to predict which stories will be the ones that stand out as the most terrifying, creepy or intense.
Take, for example, the story I wrote about a museum display of antique dolls. I’m willing to bet that you just shivered uncontrollably simply by picturing a display of antique dolls! I didn’t expect that story from Haunted Canada 4, titled “Dead-Eyed Dolls,” to be one of the scariest in that volume, but most readers have reported that it freaked them out more than any other.
Clearly, there’s something unnerving about dolls. So I was thrilled to learn about Lizzie, a doll from Niagara-on-the-Lake, and I wrote about her in Haunted Canada 6.
And now, lucky for you (or unfortunately for you, depending on your outlook), I’ve discovered one of the meanest, most frightening dolls in the country. Her name is Mandy, and her story appears in this book. I have a feeling you’ll find “Mandy Lives” one of the most memorable stories in Haunted Canada 8.
Or perhaps you’ll be more scared by the thought of seeing floating red eyes outside your bedroom window, as in “Secret Room,” or by living with a poltergeist in your attic, as in “The Etobicoke Poltergeist,” or by swimming with a corpse, as in “The Body in the Brook,” or by playing in a park that was once a cemetery, as in “Skeleton Park.”
Then again, who knows? Perhaps you’ll think one of the other stories in this volume is the scariest. That’s part of the fun of spooky stories. Fear is subjective. What scares me might not scare you, and vice versa.
There’s only one way to find out which stories will really get under your skin and keep you up at night: read on.
But there’s one thing I think we can all agree on. Dolls are terrifying.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Frightfully yours,
THE ETOBICOKE POLTERGEIST
Toronto, Ontario
Reverend Tom Bartlett of the Star of Progress Spiritualist Church climbed the stairs to the attic alone. If his pulse was racing and his knees were shaking, he could hardly be blamed. He was preparing to perform an exorcism.
The house on Prince Edward Drive South was surrounded by bushes and trees, giving it a closed-in feeling on an otherwise bright and cheery street in Etobicoke, a suburb in Toronto’s west end. It was built shortly before Park Lawn Cemetery, which opened nearby in 1892 and is home to more than 22,000 graves. The home was originally a farmhouse before the subdivision sprung up around it.
It was early May of 1968 and Albert Cracknell and his wife rented the house for the sum of 250 dollars a month. They lived on the main floor with their ten-year-old daughter, Shirley, while the Cracknells’ twenty-seven-year-old daughter, Carol Hawkins, lived in the second-floor apartment with her husband, Roy, and their two daughters, Sherry and Trudy. Carol and Roy’s nine-month-old son, Stephen, was in the hospital, which understandably placed a lot of stress on the family. Otherwise, everyone was happy. The house was full, but it was also quite large, and everyone was comfortable living together. They had no plans to move any time soon and had nothing but pleasant feelings for the house.
The house on Prince Edward Drive South
That all changed very quickly. It was a warm night when Carol was awoken by the sound of feet pounding across the attic floor above her head. First thump, thump, thump from left to right, then thump, thump, thump from right to left. This commotion was followed by piercing, screeching laughter. Although the heavy footsteps and hysterical laughter came from the attic, both were so loud that it sounded to Carol as if an old woman was right beside her in the bedroom.
She woke her husband and they both listened in blind terror as the running and laughing continued through the night. When they finally built up the courage to get out of bed and check on their daughters, who were asleep in the next room, the noises stopped abruptly. Like the girls, Carol’s parents and sister had also slept through the chaos, perhaps because their bedrooms were farther away, on the main floor.
Early the next morning, the family searched the attic thoroughly but couldn’t find any sign that anything unusual had taken place up there through the night, nor any explanation for what had created the sounds. Exhausted, Carol went back to bed. Shortly after her head hit the pillow and she closed her eyes, she felt as if someone was leaning over her in the bed. She opened her eyes and found that the room was empty, but then a sudden chill passed through her body as if a ghost had just flown through her.
That night, the same thumps and laughter broke Carol and Roy’s sleep. Whoever was moving about and cackling in the attic did so from 2 a.m. until the sun came up. Desperately needing a break, the Hawkinses spent the following night at a friend’s house. But when they returned home, they had the worst night yet.
This time, the noises started at 12:30 a.m., and the footsteps were followed not by laughter, but by a high-pitched screech that sounded like nails dragging across a chalkboard. Roy, at his wits’ end, shouted at whatever was disrupting their sleep to keep quiet and leave them alone. Shockingly, his desperate command worked — for a short while, anyway.
At 4 a.m. they were awoken by the poltergeist once more. Their cat, Fluffy, left their bedroom and walked past the stairs to the attic, out of sight of the married couple. Just then they heard a loud thump and Fluffy meowed in pain as if she had been kicked. This was followed by the same high-pitched screech the ghost had made earlier in the night, which finally gave way to the most ominous and evil-sounding deep-throated laughter they’d ever heard.
Carol thought Fluffy must be dead. Roy forced himself out of bed and found the cat in the hallway. Her fur was standing straight up as if she’d received an electric shock, and she was leaning against the wall for support. Her wide eyes were glued to the attic door at the top of the stairs.
The next afternoon, Carol heard the footsteps again, marking the first time the poltergeist was active during broad daylight. But now there was also an unusual brown light filtering out beneath the attic door. Scared for her life, Carol called a neighbour, Ron Leyzack, who rushed over and searched the attic … but found it empty.
Word of the poltergeist spread up and down the street, and one of the neighbours called the Toronto Telegram. Two reporters, John Downing and John Gault, arrived and the family welcomed them in. They searched the attic but found nothing out of the ordinary. They interviewed the family and believed their story. Since nothing lined up, the journalists asked if they could spend the night. Carol, for one, was relieved to have some extra company in the house as the sun was setting. Downing and Gault sprinkled flour across the attic floor to capture the footprints of th
e perpetrator, prints that could be used in identifying the culprit. Satisfied with the plan, everyone went to bed.
They didn’t sleep long. At 3:30 a.m. the footsteps thundered overhead. The cat howled and shook in fear. The reporters rushed upstairs, threw open the attic door and turned on the lights, but the attic was empty. The flour was completely undisturbed. There was no explanation for what had happened. Downing and Gault, both skeptics, were starting to believe in ghosts.
The next day, Carol called Reverend Tom Bartlett. The activity had gone far beyond tolerable levels and Carol couldn’t take it any longer. Something needed to be done about it, and it needed to be done as soon as possible. The rest of the household agreed completely.
The reverend loved a good challenge, and the poltergeist that had terrorized the family in the old Toronto home certainly fit the bill. Bartlett stopped at the top of the stairs and closed the door behind him, preventing anything — if there was anything — from escaping. Closing the door also trapped him in the attic, but he tried not to think about that. Instead he took in his surroundings.
It was dusk, and the attic was dark and gloomy. The air was still and musty. Cobwebs and dust covered almost every surface. Bartlett noted that there weren’t any footprints in the flour. The room was silent.
Bartlett waited a few minutes, alone with his thoughts in the darkness. Nothing happened. His nerves grew taut. The waiting was playing havoc with his mind. He willed the poltergeist to appear.
And then it did. An oval-shaped light with an unusual brownish hue appeared to his left. It looked like a giant, glowing cocoon. Relying upon his knowledge and intuition, Bartlett felt that the spirit was female, that she was ill and that her mind had been heading down a dark path for years. More than anything, he knew that she was obsessed with the house, and was perhaps angry at the people who now lived in it.
Bartlett’s wife, Pat, opened the door to the attic and stepped inside. She saw the brown light as well, and then immediately felt sharp pains in her stomach and chest that were so severe it was like she was being stabbed repeatedly with a long knife. Then a loud thumping sound filled the attic, and the temperature plummeted. The poltergeist was clearly agitated by their presence, and given time, the situation would become dangerous.
Reverend Bartlett began the exorcism.
Throughout the ceremony, Carol and the reporters remained a safe distance away, at the foot of the attic stairs. But after Pat rushed upstairs to join her husband, Carol, Downing and Gault saw the strange light under the door and felt an unearthly chill seep into their bones. A short while later Carol fainted and was unconscious for thirty minutes. When she finally came to, she was relieved to hear that the exorcism had been completed and that the reverend and his wife were confident that would be the last time they’d be disturbed by the poltergeist. They left, but the reporters decided to remain one more night, just to make sure the story was over.
As an added precaution, they tied an intricate series of fishing lines from wall to wall throughout the attic, then affixed tiny bells to the strings. No one could pass through the attic without ringing the bells; even an animal or the wind would set them off.
Night fell, and at 11 p.m. the footsteps, much to the dismay of everyone present, began again. The exorcism, apparently, hadn’t worked after all. At 2 a.m. a series of ice-cold waves swept through the entire house, chilling everyone’s blood. Downing and Gault estimated that the temperature plummeted from 20 to 5 degrees Celsius. The air became damp and the halls were filled with the pungent smell of rotting apples. Ten-year-old Shirley became hysterical with fear and was taken away to spend the rest of the night at her aunt’s house. Carol’s mother suffered a nervous breakdown and needed to be sedated. Not once through the long night did a single bell ring in the attic.
With no end to the haunting in sight, the Hawkinses and the Cracknells moved out and found new apartments to rent, never to return to the house on Prince Edward Drive South. It’s unknown whether the poltergeist disturbed the next tenants who moved in, but the Bartletts unearthed some information that might explain who the poltergeist was. An elderly woman used to live in the house, and she was known to be a fortune teller. She grew more and more eccentric in her old age and took to spending most days and nights sitting in the attic, yelling at anyone who passed outside. The neighbours complained about the woman and she was forced by her landlord to move, but she didn’t go quietly. She insisted that she wanted her son to move in after she died, but she didn’t get her wish. Reverend Bartlett is certain this woman was the poltergeist that ran through the attic, attacked the poor cat, laughed through the night and terrorized an unfortunate family throughout the month of May in 1968.
THE HAUNTED CAMP
Lebret, Saskatchewan
The Boy Scouts huddled close together in a circle around the campfire and listened to Camp Gilwell’s caretaker share tales of death and ghosts. The young boys didn’t make a peep — they were far too scared and nervous. The only sounds were the crackling fire and the occasional shuffling of an animal from within the woods surrounding them. At least they hoped those sounds were created by animals, but their imaginations were beginning to get the better of them.
Orange firelight flickered on the caretaker’s face, casting moving shadows around his mouth and eyes. He drew his scary story out, increasing the boys’ unease. He pointed at the old, dilapidated house not too far from where they sat — a building that was owned by the camp but rarely used — and revelled in telling his rapt audience that the ghost of Mrs. Seymour had been seen and heard on the second floor of that very building.
Just then one of the boys yelled in fright and jumped to his feet. He pointed at the thick bushes beside the house and said, “There was a woman! And a little dog behind her! I swear, I saw them just run into the trees!”
Everyone followed the boy’s shaking finger to Seymour House. The area around the house was searched, but there was no sign that a woman or a dog had been there that night. What had the boy seen? Had he imagined it, or had he actually seen a woman and a dog disappear into the woods? It was a mystery, and the caretaker hated mysteries. Unanswered questions crawled into his mind and refused to leave.
It was late and the boys were tired. More than a few had had their fill of horror stories, although they wouldn’t admit that to each other. One by one they made their way to their tents, zipped the flaps closed, and slipped into their sleeping bags.
But the caretaker couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t even rest. He couldn’t stop thinking about the woman and the dog.
Could it have been …? he wondered. Although he was certain he’d find Seymour House as empty and undisturbed inside as it had always been, he had to check. After all, he didn’t actually believe in ghosts, so he had nothing to fear.
He would soon find out how wrong he was.
He lit his way with a powerful flashlight and pried open Seymour House’s rusty front door. As soon as he stepped inside, the window shutters banged violently, as if the house were angry he’d entered. He slowly, carefully climbed the stairs to the second floor, trying his best to tread lightly so the steps wouldn’t creak and making certain not to put any weight on the bannister out of fear that it would snap in half.
When he reached the top step and shone his light around the second floor, he stopped dead in his tracks. Because no one had used the second floor for a long time, there was a thick layer of dust on the floor. There was a trail of footprints — the shape and size of a woman’s slippered feet — in the dust, leading from the top of the stairs into an unused bedroom. And beside those tracks were dog prints.
It’s true, he thought. It’s all true.
Without crossing the floor and opening the bedroom door — without even hesitating for a second — the caretaker fled from the house.
The story he’d told the Scouts that night was the sad and tragic history of the first Mrs. Seymour, Helena, and her husband, Dr. Maurice Seymour. In the early 1900s, Dr. Seymour treated tube
rculosis patients in the nearby Fort Qu’Appelle Sanatorium, and it’s believed that he also treated some patients in the house where he and his wife lived with their two small dogs.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Seymour died at a young age. Rumours spread throughout the area that she might have contracted tuberculosis herself, likely thanks to her proximity to people who were infected.
After some time, the doctor remarried. His new wife was not an animal lover and hated the two dogs. She insisted that they be put down, but Dr. Seymour refused. Instead, he sent the dogs to a boarding kennel. The second Mrs. Seymour would rather not have had the expense of keeping the dogs in the kennel, but she reluctantly agreed to the arrangement. Dogs don’t live long, after all, so Father Time would take care of the problem sooner or later.
But that’s not the way things played out. Dr. Seymour died before the dogs, and his widow wasted little time contacting the kennel and having the dogs put down. She didn’t want to pay for another day.
And that was too great an affront to Dr. Seymour’s late first wife. Almost immediately, her spirit returned, restless and distraught. Very soon after the dogs had been euthanized, the doctor’s second wife heard the sound of slippered feet scuffling around on the second floor while she was on the main floor late at night. Light was seen in the upstairs windows, and the shutters rattled and banged as if someone was opening them in a panic. And then came the whistling: fweet-fweet-fweet! It was the same sound people make when searching for lost dogs.
Then one night, the second Mrs. Seymour came face to face with the first Mrs. Seymour, pacing around the second floor in her slippers, searching and calling for her dogs.
The ghostly confrontation sent the second Mrs. Seymour straight to her room. She packed a bag and left in the middle of the night, never to return to the house again.
Seymour House was sold to Scouts Canada and became part of Camp Gilwell, where the caretaker enjoyed frightening the campers with tall tales that he soon discovered weren’t quite so tall after all. For the ghosts of Mrs. Seymour and her dogs continued to rise in the middle of the night, walking through the campgrounds and around the tents, before disappearing in the house where she’d lived … and died.
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