Haunted Too. Dorah L. Williams

was any connection between that land and my recent bouts of illness.

      We stayed for a while. I didn’t feel sick to my stomach and was very relieved about that, but did notice a strange but obvious tension started to develop between my husband and me. We have always had a great relationship and are the best of friends, but as we stood looking at the foundation hole that had been dug and the other work that was being done, we started snapping at each other over the most trivial things. This was so out of character for us that it must have almost sounded funny, but at the time I felt this very real fury at him, but couldn’t really understand why. I could tell from his tone that he was furious at me too, and we acted like we were enemies. It was lucky our kids were at home with a babysitter because I wouldn’t have wanted them to hear their parents talking to each other like that!

      We made up by the time we got home and both felt terrible for how we had treated each other. Like my illness, the negative feelings we had toward each other had just come out of nowhere and left just as quickly as soon as we left the property.

      By the time our house was finished it looked great and we were all happy with it. Everything seemed fine for the first few weeks, but then our youngest child became really ill. After consulting several doctors, including specialists, no one could ever determine what was causing the problem. Eventually everything was fine again, and fortunately the illness did not return and everyone remained healthy. But that awful tension definitely came back into our marriage. We were so miserable for the whole time we lived in that house.

      After a couple of years my husband was offered a new job and we had to move. When the real estate agent was over to give us an appraisal on what the property was worth, he remarked on what a huge improvement our next-door neighbours had made to their home. I was curious about that, because their house was so beautiful and I had only ever known it to look like that. He explained to me that a long time ago (probably at least fifty years), when he was a young boy, he had lived nearby, and he and the other neighbourhood children used to bet each other that they wouldn’t have the nerve to step onto the “haunted” house’s property, because they were all terrified of that whole area.

      At that time the property was completely overgrown, and the mansion was in a terrible state of disrepair because it had long been abandoned. The property that our house was built on was originally part of that huge estate. But the house next door was now beautifully restored and didn’t look anything like the agent remembered. I asked him why it had the reputation of being haunted, but he seemed very reluctant to talk about it further and the topic was dropped. And I never did learn any more about the history of that property before we moved.

      What I did learn, though, through friends in the neighbourhood, was that since we left, just a few years ago, the house has had a very high turnover rate, with the next two couples who owned it after us both leaving shortly after they moved in, on account of their marriages breaking up and them getting divorced. And the next owner, a single middle-aged woman, had some sort of nervous breakdown after living there for only a few months, and had to move away to live with her father in another city.

      So after that experience, I truly believe now that even if you build a new house that no one else has lived in before, it can still be “haunted” by whatever negative energy the property it is built on, has, especially if there was a disturbing history of some kind.

      Sweater Girl

      I don’t know if this could be classified as a ghost story, because I’m not sure it was a ghost that I saw. That experience definitely haunted me, though, and whatever it was, it could only be described as supernatural.

      About twenty years ago, when my youngest child had just turned one, we moved to a new town and bought our first house there, in the oldest (and busiest) section of town.

      The only problem I had with the neighbourhood was the congestion from all the traffic on a street not designed to accommodate modern vehicles. Between three-thirty and four o’clock every afternoon, dismissed students from four different schools in the area surrounding us hurried past, and even inside our house the noise from this was very loud.

      One warm, sunny spring day I was playing with my little daughter in our living room. She would get so excited to see all the children racing by at dismissal time that I would sometimes put her into her playpen in front of the large bay window so she could happily watch them.

      The traffic started to increase as always, with parents approaching the schools to pick up their children, and I could hear the bells start to ring, signalling another ended school day. And on cue, as always, the kids not getting rides started walking or running down the street, free from school for the rest of the day. So, in every way, it just seemed like a very typical afternoon.

      But as I placed the baby into her playpen for a better view of all this commotion, something happened that I will never, ever forget. The sunny

      afternoon suddenly (and when I say suddenly I do mean immediately) turned into a cold, cloudy day. And although there had been a constant din of noise and activity right outside the window up until that very second, it was now deathly silent, without a vehicle or person in sight. Even my neighbour who had seen me looking out the window and had just waved to me from his front garden only a moment before was no longer visible.

      My daughter stared up at me, and her big blue eyes showed just as much bewilderment as I was feeling myself. I walked over to the front door and slowly turned the knob, feeling I had to investigate what was going on, but nervous to leave the safety of my home. I glanced back at the baby in her playpen, and then immediately looked in the large front window at her again as soon as I stepped out onto the porch so she knew I was still there.

      We were both baffled. I stood on our front porch staring up and down the street trying to understand how the cloudless, sunny day had been so altered so quickly into the cold, damp grey afternoon it now was. But, even more so, I tried to make sense out of how everyone else on the street had completely disappeared, including all the vehicles. No children, no parents, no neighbours, no cars or bikes. In fact, one of my neighbours had been cutting some limbs in his backyard, and I realized then that even that noise from the chainsaw had been eliminated. It was completely and eerily silent.

      And then I saw her. As I stared up the street, looking for even one school kid, when there should have been dozens, I saw a lone figure walking slowly toward my house. I stared at her with relief at first … at least there was another person, and surely, I thought, more would start to fill the street again soon, as usual. But the silence remained, and the odd chill in the air made me rub my bare arms with my hands, trying to warm them. I kept glancing in the window at the baby, and she kept her eyes fixed on me the whole time. I’m sure she knew something bizarre was happening, but I had no idea what it was either.

      As the woman approached I saw she was wearing a very heavy brown sweater. It was early spring, and the temperature earlier that day had been unseasonably warm, which was why I was wearing a sleeveless blouse myself, and the baby was so lightly dressed. I was a bit surprised to see her wearing something that heavy and warm on what had been such a hot day. But the sudden plunge of the temperature made me think she was probably more comfortably dressed than I was at that moment.

      She walked slowly but deliberately toward my home, and I assumed she would acknowledge me as she approached, especially with the two of us suddenly being the only ones around. I planned to ask her if this didn’t seem very strange to her too. But when she got close enough for eye contact and to exchange comments, she completely ignored me. It was as if she didn’t even see me standing there, just a few metres away from the sidewalk. She didn’t pass by, though, as I had expected her to. She stopped when she got to the large maple tree growing on our boulevard and stared at it for several seconds with a look of rapture on her face … and that unsettled me. But nothing prepared me for what she did next.

      What I had thought was a heavy woollen sweater covering her arms and upper body was actually countless tent caterpillars. I finally realized this as I watched in horror as she slowly started to peel them, one after another, off of herself and place them onto the tree. I stood watching this for a few moments,