Journeys into the Unknown: Mysterious Canadian Encounters with the Paranormal

answers.

The Stories

The following is a collection of stories from people who attest to the validity of the events. They have been compiled from several sources, including several stories that occurred under the watchful eye of security professionals who, while executing their duties to protect people and property, have been drawn into unexplainable events.

The Little Girl and the Thing in the Basement

Scarborough

It started not long after they moved into a detached two-bedroom bungalow on a quiet residential street between Lawrence and Ellesmere.

The house was built in the late 1960s as part of a subdivision. There was nothing in its relatively short history to indicate there would be any problems of this nature. The young couple, Ed and June, had been living together for several years and were considering marriage. She worked for a bank, and he was employed by a local police force.

One summer evening, as the couple sat in the living room watching a movie, there came a knock from the basement, from just below where they sat. They just looked at each other. Two more knocks followed. Ed moved off the couch to the carpeted floor above the sound and knocked back twice. Two knocks came in return. He paused, looking at her in astonishment. He knocked again in a pattern: tap, tap, tap, pause, tap, tap. After a moment came the response: tap, tap, tap … tap, tap.

June stood by the phone, prepared to call for help as he went down the basement stairs, looking for the prankster. Nothing out of the ordinary was found, and all the windows were locked. The knocks from the basement continued on a regular basis. Not long after they started to notice, to their fright, that something would come up to the main floor from the basement. At 11:15 every night there would be walking on the stairs from the basement to the kitchen, then something would move around the kitchen for a couple of minutes, the floor creaking underfoot. Then it would leave, heading back down to the basement. The disturbance never lasted longer than three minutes, but it was the longest, scariest three minutes ever, as they never knew if it would change its pattern and come into the living room or bedroom with them. The first time they tested this she went into the kitchen; a knot grew in the pit of her stomach, but she didn’t see anything. Then a metal serving tray jumped off a shelf on the wall, flew past her, rattled off the opposite wall, and landed on the floor. The tins that stood in front of the tray on the shelf were undisturbed. She immediately left the house.

When they informed company about the nightly visitor they were met with skepticism, until 11:15 p.m. Strangely, neither the skeptics nor the believers ever arose and went into the kitchen to see what was making the noise. You just had this feeling in your gut warning you not to go in there! they said.

Ed was about to switch to night shift, and unfortunately this meant that there were going to be times when June would be home alone. This prospect wasn’t very appealing to her in view of these strange incidences. They agreed to install a security alarm system throughout the house. Ed picked up all the components and wiring and, along with his brother-in-law, wired all the windows and doors and added motion detectors. He also added security bars inside all of the basement windows. June felt at least a little safer staying alone in the house. Should things continue to happen, her parents didn’t live far away, and her father could be at the house in under twenty minutes.

They bought a three-month-old cocker spaniel who had made a very impressive argument with them at the pet shop, wrapping herself around their legs and just hamming it up. From Bug’s introduction to the house she seemed to interact with something that they couldn’t see. Ed and June would, from time to time, buy the dog a rawhide shaped like a shoe, which Bug enjoyed. One day they arrived home after work to find that every shoe had been removed from the hall closet and laid heel to toe, snaking through the living room and dining room, with the rawhide shoe right at the lead. Now, either something very odd was going on or this dog was destined for Hollywood. On another occasion they had ordered Chinese food. The dog just loved those dry noodles that were meant to be added to the chow mein. As a treat, she would get a couple of these. This particular night the noodles were forgotten and left aside with the condiments. In the morning, the bag of noodles was missing, but nothing was thought of it until a few days later. While Ed was playing with Bug, pulling toys out of her toy box, he found the empty noodle bag buried deep under the toys, hidden. The bag hadn’t been chewed, but rather opened quite carefully. The staple still hung from its unfolded corner.

They set up a small office in the basement, and June spent time down there working on the computer. There was a large chair in the corner of the room behind her. The dog would sit and look up at the empty chair, sometimes resting her head on the seat as if she were being petted. She would also bring her ball and toys to the chair.

During the day the house seemed comfortable, but when the sun went down, especially when the hour neared 11:00 p.m., the uneasy feelings came over them. They never dared to go down to the basement after dark. One day they were having a yard sale and a barbecue for friends, and June decided to do a couple loads of laundry at the same time. Later that night, after everyone had left and they were tidying up, she mentioned she had forgotten a load in the washer. Ed looked at the clock — 10:50 p.m. — walked to the top of the basement stairs, and stood there a moment. He went to the fridge and took out a barbecued pork chop. He waved it under Bug’s nose and the animal went wild, doing every trick she knew. He knew she would practically kill for such a treat, so he said, You want it, go get it! and tossed it down the basement stairs. The dog rushed to the stairs and slid to a stop at the top; looking down those stairs at the pork chop, she let out a whimper, turned, and walked away, heading into the living room. That was good enough for him; he looked into the bedroom and told her that the laundry would have to wait until the morning.

The knocks from the basement continued; after Ed had left the house for work they became violent, no longer just a series of knocks but pounding that sounded like everything in the basement was being destroyed. June would call her parents’ house and wait outside on the street for her father to arrive. He would check the place. Nothing was ever found to be disturbed. Nothing seemed to help; even the security built into the house didn’t stop the noises emanating from the basement. The only thing it proved was that it wasn’t a neighbourhood prankster.

One afternoon when Ed and June arrived home from grocery shopping, he opened the side door and they were stopped dead in their tracks by a blood-curdling scream from the basement. They both backed away from the door and stood in the driveway, looking at each other. After a few moments, he slipped into the house and began his search. Again, nothing was found. This episode was extremely unnerving to both of them. It was at this time they started to seriously discuss moving away, but it just wasn’t financially sensible at the time to move.

One night they were sleeping soundly when something started talking to June, rousing her from her sleep. Just as she opened her eyes, the talking stopped. She immediately woke Ed up. He jumped from the bed and grabbed for the baseball bat, flicking on the light. He was thinking of a living, breathing intruder and went on a search, until he realized that the alarm system hadn’t gone off. He checked the panel and there was nothing but green lights. He came back into the bedroom and found June standing in the doorway, terrified. Nothing was found, and she couldn’t tell what had been said. Neither of them slept that night.

A few weeks later Ed’s mother arrived for a visit and was going to spend the weekend at the house. That night, after they had all gone to bed, the banging started in the basement. Two things were different that night: only Ed’s mother and the dog heard it, and it was extremely volatile. Bug dove onto the bed with Ed’s mother and trembled with fear, and the banging actually shook the bed. Someone appeared at her bedroom door and said something; she couldn’t hear it clearly over the banging. The person was cloaked in shadow. In the morning, she questioned them about what had happened the night before. They didn’t offer an explanation, and she kept insisting that it had been June at the bedroom door.

About a week later, around 5:30 a.m., as Ed sat in the car in the driveway warming it up, he glanced at the side door to the house and, to his astonishment, saw what appeared to be a young girl bounding up the stairs to the main floor, her long pigtails swinging back and forth. He turned off the car and entered the house. He found no sign of the girl, and his wife still slept soundly, but the dog sat by the couch quietly. He knew what he had seen, yet he could find nothing that would prove it. He looked back at the dog, who was now resting her head against the couch. He briefly considered waking his wife, but then quickly dismissed it as a bad idea — Honey, something’s running around the house, got to go to work, bye! — so he let her sleep and went off to work.

One night, Ed’s brother and his girlfriend came over for dinner, and as the evening wore on they started to discuss the events in the house. The girlfriend suggested that they all go downstairs to confront it; she was making fun of them and was skeptical of the whole idea. It was around 10:30 p.m. when they went downstairs, against the couple’s better judgment. June pulled up a barstool and sat down, facing the bottom of the stairs. There came a heavy bang from upstairs. Bug took off to investigate, leaving them downstairs. She said, Wouldn’t it be funny if the dog’s ball came down the stairs? Before she could finish the sentence, the ball bounced down the stairs. A few moments later the dog started down the stairs, tight up against the wall as if squeezing past something blocking her path. Halfway down, the dog stopped and urinated on the landing. This was completely uncharacteristic, as she would never go to the bathroom in the house. The girlfriend yelled, If you are there show yourself! There was a noise on the landing. June was unable to blink, her eyes glazed over, and she started to fall off the stool backwards. They caught her and held her up. They followed her gaze to the landing, and there stood a figure blacker than the shadows, piercing blue eyes fixed on her. They all started screaming, Enough! and Go away! while quickly turning on the lights. She snapped out of whatever had been happening to her. The figure was gone. They ran up the stairs, slamming the basement door closed and retreating to the living room. There they sat for a while, no one speaking until Ed’s brother and his girlfriend left.

The events terrified them, and no matter how hard they tried they just couldn’t find a solution. Whatever dwelled in the basement had won. They decided it could have the place, and they packed and moved far away from that house.

The Playful and the Disturbed

Toronto

The house was originally built in the late 1890s as a farmhouse. In 1956, the area became part of a housing development. The farmhouse was moved back two hundred feet to a new foundation, where it currently sits, so that the subdivision road could be straightened. The house was incorporated into the new development, and brickwork was added around the original wood structure. There are windows on the outside of the house that do not exist inside. The owner mentioned that when a small bathroom renovation was done and a wall was replaced, they found an eighteen-inch air space between the original interior wall and the outside brick wall. She said you could see from the upper floor down into the foundation of the house when looking down into the space.

While speaking to the owner of the house, I learned that she, her husband, and their five sons have lived there since 1965. Her husband and one son are now deceased. The first thing they wanted to show me was the rose bush. One of the sons, who takes care of the property and gardens, observed something that he brought to the rest of the family. In the mid-1980s the father planted a rose bush along the fence line. The bush grew but never bloomed. It seemed like a lost cause, but no one ever bothered pulling out the bush. In the early 1990s the father passed away, and since his death that bush has yielded wonderful flowers. They continue to bloom to this very day. As we went to the basement, she told me about the time she went downstairs to put a load of laundry on. As she neared the back door to the laundry room, she heard what seemed to be a loud party, people talking and laughing. She could also hear the sound of glass on glass. She paused for a long time, just listening to the sounds. Then, when she felt brave enough, she pulled open the door and found nothing but her empty laundry room. All the sounds had stopped abruptly.

She pointed out the washroom where not only the residents but also countless visitors have had similar experiences. While using that washroom, they have heard phantom knocks at the door and loud fits of coughing in the basement. Everyone reported the same thing; as soon as they went into the washroom the knocking would start, only to be interrupted by coughing. This normally caused the person in the washroom to rush, but when they came out they would find that no one else was there and no one had come down the basement stairs behind them. Most relatives who visit now will use only the washroom on the upper floor.

I was introduced to the middle son, who is now in his late forties. He remembers an incident that occurred when he was living there. He was coming from the bathroom and had just started to go up the stairs when a hand from behind grabbed him firmly on the shoulder. He states that he will never forget the way that squeeze felt. He turned around and found nothing there.

I asked the woman if the basement seemed to be the focal point of all the phenomena occurring in the house. She just looked at me for a moment. No, it’s all throughout the house. There have been so many things that have happened over the years that it’s hard to remember them all. I remember having tea with my youngest son one evening at the kitchen table when we heard a frightful yell for help, it was very clear. It was a child crying for help and it came up from the basement. It scared both of us, so I called my oldest son to come with us to look in the basement. We searched, but nothing was found.

As we made our way up to the main floor she told me about the visitor who, from time to time, comes up from the basement to the main floor. "It could be heard in the middle of the night: thump, thump, thump, up the stairs. It would stop here for a few moments. She showed me how the floor squeaks near the top of the stairs, by the stove in the kitchen. Then it walks up and down the hall from the kitchen to the front door and back. This goes on for a few minutes, and then it goes back downstairs. I asked her how often this happens. She said, From time to time. … It really gets active as we get closer to Christmas." Why Christmas? She just shrugged her shoulders.

"We also have someone