The Black in the Night

Hello all :) I have been away for quite some time and I do apologize for not posting an update this summer. With three teenagers all home for summer and a full time job, life has been hopping and extremely busy to say the least! So, I had to put aside many projects and focus on work and family.

That being said, I do still have my ghost although this summer there hasn't been a lot of activity, which is usual for this time of year. It has been very quiet though so there hasn't been much to report until now.

We did have one incident approximately one month ago that was strange. My daughter was unloading the dishwasher and a plate just shattered into a million pieces where the shards of the plate flew into the air and hit myself and my son in the head. No one was injured even though it made us very nervous. It happened so quickly that you couldn't even see the movement of the plate or how it shattered! We had been arguing at the time, as I had asked her to unload the dishwasher and when I arrived home from work, she hadn't. So we were arguing over this and this is when the plate shattered. I have noticed a few common themes with the ghost in my house and one is, that it does not like arguing. That being said, activity doesn't happen every single time there is an argument in the house, but it does happen and has happened consistently enough over the years that you can see it not happy about it.
It also used to react if the children were in trouble or sent to their rooms for a time out when they were younger. It has smashed dishes in the past when this has happened, slammed door or made loud banging noises. Making it quite clear of it's dislike of the situation, I imagine! At one point years ago, I had to walk through my house and yell to the air "A good parent has to discipline their children! I am not hitting them or hurting them, I am helping them understand expectations and limitations!" It seemed to subside a little and then the activity did continue.

Other than the dish incident and my alarm being set by an unknown person mostly every night for me, for most of the summer, things in the house were quiet until 2 weeks ago. My two daughters currently share a room. We are in the process of moving them each into their own room while their older brother can use the finished family room in the basement as his room. So, being that it's summer, they do not have school and are night hawk teenagers, they were up late sorting through clothes and things in their room. An interesting fact to add is they are both teenager girls only 2 years apart in age and so I imagine there was probably some arguing going on as well. It's pretty much a given. :)
As they were sorting and cleaning, my youngest daughter noticed something strange. She said it was like black smoke moving in the air, by their closed door. She said she just stood, stared at it and then watched it move around and then it disappeared. She didn't say anything at first and then her sister saw it. Then as they worked they would see it again and again and again. They were increasingly becoming upset and scared and explained that at this point it was no longer black smoke, but became a shadow that appeared here and there in their room, usually near the door. My youngest daughter explained to me that they were so scared that they did not go to sleep until the sun came up, which was when they didn't see it anymore. When I asked why they didn't come and get me, she said they were afraid to leave the room, as it usually appeared by their doorway. Quite a problem I imagine, if you have to go to the bathroom!!

So, the appearance of black smoke moving through the air is something that has been witnessed in my house over the years. Sometimes moving faster than actual smoke and sometimes moving and rolling as smoke would in the air. The difference being though, that although it looks and usually moves like smoke, it is actually solid black in colour and not very transparent as smoke would be. I have laid in bed and watch this "black smoke" curl around my bedroom doorway and begin to move into my room. I have seen it flash by like a black streak, only to find it later on curling and twisting in the air somewhere else in the house. It is something that does not always happen, but over the years there have been consistent sightings of this type of phenomenon. Another point would be that I have rarely seen this type of activity in the daytime. Usually it is something that happens at night. If anyone reading this has any clue what it may be, send your information my way! I would be glad to hear it! As it gets colder there will be more and more activity in the house and I am going to try my hardest to get the "black smoke" on camera. If I do, I'll gladly post it here for you all to see!

Another good indicator that we are moving towards a higher activity time was last night. Last night, I abruptly woke up from sleeping. I am a heavy sleeper and this is not the norm for me. Still, when I do wake up at night there is always a common denominator. That's right folks, you guessed it! When I woke up, I sat up and looked at my clock which read 3:00 am. This hasn't happened all summer, but it seems broken sleep will be beginning again!

3 a.m. and Knives

I always remember as a kid, watching the Amityville Horror movie and being freaked out by seeing the Dad, George Lutz wake up every morning at 3:15 am. Something about, being woken up at a specific time, the same time, every night does kind of freak you out and make you wonder why? In the Amityville story, he was waking up at 3:15 because that is when some of the murders of Ronnie DeFeo's family (by his own hand) took place. Still, many of us now relate 3 am and around this time to be a bad time to wake up in the night. Especially in your haunted house.


I do this often, but it is not because of my belief in the Amityville Horror story, or my fear of it, from when I was a child (although it did scare me quite a bit, real or not!). I have only started waking up in and around 3 o'clock in the morning since living in my "haunted house". Sometimes, I will have a nightmare, and when I awake, it's 3 am. Sometimes, I will wake up at 3 am, and not know why, and then I will hear some sort of activity, walking, voices etc... Now, I live with teenagers and even if they're home on the weekends, they tend to be up in the night. There are many complaints from them of hearing someone walking around the house, banging and once my daughter felt someone pinch her waist and breathe in her ear at 3 am. I am of the opinion though, that they are just asking for trouble, if they want to sit on Facebook, or msn at three in the morning, when you have a ghost in the house. If the activity is happening at 3 am, book it upstairs at two or earlier and try to fall asleep before 3 am and hope to hell, it doesn't wake you up!


My son, had trouble sleeping last night and so he was watching his TV, when her heard walking and then a man speaking to him. The voice, he described as too low to hear clearly (for once as it's usually loud) but he knew it was a man. Well guess what time it was, just after 3 in the morning! I should really equip these guys with a digital recorder, to see what we can pick up. I think I may get one this weekend.


Anyways, back to 3 am.
During my week, I always come back to 3 am and wake up at least once, for some unknown reason around that time. I admit, I've become used to it and some of the activity that follows, but I still have those times when you wake up at 3 in the morning and your blood runs cold because what you are hearing can't possibly be. My alarm sometimes goes off at 3am and like I said before my doorbell has rung 3 times at 3 in the morning, which really scared me. The doorbell situation has happened more than once and I hope it never happens again!


Three in the morning is called by some, "the Devil's Hour". One explanation is that Jesus died on the cross at 3 pm. So because of this, people believe this is a very holy time and so therefore 3 am (the polar opposite of 3 pm) is assumed to be time when evil spirits and demons can make contact with humans. There are many theories on demonic influences having more significance or power at 3 am. I know the popular A&E show Paranormal State, holds their peak investigation time "Dead Time" as they call it, at 3 am (I love the name). There are actually many paranormal investigators that claim this is a good time for an investigation and have witnessed activity at this time.


I don't know if all that's true, but I do know that 3 am is a reality and party time in my haunted house. I know that it has been consistent since the beginning of living here and so my ghost at least feels frisky at that time, for whatever reason that may be. Maybe one day, we'll uncover why that truly is.

Now, onto the part that is really strange and more intimate to my haunting... the knives!

Approximately 1 year ago, I was cleaning the house, in preparation to try to clear the ghost that is here. We were going to go into the attic, because strange noises were sometimes coming from there, such as footsteps and banging. My attic is not finished and is just full of insulation, but it really creeped me out because of the noises, so I never went up there before this. My closet was, I admit a horrible mess. It is a walk in closet and the ceiling of this closet is where you access the attic, so I had to clean it up. So, off I go, pulling things out to organize and rearrange or throw out and what do you think I keep finding in my closet??? First one knife, then as I take more things out, another knife, then as I take more things out, another knife. Three knives in total came out of my closet as I was cleaning it. I know you could say, it was my teenagers trying to scare me (haha!) or someone just put them there as a joke, but all of us here were completely baffled.

What was to come next though was really strange. When my friend, a local ghost hunter did go up into the attic. What do you think he found in the insulation? A knife!
None of us had been up there the entire time we lived here. The knife was in the far corner of the attic, very far away from the hatch like door, so if someone was trying to pull a fast one, they would really have to have gone to a lot of trouble! Another night shortly after, we found another knife in the drop ceiling of the basement, while adjusting a tile! One of the knives was from my kitchen. The rest of the knives that were found were steak knives that I did not recognize. Makes you wonder if my neighbours were missing knives!

I am saddened to admit though, I was so freaked out at first that we did end up throwing out the knife from the attic and the others that were not mine. My son has told me off about this since, because it may have been evidence for something that happened here, such as a past crime. He has told me that I shouldn't have panicked and used my common sense and he can't think of another reason a knife would be hidden up there.
I don't know if that is true, but I do feel bad for getting rid of the knife that was hidden in the attic and most of the others we found. It was just so overwhelming at first, finding all these knives. So, too late, after we threw out the knives out I started to process what they might mean.

So now you may be asking how I can live here?
It's simple. I didn't get the feeling that the knives were a sign of our impending doom by stabbing. I didn't get the feeling of a threat. I did get the feeling that the knives are a form of communication to whatever is here, and that it is trying to tell us something very important about itself or circumstances. Another year has passed and it is happening again. I wish I had written down the exact date of when it happened last year, but I did not. I believe it was somewhere around March - May of last year (2009).

So, this week around 3 am, my daughter wakes me up from a dead sleep and says "Mommy, there's a knife on my dresser" She woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and saw it sitting there. She says it was not there when she went to sleep and it was a steak knife that looked exactly like one of the knives I threw out last year. I will keep you updated if we find any more. Please let me know any thoughts you may have regarding knives and their symbolism. It could be as simple as the ghost had been fatally stabbed in life, I guess. Who knows?

I know one thing though and that is that I will try to find that answer and see if we can give a name to our noisy roommate.

Strange Voices and The Feeling of Energy

Over the past few days, I have had quite a bit of activity in my home. More interestingly, the activity is of the more dramatic kind. Two things have happened over the last 3 or 4 days, and it is kind of baffling me.

One I mentioned at the end of my last post. It was when I was in bed, had just closed my eyes and try to fall asleep, when I felt the feeling rush over me, like energy and when I tried to move, it was like moving through molasses. The feeling I described as butterflies, but that doesn't quite do it justice. You can feel the movement of it, like you would imagine buzzing or humming to feel like, without the sound. Then eventually when I guess I had struggled enough, it let go. It felt like hours, but I would really say, it was probably 4 - 5 minutes in total.

Another interesting point, is I was speaking to my neighbour and friend about this experience. She is well versed on my house and has had her own experiences there. The reason I was telling her the story though, was because she has had a bit of experience, growing up in a haunted home until she was 18 years old and I had never been more aware of the feeling than I was this time. When I described the feeling, she said "I know exactly what you mean!" She then gave me her own description of how it felt and told me something I found very fascinating. She said whenever she encountered this in her childhood home, she would be awake and would actually walk through it. She said when she did, she could feel the "buzzing" although there was no sound and as she moved through it, her movements became slower and she had to push really hard to get through this unseen "energy". She said, as a kid, she thought it was like a game, but felt it had something to do with the haunting in her home.

I know there is a common argument out there about sleep paralysis and I do acknowledge that my symptoms are similar. This is something that commonly happens when falling asleep or upon waking, where an individual cannot move, sometimes experiences pain when trying to move and sometimes has quite vivid hallucinations that seem real, or a feeling of a presence watching over them while they are paralyzed. What I had experienced on Monday could well have been sleep paralysis. It usually happens to me more in the middle of the night though, when I am completely asleep. I've never had this experience before living in this house, and since there is other activity in the home, I am kind of skeptical of it having nothing at all to do with my unseen companion! Still the argument is out there, so I will let you, the reader decide!

After the Monday night paralysis party in my bedroom and the fact that I slept with one eye open for the rest of the night, I was very tired and cranky on Tuesday. I worked all day long, only thinking of sleep, then drove the 40 minutes to my home, just looking forward to getting into my bed and not caring about ghosts or anything else for that matter. Well, all I can say was that definitely was not in the cards for me. I had to make dinner, change the laundry and direct the 3 teenagers to do the multiple chores they had forgotten to do while I was at work, because I think my computer and their Ipods had paralyzed their brains. Still, while I was cleaning up and barking orders, my oldest daughter mentioned something to me. She said she had gone to take a nap after school (God, I wished at that moment I was her...) and she hadn't been sleeping for that long when she heard her name being called. She thought it may have been her brother from downstairs, and so she ignored it. Then, she heard it again and again and since it was interfering with her peaceful nap (...I was jealous at this point...) She woke up, laid there and heard it again, while she was wide awake and when she heard it the last time, she said the voice sounded very strange.

I asked if the voice was male or female, and she said "Mom, it sounded so weird, I couldn't tell!"At this point she knew nothing about my experience the night before. She was a little scared and unnerved, but I reassured her that all was well. She said she really didn't like the sound of the voice.

Last night as I sat on my front steps while drinking a tea, I heard the whisper of my name. At this point, I just got up and left the steps, went back inside and called a friend. I eventually made it up to bed and passed out, because I was too tired to stay awake but it took a lot of watching TV to get there. So there was the second experience. Two different times we heard voices.

Now I have heard voices here before, as well as the kids (not crazy, I promise) and there is one thing I have noticed. There is usually something wrong with the voice your are hearing. Sometimes it's too loud, it sounds modulated and strange, it's in some sort of gibberish or you can't define what it's saying. It's always simple communication. Never lengthy sentences and other than names, it isn't saying much. Sometimes it is just a yell.

We have also had small incidents of voice mimicking. Where the kids are answering me, but I hadn't said anything or I am answering them and they never said anything. It doesn't happen often and hasn't happened for awhile, but it is also a strange phenomenon. Not one that I like to happen though.

Anyways, it's been a long journey, but I hope I am getting closer to finding a solution. A friend of mine has mentioned she knows a reputable psychic, and I will see if I can get him in here, as well as going to find the Land Transfer Office and finding the paperwork on previous owners. I tried many years ago, but was not able to get a proper printout from their computer.

Wish me luck and send me your thoughts!

The Introduction

I figure I better start the blog off, with the beginning of the story, so here goes. Just over 10 years ago, when my children were small and I was still married, we bought a house. We all moved in happily, having lived in a condo before this and loving that there was more space, a little backyard and a park just beyond it. So we moved in, with high spirits (no pun intended) and began to set up roots, in a lovely quiet part of town. I have to say, I went into the house about 2 or 3 times before buying it and and each time that I did, I never experienced any type of fear, dread or warning that this was anything but a nice little home for my family. So, after we had moved in I started to unpack and make it our home, as I was at home with the kids at the time and only my husband was working.

The first thing we noticed was that the house was kind of cold, but we just thought that maybe since we had moved from an apartment, with 3 inside walls, that would be why. The first year actually moved along nicely and other than the cold or the occasional locked door or moved object, that could have possibly been explained away. So, life was normal and pretty much uneventful. As we moved into the second year though, this became another story.

The first thing I noticed consistently is that the door to the powder room on the main floor would be locked quite regularly with no one inside. I figured this was the kids that would be doing it, so I would tell them to please stop locking the bathroom door with no one in it. They always told me that they did not lock it, but there was no other explanation in my mind. So, I continued to find it locked and then would have to pop the lock again and again, using a kitchen knife. The day I realized that it wasn't the children was when they all went away to their Grandma's house. The bathroom door on the main floor was unlocked, and later in the day, it was locked and no one had been home except for me. Now I know some of you out there will say that it was a possible delusion on my part and hey, maybe I just need some medication or that the lock was broken and locking itself, but I can assure you that the lock had to be twisted to lock and was not faulty, and that I don't unfortunately need medication. The door locked on its own and that was the very first time, I felt my blood run cold for a moment, but certainly not the last!

The next thing that happened was that the light in the garage would go on and off by itself. If you turned on the light, then stepped into the garage, especially at night, the light would turn off and you would be left in the dark, rushing to escape. I tend to be a bit of a sensitive and since we had moved in, it was the garage that used to give me the worst vibes. I always felt a little uncomfortable in the garage. Anyways, it was all still manageable and easier to rationalize, because these were small annoying things and would not affect you badly except at the exact moment they happened. I was still easy to say 5 minutes after I found the bathroom door locked and been the only one home, to say..."Oh, I must have locked it and forgot." Not true, but it helps you get through the day!

The first extremely scary thing happened to my son, who at the time was 8 years old. I went into the garage to take out some garbage. All the kids were in bed and I was just cleaning up. I suppose my son took this as a good time to sneak down and get a snack from the kitchen. I heard him through the door that leads from our house to the garage. He said "Hi Dad!" and then a moment later let out a blood curdling scream! I rushed out of the garage thinking he had hurt himself, to find him frozen on the staircase, saying "There's a man in the house and I thought I was Daddy, but it wasn't and he ran into the kitchen really fast!!" I told him to go upstairs and get into bed and that I would check it out. At this point my husband worked many long hours at 2 or 3 jobs to keep us afloat and he was often working the night shift like he was that night. So, here I was, a woman, alone with 3 little kids, and apparently there was some unknown man running around my house! At this point I never though ghost, I was deathly afraid there really was a man in my house! So I grabbed a baseball bat from the garage, and I went through every room, and closet and place that someone could hide. I did it twice, and there was nothing. So, I ended up collecting all my kids together in my bed and half sleeping through the night. I couldn't understand what had happened. It was then that my ghost decided to make itself known, and initially it wasn't very nice.


The next event was the smoke alarms. I have one on each floor, and they are all battery operated. Our Family room is in the basement, and after I put the kids to bed, I sat down in the basement to watch some TV. About 5 minutes after I sat down, the main floor smoke alarm went off. After that the smoke alarms went off in succession, until I ended up smashing the one in the basement, because it would go off, until I ran up and then it would stop. Whatever it was, didn't want me sitting on the couch that night!

There has been many events over the years that have happened since. We tried to clear it and it would come back 3 days later and ring my doorbell at 3 in the morning. One time when we were trying to clear it, it answered the phone and spoke to my best friend in my daughters voice. The problem was, my daughter was at her father's house that night. I was locked in the garage, on the coldest day of winter, even though the lock was not set. I ended up taking a hammer to the handle, pulling it off the door and still it would not open, until a few good kicks. Whatever was holding the door on the other side was like steel. The, it just let go, and I walked into my house, and it was too quiet, like a vacuum.

Things have settled down a little now. Still, it sets my alarm most nights. We went away a few weeks ago, and my neighbour came over, to use my computer as hers was broken. It made so much noise while she was downstairs that she and her two children fled from the house and would not come over until we got home. I told her it was probably mad, that we were on vacation, and it was stuck at home :)

Just last night, I went to bed and as I was falling asleep I felt this wave of energy that I can't describe. It's like a rush of butterflies, accompanied by paralysis where I can hardly move. I know some of you out there will say this is just sleep paralysis, but it never happened until I moved here, and last night night I wasn't asleep, just starting torelax when I felt it and could not move off my bed. Eventually it lets go, but I have no idea what the hell that is! It may only happen, once or twice a year and I say..."thank God for that!".

So, this is the beginning of my blog, and the way I am going to track dates and times that things happen. Who knows, maybe I will find the answer to what is in the house and why it is there. I have been told it is an ghost and by others that it is not. I tend to be a bit of a medium and I cannot get an impression of what it is. Come and follow me on this journey and if you have any suggestions or tips, email me at hauntedcare@gmail.com