Matt’s room looked completely different when I was finished. He was happy with its fresh look, but he had been drawn to that room even before it had been cleaned and redecorated.
It may have been because we were so busy those first few months, or perhaps we just assumed what we were hearing was the natural creaks and groans of an old house, but it was some time before Ted and I began to notice the sound of footsteps running down the stairs between the first and second floor. On many occasions we would sit in the living room after putting the children to bed and hear someone descend the stairs into the foyer, continue down the hall, and enter the kitchen. We always assumed it was either Kammie, Matt, or Rosa. I would order whomever it was to stop running on the stairs in case they fell. And Ted would sometimes call, “Come on out. We know you’re up,” in case the child did not realize we knew they were out of bed and hiding in the kitchen. A glance, however, always revealed an empty stairway, and none of them ever appeared where we were seated.
Even the children remarked on hearing the sound of footsteps, but it did not bother them. It gradually became so commonplace that after a while we just accepted the peculiar noise and paid it little attention. Another oddity we all came to accept was the wonderful aroma of bread or cookies baking that mysteriously and frequently wafted through the house. It seemed to emanate from the kitchen even though I had nothing cooking in the oven. Even stronger was the distinctive smell of a wood-burning cook stove. Ted and Kammie noticed that phenomenon the most and would often comment on it.
Shortly after we began to hear the footsteps and smell those aromas, I tried to learn as much as I could about the previous owners of the house. I visited the local history section at the library and the downtown land registry office. Through that research, and conversations with elderly neighbours who had lived on the street for many years, I learned that the property had had seventeen different occupants, including us. Old telephone books proved to be a valuable source of information as they listed not only the address and name but also the owner’s occupation and spouse’s name. The town’s newspaper, saved on microfilm, also provided a lot of detail, and I read as many back issues as I could.
One family had lived in the house for forty years, and another had resided in it for nine. Mr. Ryan had sold it to us after living there for two decades. Apart from those three families, all the other residents seemed to have come and gone rather quickly, and there were many years when the house had sat altogether vacant.
I knew the house had been built in 1903, as our home and several of our neighbours’ houses had all been constructed in the same year. That fact was verified by many elderly residents and by the old town records. I could not establish who the land’s original owner had been through the telephone directories at the library, as that form of communication had not yet existed at the time the property was sold. At the land registry office, however, I learned that on March 29, 1865, the property upon which the house now stood, which had once been Crown land, had been sold to a Mr. F. Lincoln. At that point, the town’s small population had been growing steadily and there were a few industries, including a carriage factory, tannery, and mill.
Mr. Lincoln had kept the property until April 9, 1879, when he sold it to James Raye. On March 10, 1880, Mr. Raye, in turn, sold it to Walter Smit. By that time the property was only half an acre in size and the price paid was $450. The local economy was good, and based on newspaper advertisements from that period, eggs sold for only ten cents a dozen, a pound of tea, for less than forty cents, and flour, was six dollars a barrel.
By the time of Walter Smit’s death, on June 23, 1903, the property had been divided into three small lots, each boasting a brand new house. Mr. Smit left the property to his son Walter Jr., who then sold the house we would one day own only a few days later to Robert Hudson for the sum of $2,150. Mr. Hudson kept the house for only four months, selling it on October 29, 1903, to Ivan Wards Jr. for a price that was illegible in the old record book.
Mr. Wards apparently left the house less than six months later. The records seemed to indicate that it had been repossessed by the financial institution that held the mortgage because the payments could not be honoured. Or Mr. Wards simply chose to walk away from his monetary obligation for some other reason and allowed the bank to repossess the house only half a year after purchasing it. His father must have decided to live there next. The house sat empty and the bank was unable to resell it to any other purchaser until July 29, 1905. On that date, for the bargain price of $1,300, someone named Ivan Wards Sr. became the next owner of the house.
Mr. Wards did not live there for any longer than his son did, however. After six months, he also moved out and sold the house in early January of 1906 to Mr. Evan Albertson for $2,600. At that time, automobiles were still quite a rarity and the nearest mechanic was over a hundred miles away. The central location of the house must have made it very desirable as it was only a short walk away from all the town’s amenities. Those would have included the first movie houses, which, for a five-cent admission price, played silent films that were changed three times a week.
Four years later, on April 16, 1910, Fredrick Barker bought the property for $3,150. Mr. Barker and his wife lived there only until October 11, 1911, at which time they moved just two doors away, leaving the house vacant.
In April of 1912 the whole world was stunned by the tragic loss of the Titanic. But locally 1912 was a prosperous year, and the real estate market was booming. Still the house remained vacant. It was not until 1917 that William Neen became its next resident. His occupation was listed as baker and then as soldier. Apparently he was renting the house from the Barkers because the property remained in their name. When I saw that he had been a baker, I immediately thought of the aromas that teased us in the house, and the woodburning cook stoves that would have been used for baking in 1917.
Mr. Neen was not mentioned after the end of the World War I, and I wondered if he had ever come home again. Whatever might have been his fate, there was no record of a wife. The house remained vacant again until August 30, 1919, when Mrs. Barker, now a widow, finally sold it to a Mr. and Mrs. Ford for $3,050. That was less than she and her late husband had paid for it nine years before.
Of all the former owners of the house, the Barkers’ actions intrigued me most. Why would they leave the house eighteen months after its purchase only to move two doors away into an identical house on the same street? The appearance, layout, and dimensions of the two houses were exactly alike. I could have understood their moving if the house two doors away had been larger, or had had a different floor plan, or if they had moved to a different location. But the only visible difference between our property and the one two doors away to which the Barkers relocated was that the lot was two feet wider.
What seemed even stranger to me was that the house had sat vacant for such a long time, given the neighbourhood’s preferred location. That would have been the case even more so early in the century, with its close proximity to the downtown core. Other than the Barkers’ eighteen-month residency and the one-year period in which it had been rented out to Mr. Keen, no one had lived in the house at all in the eight years the Barkers owned it. In a time when real estate sales were brisk and buyers were eagerly seeking houses, why could the Barkers not sell the house when they had no intention of using it themselves? And why did only one person rent it during that period when, according to an old newspaper article, housing was in such high demand? Finally, why, when Mrs. Barker was able to sell it, had she taken a loss on what they had paid for it several years before?
I went back to the library to do more research and noticed some strange patterns I had not noticed before. Not only had the Barkers abandoned the house after eighteen months to move two doors away, but the first two owners had also stayed for just a few months before moving within the same neighbourhood. Robert Hudson had lived there for only four months when he moved down the street, eight houses away. The next owner, Ivan Edwards Jr., stayed fo
r six months before leaving, and he too bought another house right around the corner. Obviously those former residents liked the neighbourhood as they chose to remain in it. They must have liked the style of the home because their next ones looked identical. Why then had they not simply remained in the house?
Another unusual coincidence I detected was that, with only two exceptions, one of them being our family, every new owner of the house seemed to come from out of town. It seemed as if only strangers to the area, those unfamiliar with local history, were willing to purchase and then live on that property, but in most cases, not for very long. We had been in town for six years when we purchased the house, but we had not been very familiar with its local history either. Yet my search through the newspaper archives did not uncover any report of an unusual or tragic event ever taking place at that location.
From August 30, 1919, until May 22, 1927, the Fords lived in the house. Until then that was the longest period that anyone had resided there. The Ford family had been similar to ours, with two little daughters and a son.
When Mr. Ford sold the home on May 22, 1927, to G. J. Niles, he received $4,500 for the property. That was a very good price for the time. Mr. Niles and his wife, Jenny, lived in the house the longest time of any owner. They too had a family that consisted of two daughters and a son. The wealthy Niles family, who wanted to have a house in town so it would be easier for their children to get to school, also owned a country property that served as their weekend residence. The house would not change hands again until 1968.
Our next door neighbour, Donelle Porter, had lived in her home for most of her life. She liked to remind people that she was older than the grass in the neighbourhood, because most of the land had not yet been sodded when her family moved into their new home. Her parents had purchased the property when it had been first built, and she remembered all of her previous neighbours very well.
When she was young, Donelle and her siblings had been very good friends with the children who had lived in our house. She remembered Mrs. Niles very fondly and often spoke of “Aunt Jenny,” as everyone in the neighbourhood had affectionately called her. They had been kind and thoughtful people who were always ready to help out their neighbours, especially during the difficult years of the Great Depression. Donelle’s mother would very thoughtfully be presented with a crate of oranges and grapefruits from the Niles each Christmas, and the significance of that generosity was still evident in our elderly neighbour’s reminiscence.
In July of 1968, Luis and Martha Borgin bought the house from the Niles and lived there until August 1970. Luis had an accident and was forced to move to a nursing home shortly before they sold the house to its next owners, Martin and Pamela Riley, in August 1970. However, the library’s records indicated that, although they bought the house, the Rileys never actually lived there. The house was listed as “vacant” until it was sold again three years later to the next owner.
Mr. and Mrs. Ryan purchased the house in 1973. They lived there with their children for quite a while until Mrs. Ryan passed away in the hospital after a lengthy illness. Then, with his children grown and on their own, Mr. Ryan found the upkeep of the house too difficult with his frail health. So, after more than twenty years of ownership, Mr. Ryan sold the house to our family.
Although my research did make me curious about the former residents of our house, I did not find anything in the written records, such as a death or a fire, to explain the occurrences we were later to witness. It did, however, seem peculiar to me that the property had changed ownership so frequently. Since it was first purchased, seventeen different residents had moved in and out of the property over the years, with only a few staying a substantial length of time.
Our elderly neighbour Donelle seemed to know all about the current and former occupants of every house along our street, and she helped me to fill in the blanks in my research that the library’s records could not. She entertained us with stories of the “olden days,” and the children loved to hear her talk of her own childhood. A lot of the area had been farmland, so our neighbourhood contained some of the oldest buildings in that part of the town.
Donelle told us about the people who had lived in our home before we did, but nothing out of the ordinary was ever mentioned. It seemed as if it had always housed happy, normal, growing families, very much like our own. Donelle went into great detail about the children who once lived there and what had become of them as they married, began careers and moved away. Although some of them had unfortunately died early in their lives, as young adults, no parent had ever lost a child while living under that roof. As far as we knew, and we certainly had not been told otherwise, there should have been nothing unusual about the house itself.
When events began to unfold, we did not know why. I went back to the local history section of the library many times looking for answers but could find nothing there that offered an explanation.
I felt it would be inappropriate to question Mr. Ryan or Donelle about specific occurrences. It was obvious that Mr. Ryan had left his home reluctantly. When we bought the house, he had told us, very sincerely, that his family had shared many happy years there and he hoped that our young family would do the same. I did not want Donelle to think I was crazy, so I asked only general questions about the past. And, I did not want to reveal that I was trying to determine if someone from a former time was haunting our home. After all, perhaps the incidences were not related to the actual house but were linked somehow specifically to the piece of land, or even just to our own family.
I realized as time went on that a haunting was a private matter. It was not something easily discussed with other people, even a close neighbour. If we felt we could not tell others about the happenings within our home, then perhaps former residents had felt the same restriction. If they too experienced strange occurrences, they may have felt the only option they had was to move away. And that certainly had been done, time after time.
3
WATCHING FROM THE WINDOW
During the days, while Matt and Kammie were at school and Ted was at work, Rosa and I kept ourselves busy in our new home. Our cocker spaniel, Piper, loved to follow us around but refused to go up the stairs to the second floor. She had not hesitated to do so in our previous house, but now, if we went upstairs, she would sit on the foyer floor and cry until we came back down. If one of us carried her up, she would dash into the master bedroom, jump on the bed, and shake like a leaf until she was brought downstairs again. She would occasionally remain in either Kammie or Rosa’s bedroom for a short period of time, but would whine and run for the door whenever Matt tried to bring her into his room.
We fully expected Piper to resume her old habit of sleeping every night at the foot of one of the children’s beds and thought she only needed time to get used to the new surroundings. She continued, however, to avoid our second floor. As with the footsteps on the stairs and the mysterious odours, we gradually came to accept her strange behaviour.
Life went on fairly smoothly, despite those oddities. The children seemed to love our new home, and Rosa often played in the backyard with Piper while her brother and sister were in school.
One afternoon, Rosa came running into the house from the yard, yelling, “A pretty girl is up in my bedroom!”
“Is she?” I smiled at her when she reached me, but I was a little surprised. It wasn’t like Rosa to make up stories. She was so emphatic and excited, however, that I could not help but chuckle.
“I saw her! She was standing at the window up in my bedroom and she waved to me!” Rosa persisted.
“What did she look like?” I asked, playing along with what I thought was a new game.
“She had on a pretty dress and a bow in her hair,” she said.
I was beginning to feel uncomfortable with Rosa’s seriousness.
“Sweetie, no one is here but you and me. And I wasn’t upstairs,” I explained to her.
Rosa insisted that we go up to her room to see if the gir
l was still there. I thought it would help to convince her that she had just imagined seeing someone waving to her from her window, so upstairs we went, hand in hand. The room was empty, of course, but Rosa remained unconvinced.
She walked over to the window and looked down to where she had been playing in the yard, blowing bubbles with liquid soap and a bubble wand.
“That’s where I was when I saw her,” Rosa said and pointed. “And she was right here at the window, waving to me.” She was growing frustrated with my disbelief.
“But you and I are the only ones in the house,” I said again.
Rosa nodded her head in agreement, but I could see she was confused. She knew what she had seen, but she also understood that we were the only people at home and that no one else was in the bedroom.
“But I saw her. Where did she go?” Rosa asked.
I shrugged my shoulders in response and hoped that was the end of it. But Rosa walked over to her closet door and peeked inside, then looked under her bed, still searching for the girl who had been at the window. Thankfully, after a few moments she gave up and went back outside with Piper.
Rosa mentioned having seen the same girl on a number of occasions over the next few months, but she was much more casual about it.
“I saw her watching me today,” she would say.
“Who?” I would ask, thinking she was referring to one of our neighbours.
“The girl in my bedroom,” would be her calm reply.
Her older sister and brother laughed at her insistence that she had seen the girl. They questioned Rosa about her story, trying to get her to trip over her facts, thereby proving she was only making it up.
Haunted Page 2