Sorry for the long delay in getting Chapter 7 out onto the Interwebs. Christmas has been busy and frankly, the whole damn thing has been scaring me again. Amazing how much I can remember about being terrified. Comparing notes with my father and brother at our annual Boxing Day dinner, it bonked me over the head (once again) that this shit really happened and is not just a scary movie I once watched. I didn't realize how much I had compartmentalized so much of what happened, how much I separated myself. So, I've been sleeping with the lights on again.
My dad has some amazing experiences of seances and Ouija sessions with my mum and their friends. They opened a lot of doors and let in lot of spooky shit. My dad admitted that before he met my mum and stayed overnight in her family's haunted farm house, he did not believe in the paranormal. Now he says there is absolutely no doubt that there is something out there and it is not to be trifled with.
So, here is my father's account of their experience at The Plum Tree, a gift shop owned by a friend in Waterloo, Ontario. This took place in 1967, a couple of years before I was born.
The Plum Tree
Lacking a flashlight Ross handed me a small
table lamp and plugged it into a long black extension. Thankfully he had
already removed the frilly pink shade. I put a tentative foot on the first step
of the ladder. It wobbled and skittered under my weight. It seemed this worn
old wooden ladder was less enthused about my checking out the attic than even I
was. Why was it always the attic that was deemed to hold the secrets of a
haunted house? And more to the point how did I get volunteered to be the one
checking it out.
Alan grabbed hold of the ladder to stabilize it
and I carefully moved upward. The access to the attic was a less than two foot
square typical in these nineteenth century houses. Holding the lamp in my right
hand I pushed the palm of my left hand against the access panel and after a
moments resistance it moved a small amount. It felt heavier than it should for
what was just piece of painted plywood. It felt like a weight was on it. Like a
brick or something. Or another hand pushing against it. Still, with a little
more effort, I managed to lift it clear of the recess and slide it out of the
way. Cautiously I raised the lamp and my head at the same time. I just caught
sight of some cobwebby rafters and then it all went dark. Shit!
The light had gone out. I quickly shuffled down
the ladder.
“What happened? Did the plug come out?” I asked.
“Its still plugged in,” Ross replied, “ I’ll get
another bulb.” He went off to rob another lamp.
Soon another bulb was handed to me. It flicked
on as soon as I screwed it in. “ I guess it was just the bulb. For a second I
thought something didn’t want us looking up here.”
The others chuckled without much conviction. I
shinnied up the ladder. Once again as soon as the lamp broke the plane of the
attic floor there was a dull pop and the light went out. Fuck.
I came down the ladder a little quicker this
time. What were the odds that two bulbs would just happen to burn out at
exactly the same place. I was having a bad feeling about all this now. The
little hairs were bristling on the back of my neck like a doberman’s. I tended
to pay attention to these little warnings.
We all stood looking at each other for a minute.
Nervous laughter.
Ross was the first to break the silence. “I
think there’s a spare pack of bulbs in the kitchen.” Off he went down the
stairs.
He returned a few minutes later with a two-pack
of yellow 60w bulbs.
“These are for the porch lights, “Ross says
almost apologetically, “hope they’ll do.”
“Can’t do any worse than the last two,” I offer.
“Anyone else want to try. Maybe it’s just me.”
Ross shakes his head. Nancy just looks at me
with Bette Davis eyes. Or maybe Minnie Mouse’s. Alan however reaches out for
the lamp. And this time I hold the ladder steady for him.
To my surprise the yellow glow stays on.
“Goddamn,” I say. “Whatta ya see?”
Alan cautiously moved another step up the
ladder. “There’s nothing here. Just a big empty attic and a few spider webs.
Actually a lot of spider webs.
Have a look.”
Alan moves far enough up into the attic that I
can get up the ladder and have a look. “Yep, nothing here.” I don’t know what I
was expecting. Or what any of us were expecting. Headstones. The sharp teeth of
giant clowns leering out of the darkness.
Before heading back down the ladder I look
around to see what was causing the resistance as I opened the hatch. There was
no brick there or anything else that caused the weight I felt. It was just a
simple square of plywood.
After I stepped off the ladder Nancy’s curiosity
got the better of her imagination and she went up the ladder for a look. Ross,
however declined and I guess he was entitled since he was the one that had
found it necessary to invite us here in the first place, not so much to
exorcise any little caspars but more to reassure him that he wasn’t going
wacko.
We were in Ross’s craft store which he had named
‘The Plum Tree’. It was in Waterloo, Ontario which also conveniently was where
I was attending University. Alan and Nancy had come down to visit me from our
home town of Stouffville. Ross happened to be a close friend of Nancy’s older
brother Mike, having attended OCA together. Ross had contacted Nancy to see if
she could help him with a ‘problem’ he was having. He knew through Mike that we
had been playing around with the paranormal and had a few seances under our
belt.
Now we weren’t the Ghostbusters (sorry, that
movie wouldn’t come out for another decade and a half) or anything, more like
‘Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys discover a Ouija Board’. In fact all this stuff
sort of started at Alan’s grandma’s farm house over a damn Ouija board. I don’t
use the word damn lightly. If you own a Ouija Board burn it now. (Hold on! I
just read the rules for safe Ouija disposal. Don’t burn it. That could cause
someone, likely yourself, to die. That is not good. A Ouija Board must be chopped
into seven pieces, sprinkled with Holy water and then buried. Seven pieces, not
eight, not six.)
Our dabbling in the occult was mere
entertainment at this point in time. We were still innocents and like most
nineteen year olds were burning with a desire to answer the unknown. It hadn’t
gotten scary. Yet.
The Plum Tree was in a very large old house on a
corner lot one block removed from Waterloo’s downtown on King Street. It had
been built in Victorian times and as well as being the home to some well-to-do
members of Waterloo’s early days it had also been a restaurant at some point
and a safehouse for Polish refugees after WWII.
Customers entered the store through the original
front door of the house with its large covered veranda. After passing through
the vestibule there was a small room to the right that had racks of one off
ladies dresses made by a seamstress friend of Ross’s. To the left was a narrow
stairway that led up to the second floor. In lieu of a door there was a curtain
of stringed black beads blocking the stairs with a small handwritten sign
‘employees only’. The beads reminded me of a rosary.
Continuing on into the main part of the store
was a large bright room absolutely full of craft items for sale. There was a
heady smell of insense from the various candles and pot pourri. Many of the
items were Ross’ s specialty Christmas wreathes and table centrepieces.
Christmas had been over for a couple of months but these items were always in
demand. There were other items made by other local craft people. Hemp handbags
and stuff like that. On the south side of the room there were large bay windows
letting in the late winter light. On the opposite wall beneath the stairs that
went to the second floor was the sales counter and cash register. At the back
of the room was another beaded doorway (this was the sixties) again with a
‘Employees Only’ sign.
Through this doorway was the home’s original
kitchen but was now cluttered with boxes and various packing materials. A side
door led outside to another veranda. The kitchen walls were a splash of
Victorian yellow. There was a door down to the basement. For reasons that I
don’t remember we never went down there. As everyone knows next to attics
basement are the next creepiest part of any old house. Why the bad rap for
these areas on the edge of your ‘living’ space. Maybe that’s it. If they are
not part of the ‘Living’ space they are by inference part of the ‘Dead’ space.
Accessing the second floor through the narrow
stairway at the front of the house there is a long hallway terminating in a
cavernous room that takes up the back half of the house. On the left is a small
kitchenette where the staff take their breaks. To the right is a small sewing
room with an industrial looking sewing machine and reams of rustic looking
fabric. In the hallway is the access to the attic. About half way down the hall
is another room, presumably once a bedroom that is full of boxes of crafting
materials. I seem to recall there was a door to an outside staircase before the
large room at the back but I am not sure. Trying to squint down memory’s
wormhole after fifty years is bound to produce a few anomalies.
The large room at the end of the hall is the
most interesting one in the house. It still is as it was when the place was a
restaurant. The ceiling is a dark purplish blue with pot lights and a
constellation of painted golden stars spilled across it. It has been made to
look like the night sky. Aside from a large work table the rest of the room is
obscured by a forest of Ross’s handmade Christmas trees and other decorative
items. At the far end of the table I can make out a mantlepiece and what is
presumably a now unused fireplace. This must have been the master bedroom of
the original design.
After we had concluded that there was nothing of
interest in the attic we sat around the small table in the break room. It was
late afternoon on a Saturday and the store was now closed. It would be dark
before long. Ross had ordered in a pizza and broke out a bottle of wine which
lacking any proper glassware we sipped from a variety of coffee mugs.
Ross related the events that had led to his
asking for some assistance. Apparently there had always been some strange
activity happening at The Plum Tree since he had opened it. Most had happened
to some of the women that worked there but nothing was so overt that it drew
much attention. Stuff disappeared only to reappear in another part of the
house. Strange sounds that could have been explained in reasonable fashion.
(The house is just settling in the cold. Etc.)
Then a few weeks ago Ross’s seamstress friend
had been terrified enough to quit working at the Plum Tree and would now
only work out of her own house. She had often felt that on occasion someone was
in the sewing room with her but when she looked around there was no one
there. But on this day she had felt someone breathe down her neck. She yelled
out “Ross. Stop it!” as she turned around. But Ross wasn’t there. No one was.
She ran out of the room and then out of the house. The dress she was working on
was still on the sewing table.
Then a week later after the store had closed and
the staff gone home Ross was busy taking the till off and making up his daily
cash deposit. He heard footsteps moving about upstairs in the otherwise quiet
store. At first he thought that one of the staff had come back in or that even
a nosey customer had bypassed the Employees Only sign. Then the footsteps came
down the stairs directly over Ross’s head who was standing motionless behind
the cash register. The footsteps were heavy like a man’s booted foot. Ross
heard the beaded curtain rattle then the footsteps walked right past him. There
was however no body attached to them. Then the beads parted going in to the
kitchen and the footsteps faded away. Ross did not bother to grab his coat. He
didn’t bother to take the deposit with him. And he didn’t bother to lock the
door or turn off the lights. He ran out the door. Got into his car and drove
away. He didn’t bother stopping nearby at his mother’s house where he
lived. He knew she wouldn’t understand. So he drove all the way to Toronto
where he had friends that would pour him a stiff cocktail while he poured out
his story. It was only after getting to Toronto that he called the Waterloo
police and asked them to secure the store, explaining that he had been called
away on an emergency.
Ross, telling his story had my neck hairs on the
rise again. This bottle of wine was not going to be near enough.
After the pizza was finished Nancy suggested
that we should have a séance to see if we could determine who might be Ross’s
invisible guest. We decided that the big starry night room might be the ideal
location and soon we had ourselves seated around the big table there. Normally
the séance would be accompanied with candles but in this case we left the pot
lights on although they were dimmed a bit. None of us wanted to sit in the near
dark.
Nancy sat at the end of the table with me to her
right and Ross and Alan to her left. Alan and I reached across the table so
that we could form a circle with our hands. This is part of the ceremony of the
séance the idea of which is to focus all our energy for the medium to draw
from. In reality if the medium is strong enough and by that I mean a sufficient
portal to the ‘other’ side then we could be sitting there swilling beer with
our feet on the table without it making a difference. And in time Nancy was
that strong. Gift or curse. To me it would become a curse. But these were early
times and we were still playing it like it was a game.
At first there was the usual mumble jumble. How
we were hoping to make contact with any spirits that were hanging about. That
we were not a threat but there to help whatever restless entity that was trying
to draw attention to itself. I’m paraphrasing here. I don’t remember Nancy’s
exact words.
[As I said these were early days and Nancy had
not yet learned or was able to go into a complete trance in which she was not
aware of her immediate surroundings. That was when things got truly scary
because she was then able to communicate to us through the voice of whatever
spirit answered the door. Sometimes these catatonic states would come on
unbidden. It was almost like a door that once opened could not fully be closed.
And believe me that things that come knocking are usually the same ugly things
that go bump in the night. These deep trances were exhausting and always
followed by a period of almost drugged like sleep. But at this point Nancy did
not sink into that depth of trance. It was more akin to meditation]
At first nothing happened. There was no sign of
any presence. This is pretty normal. It usually takes a while to get an answer.
Sometimes you are so keen to hear something that could be perceived as a sign a
mouse fart would sound like a fat man with a trombone.
This time however there was no doubt in
anybody’s mind. About the third time Nancy asked for a sign of a spirit’s
presence one of the larger Christmas trees that was right behind me shook like
crazy. This gold sprayed tree was probably five feet tall so it did not shake
by an errant breeze. It was all Ross, Alan and I could do to not bolt from the
room. Nancy however sat unperturbed and continued on asking questions of the
now confirmed presence.
These questions went unanswered for whatever
reason. The tree did not shake again. At one point I thought I heard a soft
rapping on the mantlepiece but it could more readily be the thudding of my own
heart. There could be several reasons that there was no further tree shaking.
Maybe it had consumed all the energy it posessed to shake the tree the one
time. Maybe just having been heard and acknowledged was all that it needed.
There is no need to explain any of this. No one has. I mean, when you think
about it, how does a spirit with no visible mass make audible footsteps, creak
floorboards and move beaded curtains aside?
When there was no further sign from our guest
spooker Nancy decided to try some automatic writing. Ross found a pen and sheet
of paper for her. Now the theory of automatic writing or ‘psychography’ is much
the same as moving the planchette on a ouija board. You hold the writing
device, in this case a pen, in such a manner as to not influence or control it.
Your fingers are not supposed to do anything more than keep the pen upright and
in contact with the paper. The scribble that usually results can be open to
interpretation so I am sceptical of its value as a means of communication. Some
call it ‘Spirit Writing’ and use it as a form of reaching a higher self. So
even if you happened to find something legible on the page there is no knowing
whether the source is internal or external (or possibly even both). I tried it
once. It wasn’t any different than freeform doodling or pissing in the snow.
The rest of us relaxed as Nancy doodled away.
After a good fifteen or twenty minutes had gone by, she stopped and then
passed the paper to us to see if we could make out anything. There were two or
three slanted lines of writing. It was hard to figure where words might have
started or stopped. One part that was sort of legible looked like …name is… and then something that could possibly be
Polish. But then again what scribble doesn’t look like a Polish name. I also
wouldn’t have put it past our medium to have us on a bit whether it was
subconscious or not. Just the same we managed to come up with a theory that
Ross’s ghost was the spirit of a young Polish refugee that came to an untimely
end of some sort and had attached himself to this old house.
It was decided that we would once again try a
séance to see if we could learn anything more. I could say we were a little
more into it now. The events so far had given us an edginess that was a benefit
to focussing our concentration. Nothing happened for the longest time as Nancy
asked if the spirit was still with us. No response. She asked if the spirit
would confirm that he was the spirit of a Polish refugee that had lived here in
the 1940’s. No response. More of the same questions were asked in different
ways. But again with no response. I think the last thing that Nancy might have
asked was whether the spirit was still here. All of a sudden, there was a huge
crash as if a car had driven into the side of the house. A car crash but
without the sound of tearing metal that should accompany it. Nancy’s eyes flew
open not sure if she was the only one who heard it.
We ran out of the room and out onto a upstairs
landing on the outside of the house. (This is the same landing that I cannot
confirm from memory of it yet I am sure that we ran outside but not through the
downstairs) There was no crash outside. The streets were devoid of any traffic
crashed or not.
We looked around the rest of the store. There
was no evidence of anything inside that would have caused such a noise. I mean
it virtually shook the house. For reasons I cannot remember we neglected once
again to check the basement although I am unsure why it was overlooked. Maybe
we just didn’t want to.
We all felt that the séance had concluded. Ross
had other plans for the evening and the three of us headed back to my
university residence to seek some alcoholic refreshment. For Ross our bit of
ghost hunting was a success. While far from being explained he realized that it
was not all in his head and that he was as sane as the rest of us. However sane
that might be. He felt that the presence in his store that while being a bit of
an extrovert was not a bad spirit and he could live with that.
As I was sitting in front of my computer, staring at a blank page and thinking about Lilac Lane, I got a phone call from my cousin, Ted. "I'm going to Haliburton," he said. "Give me directions to the trailer." I was a bit flabbergasted, as he had no idea I was writing about Lilac Lane and we haven't been near the old place in over 30 years. He had experienced childhood trauma there, which I will write about in a later post.
