Ghostly encounters close to home
We heard all the campfire stories. We read all the folklore. Now we want to collect ghostly encounters from the source, from places closer to home than a castle in Ireland or a graveyard in Chicago. Please browse through our collection of encounters submitted directly by those who experience them. There's no copy and pasting here, just real people with real experiences.
If you've had a ghostly encounter, and you'd like to share it, please email us your experience, and don't forget to include where and when it happened. We will email you the final formatted text for your consent before we add it to the website.
Anonymous Ontario Residence
Location: Ontario
My father moved to a smaller house and rented out his house/property to my brother, his wife and their two kids. (As an aside I lived in this house about 8 years and it wasn't haunted per se but we did have some creepy stuff happen from time to time there).
Well shortly after moving in my niece, Reghan (yes, named after The Exorcist - my sister has a son named Damien so I'm told my next child has to have a horror movie name) started talking about an imaginary friend. Normal behaviour for a (then) 3-year old so they thought nothing of it. Reghan should have started school that fall when she turned 4 but they felt she wasn't ready and kept her home a year. During this year she still mentioned her imaginary friend from time to time, who even got a name - Talon. Which is a pretty unusual name for a little one to come up with on her own.
So this year she finally started school and on the big day, her first day of school, she told her mother (my sister-in-law Teresa) that Talon didn't want her to go to school. Teresa told her too bad, tell Talon you'll be home in a few hours, humouring her. Well after bundling the kids off to school Teresa and her mother (who lives with them) went grocery shopping. They put the groceries away in the kitchen then she went to go into the kids' room which is just off the kitchen. She couldn't get the bedroom door open. She and her mother pushed and pushed and through the crack they realized that Reghan's play kitchen was wedged under the doorknob. They managed to knock over the toy and get the door open. (There's no other entry/exit to that room, and nobody was in it.) Weird enough as that was Teresa had another shock. The glass of water Reghan had been drinking before she left for school (and set on the kitchen counter with water still in it before leaving) was upside down in the middle of her bed, water everywhere.
After this Teresa needed a smoke. She and her mother were sitting at the kitchen table having a cigarette when they heard a weird "thwack" noise coming from the living room. They hadn't been in the rest of the house yet since coming home. Teresa was thinking "Now what" and when she went in saw that all her die-cast mustangs were in a condition other than she had left them - all the doors and hoods were open instead of closed. She was so scared at that point she just turned and ran and kept going right out the back door. Her mother followed and got her calmed down enough to come back inside. They were barely in the kitchen when another noise sounded from the living room. "Thud. Thud." Almost scared to look, Teresa peered around the corner into the living room and received another shock. Teddy bears that had been up on a shelf had been thrown across the room and a Breast Cancer beanie she had beside a picture of deceased relative was suddenly now sitting in the very center of the couch. She decided enough was enough and hollered out that Reghan would be back at 3, then she found an excuse to be outside most of the day.
Now here comes the creepiest part. When Reghan came home from school she was sitting in the living room watching Sponge Bob and started talking to her imaginary friend. Teresa heard her say, "You did WHAT!?! Talon, you know you can't play with Mommy's mustangs - you could break them!!"
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Anonymous Fairview Residence, by "X"
Location: Fairview, Nova Scotia
June - Present (September 2009)
I recently moved to Halifax, Fairview to be exact, from Cape Breton (June 2009) and from the time I moved into my home, I've been having strange experiences. It started when I heard footsteps on the stairs of my duplex in the first week I was here. Thinking it was a good idea, a friend of mine brought over her Ouija board and some wine and we played for a little while. I thought she was moving it and she thought I was moving it while the whole time we were talking to a "spirit" named Ed. We eventually put the board away and forgot about it.
A few days after the Ouija board incident, my oldest daughter (6) came downstairs after playing in her room. I asked her who she was speaking to since her brother and sister were downstairs with me and her response was, "her new secret friend". When I asked if her new friend had a name, she quietly responded "Ed".
Over the next couple of weeks I have, and still am, experiencing feelings of being watched. This happens mostly in the evenings when sitting on the couch by the stairs. Late at night I can still hear footsteps on the stairs which I thought may have been the neighbours but they happen at odd times like 3am and later. I had a friend staying with me who claims he's seen shadows on the landing by the couch and had at times woken out of a deep sleep with the feeling that someone was watching, even to the point of getting up to turn the light on just to make sure it wasn't me puttering around downstairs.
At differing times during the day I have experienced feelings of someone touching my shoulder or reaching in my pocket. This occurs mainly in my kitchen. There have been times when I'll be standing at the stove or doing the dishes and tell my son to get out of my back pocket but my daughter will either tell me he's with her in the living room or there is no one there when I turn my head to look. I have been tapped on the shoulder a number of times, none of my children are tall enough to reach my shoulder.
Also, over the last couple of weeks, the doors to the bedrooms upstairs have been closing but when I go up to check to see what is going on, they're open again. Sometimes they'll be closed when I go up and when I go up again, they'll be re-opened. This happens both with the windows open and closed. My kids are sound sleepers and hate their door closed so I know that it wouldn't be them doing it.
Tonight {{email received early Sept 09}} was the icing on the cake. I made a cup of hot chocolate and when I finished, I unplugged my electric kettle and went to sit down. I was alone, checking emails and thought I could hear the kettle boiling so I went to the kitchen and what I saw made me want to pack and move. The water was boiling, the button was pushed down, the light was on but it was still unplugged. Not long after I noticed my cell phone had moved from where I normally put it by my computer to farther up on the table. Not a big move but enough to notice.
That's everything that has occurred so far. I'm not sure what it is or what it wants but I think the Ouija board may have had a lot to do with it. Sort of feels like I'm going a little crazy since I was here alone for the majority of stuff that occurred.
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Anonymous Youth Centre Experiences, by "Scott"
Location: Dartmouth, Nova Scotia
June - September 2007
One of the duties we performed was doing a nightly "fire check" after all the youth were settled in bed, usually between 12am & 1am. When I started working there the job of doing this fire check was given to me. This was a large facility and gave me the impression of being "Institutional". In fact a long time employee informed me it was indeed an Institution at one time for mentally challenged people. I was somewhat uncomfortable doing this fire check alone, and I originally attributed my feeling to the fact that I was unfamiliar with the workplace setting, and the very nature of the stressful work with the kids could be playing on me. After about three weeks this uncomfortable feeling did not completely go away.
In July/07 I was doing the check, and I was in the basement. I felt a sense of being watched, and thinking one of the kids was roaming around where they weren't supposed to be, I used my radio to ask a coworker to do a room check to make sure all the kids were in their beds. They were. While unlocking one of the doors in the basement, I had the sensation of something brushing against my arm and my radio was pulled from my pocket and dropped to the floor. I can't see how I could have physically caused this as I was not walking or moving at the time other than unlocking the door, and the radio was deeply seated inside my pocket. The feeling of the radio being pulled was highly disconcerting, to say the least!
Another instance in July/07 occurred while I was in the large cafeteria at 3am having a snack. I got up from a table to get a napkin, and when I turned around I could see out of the corner of my eye what looked to be a figure of a person in a jacket with the hood pulled up. This figure was only there for an instant, and disappeared before I could focus on it.
There were multiple cameras installed outside the facility to help us keep an eye on things. During the night shift there are four youth workers on shift, and we would take turns monitoring the cameras. While I was on the monitor I noticed what looked like a shadow moving erratically around the basketball court. I shifted the view to another camera farther away, and still caught the shadow! I called a coworker into the office, and she also saw the shadow on the two different cameras! I marked the time stamp down, and the next time I worked a day shift I attempted to get a tape of the shadow, but my supervisor refused!
As a side note, it occurs to me that all these "activities" occurred at the same end of the building.
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An Encounter at the World Trade & Convention Centre, by "X" (name changed by request)
Location: Halifax, Nova Scotia
Early 2000's
I worked at The World Trade & Convention Centre. It was very
quiet one evening when I was in the lobby. I had a sudden feeling that
I wasn't alone. I looked up and towards the PG Tunnel I saw a figure
come through the 3rd set of closed oak doors & stand staring at me
(although it had no face that I could tell of).
I couldn't take my eyes off this figure, but I wasn't quite sure what I was seeing because I could see through him. He was there but he wasn't there. I just sat looking at him and he at me for what must have been a good 10 -15 seconds. I assume this figure to be a man because of his dress and size. He wore a hooded cape (like a monk’s cape) that covered his face and entire body. I could see the shape of his body and his raised arm (not visible under the cape) but he had no face, hands or legs.
He moved above ground very smoothly and quickly. I assume I held little interest to him because he turned and quickly moved in the direction of the Five Fishermen. He just glided through the rail of the Atrium behind the glass elevators and disappeared. There is a drop of one story over the rail. I got up to look but he was gone.
A Similar Encounter at the Metro Centre, by "Y", as told by their friend "X"
Location: Halifax, Nova Scotia
Mid 1990's
"Y" was in the Metro Centre one evening in the dark doing rounds. The
only light was coming through the windows on the concourse, and that
was only enough light to just see the ice deck and other areas of the
bowl, but not clearly. Across the other side of the Metro Centre bowl
(North side), he could see a figure. It rushed across the Metro Centre
ice deck towards "Y" and up into the stands faster than any human could
ever move. It passed right through "Y", nearly giving him a heart attack!
Moving again towards the Five Fishermen and dressed exactly like the
figure I saw. Again, it had no feet.
NOTE: Both “Y” and I had separate experiences with the same figure but years apart. "Y" never told anyone about his experience (me included) because he thought everyone would think he was crazy. He only told me about his experience after I got up the courage to tell him about my experience. I described exactly the figure he saw years earlier.
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Various Experiences in Dartmouth by James Thompson
Location: Dartmouth, Nova Scotia
Summer 1992
I live in downtown Dartmouth across from the Christ Church. The first
encounter was when I was around 9 years old. I was tossing a tennis
ball against the outside wall of the Church hall building. I happened
to look up into the windows and saw a young girl looking down at me
from a desk smiling. Standing right next to her was an older teacher.
This teacher was dressed in what looked like period time dress. She had
a dark coloured dress on and her hair was in a bun. She also looked
down at me but was not smiling. I attended beavers and cub scouts at
that church hall and the windows that I saw those two apparitions are
quite high off the floor. Too high to see someone seated next to the
glass.
Christmas 1995
My next was at my then best friend's house on Parke Ave, Dartmouth. I
was 12 years old and spent the night at his house on a Saturday night.
We always slept in his living room. There were two sets of stairs in
this house. The back set was uncovered when his family moved in. His
father had told us a story of a woman that gave birth in the staircase
during the Halifax Explosion. That night we experienced something odd
to us, being 12 at the time. We had just turned out the lights to get
ready for bed and noticed that the stairway lights had been turning on
and off. This continued for a few minutes until we got up to
investigate. The weird thing was, the only light switch to the stairway
set of lights was in the living room with us. Never once did we feel
threatened though, it was a very calm feeling.
October 2005
My other experience came when I was 22. My parents own a property in
downtown Dartmouth that is about 135 years old. Ever since I was young
creepy stuff has happened in that house, not only to me but my sister
as well. When I was 22 I was living with my parents. I had gone to
sleep and was well out. I was woken up violently in the middle of the
night. The window in the room was bright orange. It felt like somebody
was trying to pull me out of bed and at the same time it felt like
somebody else pulling me back. This happened twice that same night. It
was the most terrifying experience I've ever gone through. It was like
I was being attacked and protected at the same time.
1996
In the same room in the house my sister says she has seen an old man
give her a gift. She said that he walked into the room with his arms
held out holding a gift then disappeared. She didn't dream about gifts
prior to that. My sister was 10 at the time. Even now from time to time
there will be weird noises or I will notice the screen doors locked
when I haven't touched them.
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Parking Lot Stranger by Darlene
It was mid-to-late 1997 and I was living in Oshawa, Ontario. I had two children at the time, one being five years old and the other a baby in an infant car seat. We drove a two door Dodge Neon at the time and my husband and I were in a mall parking lot and we were getting the kids into the car. I was on the passenger side and buckling my five year old son into the back seat, my husband was on the driver’s side putting the infant car seat into the base which was mounted in the car. Both doors were wide open blocking access to the vehicles on either side of the car. A man approached us from the rear of the car as if he wanted to get into his car. I said, "Opps, sorry we will be just one minute getting the kids in", the stranger replied, "No problem me duck". With that I popped up to get a good look at the man and he was gone!
When this first happened I thought the man was wearing a long coat like a trench coat, but after I thought about this in greater detail there was no detail to the man. I did not see a face just a dark figure. Now this is where I have problems...my Uncle June died earlier that year. My uncle called me "me duck" (My family is from Newfoundland).
Did I really see someone? Or was my uncle paying me one last visit? And if I did see someone how would that person know about "me duck".
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The Little Boy in Aurora by Darlene
This time was in 2002 and we were living in Aurora, Ontario; September 18th to be exact. I had given birth to my daughter six weeks earlier and during my pregnancy my gall bladder went bad so the doctors decided to remove it. I had my surgery September 18th and my children were being looked after by family so I could rest after surgery and my husband was on midnight shift.
I went to bed as he was getting up for work (about 10pm) I had just taken my pain meds and went to sleep. I woke up at about 2am because I heard a sound from the basement (we crate our dogs at night so they do not eat the sofa and drywall).
The dog's crates are located in the basement but when I woke I noticed that both dogs were on the bed with me, my husband forgot to put them to bed. I sat up in bed and I heard the noise again, it was like the crates were rattling. I walked downstairs to see what was going on and as I rounded the top of the stairs I froze in my tracks! I saw a little boy about eight years old covered in blood from head to toe, a lot of trauma was around the face. The boy said to me, "It's ok, I am ok now". He said that two times, but as he said it the second time, I ran so fast up to the front door and ran outside. I had to stand under the street light hyperventilating saying to myself "It’s not real" over and over until I was able to regain my composure. I went to a friend’s house and banged on the door until she let me in. I could not go back into the house that night.
I know I could have been seeing things due to my medication but after this I found out that a former resident of the house next door (it was a townhouse) had hung herself in the house. Also, a former resident of the unit two doors down had killed themself by idling the car in a closed garage.
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The Little Girl in Guelph by Darlene
We were living in Guelph, Ontario (I know we move a lot due to my husband’s job). It was 2006 and we were living in a house that was about seventy years old. It was in the middle of the night and the family was sound asleep. I woke up to a figure of a little girl standing beside my bed not saying a word. I thought it was my daughter Alicia who was about four at the time. I was lying on my stomach. I went to roll over to get out of bed to escort her back to her own bed and the figure was gone. I walked into her room to check on her and she was sound asleep.
During our stay in that house I had the feeling I was being watched. I just summed it up to the fact that the house was on a main road and the window faced the front of the house.
We are still living in Guelph but in a different house now. The house I am living in was built in 1862. I have the complete history of the house I am living in and I am in contact with the great grand children of the man who built my house so I can’t wait to see what encounters I have here if any...
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Alison's Spook (member)
Location: Wolfville, summer 2006
Rob and I went to a B&B outside Halifax for the weekend. The first
night we stayed there was ridiculously humid (it is in the country),
and since I never sleep very well in strange places, I was up all night
while Rob was sound asleep.
It was a full moon on beautiful dyke land, and I had been entertaining myself for hours watching the shadows grow longer in the room. I could see everything in our small room; a wicker chair, a closet and a dresser. At around 2am, I was getting pretty fed up with staring at the ceiling, so I began to roll over on my side (facing away from Rob) when I came face to face with a 4 ft black, cone-shaped thing.
It resembled a shadow, yet was different from others in the room because it had mass, and it certainly was not in the room prior to then! I couldn't see through it, and although it had no defined features, I felt that it was somebody. I will never be able to articulate this well, but it felt human and I didn't feel threatened. I was startled, however, and screamed and burrowed into Rob's back (who mumbled but never woke up), hiding under the sheets till I fell asleep.
Needless to say I was too tired to go downstairs for breakfast the next morning, so Rob went down without me. I didn't feel very good and was in no mood to tell him what happened the night before; I just wanted to sleep.
After breakfast we went out to tour the community, and Rob excitedly told me about the breakfast conversation. The house we were staying in was 130 years old, and the owner said that when he and his wife bought it, the whole community was there to watch them receive its keys. The real estate agent waited till the keys were in their hands to tell them that it was haunted! Apparently in this house, objects have disappeared and re-appeared in strange places, footsteps are heard from the upstairs (where we slept), the upstairs rocking chair rocks by itself, and many guests have been visited by a little girl apparition in the room next to us!
I put two and two together and told Rob what I had seen the night before. We are ghost investigators, but were on vacation, and were under no pretense of knowing/wondering if the B&B was haunted. I’m just glad my first encounter wasn't a terrifying one, and Rob is envious, to say the least.
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Cottage Experiences by Randall
Location: Oakfield, Nova Scotia
My family maintains a cottage around the Shubenacadie River. This property has been in our family for almost 100 years now and was the home of 2 relatives of mine who passed away upwards of 20 years ago. The man died of a heart attack in the driveway and his wife as far as I know died in the house (now the cottage). Just last summer a large part of the family was at the cottage and began discussing the spirit world and related matters and soon different experiences everyone had had at the cottage came to light. The following are what myself and my family members who are all reputable, very lucid people have experienced:
One day my cousin had a couple of friends down in the early spring and was giving them a tour of sorts when she realized she had forgotten something in the car. Her friends continued into the unoccupied back of the house and upon my cousin's return they told her that there was a woman in the back room. Amazed, she asked them what she looked like and both of them immediately pointed to a picture of the long dead woman hanging to the right of the kitchen door and said "that's her there". Needless to say they left fairly quickly.
My father is almost continuously going to the cottage in the winter time to work on snowmobiles. One night he was in the garage working away when he suddenly smelled the brand of pipe tobacco that the man who lived there used to smoke. He spun around to see where the smell was coming from and found himself alone.
Myself, I had come back from univerisity with my girlfriend to spend some time at the cottage over the March break. The first and second day were uneventful but then on the second night we were sitting facing each other on the couch talking and my attention was drawn past her and to the other side of the room where a man materialized and dematerialized from approximately the waist up in the space of a couple of steps.
One night while sleeping in one of the back bedrooms, my cousin suddenly awoke to see a man standing in the hallway smoking a pipe and then he either walked away or disappeared. But the point is everyone else in the cottage was soundly sleeping and no one present smokes a pipe.
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Haunted Hotel by Rob (member)
Location: Halifax
I used to work in a hotel in downtown Halifax which was thought to be haunted by a former general manager. Besides other reported unexplained activity, someone once witnessed him waiting for the elevator on the seventh floor.
All three of my experiences occurred while I was working the graveyard shift. The first one occurred while I was on the eighth floor where the majority of unexplained events occurred. This floor consists of ballrooms and a large meeting room. The only other people working were the two people down on the front desk.
I was in the largest ballroom at the time. I had looked all around it, because if something did happen to me, I wanted to be sure I knew I was alone. Overhead there were six chandeliers and only three of them were on. Nothing was happening and I was starting to get bored. Sitting at a table, under one of the chandeliers that was on, I boldly exclaimed, "If there’s anybody here with me then do something." The last word had barely left my mouth, when the chandelier above me dimmed all the way down (they were on dimmer switches) and then brightened back up again. Although I found this strange, and since it was my first experience at the hotel, I blamed it on the windy night.
The next day I asked one of the maintenance guys what would happen if the wind affected the lights. He said they’d all turn off and take a moment to come back on. I told him what had happened and he said the wind couldn’t have been the cause since only one light was affected and the wind wouldn’t cause it to dim in that manner.
My second experience happened in the kitchen which is next to the ballroom where I had my first experience. I had gone up to the kitchen to see if any cookies had been left out. There was, and while walking through the kitchen eating my cookie, I heard a set of keys jingle behind me. I was surprised the duty manager was up there and spun around to explain the cookie to him but there was no one there.
My last experience was on the bottom floor in the staff hallway, and someone else experienced it with me.
The woman working security and I were watching TV in the staff room. I decided to accompany her on her security rounds when she returned from the bathroom. When she got back she was surprised to see me still watching TV because she thought it was me whistling a tune in the hallway. Since there were two people working the front desk I suggested that maybe it was one of them but she saw no one when she heard the whistling.
While walking out to start the security rounds I hung back a bit to see if there was anyone around or if I could figure out what could have caused the whistling. Finding nothing I headed towards the elevator but before I could reach it I heard someone whistling a tune behind me. In amazement I jumped back staring down the hallway, and there in front of me was a section of the hallway whistling a tune, which then faded out. I tried to figure out a rationale explanation but couldn’t find any cause of the whistling.
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The Yellow Room by Dwayne (member)
Location: Cape Breton
With all investigations we come to a point in the evening that we find ourselves in a impromptu question and answer discussion with our hosts. The questions tend to vary from What's your day job? How did the group form? Have you seen a ghost? The one question that always pops up is, What got you interested in ghosts?
I suppose the seed was planted when I was a child. We were all enthralled with ghost stories. We would wonder if theses stories were true, or was it made up to keep us out of the abandoned house on the hill?
Fast-forward to my teen years. I'm living in an older house with a small second floor. The floor consists of three rooms, the blue room, the middle room and the yellow room. The blue room was my bedroom, the middle room was more of an office and storage area and the yellow room was a spare bedroom that we could never seem to get warm. No matter our efforts, when you walked in, you noticed a drop in temperature. Nothing ever happened to me while I lived there, but shortly after I move to Halifax, my mother had a visitor from a Faith healer. This man used energy healing to assist people in curing their ailments. After a walk through the house, my mother asked if he noticed anything. He then went on to explain that there is an elderly man sitting in the chair in the corner of the Yellow room. He doesn't really want to be there but he knows he has to stay. He also asked for a pair of wool socks. My mother did as he requested. When I would go home for visits I would walk up to my room, glance into the Yellow room to see the socks on the chair in the corner.
As it turns out, there was an elderly man who stayed at the house and was cared for by the owners as he was sick. I haven't found out if he died there but it does seem there is a bit of his energy left.
Another twist to the story happens a few years later. My mother has moved out and my cousin and her boyfriend moved in. My cousin told me of being woken up in the middle of a winters night to someone pounding on the walls on the outside of the house. One wall, then the other, then another, BANG, BANG, BANG! Her boyfriend went out to see who was there. Of course there was no one, but stranger still was the lack of footprints in the snow. No one would have been able to run around the house banging on the walls without leaving tracks.
I haven't been to the house in a few years, but will update the story if anything should happen.
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