Cricket on the Hearth
The Cricket on the Hearth resides in a magnificent old home along the Bedford Highway and is named after a Charles Dickens story (1845). The home was built c.1867 and eventually came to be owned by Dr. A McD. Morton who served the whole region from 1902-1918. Being a doctor’s office and residence, not only did it have a quarantine room for Scarlet Fever, but also one of the first telephone switchboards in the area at the time.
Jackie and Shelly were our hosts for the evening when we investigated the Cricket. The Cricket on the Hearth has been there for 25 years but Jackie actually lived there at one time when she was younger before it became a shop.
The home has been renovated over the years. The electrical has been brought up to code and a back room was added on. At one time the home sat empty for two years.
Experiences
- Jackie sometimes comes in on Sundays to work on displays. During one of these times, she had the feeling that someone wanted her to leave and that she was not alone.
- Things have gone missing (keys were once found in the basement).
- A light once blew when Jackie switched it on. She then heard two young girls giggling in the front room.
- Jackie’s father once heard someone running down the corridor near the main staircase.
- One day Jackie’s father and grandfather were in the Cricket on the Hearth when they saw a lady dressed in white. They thought she was a customer, but when they went to assist her, there was no one to be found.
- A young boy was once in the house playing with a cat who he thought was owned by Jackie’s family. That is until the cat disappeared in front of him.
- When Jackie was a girl her room was the former quarantine room. There are two windows in this room that had Venetian blinds on them at the time; one of the blinds was broken and wouldn’t work. Jackie watched as the broken blind went up and the other blind came down at the same time.
Investigations
January 13th, 2007
Nothing appeared in our pictures, and although some strange sounds were recorded on both audio and video (these were mostly odd thumps, knocks, and clicks that were unaccounted for) we have to keep in mind that this is a very old house; I wonder though if they were actually made by the house. There were also some interesting metallic-sounding bangs and thumps but Jackie suggested that this is most likely the furnace.
No conclusive fluctuations were recorded that night. An event did occur though when the batteries were drained in my motion sensor light; the batteries were new and this occurred after a half an hour.
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