Location: Dorval, Quebec, Canada
The following report was sent into our website by Meema on May 27, 2010:
“As a preface, all I am about to relate, strange as it is, actually happened. We are a family who seek always for rational explanations, and will consider everything possible, especially with a physicist in the family, and our own enquiring minds. A strange sequence of events began several years ago, with my waking in the early hours to hear what appeared to be someone spinning a dime or other small coin in a glass dish. With one husband and two young sons and absolutely no reason for them to be doing such a thing just before dawn broke, I put it down to insects somewhere, and forgot about it. But it would wake me every time, and after creeping out to the two other bedrooms, would find only small children, flushed in a deep and peaceful sleep, and return, perplexed. And shortly after this came the feeling of illness, every time I went down into the basement, which has a finished playroom, workshop and laundry area. And at one point, I asked my husband to have a look at the furnace, to make sure we were not having a problem with escaping carbon monoxide – the oil company had already done an annual check, but I felt there was an explanation for this mix of nausea and dread. As he walked to the furnace, I stood, legs straddled in the doorway between playoom and laundry, when something unseen punched me, hard, in the solar plexus, and reduced me to my knees, gasping for breath. My husband picked me up and we almost fled up the stairs.
Next came the footsteps. The younget son became worried about footsteps coming from the upstairs bathroom and entering the oldest son’s bedroom when no one was in save for himself. We’d never gone through any childish frights before, and as much as I tried to explain gently the oncoming winter’s contracting carport sounds, he was adamant about what he had heard. I returned one day from my teaching position, flopped in a chair beneath this bedroom, and distinctly heard someone stagger out from the bathroom and enter said bedroom, flinging him or herself onto the mates’ bed. This bed had two storage drawers beneath it, with little handles which chinked loudly if someone threw themselves onto the bed. They chinked, loudly. Thinking a son was home from school and perhaps unwell, up I went, only to find an empty house. And to feel distinctly concerned. Footsteps began on the stairs afterwards, carpeted though it is. There was a sense, nothing I can describe otherwise unfortunately, of the house being “busy”, as though there were many people here. When you turned a full attention to this area of strangeness, it closed off, and we all felt we were imagining things. And then the shadows began. Our television was in the playroom downstairs, and for weeks I had been catching black shadows from the corner of my eye. This all happened before the internet, before any mention of those two words “Black Shadows”, incidentally. And one evening, my husband, down in the playroom and sitting opposite, started to laugh a little, and said “So you are seeing them too?”. He had been seeing them for some six weeks. My sighting was of possibly one tall and very thin black matte being who disappeared near the door frame. We put it down to anything we could think of – eye fatigue, fluorescent lights, something outside, although nothing quite rang true.
And then the light fixture in that particular corner began going berserk. Bulbs blew almost daily, and my husband checked the wiring for a possible problem, but everything was in order. We didn’t connect the shapes and the outlet at that time, and perhaps still cannot. But it happened.
We had a toy cupboard downstairs for the youngest son, who came screaming up one morning, saying two black shapes had come at him. We were a pretty sensible bunch, agreeing not to say anything about these strangenesses to the children at all. And then two shapes followed him into the upstairs bathroom, and he came out in a panic. And then the cigarette smoke at night became overpowering, followed by cold and icy perfume scent of the sort I did not know. We checked outside, and even asked neighbours to refrain from smoking near our open bedroom windows! They actually wondered what we were talking about!
And one evening, I decided to go downstairs to watch some television, with a “just dare” attitude to whatever was happening in our home. I managed to sit through a half-hour of PBS as something unseen appeared to walk between myself and the television, as though in a terrible agony, wringing its hands. The feeling in the air was so palpable, so real. Nothing was visible, but I could see from whence it started and where it stopped and retraced itself. I made tea, determined to put this down to imagination, went back downstairs, but was up in a matter of seconds. Something was definitely there. I would rather have seen it at that point, than not. At least I could have known what we were dealing with. I had no idea to whom to turn for any sort of help – we’re not religious people, and I felt that wouldn’t have helped anyways. Next came something quite startling. I was sitting on the sofa in the front room talking to my husband, saying that I thought it was time for the fixture on the back stairs to be changed, when we heard a strange scraping noise before I had finished the sentence. We rushed to the kitchen – and saw on the back stairs, the fixture, hanging down by its wires, swinging against the stucco wall. Sightings of black shapes had begun to come upstairs now. As I played the piano one sunny morning, a shape appeared to my right and moved quickly behind me. With a large mirror over the piano, I finally expected to see reflected what had been living here with us, and was even more frightened when nothing appeared. A shadow figure, matte black, began to appear behind our eldest son now. He was completely unaware of this and laughed it off, but I had a few more milliseconds to observe it when it followed him around.
I wrote down other details and filed them somewhere – but these are the main strangenesses. And it ended abruptly as well. One night, after watching a film, my husband and I went to bed, and I lay there in the dark, worrying about it all, when something patted me fairly forcefully on my hip. There was no doubt in my mind that this was a kindly sort of pat, to say “Don’t worry – it will be alright”. I murmured something to my husband, who, I was alarmed to suddenly see, was on his side with arms outstreched far away from me. And at that moment came four of the most insistent knocks, loud and demanding, that we had ever heard. All four of our family met on the landing, for that is where they came from, and of course, we could discover no reason nor method, nor person who would have done this. At just after 2am, we looked at each other – and then my husband said the stranget thing – he said “I think it has gone. It was saying good-bye”. We returned to our beds, slept, and found that he had spoken the truth, for we had no further disturbances or mysteries of any kind.
I have no idea what we went through, or why. I think our lives are a little richer to have experienced this of course, but I really would like to know what this was about. A mind can formulate all sorts of reasons from ghosts, poltergeists, time travellers in today’s parlance of course………. but all of these events happened, and there were often more than one witness as well. The house has been calm and welcoming since the departing summons as well, and there is only a feeling of peace and rest here. There is no more cigarette smoke, nor the beautiful perfume in the night. However, I would never, ever, wish this back, although it does provide the idea that we are not alone, and that our view of life is an extremely narrow one. And for that I am eternally grateful.”
The following update was sent into our website by Chris on June 8, 2010:
“Our “troubles” left with four sharp knocks in the middle of the night, but we will always wonder what had happened in this quiet house, built in 1949. I think it makes for interesting reading, and similarities between experiences may prove to help investigation. Sometimes, I feel all of this business is associated with electricity, but I don’t know how. I do know that where we saw the black matte shapes, we experienced blown-out bulbs and flashing lights, and then at the top of the stairs, on the same electrical circuit, the tumbling-out of the fixture for absolutely no apparent reason. After those four imperious knocks, everything returned to normal, no more blown bulbs, secure fixtures, etc.”
Michelle McKay Paranormal 