Attempt to Capture Ghost Voices

Background:

Even though I grew up in this house and visit often, I have never before attempted to record any disembodied voices. Only on rare occasions have voices from "the beyond" been heard in the house. It is not as common as noises, smells, apparitions, etc.

 With a regular tape recorder and a brand spanking new audio cassette tape, we decided that since we were going to visit my mother on this particular day anyway, we might as well try to capture some evidence on tape.

And somehow I got it into my head that while this was going on in an upstairs bedroom, why not whip out the Ouija board downstairs and really try to contact someone on "the other side"?
Important to Note:

I realize there are 2 sides to the Ouija board argument so to speak...my mother has always had one and we have messed around with it over the years. There have been some intriguing and scary results, but never anything "evil". Please respect the fact I have on occasion used it, and I will respect your side of it if you are anti-Ouija board for whatever reason. Not long ago, I lost all faith in the Ouija board due to a blindfolded experiment; however, after today I may have to re-examine all of that. You may think the Ouija board is just a game, downright evil, the scariest thing on the planet, or the dumbest thing on the planet. The point of this piece you are reading is not to determine what it is. I just want to relay to you what I experienced today. Conclude what you will.

What Happened:

We began our recording in the living room. The house was quiet. My mother had reported that nothing out of the ordinary had been happening lately, except for a few bumps in the night sometimes but she cannot say with certainty that it wasn't one of the cats.

While recording in the quiet living room, I asked (out loud to no one in particular) if there were spirits among us, could you please let us know you were there, what is your name, please say something...that sort of thing. After a little while, we stopped recording (not knowing if we captured anything--we would discover the results later during playback). We then proceeded to the upstairs spare bedroom that is known to have paranormal activity in it. Incidentally, we sat the tape recorded on a very antique rocking chair--the very same chair that my mother used to hear rocking by itself, nearly 70 years ago when she slept upstairs and the chair was downstairs in the kitchen. (Sidenote: my parents thought it would be a grand idea to put this rocking chair in my bedroom when I was a kid. How I ever slept through a night waiting for the thing to start rocking by itself, or worse, waiting to see a ghost rocking in it, I'll never know, but I digress...)

So as I was saying, we started recording and asking the same sort of questions we did downstairs. After a while, we stopped recording, and took the tape player downstairs to listen to the playback. To my surprise, there were no EVP voices, just mine on tape. This brings us to what we in the investigation world like to refer to as Plan B.

Plan B was to leave the tape recorder recording in the haunted spare bedroom by itself (Creepy, isn't it?!!) We recorded for about 45 minutes while we were downstairs and it was about this time that I had the grand idea to try to contact someone on the Ouija board. When you use a Ouija board, it can be very fickle. Sometimes you can't even get the planchette to move, other times you can hardly keep up with it. I suppose I expected to get the attention of a spirit who I might be able to coax into speaking into my tape recorder. Hey, it was worth a shot.

The first "person" (and I use the term lightly) I believe we might have contacted was an elderly man who used to live there in the house when my mother was a child. He revealed his name, his nickname, and games he played with my mother when she was young. He told us a little bit about his past, which confirmed to us who he was. We then asked him if he had any messages for us. He spelled out the following: WE MUST NOT PULL STUNT WTMOWRM.
What we assume this means is "We must not pull stunts with mom." The reasoning is my son Scott has this lovely habit of sneaking around our non-haunted house and jumping out at my unexpectedly, thereby scaring the living crap right out of me. It is lovely... NOT!
I am assuming the contact on the Ouija board was handing out advice to an otherwise fine young man, suggesting he stop doing that to me. This is my interpretation, as Scott really doesn't pull any other "stunts".

Suddenly, in the middle of this, the contact spelled out "Murray wept." This is interesting as my deceased father's name is Murray. The planchette began to move faster around the board from what it had been, indicating perhaps we were with a different contact. I asked the name of whom we were talking to, and it spelled my deceased brother's name. The "Murray wept" would be a confirmation that he did indeed weep when his son died.

I needed more proof. I asked where I had been this very morning in relation to all of this. The planchette spelled "wreath". We had been to my brother's grave this morning to remove the Christmas wreath we had put there. Okay! Now we were getting somewhere!

I asked if he could speak into our upstairs tape recorder. He said no. I asked for a sign he was with us in the room. A few moments later we heard a thump on the side of the house, of which no other source was found. I am not definitely saying it was my brother communicating from the other side, but I AM definitely saying no other obvious source for the noise could be found.

We asked my brother if he had any messages for my mother (who was there with us). The answer was "Am ok." I asked what it was like on the other side. The answer: "other world". I asked him what kinds of things he did there. The answer: cubs, boy, work. When he died he was a cub scout, which he loved.

At this point, I left the table but remained in the room to cook dinner. (we were at the kitchen table) My son and my mother continued to use the Ouija board, maintaining contact. After just a few moments I walked into the nearby pantry to get a measuring cup. In those few steps, I suddenly smelled a very obvious scent of roses, like I was suddenly in a blooming flower garden.

 Concentrating on my recipe, the smell didn't even register with me at first. I walked back to the stove to cook. My son got off his chair, stepped toward my mother, then toward me. He asked, "Don't you smell that perfume?" At which point I realized I had indeed smelled it. We discussed the scent, which had dissipated at that point, but we both agreed it was a rose garden smell. No one present was wearing perfume. This was further confirmation to us, because we had asked for a sign. The other two in the room did not smell anything (other than the spaghetti).

On the drive home, we popped the tape into the stereo and listened to the recording we had made. After about 5-10 minutes of silence, you can very clearly hear a knock on the tap recorder. We had placed the recorder on the bed in the spare room before leaving the room. The noise is very obviously a tap or knock against the tape recorder itself, like someone rapped on it with their hand or an object. It is the only odd noise we captured on tape. Remember, no one else was in that room and the door was shut tight. If someone had decided to go in during taping, you would have heard the door opening. It is impossible to open the door and enter the bedroom silently.

Someone or something hit the tape recorder. Unfortunately no voices came through, though.

Result and Conclusion:

The Ouija board is not proof of anything paranormal but while I can't prove it is concrete evidence, no one can disprove it, either. Also, something hit the tape recorder. It could not have been a live person. This concludes me to believe it was possibly a spirit. I did not necessarily need this to happen to prove the house is haunted...remember: I grew up there. Many people in my family and even visitors have had paranormal experiences in the house. We could fill a book. Hey, what a good idea! A book!! 

Want to read more about Ouija boards?
Ouija Board Info

Need the link to our paranormal newsletters?

No sign-up required.

Nova Scotia Paranormal Events Newsletters 

The Phantom Car Rides Again

The Phantom Car Rides…Again! 

Last month I was there visiting and was going to stay for a few days. A hurricane was bearing down on Nova Scotia so I decided to stick around. If the power goes out, and weather is wild, it seems like a perfectly good time to get the Ouija board out, if you ask me, but that is a different story for a different day. (insert evil laugh here).

It was late afternoon and I was expecting my son and his girlfriend to arrive home from work at any time. Their dog was there with me and my mother was having a nap. All was peaceful and quiet and I thought I’d brew up a pot of coffee. It was a warm day and the window screen in the door was up.

Just as I was sticking the pot under the coffee maker, I clearly heard a car drive in the driveway. The dog whined a little as she heard it, too and I assumed my son and his girlfriend had arrived. I thought it was odd I hadn’t heard his car before he actually pulled into the driveway, as he has a type of muffler that makes the car sound slightly louder than normal and you can hear him before you see him.

I looked out and there was no one in the driveway.

I marched right out into the middle of the driveway, looking up towards the neighbor’s place, as he also uses the driveway but there was no vehicle or sign of anyone having just driven past.

All was quiet again. My son and his girlfriend arrived home about a half hour later.

You can imagine my excitement at possibly having encountered the phantom car once again.

I kick myself now for not grabbing my phone and snapping a few pictures of the driveway at the time of the sound. You never know when the unexplained is going to show up in your photos.

Here are links to our other phantom car experiences: 

Phantom Car 1

Phantom Car 2

Phantom Car 3

Nova Scotia Paranormal Events Newsletters

My Mother's Experiences

My mother has included the following in a written account of our personal family history. While much of what she has experienced while living in her house has been reported in other posts on this blog, the following may be of interest. These are her words and she often tells these tales when we discuss unexplained occurrences:

My first experience was when I was probably no more than two or three. It is one of my earliest memories. I remember being in the kitchen and suddenly a big, round ball of light rolled out the dining room door into the kitchen. No one else saw it but me, but I still remember this.

Then, when I was five or six my mother moved me upstairs to the large bedroom. There was a washstand in the room with an old-fashioned basin and pitcher set on it. One night the sound of those dishes rattling woke me up. I “knew” that it was a mouse and I also “knew” it was going to run across my face, which it did! I can still recall how it felt when whatever it was passed over my face. I began screaming and my mother ran upstairs to see what was wrong. I was practically hysterical and told her a mouse ran over my face, but of course there was no mouse. She had to spend the rest of the night in my bed because I was so frightened.

One of my most frightening experience happened when I was a teenager. My mother and father slept downstairs (in the room I now sleep in) and one evening my father had gone to bed and mom and I were still up listening to the radio. Suddenly, music started to play, sounding like it was coming from upstairs. I remember being very frightened and screaming, “What’s that?!!” and my father got up and came out (in his long-johns which he slept in) saying, “I hear music!”

My mother didn’t hear a thing. It sounded as if the radio, which was upstairs in my room, had come on, although there was no way that it could have. Mom and I started to go up the stairs to check on it and when we were half way up it stopped just as suddenly as it had started. That was the first time my hair stood on end! Whenever anyone would mention it for years afterward, I would get chills up and down my spine. I do not know if they were forerunners, but there were two deaths in the family within the year—my grandmother, Sarah, in April and Lilie, who lived here, in July.

There is a rocking chair in this house which, when I was a little girl, used to be in the kitchen. It is very old and my mother told me that her grandfather brought it with him when he moved from Lower Northfield in the mid 1860’s. I woke up one night when I was a small girl and heard this chair rocking slowly, as it creaked when you rocked it. The next morning I innocently asked my mother if she didn’t sleep well the night before. She said she had slept fine and wanted to know why I was asking. I replied,” Because I heard you up rocking in the night.” At this, she became very upset and said that was her grandmother’s chair and she used to rock very slowly in it, the same way I had heard it. Growing up, I heard it rocking “by itself” many, many times.

Many years later when my son was in his teens, he slept in that room and awoke one night to see a girl with long brown hair leaning over his bed. A few years earlier my other son was alone in that same room one Sunday afternoon, lying on his bed reading a comic book, when the door on one side of the room opened and closed and a few seconds later the door on the other side of the room opened and closed. Someone passed through, although he saw no one.

The spare bedroom directly above the living room seems to be the scene for most of the unexplained activity. In summers past, when relatives were visiting from Ontario, they would sleep in that room. One of them told me she awoke one night to find my mother standing at the foot of the bed. I have also heard footsteps and sounds of floor boards creaking from that room when no one was occupying it. Rebecca’s bedroom shared a wall with that spare bedroom and there were many nights as a child and teenager when she would hear noises, knocks and mysterious banging coming from that room. My grandson also saw my mother sitting on the bed in that room, petting the family cat.

There have been numerous times when there is an overpowering smell of perfume, which I associate with my mother. Every year when I do my spring cleaning and wash all of the good dishes in the china cabinet, most of which were Mom’s, I am sure to smell perfume. She loved her dishes and up until the last few years she lived, she washed them herself. She would get me to carry them to the sink and back in to the cabinet after they were washed and dried. Every year I do this and can smell her perfume and I know she’s there. Also, sometimes there is an unpleasant smell that Rebecca refers to as “old people smell”. My mother was born in this house and lived here her entire life (91 years) so it must be hard for her leave, which is why we know she is still around.

About a year after my husband died (1982), our church held a Memorial service to honor members of the community who were no longer living. Members of the congregation were asked to come forward and light a candle in memory of a family member, so I lit one for Murray and Ricky, and Rebecca lit one for her grandparents. That night while we were in bed I awoke to find the kitchen light on. I laid there for a few minutes thinking that one of the kids had gotten up to go to the bathroom, but I didn’t hear anything so eventually I got up and turned the light off. They both told me the next morning that neither of them had been up in the night. The following night the light came on again and after a few minutes it turned off. I told my brother about this a few days later and he said the switch was probably worn out so he took it apart to check it but found nothing wrong with it. My theory is that since we lit candles in church in memory of our loved ones, they did something similar for us!

Perhaps the single most terrifying experience I personally have ever had occurred on Sept. 26, 1982. I know the exact date because I told relatives about it as I was leaving their house the next day after their daughter’s first birthday party.

I was in bed and had been asleep for a while when something woke me up. There was a tall woman standing right beside my bed staring down at me. It was dark in the room but I could see her perfectly. She had very pale skin and dark hair which was piled up high on top of her head, and very dark piercing eyes which were staring at me. She was dressed in a long loose dress or robe, and it was pale green and pink in a damask pattern. I remember I screamed when I saw her and she immediately disappeared. The strangest thing about it was she seemed to have Chinese features and it was certainly no one I had ever seen before. I slept with my light on the rest of that night and for weeks afterward, but I never saw her again.

One night quite a few years ago, my nephew’s daughter and a few friends were here at the house and they wanted to play with the Ouija board. They lit candles and went to the living room with it. During their ‘session’ a plant stand in the corner fell over. I had been in bed but awoke to them screaming. The next morning, the phone rang. I answered it and said “hello” and an old woman’s voice said “hello”. I said “hello” again and so did she and then the line was full of static and I couldn’t hear anything so I hung up. I pressed “star 69” to identify the last caller but I got a message saying the call could not be traced. I am convinced it was a caller from the Great Beyond, possible stirred up the night before by the Ouija board session.

One afternoon I was expecting my son and his girlfriend to come visit as they usually did on Sundays and I heard a car drive in. I looked out and saw their car backing into the field on the other side of the driveway. I went on with whatever it was I had been doing, expecting them to come in at any moment. After a bit, I wondered what was taking them so long and when I looked out again the car was gone. I supposed they had forgotten something and left and gave it no further thought. A half hour or so later, they did come in. I asked them why they had been there and left earlier and they looked at me in astonishment and asked me what I was talking about because they had just left home for the first time. However, I had seen them before!

Need the link to our paranormal newsletters?

No sign up necessary!

Nova Scotia Paranormal Events Newsletters

Pennies!

Last year at my work, I began finding pennies in the strangest places.

Sometimes single ones, sometimes 2 or 3 together. They would be on shelves, on floorstands in the store, in my locker, the lunch room table, on the floor...really in odd places. Even on my doorstep at home. And I would find maybe as many as 10 in one day. At first it was sporadic---One day I'd find some, the next day, none, then some more the day after that. 

Eventually, it increased to where I was finding them every day. I didn't specifically look for them...they were just popping up wherever I was. 

These places might not seem that odd to you, but they seemed to be penny-free one minute and then the next I looked, there'd be a penny there.

I know in the past I mentioned on here that I did not really believe in the powers of the Ouija board anymore, but one day just for fun at my mother's house, we were messing around with it and right away it started talking about the pennies. To make a long story short, my brother who passed away when I was a baby, indicated that he was the one leaving the pennies around for me.

I thought a lot about this and so to "test" this theory, I asked out loud one evening that if he were truly leaving pennies for me, could he please leave a large amount of them, like piles of them, and then I would know that this was probably true.

About 2 days later, I was at work, but in the back stock room when my manager called me out front. She said a customer came up to the counter with a bag of pennies, saying she found them out in front of the store. Not knowing what else to do with them, she brought them in to us.

(Who would do that?? If you find money like that, wouldn't you either just keep it or leave it alone? I don't think I would turn it in at a store---after all, they are just pennies, not hundred dollar bills.)

My manager alarmingly handed them to me (I had been telling her for weeks about the penny thing happening to me). There tied up in a small clear plastic bag was about 50 pennies.
I still have them...and I have thanked my brother!

P.S. You may think my manager was playing a joke on me and she brought the bag of pennies herself, but she believes in all things weird and strange, plus she did not know I had asked to receive a pile of pennies. She was beside herself with bewilderment when a bag of pennies showed up!

Need the link to our paranormal newsletters?

No sign-up required.

Nova Scotia Paranormal Events Newsletters