“One evening I was working with Rhonda. It was about eight o’clock and we were the only two people in the inn. We were in the bar area when we heard footsteps upstairs. Then we heard someone walking up and down the stairs by the back dining room, the stairs that lead to the second floor. The floors creak, so we know when someone is walking around. I also heard a door slam. It sounded like the door to either room 3 or 4. Rhonda said to me, ‘Do you want to go upstairs to see who it is?’ I said ‘No!’”
“I think this spirit activity is so intriguing. Somehow it renders the previous inhabitants mysterious,” Gabriella added.
One night Gabriella was working with Norman Rondeau. At the end of each day Norman would retire to the office on the second floor to complete the day’s bookkeeping. At this time of the evening the business would be closed. On that particular night Norman and Gabriella were the only two people in the building.
Gabriella explained what happened, “I was downstairs in the basement taking some food out of the freezer for the next day. Suddenly I heard someone walking around in the bar area. I came upstairs, thinking it was Norman and then I realized he was still in the office. I asked Norman, if he had been downstairs, but the answer was no. I returned to the basement and again I heard the footsteps.”
Gabriella took me to the basement, to show me how you can hear the footsteps of customers walking on the first floor. The sound of footsteps was quite pronounced.
As for Norman, although he had never seen a spirit appear, he had often heard mumbled voices. On another occasion, Norman, his mother Carol, and her sister Lillian were in the sitting room on the second floor when the lights went on and then off all by themselves.
Objects frequently went missing in the inn. Pictures hanging on the walls completely disappear. A special knife, used in the kitchen, disappeared and was never found. Gabriella’s piping bag used for cake decorating also vanished never to be found. Who else had uses for these things and who changed the surroundings? Was there another setting, just beyond their view?
One evening at closing time, Rhonda went upstairs to check the rooms on the second floor. Walking along in the dark corridor she fell over a table in the middle of the hall. Someone had moved this piece of furniture away from the wall.
Norman’s mother, Carol, and her husband often helped out around the inn. One day she was cleaning room 5. This room was well lit by natural sunlight during the day. Carol left the room and returned momentarily to discover that the lamp had been turned on. On another occasion she had been working and sat down in room 5 for a short rest. “I closed my eyes and the lights just came on by themselves,” she explained.
It would seem that the inn is indeed a mysterious place of unexplained activity. Some people speculate that it is Pauline Delamere’s grandmother, Ida, who died in the building. Other people have chosen to ignore the activity. If Pauline is right that there was no spiritual activity in the building before the 1970s, what could have caused it to start later?
When I returned in 2007, ten years after the writing of Haunted Ontario, I discovered that there had been many more experiences.
In August 2002 Pam Sulesky and her friend Sue MacLeod Browning arrived at the Severn River Inn. In the evening they had dinner on the back porch overlooking the picturesque Severn River. During their meal Pam’s friend Sue saw something.
Pam explained, “My friend Sue is a gifted native healer from the First Nations Reserve of Curve Lake. That night she saw a woman in a blue dress with red hair worn up in a bun. She was walking along a balcony situated in front of the second-storey windows overlooking the river. This balcony doesn’t exist today. I couldn’t see this, but I didn’t doubt what Sue had seen. She often sees things that most of us cannot.
“We strolled around the building after dinner to gaze at this beautiful building that must have had a wonderful past. When we looked at the structure from across the road Sue commented ‘Look at the roof area. What do you see?’ I noticed a purple aura around the building. It was really strange.”
The women then moved to the side of the house and encountered something. Pam observed, “I heard children laughing and squealing behind me. I turned quickly. It was a little startling, but there was no one there. At the same time I was looking for children that didn’t exist, Sue noticed a man with a handle-bar mustache and wearing armbands on his sleeves. Again I couldn’t see anything.
“Then we entered the inn and sat in the bar section. When the waitress came Sue asked her if the place was haunted. She went crazy. She called into the kitchen area to the cook and said ‘these ladies have seen the ghosts.’ The cook handed us a copy of Haunted Ontario. We were stunned. The Severn River Inn was in the book. The woman that Sue had seen in the back of the building was the ghost named Ida.
“That night as we walked around the second floor where we were staying the energy was undeniable, especially to anyone who has worked with energy before.
“Every time we would mention the name Ida, the lights would flicker in the sitting area of the second floor. Eventually I sat on the couch to enjoy a cup of tea, but we called it a night when something knocked the tea cup from my hand. It literally flew from my hand to the chair beside me. The feeling was similar to that of a magnetic pull.”
This was only the beginning of the activity that night. Pam continued, “Once we moved into the room to call it a night, things began to happen. While we tried to sleep, we could hear the wind outside our window. The wind was blowing so hard it sounded as if there were a tornado outside. When Sue opened the drapes, it was still and calm outside. Under the bed, it sounded like someone was shuffling cards. It was so bizarre. Again, trying to get to sleep, I noticed someone had turned on the light in the hallway, as the door didn’t meet the floor tightly. I could see the light coming under, into our room. I thought to myself, ‘well, maybe they leave that light on for other guests’. Around 11:30 p.m., I was awakened by the sound of cutlery being sorted. I heard drawers opening and closing and the distinct sound of forks and knives being put away. Sue was already awake; she was worried because she could smell smoke. I couldn’t smell it and I tried to put her mind at ease, but she was insistent. She thought there was a fire and ran out into the hallway to check and see if there were smoke detectors. All was quiet and normal outside our room, so she came back perplexed. Finally, sleep must have come because we awoke in the morning, although not too well rested.
“We went downstairs to enjoy our continental breakfast and spoke to the woman serving us about our strange and busy night. I’ll never forget the feeling that washed over me when she told us we had been alone in the building since 9:30 p.m. the previous night. How could that be? Who turned on the light? Who was sorting cutlery? When Sue told her how she thought the building was on fire, the woman explained to us that the original house had burned down a hundred years ago. They had pushed the remains of the burned building into the river, and rebuilt the house we were in today. She told us that divers had been in the water that weekend and had brought some things out. I wondered if that might explain the dream I had had about a woman who gave me a china bunny rabbit with a beautiful burgundy and gold pattern on it. As well, I wondered if this diving group had stirred up the spirits who were watching so closely over their beloved home.
“After our breakfast, Sue went back to our room first to shower, change, and pack up. When she was finished I went up to have a shower. It seemed that the water had a mind of its own. While I was in the shower, mentally reviewing all the activities of the night before, the water completely shut off. I got out of the shower and tried the sink tap … nothing, no water. The whole time I could feel a presence around me. It wasn’t scary, but it was definitely there. I wrapped myself up, and went into the hall and hollered down to Sue and the waitress about my dilemma. Sue went out into the yard, where the owner of the inn was watering the grass! Clearly, nothing was wrong with the water flow. He went down to the basement, checked all the pipes and could not figure out why, just in our room, the water would not run. I went back into the room … stood in the bathroom and said out loud, ‘Ida, we have to leave … clean or dirty we have to leave. I promise to come back and visit again. Please let me get washed.’ No word of a lie, I moved over to the shower, turned