Most years I am surprised to discover that I have happened upon something strange or uncanny to share in a Halloween post, and with a weirdly disengaged 2024 (primarily starting with my emergency eye surgery in April that saw me taking a long stretch off of work — a break which became a resignation — and a subsequent lack of interest in reading or interacting with people; I haven't even written here in months), I started the summer by forcing the issue with a "ghost walk" of nearby Castle Kilbride.
The description for this tour promised plenty of spooky stories and a "confirmed urban legend", but honestly, it was a little underwhelming. Most of our guide's stories were about strange occurences from earlier tours and paranormal investigations (which begs the question: Why on earth was there a first ghost walk if the building seems to have no long history of haunting?), and my favourite story didn't even happen at this site at all. To wit: While explaining that a local minister changed his mind about spending a night in the mansion — having vowed beforehand to prove there's no such thing as ghosts but refusing to say what might have happened to make him change his mind about sleeping there — our guide told us of another guide in a different city's ghost walk tour that had an unsettling experience of his own. Apparently, the night before this Daniel was set to host his first solo tour, he went to bed early, leaving his wife to finish up some knitting in the warm glow of their Christmas tree. Suddenly, their cat raced into the living room, yowled at the darkened window, and then ran up the tree; sending decorations flying as the tree crashed to the ground. After tidying up, the wife went up to bed, woke her husband to discuss the scene with him, and turned over to go to sleep. At some point in this winter's night (not a time of thunderstorms in these parts), Daniel was awakened by a flash of light outside the bedroom window, and in that light's bright glow, he watched as his sleeping wife levitated off the bed and spun towards him with an uncanny smile on her face. The light flashed again and his wife spun away once more. Another flash and his grinning wife was facing him anew; one final flash saw her spin away again. That was the end of the experience and Daniel had to wonder if it was a message from whoever (or whatever) haunted the site he was to lead a tour through the next day. With a sly grin, our own tour guide suggested that the local minister just might have had a similar experience the night before he had committed to sleeping in the attic of Castle Kilbride alone. (I will note that going on this nighttime tour with some of my favourite people was a nice experience, even if the castle didn't turn out to be all that creepy.)
The panicked cat from Daniel's experience put me in mind of two other animal-related stories I heard this year. The first story was told by a young woman, a friend of Kennedy's, who had a part-time job at the stable where her horse was boarding. As a lark, the barn's owner brought in an animal psychic, and as she was walking through the barn and, apparently, silently communing with the horses, the psychic suddenly turned to Kennedy's friend and asked, "Have you had some bad news lately?" The young woman was surprised and said, "Well, yes. I just learned that my mother's cancer has come back." The psychic nodded and said, "Yes, your horse knows. He keeps telling me, 'Sad. My mom's sad.'" And as uncanny as that statement was, the psychic then made everyone laugh when she said, "The people around here really need to start watching their language. These horses know all the four letter words and won't stop using them with me."
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| What a strangely appropriate picture to see on facebook |
The other story concerns Kennedy herself: While cooking dinner one night this summer, she dropped some shredded cheese on the floor and reflexively called her big dog, Bowser, over to clean it up. Bowser came and sniffed the cheese but turned and walked away again; he can be funny like that with soft foods. A short while later, Kennedy felt Bowser brush against her leg again, and when she turned to tell him he was too late — she had already picked up the cheese — she could see he was fast asleep on the couch; nothing had actually brushed against her. Nothing except maybe Kennedy's other beloved little dog, Peaches, who had unfortunately passed earlier in the year. Kennedy immediately knew that it had to have been Peaches — no shred nor crumb stayed long on the ground with that little dog on the job — and Kennedy felt immense joy with the encounter: she knew at that moment that Peaches had never left their home and it eased some of the grief Kennedy was still feeling about losing her. Here's the best picture I have handy of Kennedy with Bowser and Peaches:
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And Kennedy's experience reminds me of one more story that I heard some years ago: I have a friend who lives in Texas, and she had a beloved black cat named — fittingly enough — Spooky. Spooky was an indoor/outdoor cat, and when my friend was away from home for a week, she arranged for a neighbour to come by to fill Spooky's bowls and make sure he always had access to the garage. But when my friend returned home, she couldn't find Spooky anywhere; and as days went by with no sign of him, she began to fear for the worst. Being a religious woman, my friend prayed to God and Saint Anthony, and when she rose from her knees, she followed an inner compulsion to look once more for Spooky on a nearby dry creekbed. And there she found Spooky's body — decomposing from the neck down and being fed on by small creatures, but with his face intact and looking remarkably peaceful and like his own resting self — and although she knew she had walked and rewalked that creekbed every day for a week looking for Spooky, and though she could not explain his unsettling appearance, my friend knew that supernatural forces had led her straight to her beloved companion's remains and she was grateful to have resolution and an opportunity for closure and goodbyes. My friend knows that this reunion with her beloved Spooky, along with his perfect little face, was nothing less than a miracle.
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I've collected other animal-related stories over the years — from my great-grandfather's reverent horse to the ghost dog left behind in my sister-in-law's house by its previous owners — so I find something intriguing about the idea that animals may have a closer connection to the great unknown than us overthinking humans (and I also find it interesting that, in the end, a unifying theme presented itself for this post; perhaps there was no need to force the issue with a lame ghost walk when good stories tend to make their way to me unbidden).
My usual caveat: These stories are recorded, to the best of my recollection, as told to me; make of them what you will.
Happy Halloween!
Strange stories from previous years:
