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My Three Ghosts
Introductory Excerpt from the Writings of Haunted Hamilton's Resident Psychic, Suzanne Mann.

I am very excited about working so closely with Haunted Hamilton and I am happy to share this written excerpt of a true story about my experiences. I hope that you enjoy it.

Upon rising today, I noticed that the sky was almost as dark as when I had gone to sleep: it was incredible. I hurried to get my coffee so that I could run outside and enjoy it. I'm glad that I did not make it, however, because the sky suddenly unleashed a torrent of dime-sized hail so swiftly and furiously that it would have hurt me. I have always loved these days. I recall doing the very same thing when I was much younger and times were very different.

Back then, I was relieved to be moving into a house. More importantly, I was relieved to be moving at all. At twelve years old, I had already experienced the antics of a mischievous ghost in our apartment for one year. Some time between the ages of six and ten, I had witnessed a porcelain figurine rise into the air and settle back down on a shelf. We believed that we were putting such matters behind us.

Consequently, when extraordinary events began to occur on our very first evening in the new house, it took us all--my mother, my stepfather, my sister and myself-- by surprise and filled me with a sense of dread. My fear was not related to the events of a haunting but was actually the result of being expected to reject something that I felt, deeply, ought to be welcomed.

Fortunately, ghosts communicate to me through my very lucid dreams these days; however, my first experiences were anything but direct. It was in that first house--beginning more than 20 years ago--that my entire family and I could share experiences and traditional belief could surrender to something else.

Driving up to the house as new owners, it did not seem unusual: there were no clouds gathering overhead or isolated bolts of lightening illuminating a dilapidated structure. It was an old home (dating back to 1845) and it was, in fact, more attractive than most of the others on the block but its exterior did not betray anything out of the ordinary.

As might be expected, on our first night, we had turned on all the lights in the house as the sky darkened and we had moved boxes into their intended rooms. The furniture was in place and we were resting in the living room, settling down into our first evening--and night--there.

Without warning, I began to experience a "welling up" of anxiety in my chest, a critical sign to me that something was about to occur. The table lamp resting between my mother and myself began to make an electrical sound and then flickered: once, twice and three times. We were plunged into darkness as every light in the house went out and the one described lamp remained lit.

We looked at each other in astonishment. I ran to the window to see if lights in other homes had extinguished: all that had been on remained lit. The street lights were on. Our porch light was out.

"O.k.," my stepfather said as he grabbed a flashlight. Down to the basement he and my mother headed as my sister and I sat, waiting to hear that fuses had been blown. This was not the news that we would receive: no fuses had been blown out, no circuit breakers were down. My parents resolved to have an electrician visit to inspect the wiring.

In the meantime, I would not sleep very peacefully. For, though nobody had spoken of it, I knew that there was going to be haunting activity and I knew that it was not the ghost from the previous apartment. I simply did not know why this interaction with the spirit world was occurring; moreover, I did not know why it was happening to me. The shadowy world just on the periphery of our senses would come into even sharper focus for me and the clarity with which I could see and could sense another side to life would start a lifetime of searching.

A few days after the incident with the lights, my mother--strongly convinced of a problem--contracted an electrician to inspect the wiring. While I was at school, the same "welling up" occurred out of the blue: I knew something about our new house was going to come to light. I knew what the electrician had--or, rather, had not--found. When I arrived home, it was to the news that the wiring was brand new and in fine order. In fact, the the worker informed my mother that this was how ghost stories often began: a family calls an expert for inspection due to some anomalous event and the verdict is that nothing wrong can be found.

One day, mere weeks after moving into the house, I awoke early to much noise and commotion. As I descended the stairs, I stopped at midpoint. The front door was wide open and, for some reason, I knew that this was significant. I asked my mother why it was open. Then, she explained that both the back and the front doors had been found wide open when she awoke at 4:00 a.m. that morning. Unfortunately, we had just installed high-end, expensive dead-bolt locks on both doors the previous day and my parents were both fanatical about locking doors at night. What was most frightening, however, was that nobody knew <em>for how long</em> the doors had been wide open.

In short order, stronger evidence of the paranormal would creep into our lives. Not particularily religious folk, my mother and stepfather--Anglican and Catholic respectively--would start their campaign of posting religious icons such as the crucifix on the walls and sprinkling Holy Water wherever something that they perceived to be evil occurred. I, on the other hand, grew increasingly confused: how could something that seemed so harmless and natural also be evil? Why did my parents' beliefs conflict with my intuition?

At any rate, at night in the weeks following, my family and I would begin to hear--and to be awakened by--the sound of heavy footsteps on the bare, hardwood stairs leading up to our bedrooms. They would stop at the landing before the final few stairs leading to the hall and then start all over again. I was intrigued. Every time anyone spoke of it, I saw a large man (over six feet tall), dressed in 19th century clothing but I did not sense anything "bad" or "evil".

Possibly one of the strangest things that ever happened to us, however, was the ability to hear wood being chopped in the basement followed by heavy steps across the concrete floor and the sound of logs being tossed into a pile. We could hear it from our bedrooms on the second storey! One night, my mother, my sister and I decided to investigate and the sounds lasted until we arrived at the door to the basement in the kitchen.

By 1985, ghostly events were commonplace to our family. By 1985, we had become accustomed to the very first signs of activity starting: smells, inexplicable wall-banging alerts, sing-song recitations of nursery rhymes and apparitions. We had met--and were living side-by-side with--Armin, Adele and The White Lady. By 1985, my parents had abandoned the crucifix and the Holy Water in favour of humour. To my great relief, we were becoming a ghost-friendly family and the stories that I would, in time, collect could fill an entire book.

Suzanne Mann

Be sure to visit Suzanne's website www.manntiques.com

You can visit Suzanne in person at the new Haunted Hamilton Shop located at 158 James Street South in Hamilton, Ontario, where you can purchase her handmade Botanical Products or enjoy a cup of tea and a psychic reading.

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