A book of verses underneath the bough, a loaf of bread, a jug of wine...

“Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along―the same person that I am today.”

Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

And so, at last, a sunny afternoon in Muskoka, a Coke, some hickory sticks, and a comic book.  It's been a very long time, but it's exactly the way it should be, and exactly the way it was. 

I'm ten again.

Thank you so very much, Karli.

- Sid

Ghost Story.

"Where are we staying in Muskoka again?"
"The Inn on the Falls, in Bracebridge."
"Thank you!"
(Is she going to Google it? I hope she doesn’t Google it...)
"Honey?  Why is our hotel listed on Ghostwalks.com?"

It’s a beautiful October afternoon as we pull into the parking lot of the Inn on the Falls, located in Bracebridge, Ontario. Autumn is perhaps the best time to visit Muskoka, and the leaves have just nicely started on their annual display of colour. We’re here for a couple of nights while I give Karli a quick overview of my childhood:  my parent's house, the original family settlement, the high school that I attended, and so on, along with just a general tour of the region. 

I’ve always liked the Inn on the Falls for its classic old-fashioned feel - the main building was built by stonemason John Adair in 1876, and the current owners have elected to maintain its traditional decor with antique furniture and paintings.  It's a bit worn around the edges, but it's a far more interesting location to stay at than one of the more modern hotels in the town.

Perhaps too interesting.  In addition to its other charms, the Inn on the Falls is haunted.

Popular culture has introduced a standardized set of horror tropes that are instantly recognizable, and the concept of the "poisoned hotel" is one of the standard slasher movie memes, as typified by the Bates Motel, the Overlook Hotel from The Shining, or the eponymous Hostel.  (The unfortunate typo on our reservation confirmation  - "The Maim Inn" -  sounds like an acceptable title for a new franchise for this list.)

The Inn on the Falls has been the site of a wide variety of ghostly sightings and mysterious events over its lifetime.  It's home to three ghosts, known as Bob, Sarah and Charlie,* who haunt different parts of the building, and Judge William Mahaffey, who purchased the house from Adair in 1877, has been seen walking six inches in the air over the floor of the pub.**

Radios have been known to play without even being plugged in, guests and staff have experienced cold spots in various locations around the inn, and people sleeping in Room 105 have smelled a wet dog in the night - and claimed to have felt its weight on the bed.

Fortunately, that's not the room that we have booked, but our two-level suite seems to have been designed for paranoia:  the closets extend far too far past their doors, with odd panels in them that seal inexplicable openings, and the stairwell to our bedroom is an ideal venue for glowing spectral manifestations in the middle of the night.

After checking in, we spend the rest of the day walking around town, and then visit my brother Harold and his wife Sue for dinner, returning to the inn at about ten.  It's a small business, and as such there's no front desk staff after 5:00, so we let ourselves in through the locked front door.

The Inn is completely silent. There are other cars in the lot, but the site includes a variety of outbuildings and extensions, so there may well not be anyone else staying in the main building with us. The dining room is dark, and the sitting room is lit by a single lamp in the front window.

After we go to our room, I slip downstairs to take some pictures of the foyer and the sitting room.  To my surprise, I'm a bit apprehensive, and the hair on my neck rises.  I feel as if I'm one of those movie characters who suddenly sees movement in a mirror only to turn around and see nothing behind them, nothing at all. I glance over my shoulder for a moment, then finish shooting and go back upstairs.

Oddly enough, the alarm goes off at 6:30 in the morning - eerie in the context of previous ghostly behaviour, but I'm still more likely to attribute it to previous guests than ghostly fingers.  I turn it off, and the phenomenon is not repeated - apparently ghosts do not choose to act as snooze buttons.

On the second night, Karli wakes up for a few minutes, and hears distant screaming in the night - or is it a dream?

As we pull away from the parking lot after checking out, Karli comments, "I'm looking forward to getting a good night's sleep tonight - I kept thinking about the ghosts..." 

I'm surprised by this (and a bit remorseful.) As I've said before, I'm a complete sceptic when it comes to the paranormal due to the complete lack of solid evidence.  Supernatural visits always seem to be a bit circumstantial - it's one thing to read that an employee has seen the spirit of a judge who's been dead for 104 years floating in the air over the flagstone floor, but it's not the same as showing me a picture of the magistrate on their iPhone. 

Hearing something go bump in the night is all very well and good, but I'd like to see what actually went bump.

- Sid

P.S. for more paranormal information on the Inn at the Falls, visit The Haunting Group website for the details of their investigation.

* One gathers that these are nicknames rather than the results of communication with the spirits via medium, Ouija board, or some similar means of contacting the afterlife.

** It's assumed that the judge is walking at the height of the original wood flooring which was removed during renovations at some point in time.

"If I could save time in a bottle..."

“Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well.”

George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

And what, you ask, was in the big bag behind my breakfast?  It contained a part of my birthday gift from Karli - and you'd have to know me extremely well to understand why she would give me this odd selection of common items.

For a long time when I was growing up, summers were an idyllic break from school and schedule. My father ran a semi-successful little construction business, and it was a given that we would act as his semi-paid* employees, but as the youngest of five (and quite admittedly the least interested) there was a period of time where I wasn't really expected to help shovel gravel or dig trenches. As such, the sunny Muskoka summers were very much my own time in the years before I started high school.

Because my siblings were off working for my father, I was pretty much on my own with my mother - we'd go for walks, or I'd play on my own. But once every couple of weeks or so I'd put on my worn canvas knapsack, climb onto my rusty fixed-gear bicycle, and head off to the Bent River General Store, located a few miles away on the highway.

The first part of the trip was always a little exciting - there was a long long hill that went from our house down to Lake Rosseau, and it was easy to build up a lot of speed on that hill. (It was a lot less fun coming back - one of the measures of summer for me was making the trip enough times that I built up the stamina to ride all the way up the hill on my return trip without having to walk my bike.)

Once at the store, I had a set shopping list.  I'd buy a Coke, a bag of hickory sticks, and some comic books.  We didn't have allowances or anything like that, but my mother would sometimes give me some money, or we'd collect empty bottles from the side of the road for the deposit.

The comic books that I purchased would probably be worth a reasonable amount of money right now if that youthful version of myself had somehow been able to put them in storage. In the 60s, both Marvel and DC had adopted the practise of selling three or four** comics in a bag for a few cents less than cover price in an effort to both increase sales of less popular comics and to reduce the number of returns from retailers.

The Bent River General Store sold Marvel Comics, and this was at the height of the Silver Age of comics, as the Bronze Age was just beginning. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were busily building on the foundations of the Marvel Universe that they had created in the early 60s, along with disciples like Steve Ditko, Jack Sinnott, John Romita Sr., John Severin, Roy Thomas, Archie Goodwin, and a host of other classic Marvel artists and writers.  As such, even a one-off comic guilty of poor sales at the time could easily have become a valuable collectable 45 years later.

After I'd made my purchase, I'd get back onto my bike, and start the trip home. There was a little isolated hill about half a mile along the road on the way back, where I'd run my bike down into the ditch and  lay it down in the tall grass on the other side.  I'd lie there in the sun, read my comics, drink my pop, and eat my hickory sticks. It's a treasured memory for me, one which has never lost its lustre as the years have gone by.

Tomorrow we're flying to Toronto, and after spending a few days there, we'll head up to Muskoka so that Karli can see where I grew up.  As part of that side trip, we'll be driving along the road that I would have ridden on those long lost summer days.  I've packed everything, and even if it's raining and we have to sit in the car at the side of the road, I have every intention of being a ten year old boy again for just a few minutes, with my comic book, my Coke and my snack.

What a brilliant and thoughtful gift to give to someone who has just turned 55.  Thank you, my love.

- Sid

 * This was a ongoing bone of contention.  My father maintained that after all, he was paying for food and a roof over our heads, whereas we always felt that we were saving him from having to hire workers who would have been considerably more demanding in terms of regular paycheques. Practice fell someplace between the two - we'd get paid now and then, but not really as much as if we weren't members of the family, and my father didn't end up charging us rent.

** I would have sworn that you could get two comics for 19 cents, but I cannot find one bit of documentary evidence that supports this belief.