The Big Book of Canadian Hauntings. John Robert Colombo

happened with their uncle. He wasn’t there! At the time that was just as well, I had enough on my plate to deal with. All in all, they had relatively small bangs, bumps, and bruises compared to what could have happened. I think the biggest injury was their minds and naturally their nerves! Damon, especially, felt the responsibility for both his passengers and the car. He didn’t seem too concerned for his own physical condition!

      The details that hang heaviest over me to this day about the accident are two-fold. Number One, how easily I could have lost both my sons in one easy freak swoop!

      Number Two, the feeling of the energy that had shot through my body that day that told me something wrong had happened! How unnerving and helpless I felt, because I was unable to capture any of the details.

      The best way I suppose to describe this feeling to others is like this. It is like someone witnessing a dog barking incessantly at something but not being able to see or hear what it is that the dog is barking at. You only sense that it can’t be good. All you really know is that common sense tells you to act defensively, to be alert, and to be on guard!

      This source of energy has come to visit with me on other occasions as well. For the above-stated reasons, it continues to be both a blessing and a curse. It immediately overcomes me at different speeds, strengths, and lengths of time!

      What I have figured out is that the older I get, the stronger it seems to get! Also, that it picks me! I never pick it! I usually end up pacing and my mind racing as it occurs. My mind and my heart do instant battle.

      Which one wins? The honest truth? The one I feel the most!

      May 26, 2005

2 SOME OLD-FASHIONED GHOSTS

      The fact that there are so many words in the English language for ghosts and spirits argues on behalf of their very existence! Elsewhere in this book I have gathered these words together and arranged them in alphabetical order. Here I have gathered some “ghost stories” of the traditional kind, as I found them in the columns of old newspapers and journals. Not all ghosts, when they appear, need to be swathed in white shrouds or cerements — but many were and still are. It is worth noting that we do not “see” ghosts so much as we do “sense” their presence. Yet these ghosts are as much phantasms or psychical experiences as they are creatures of folklore. Perhaps for that reason they have particular penetrative powers!

      They haunt us still.

A GHOST STORY

      Nova Scotian, Halifax, Nova Scotia, November 7, 1859

      Mr. Hector M’Donald, of Canada, was recently on a visit to Boston. When he left home his family were enjoying good health, and he anticipated a pleasant journey. The second morning after his arrival in Boston, when leaving his bed to dress for breakfast, he saw reflected in a mirror the corpse of a woman lying in the bed from which he had just risen. Spell-bound, he gazed with intense feeling, and tried to recognize the features of the corpse, but in vain; he could not even move his eyelids; he felt deprived of action, for how long he knew not. He was at last startled by the ringing of the bell for breakfast, and sprang to the bed to satisfy himself if what he had seen reflected in the mirror was real or an illusion. He found the bed as he left it, he looked again into the mirror, but only saw the bed truly reflected. During the day he thought much upon the illusion, and determined next morning to rub his eyes and feel perfectly sure that he was wide awake before he left bed. But, notwithstanding these precautions, the vision was repeated with this addition, that he thought he recognized in the corpse some resemblance to the features of his wife.

      In the course of the second day he received a letter from his wife, in which she stated that she was quite well, and hoped he was enjoying himself among his friends. As he was devotedly attached to her, and always anxious for her safety, he supposed that his morbid fears had conjured up the vision he had seen reflected in the glass; and went about his business as cheerfully as usual. — On the morning of the third day, after he had dressed, he found himself in thought in his own house, leaning over the coffin of his wife. His friends were assembled, the minister was performing the funeral services, his children wept — he was in the house of death. He followed the corpse to the grave; he heard the earth rumble upon the coffin, he saw the grave filled and the green sods covered over it; yet, by some strange power, he could see through the ground the entire form of his wife as she lay in her coffin.

      He looked in the face of those around him, but no one seemed to notice him; he tried to weep, but the tears refused to flow, his very heart felt as hard as a rock. Enraged at his own want of feeling, he determined to throw himself upon the grave and lie there till his heart should break, when he was recalled to consciousness by a friend, who entered the room to inform him that breakfast was ready. He started as if awoke from a profound sleep, though he was standing before the mirror with a hairbrush in his hand.

      After composing himself, he related to his friend what he had seen, and both concluded that a good breakfast only was wanting to dissipate his unpleasant impressions.

      A few days afterwards, however, he received the melancholy intelligence that his wife had died suddenly, and the time corresponded with the day he had been startled by the first vision in the mirror. When he returned home he described minutely all the details of the funeral he had seen in his vision, and they corresponded with the facts. This is probably one of the most vivid instances of clairvoyance on record. Mr. M’Donald knows nothing of modern spiritualism or clairvoyance, as most of his life has been passed upon a farm and among forests. It may not be amiss to state that his father, who was a Scotch Highlander, had the gift of “second sight.” — Boston Traveller.

THE GHOST OF THE DROWNED MAN

      Collingwood is located on Georgian Bay in Northern Ontario. Today it is an affluent year-round resort community; in the past it had a profitable ship-building yard. This news story is reprinted from the Quebec Daily News, Quebec City, December 22, 1862.

       A Collingwood Ghost Spiritually Inclined

      A few months ago an old man fell over the railway wharf at Collingwood, and was drowned. — Ever since, the more simple folks of the town have been under the impression that his spirit walks the wharf when churchyards yawn. On Tuesday night, one of the railway officials had occasion to walk along the wharf on business. He carried in his hand a lantern, and to his astonishment he observed what he supposed to be the ghost of the drowned man. In the outstretched hand of his ghostship was a tumbler containing what appeared to be liquor, the deceased having been rather fond of a drop, while an inhabitant of this lower world. While the official stood gazing at the spectre, a voice exclaimed, in deep sepulchral tones, the word “Beware,” and the spirit vanished into thin air. He returned to the office and acquainted the other officials with what he had seen, who tried to laugh him out of it, but without effect. He still declares that he saw the ghost of the old man.

A GUARDIAN OR A WARDEN

      A spirit is often believed to be the guardian of a person or the warden of a specific site. “A Ghost in Thorold” appeared in the St. Catharines Journal, October 23, 1863.

       A Ghost in Thorold

      Last week the bridge-tender at the bridge over the Canal entering the village from the North resigned his position, and a gentleman of the Irish persuasion from the town took his place. It seems that at some indefinite period a man was drowned near the bridge, whose shade remained perfectly invisible until Thursday night last, when Andy was on duty. On that night Andy saw a man with a lantern, or a lantern without