Well, I discovered that a man named Elgin had owned the property for a long time, shortly after it was built, until the previous owner, who had sold to us, bought it from him. He had spent most of his long life in that house. And I found a photograph of him in the library. I showed it to my daughter and said, “Who is this?”
She smiled when she saw it, and said “That’s Elgin!”
There’s No Place Like Home
Our house has had some sad history, and that might account for the things we have experienced while living here, if, as they say, untimely deaths cause spirits to remain earthbound.
When it was built in the mid-1800s it was a modest one-storey house. But as the original owner prospered he kept adding on to the house until it was built into the large home it is today.
He started out as a small local merchant but soon owned many businesses in town. He had immigrated to Canada from England with his parents as a small boy, and in the 1881 census his elderly widowed mother is listed as living with him and his wife and their five surviving children in this house.
I found some information about this family in the library archives, and many more records were found on Internet genealogy sites.
I learned that he and his bride moved into their new house at the time of their marriage, when it was still just the small original structure. Two years later she died of influenza. And their infant daughter also died of that just a few days later.
He remarried five years after that, and had six children with his second wife. Their eldest son was killed when he fell down the steep cellar stairs and broke his neck when he was only ten.
When his second wife died in 1895, he sold the house. We bought it a few years ago, after many other owners, and have done an extensive restoration on it.
So … that brings me up to the haunting part. As I said, we have extensively restored the house and while doing so we had many people working on it with us for months. So during all that chaos I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. It wasn’t until we were actually living in the house that it began, or at least became noticeable.
At first it was nothing definite, just feelings like being watched. Sometimes it feels like you hit a pocket of icy cold air as you walk in a certain area of the house. But as it is a very old house, drafts are to be expected in colder months. In the summertime, with no central air in the house, those icy pockets of air are a bit more difficult to explain. That never scares anyone; it’s just a weird thing that often happens.
And then there are the strange sounds; but again, in a very old house that is not completely unexpected either. When doors open or close and floorboards creak we just try to ignore it as being due to the house’s age.
But there is also a distinctive little boy’s voice and laughter. We’ve all heard it, and usually when we’re all together in the same room, so we know it isn’t anyone else in the family.
We’ve also heard the sound of running. It always starts in the upstairs sunroom area and travels along the hallway and down the back stairway into the kitchen. It’s the laughing that is most often heard, though, and we’ve also clearly heard a little boy call out, “Papa” and “in here.”
Another odd thing, to do with voices too, is that a few times my daughter has come looking for me to see why I called her, when I never did. But she heard someone calling her and thought it was me.
My husband is the only person, so far, who has actually seen a ghost in our house. And this has happened to him twice. One evening, when he was the only one at home, he walked up the stairs toward our bedroom after getting home late from work. Through the railing, he thought he saw me, in my nightgown, walking through the doorway into our room. As he continued up the rest of the stairway he asked why I hadn’t gone to the movie with my daughter as planned. When there was no answer, and he was alone when he walked into the bedroom, he realized whomever he had seen was gone. But he was positive he saw a woman going into that room, and thought it must be me.
When I got home later he was still a bit dumbfounded at what he had seen.
The second time he saw something it scared him a bit more. Again, it was when he was there alone. He had just arrived home from work and came in through the back way. Our dog went to greet him, and as he was taking off his coat and walking toward the front entrance to hang it up, he saw someone, or something, very large come right through the closed front door. He said a red mass (like a mist) came through the solid oak door and then started to form into a very tall man. The dog yelped and hid behind my husband (some watchdog). He stared at it for a few seconds as it took a human shape, and then it dissolved into thin air.
In spite of the haunting, we love living here. This house felt special right from the start, and the longer we live here the deeper I feel the connection with it. I can understand why past residents might want to remain.
Haunted Ground
My experience isn’t really about a haunted house so much as about the land the house was built on.
My husband and I were very excited about the new house we were going to build when we sold our old house. The only problem was that we had a really hard time finding a building lot to purchase. We had two small children and hoped to build in a quiet area of the city, but not many lots were available at that time. Finally we had it narrowed down to three possible lots, but two were in areas that we really didn’t like and the third was about twice the price we wanted to pay. But we had to make a decision fairly quickly, because the house’s construction had to start so it would be ready to move into by the time our old house had to be vacated.
We decided to go with the expensive lot, even though it cost a lot more than our initial budget had allowed. It was a beautiful piece of property with gorgeous, mature trees, on a really quiet street. And something that we also really liked was that it was right beside an incredible 1800s-era mansion that sat on a huge estate-sized lot that took up the rest of the block.
So as we drove by the property, it seemed like, other than the price, it would be an ideal place to build our house and raise our family. But once the car was parked and we started to walk around the property I suddenly became violently ill. I had been feeling well, with no sign of sickness, right up until that moment. It just hit me full force right out of the blue. I was so sick that we headed back to the car as soon as I could make it that far and planned to go right back to our house. As soon as I got back into the car I was fine again, but we left anyway in case the illness returned. It didn’t. I felt completely normal still when we got home, and remained well until we went back to the building site the following week. Although not quite as intense as the first time, I was sick again as soon as I started to walk onto the property. We had not considered that the property could somehow be the cause of the illness at that point, but once again the minute I walked off the property and sat in the car, parked on the road, I immediately felt fine. I had so much to do during that time period that being sick was the last thing I needed, so I was very relieved when the feeling passed so quickly and I was able to resume my busy schedule when I got back home.
A few days later my husband suggested we drive by the building site again to see how the work on the new house was coming along. By then, though, I was starting to sense that for some bizarre reason that property made me feel deathly ill whenever I walked on it. This was a terrible feeling, because our new house was being built on that lot and I knew I couldn’t avoid it forever. So, somewhat nervously, we drove over to the new property. I sat in the car for a few minutes before I felt ready to walk over to where the house was being built. Nothing happened at first, and I was relieved and felt foolish at the same time. I thought it had been pretty