Ghosts and Haunted Houses by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

http://bookswelove.net/authors/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

 

As far as I know, I have never seen a ghost. However, I did live in a haunted house, although without my knowledge. When my husband and I and my brother and sister-in-law first moved to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island we bought a house that had been converted into a duplex. My sister-in-law told me that she was continually seeing a man coming and going from their side. I saw no one on our side.

I returned to Alberta to visit family and friends and was describing where our place was to a friend. She began asking questions about it and said that a friend of hers had lived in that house years earlier. She also asked me if I had seen the ghost who occasionally wandered through the house there. I said no, but my sister-in-law had.

She said that a man had died in that house and her friend had seen his ghost often while living there.

I’m not sure if the reason I did not encountered that ghost nor any others in my life is because I don’t believe in them or because I’ve been lucky. However, if a ghost is reading this, this is not an invitation to come to me and prove you are real.

The First Page "Magnetic Carrot" by June Gadsby

Follow this link to purchase June Gadsby Books
 

One of the most difficult things to do when starting a new book is creating that magnet on the first page that draws your reader into the story and impels them to turn to the next, then the next. On and on, letting the pace mount and the fascination grow.

I have read so many books by writers where the first page[s] don’t have that magic, magnetic pull, so I’m obliged to throw them to one side. Life is too short to stumble on through endless, scene-setting, meandering prose, wondering when the main protagonists are going to take shape and form and when the action is going to start.

Sometimes the magnet is no more than the first sentence, short and snappy, full of the promise of exciting things to come; and it makes you curious enough to want to read on. I spend as much time creating these first, important words as the whole of the first chapter. Maybe I succeed. Maybe I don’t. However, I give great importance to this tiny bit of writing and most of the time I’m happy with what I’ve achieved.

Here are just two examples, bearing in mind that we don’t all have the same taste in reading matter. I write multi-genre books – mainly historic, romantic suspense around the early 1900’s as well as contemporary. The book I’m working on at the moment, is a contemporary romance. It has only two words of dialogue to kick-start it and give that all important ‘carrot’ to entice the reader to read on.

                

“This affair!” [Which also happens to be the title of the book.] The words hit the heroine like a shock wave as she sits across the breakfast table from her husband, who has just uttered the words. He glares at her above his morning newspaper. She is suddenly drowning in guilt over something that happened five years previously…

My second example is the first page from “To The Ends of the Earth” which I wrote after an inspirational trip to Patgonia:

[Four 5-star reviews on Amazon – here’s just one of them:

I loved this book!

By Pamela Fudge on 2 February 2017

I loved this book. I was pulled into the story from the first page. It is a beautifully written novel, peopled by characters who, quite literally step off the page, it was a most enjoyable read and I highly recommend it

Chapter One

          First, there was the dust cloud. It appeared small on the Patagonian horizon like tumbleweed; a rolling ball of pampas grasses chased before El Pampero. This constant summer wind blew relentlessly across the Andes from the west, until it arrived at the small coastal towns around the Valdes Peninsular.

            But this particular cloud of sun-dried, wind-blown dust that day in 1900 was not caused by tumbleweed. As it grew in size, drawing ever nearer to the scattering of log cabins belonging to the tiny Welsh settlement town of Puerto Daffyd, the cloud took form and shape.  The hollow thud of hoofs could be heard long before watching eyes made out the shimmering shape of a young woman on the back of a sleek black stallion.

            She rode astride, gaucho style, long legs clad in guanaco hide trews. Her white shirt in fine cotton, clinging to her breasts left no doubt that she was female – and shocked the group of Chapel ladies watching her arrival from behind prim lace curtains.

            “Here she comes,” announced the Widow Evans, whose house it was, as if she was the only one to see.

            “Gwyneth Johnns, is it?” One of the other women struggled to see past the heads of the women assembled at the window. “I never expected to see her again, look you; but she still comes, brazen hussy that she is.”

            “Aye. How does she have the face to show herself where all is known of her?”     Cups rattled indignantly on saucers, tea was spilled and no attention paid to it.

 

So, what does this ‘magnetic carrot’ tell you? Before you have reached the end of the first page you know where, when and who. You know that the heroine is no ‘lady’ in the eyes of the very proper Victorian ladies of the town. The fact that she rides astride the stallion like a man, not caring how she appears, tells us that she is no weakling of a female, but strong and passionate. She is infamous – but for what? This is not a fluffy-pink romance. It’s an adventure sprinkled with danger, violence, betrayal and love, the whole set in the wild plains, breath-taking mountains and glaciers of Argentina and Chile. Ideal reading for armchair travellers.

Unless you have a strong literary bent I suggest you stay away from ‘clever’ writing. Many years ago, I used to think that to become a published writer you had to show the world some kind of amazing grasp of English. Good literary writers are few and far between and the story often gets buried among the beautiful prose. Books that have little dialogue are lacking in characters that have flesh, bones and emotions. My agent, when he took me on before I was published, told me: “You’re trying too hard to be a writer.” I wasn’t sure what he meant back then, but it became obvious when I started writing from the heart instead of the head. Instead of describing in prose my characters, I let them speak to my readers in their own words and then they became more real. They are largely responsible for telling the story. My job is simply to introduce them and a little of their background – and get the readers to turn that all important first page, eager to discover what lurks beyond.

 Forbidden! – Here’s a taste of my latest novel; war, violence, rape, incest, conscientious objectors, prisoners of war; family secrets; and passionate, forbidden love. I can’t wait to get on with it.

Chapter One

The world exploded and went on exploding all around the young British soldier. He had never heard a noise quite like it. It was too loud, even, to hear the cries and the screams of his comrades who seemed to be flying in pieces into the air, just like he was. However, what he thought his saw through dust-filled eyes were dismembered bodies, arms, legs, torsos. Before he hit the ground he imagined he saw the head of his best pal, Rooney, stupid sod that he was, flying past his line of blurred vision, that cheeky grin still fixed on his face. He’d just had his sixteenth birthday and they got drunk on the CO’s secret stash of rhum, which they had pinched while he was having a meeting about battle tactics because they were due to cross No Man’s Land in a day or two, if camp rumours were to be believed.

               “Hey, Rooney, ye daft bugger. Where’s the rest of ye?”

               Did he shout that out loud, or was it just an imagined echo in his head, penetrating the high-pitched whining in his ears as enemy shells exploded all around him?

               An explosion too close for comfort sent Private Jack Williams of the 19th Northumberland Fusiliers, again flying through the air, then he hit the ground hard a second time. The earth beneath him vibrated. Rivers of blood-stained mud poured over the barren incline where once golden maize crops had grown. Rivulets of the rust-coloured liquid coursed towards him, soaking into his tattered battle-dress uniform, finding its way around him and further down the hill he and his comrades in arms had just climbed, full of courage and pride and shouts that they would bring the bastard Germans down, annihilate the bloody Hun.

               That was a laugh, Jack thought as he lay there, unable to move, unable to see or hear. The ground beneath him had stopped vibrating. He supposed that that meant the battle had ended. Either that, or he was dead. He wondered, quite calmly, now many pieces of him were missing. It hadn’t hurt, whatever went off beneath the running feet of his infantry battalion. The force and the speed of it happened too quickly. If he was still alive, he knew the pain would come soon, but for now he was content to lie there, unmoving. Lie there and pray, though he wasn’t a religious lad, not like his mother who was always to be found with her nose in her Bible and on her bony knees by her bedside every night.  

The Ghost Ship of Prince Edward Island by Anita Davison

Whilst doing research of the island for Envy The Wind, I came across a ghost story about a ship which has appeared since 1768 in the Northumberland Strait  the stretch of water which separates Prince Edward Island from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

This ghost ship doesn’t have a name, but is described as having ‘crisp white sails and a black shiny hull’ that are completely engulfed in flames. She is not always sighted in the same place or a specific time, although more often between September and November whe she is believed to be the forewarning of a north easterly storm.

The ship appears so real, that on occasion attempts have been made to rescue the crew. One of these occurred in Charlottetown Harbour around 1900, when a group of sailors reported they could see members of the crew running back and forth to avoid the flames. The sailors took out a rowboat and raced toward the ship which disappeared before they reached it. A thorough search was carried out by divers, but no shipwreck was found.

On occasion,  a large number of people witnessed the ship's appearance simultaneously, all saying it  was moving fast, even on nights when there was no wind. One sighting was described as follows: [paraphrased]

As it came nearer it seemed to lose speed and stopped opposite our house. We got up on the banks to watch but there was no sign of anyone on board and no dory on tow. About ten minutes after she stopped, smoke began to rise slowly over the deck. There were men who seemed to come up from below and run around the deck in every direction as flames spread across the deck. Men climbed the masts, but when they were halfway up, all the sails caught at the same time. The men were no longer visible as the ship was engulfed in flames. We watched it until the flames died and everything crumbled to the deck. The hull gradually sank lower in the water until it disappeared.

Ferries crossing the Strait between Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island before the Confederation Bridge was built, often encountered the phantom ship. A ferryboat captain reported sailing straight through the flames finding nothing, while another claimed to have seen “a burning vessel appeared aglow with fire and was moving fast.” 

In 1885, a group of rescuers attempted to help the burning ship were lost themselves, never to be heard from again – although this could be apocryphal as I couldn’t find any specific evidence of this event.

In January 2008, 17-year-old Mathieu Giguere claimed to have seen the ghost ship, describing it as a “bright white and gold ship” During some sightings, witnesses also claim to hear gunfire, or a ball of fire in the sky.

In 1905, a New Brunswick scientist William Francis Ganong suggested the nature of the light described in sightings could be a natural electrical phenomena on the surface of the sea which rises in columns, and resembled the flaming rigging of a ship. Another explanation is that the ship is a bank of fog reflecting moonlight, or the setting of the moon on the horizon. Not as romantic as a burning ghost ship, but at least it does not have its origins in an ancient disaster.

The stories of the sightings don’t vary much, even though the ship was viewed from both sides of the strait, the south coast of Prince Edward Island, the North coast of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, as well as Caribou Island and Pictou Island.

Some feel this ship might be The Isabella, a schooner which set sail with a cargo of lumber in December 1868 and was lost at sea off Labrador. She was last seen by a lighthouse keeper on Amet Island during a violent storm off Nova Scotia, but no trace of her was ever found.

Other theories are she is an immigrant ship of Highland Scots, lost at sea while searching for new land, or a pirate ship sunk near Merigomish by a British warship during the Napoleonic War. One explanation is she was a pirate ship that pillaged a ship from England, then the crew got into a drunken brawl with another pirate ship over the spoils during which both ships caught fire and all hands were lost.

"There's a burst of flame and a flash of light
And there on the tide is a frightening sight
As a tall ship all aflame lights up the sky
Tales of the phantom ship, from truck to keel in flames
She sails the wide Northumberland Strait
No one knows her name.”

From "Tales of the Phantom Ship" a song by Lennie Gallant

In June 2014, Canada Post issued a stamp depicting the Northumberland Strait ghost ship, issued on Friday 13th as part of a series of Canadian ghost story stamps. 

Envy The Wind - A story of Prince Edward Island will be released in Summer 2018

Personally, I don't believe in ghosts, or the paranormal, and maybe the 'light phenomenon' explanation is feasible. However, islands in general often have romantic tales connected with the sea which are passed down through the years which add to their character.
After all, stranger things happen at sea.

Ghosts, ghouls and other sightings by Victoria Chatham

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It’s October, folks. Time for ghouls and ghosts and all things that go bump in the night, culminating with Halloween on October 31^st.

As so many festival days do, this one goes back over 2,000 years to the time of the Celts who peopled Ireland, much of the United Kingdom and northern France. On the Celtic calendar, Samhain (pronounce it Sow-in or Saw-in) represented the end of summer’s light and warmth and the start of the cold and dark of winter. To encourage the spirits to help the living and their livestock through this dark half of the year, offerings of food and wine were left outside peoples’ homes, or an extra place was laid at the table. Whether or not the spirits braved the journey through the thin veil between living and dead is a matter of conjecture.

Calgary has several reputedly haunted houses. One of them is The Deane House, in Inglewood. Built in 1906 for Captain Richard Burton Deane, the Superintendent of the Royal North West Mounted Police, the house was moved to its present location in 1929 when it became a boarding house. From then up until 1973 several unfortunate incidents involving tenants occurred.

One man was fatally wounded after falling down the stairs. A young woman jumped from a second storey window. Another man was gunned down on the porch and a depressed, epileptic boy committed suicide in the attic. As if these incidents were not bad enough, a murder/suicide incident was carried out in front of two young children.

After 1973, the house became a gallery and studio for local artists who were the first to report unexplained occurrences there such as the smell of pipe tobacco or cold spots on the stairs. When the house became a restaurant several of the staff reported seeing shifting figures on the stairs, a cupboard door that would not stay locked, and most spooky of all, an apparent blood stain that could not be washed away.

Other hauntings in Inglewood have been reported at the Victorian era Cross House, now a restaurant and renamed Rouge, and the Hose and Hound pub which was once a firehall. Chief James ‘Cappy’ Smart was known to have an interest in exotic pets and it is reputed that the ghost of his monkey now haunts the pub.

In downtown Calgary another of the Fairmont chain properties, the Palliser Hotel, has reports of a ghostly debutante and a haunted elevator. There is also the Doll Block Building on 8^th Avenue and the old City Hall. Through the month of October, there are many ghost walks and tours available, some of them lantern-lit for full atmospheric effect.

Whether you believe in ghosts or not, October is the month when you can fully indulge all your flights of fancy.

Haunted Ontario by Nancy M Bell

His Brother's Bride: The youngest child of the local doctor and evangelical preacher, Annie Baldwin was expected to work hard and not protest. Life on a pioneer farm was tough so neighbors helped each other. George Richardson the underage Doctor Bernardo Boy, orphaned and shipped to Canada a few years earlier, is loaned to the Baldwins to help bring in the hay. Younger brother Peter Richardson was placed with another neighbor, so the brothers stayed in touch with each other. The Great War brought a lot of changes to life even in the back woods of Ontario. In spite of the differences in their social standing, George and Annie fell in love. When George departed for France they had an understanding and he promised to return to her when the war was over. Like so many others, Annie waited and hoped, carrying on as best she could. Only time would tell if her dreams would come true.
Click on the cover to be taken to buy links.

Since my book is set in Ontario in Haliburton and Machar County I thought I'd share a few hauntings with you. One is not in Haliburton but in Durham Region near where I grew up. My older sister lived at the end of the Island Road on Port Perry Island which lies in Lake Scugog connected to the mainland by a narrow strip of land, and that is where one of the haunting is situated. I have actually seen this phenomenon myself many years ago.

The Ghost Road legend begins around 1968 with a young man who crashed on a motorcycle and, in some versions, was decapitated on a rusty barbed-wire fence. Now, a big round white light speeds down the road before turning into a small red light, sometimes accompanied by the sound of a motorcycle.

This is borrowed from Paranormalseekeers.ca

One of the best known haunts of Ontario is Scugog Island’s Ghost Road, just outside the quaint village of Port Perry. This has been the sight of many interesting phenomena, as well as the birth of many legends. One version of the legend goes that, sometime in or around the year of 1957, a young man was testing the limits of his motorcycle on an old concession road up on Scugog Island. He was on a straightaway and pushing the engine as fast as he could. The road is short, so he soon realized he was running out of room and was quickly approaching the intersection where the 9th Concession meets. About 100 meters from the south end, near a large tree, he lost control and plowed into a field. He caught himself on an old rusty barbed-wire fence and was decapitated. Some say his head bounced off the rock! Some also say that he simply banged his head on the rock that is still located on the road, and met his end that way. It is this story that goes along with the reports of the large round white light heading down the road that, when it passes you, it then turns into a small red light. There are also occasional reports of the sounds of a motorcycle to accompany the light. This location was also home to a well-traveled Native footpath.

There have been many artifacts, including Native remains unearthed in the immediate region. With many psychics over the years visiting Ghost Road, many have reported that there is other strange paranormal activity that is present there. Some Durham College students went out and caught the phantom lights on film, so this does exist, and the light can be seen from either direction. For decades (possibly much longer) people have been reporting strange and inexplicable phenomena occurring on ‘ghost road’. The most common of these is the mysterious white ‘light’ (the headlight of a motorcycle according to legend) and a smaller red ‘light’ (the tail-light). Other anomalous phenomena include the sighting of ‘ghostly beings’, cars being pulled forward and backwards by the phantom children, electrical anomalies (like stopping under the big tree or the weeping willow and having your car go dead, only until it’s pushed away from under it, batteries draining and equipment (i.e: cameras) malfunctioning, UFO’s, strange sounds, no cell range or cell phones suddenly dying when batteries were full, and other various strange occurrences.

In 1827 the town of Lindsay was founded by Mr. William Purdy and his sons Jesse and Hazard. The town was first known as ”Purdy’s Mills”. Purdy built the first dam in the winter of 1827 to power his gristmill. The dam was 10 feet high, and located on the Scugog River, in Lindsay. The dam flooded the area near Port Perry, creating a lake and Scugog Island (location of Ghost Rd) was born. Now, our experiences on Ghost Road have been quite different. We observed the light coming from the North, not the South. We have also witnessed several other beings on the road. Please watch our TV Show premiering on Halloween on Rogers Cable to learn more of what The Paranormal Seekers found on Port Perry’s Ghost Road! ***Just a note*** the information stated above is collected from various other websites who have all repeated the same information…not knowing who has direct ownership to the original wording. We have just merely copied what they have documented***

And this from the Scogog Heritage site:

One of the best known haunts of Ontario, Scugog Island's Ghost Road, just outside the quaint village of Port Perry, has been the sight of many interesting phenomena and many legends.

The legend goes that in or around 1968, a young man was testing the limits of a motorcycle on an old concession road on Scugog Island. He was on a straightaway pushing the engine as fast as he could. The road is not too long and he soon realized he was running out of road and heading far too fast for the spot where the road meets with the 9th Concession. About 100 meters from the south end near a large tree, he lost control, plowed into a field, caught himself on an old rusty barbed-wire fence and was decapitated.

Of course, we've also heard that he simply banged his head on a rock still located on the road and met his end that way. It is this story that goes along with the report of the large round white light heading down the road that when it passes you, turns into a small red light. There are also occasional reports of the sounds of a motorcycle to accompany the light.

The light, as examined by several Toronto ghosts researchers, actually does exist but does not, as stated, travel down the road. It appears above the road and only if facing south. The image has been caught on film but the pictures belay the fact that the light ain't much to look at. It appears as if it was a small plane some miles in the distance but hovering.

Now on to Haliburton.

Buck Hill is near Killaloe, Eganville and Golden Lake, all places mentioned in His Brother's Bride.

Buck Hill has a legend about a logger’s family during the Depression. The daughter vanished one night while chasing the pet dog, who had run off. Theh logger searched for her and eventually went mad. His ghost still searches for her, and his lantern is seen as ghost lights in the area. The balls of light, seen at close range, are baseball-size white, amber or green lights that will occasionally flare up to much larger.

Bala Bay Inn, Torrence Ontario, is located 33 km from Sprucedale, Ontario where much of His Brother's Bride is set.
Bala Bay Inn is rumored to be haunted, and was the locale where E.B. Sutton died (in Room 319) and lay in state. Ghostly activity reported here includes poltergeist activity, including rumbling and rattling doorknobs, unusual sounds and TVs working that were not plugged in.

In Parry Sound, Ontario. (Home of Bobby Orr!)
Under the 100-year-old trestle bridge that floats over the mouth of the Seguin River has a chilling side to its story.

Suicides on the bridge; kids playing chicken with the train; high school kids who believe the water is deep enough to jump from the bridge — one survived, barely. Their ghosts apparently still hang around.

In a parking lot nearby, the ghost of a native woman is sometimes seen wandering, likely killed going to or from a nearby trading post documented in local history books as on Bob's Point.

Strange and creepy. But I've even had experiences myself. Before my grandmother died I had a dream where her oldest sister (who wasn't always a nice person- at least in my opinion) came to me trying to tell me something. The wind was howling and leaves and sticks blowing around and I couldn't hear what she was saying, but I knew it was her. My grandmother died within a month.

Often my maternal grandfather will appear at the corner of my vision and I often hear his voice when I'm doctoring sick or wounded animals.

We lived in a very old farm house just outside Uxbridge, Ontario. The old Byam place it was called. The house is now an art gallery, Buckingham Fine Arts. When we lived there, I once work up at 3 in the morning to see an old man and woman standing by the open door of a big linen closet in our loft bedroom. I wasn't scared, just kind of surprised. I remember asking her what they were looking for, although I don't think I actually spoke out loud. She smiled and said, "Don't worry dear, we're just looking for something we left here." I went back to sleep but in the morning the door was open and I know it was closed when we went to bed. I often saw the old man out in the barn when I was mucking stalls and especially in the hayloft. I loved that big old barn with the huge roof beams.

Here are a couple of photos of the house after it became the gallery.
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I think that's enough spook for now. LOL Stay safe, stay happy, stay healthy.
ON a brighter note, here are some photos of the country near where His Brother's Bride is located.

Nancy M Bell is a proud Canadian and lives near Balzac, Alberta with her husband and various critters. She is a member of The Writers Union of Canada and the Writers Guild of Alberta. She has publishing credits in poetry, fiction and non-fiction.