Haunted Ontario 3. Terry Boyle

was killed in battle. This medicine man knew this was going to happen, but did nothing to prevent it. She had discovered this and had come to hate the medicine man.

      Then suddenly, she was back in the present with her husband. He was aware that something had happened to her. She did not want to leave the area. She knew she could return to that time at any moment.

      Two years later, she had a deep yearning to return to the site. Her husband had died and she had too many unanswered questions. She followed the same pathway to the spot where she had stepped back in time. Once she arrived in the same location she received a strong message instructing her not to go back.

      Her questions were, “What do I do with this experience? What does it all mean?”

      Where does one go with questions like that! Was this “travelling clairvoyance”?

      This force that Mesmer talked about applies also to the story in this book entitled “A Scent of Roses.” In this story people travel to a farm in Marmora, Ontario to experience the miracle of divine healing by the laying of hands, the drinking holy water, or by the power of prayer.

      Although Mesmerism was a forerunner of parapsychology, the Society for Psychical Research was on a different path. They set about establishing a religious movement entitled Spiritualism.

      The Spiritualism movement originated in America in the middle of the nineteenth century; it was brought to public awareness by events recorded in the Fox household.

      Irwin and Watt wrote about the beginning of this spiritual movement. “In December 1847, a blacksmith named John Fox, his wife, and two of their children, fourteen-year-old Maggie and twelve-year-old Kate, moved into a rented, wooden cottage in Hydesville (Rochester), New York. The house was said to have had a reputation for being associated with uncanny events, and in the latter half of March, 1848, the family began to hear a variety of strange sounds — rapping, bangs, and scrapings — as if furniture was being shifted.”

      John Fox thought the window sashes were being rattled by the wind. So he carefully checked all the windows in the house, giving each one a firm shake. His daughter, Kate, observed that each time her father shook the windows the noises were heard, as if in reply.

      “It occurred to Kate to snap her fingers to see if that would elicit a similar response. The ‘ghost’, as it was taken to be, responded to this challenge with raps in the pattern.

      “Eventually, word got out about the ghost in the Fox home. More and more people flocked to the house to witness the communications.”

      The Fox sisters began to travel across the country demonstrating how they could communicate with the spirit world.

      The sisters held séances and participants often felt the touch of an invisible hand. Objects moved unaccountably and musical instruments playing without human intervention. The sisters enjoyed success as mediums for many years.

      The Fox sisters had captured the imagination of the American public. Irwin and Watt add, “Mediums sprang up in other parts of New York State, and by the early 1850s, followers of spiritualism in New York City numbered in the tens of thousands.”

      In the next few years, spiritualism had spread throughout America and to Europe.

      In a book entitled Ghosts and Spirits, by Chambers Harrap Publishers, it was stated, “By 1888 alcoholism was taking its toll on both Kate and Maggie. Their sister Leah had given up managing her two younger sisters. While the two sisters were at this low ebb, a reporter offered $15,000 to Maggie and Kate for an exposé of their methods.

      “On the night of 21 October, 1888, Maggie performed at the New York Academy of Music, with Kate in the audience. Maggie showed how a simple cracking of the joints of her toes could produce a sound loud enough to be heard through the whole theatre. This had been put forward as a possible explanation for the rapping sounds, but no one had been able to prove it until this admission was made.”

      In 1889, Maggie retracted her confession and returned to doing séances.

      Kate and Maggie died as paupers. The Fox home was dismantled and moved to Lily Dale, in New York State.

      The spiritualist community of Lily Dale was created in 1879, as a home for mediums. Lily Dale is located about an hour drive southwest of Buffalo. It is a settlement comprised of a cluster of nineteenth-century, gingerbread houses. Today there are forty mediums living in Lily Dale.

      Every year approximately 22,000 people visit Lily Dale to participate in classes and workshops, to share public church services, mediumship demonstrations, and lectures, and to have private appointments with mediums.

      We went to Lily Dale to ask Greg Kehn to assist us in seeking out the spirits in the Orillia Opera House. It was incredible to work with Greg. He is truly a gifted medium and is able to see the spirit world and communicate messages. Historical facts verified almost every spirit he encountered in the Orillia Opera House.

      Although the story about the Fox sisters ignited a spiritualist movement, it was not the first such paranormal story to make history in North America. The “Baldoon Mysteries” story in this book was an earlier event — and a sensational happening in the community of Baldoon, Ontario.

      That story concerns the McDonald family, who were persecuted for three years by the curse of a witch. The family not only experienced knocking, but a host of other paranormal occurrences.

      What is a “ghost”? The Oxford Dictionary states, “The supposed apparition of the dead.”

      Renowned author Dr. Hans Holzer was one of the world’s foremost experts on the subject of the paranormal and authored more than one hundred books on parapsychology.

      According to Dr. Holzer, he believed there was a difference between a ghost and a spirit. “A ghost appears to be a surviving emotional memory of someone who has died traumatically, and usually tragically, but is unaware of his or her death. A few ghosts may realize that they are dead but may be confused as to where they are, or why they do not feel quite the way they once did.”

      Dr. Holzer believed that when death occurred unexpectedly or unaccountably, or when a person died who lived in a place for a very long time and was attached to the premises, there would be shock, trauma, and an unwillingness to part with the physical world.

      Holzer stated, “Ghosts — individuals unaware of their own passing or incapable of accepting the transition because of unfinished business — will make themselves known to the living people at infrequent intervals.”

      This could be the case in some of the hauntings at Black Creek Pioneer Village.

      Dr. Holzer points out that in his research “no more than 10–15 percent of all sightings or other phenomena are ‘real ghosts’. The larger portion of all sightings or sound phenomena is caused by a replaying of a past emotional event, one that has somehow been left behind, impressed into the atmosphere of the place or house.” (See the “Cherry Hill House” story in this book.)

      Dr. Holzer mentions his view of the difference between a ghost and spirit. He believes ghosts do not travel or follow people home; neither do they appear at more than one place. Reports of apparitions of the deceased are not ghosts to Dr. Holzer, but free spirits.

      He defines a spirit as such: “Spirits are people like you and I who have passed on to the next world without too much difficulty or too many problems. They are not bound to anything left behind in the physical world. They do, however, have ties and emotional interests in the family or friends they left behind.”

      Holzer believes that spirits are people who have died and are living in their duplicate “inner body,” the etheric body. They are different from the physical living people in respect to certain limitations and the time element, but spirits are simply people who have passed on to the next world with their memories and interests intact.

      Whether a ghost or spirit, people of all walks of life have had encounters with these unusual entities. An older man, who had taken my historical, haunted walking tour of Bala, Ontario, shared this incredible experience with me: Four years ago, on the night