The house I live in now was at one time a farm house, reported to be the only one in the area about 90 years or longer ago. The original owners (the farmer and his wife) built this house and an extra house next door that was built for the hired hands to lived in.

A neighbour who lives a few doors down the street told me her father built the house that she lives in. She was actually born in her house and is now in her late fifties or early sixties. It seems the farmer had died and the wife started selling off the farmland. That I could understand (a need for money), but she moved out of her home and into the hand house. Then she sold her home, doesn't that seem odd to you? I would think in your old age you would want to stay in your home. As a young child my neighbour remembers an old lady living in the hand house.

The farmhouse was sold to a two french men. From what I understand they were very seldom ever known to be sober. If you had seen some of the renovations in this house you would know in an instant that this was true. I don't think they ever heard the phrase: "Do it right the first time so you won't have to do it again. I won't go into all the details of what repairs I have done so far but I think this place will keep me busy for years to come. The French people sold the house to Arthur's Mother, he was eighteen at the time. Later Arthur's Mom sold the house to Arthur. There is a granny suite downstairs and she lived there until her death. I met Arthur's Mom and she was a very nice lady and I feel fortunate that I had the chance to meet her and get to know her.  She is missed and remembered fondly.

After her death Arthur had tenents for awhile in the basement granny suite. These were not very nice people and we were always having problems with them. Thankfully Arthur eventually had enough of the constant problems they caused and asked them to leave. After they moved out I realized we had another problem.

The very first thing I noticed was before they moved but didn't think much of it at the time. That was sometimes when I got up it the night to go to the bathroom I would think someone was in standing in the hallway in front of the bathroom door. I had to go back to the kitchen and turn on the stove light which would give me enough light to see if someone was there. There wasn't anyone there but a few times I had gone to the bathroom in the night and been surprised because the tenent from downstairs for some unknown reason had decided to use our bathroom instead his own. After that we started keeping the kitchen door locked. You really don't think about the possibly of someone standing in your way when you are sleepy, until you run into the feeling that someone is there. This continued to happen.

This is about the time I started doing renovations to the house. The people who owned the house before Arthur and his Mom had put a huge shelf above the fridge. The thing was really a pain to clean and I was forever climbing up there to dust it out. I just hated the darn thing. I had enough of it and moved the fridge out of the way. I pulled on the shelf to see if it was at all loose. It didn't budge even if I used all my weight. I tried for quite awhile and made no progress in taking it apart. I called my friend across the street to see if she was home, she was and I asked if she would mind coming over to help. We pulled and yanked on that ugly thing. We used hammers a prybar and still had one heck of a time trying to get it apart. The reason we had so much trouble with it was the nails were about four inches long, and hammered directly into the studs at the back of the shelf and on the side wall. Each piece that came apart was quite an accomplishment. My friend got a piece off and handed it to me. The way she handed it to me I saw there was a word carved into the end of it. I looked at it closer and saw that it was the word LIAR all in capitols. They had also carefully painted each carved letter with green paint. I had goosebumps and felt I had to get that damned thing out of the house, to me it felt like a curse. I know it makes no sense but that is exactly how I felt. Out to the wood pile it went right then and there. We got rest of it apart and had another suprise. The very top of the shelf against the ceiling was hanging down a bit but wouldn't come off. Up the ladder I went to see what the problem was. The top shelf was covering an open hole there was no ceiling. This part of the shelf was not nailed into place it was suspended by wires. Once we got this down we could see up inside the ceiling and saw that at one time walls had been moved. They had cut just below where the old walls were and started a new wall where ever they felt like it seemed. I was left with an unsettled feeling about the entire situation and wondered who the LIAR was and also what happened to him. Why him? I suppose it could be a female but I find males have the ability to be  dishonest more often than females.  No offence intended to any male readers.

We had bought a new deadbold for the back door after the tenents had moved out because they still had a key and came in one day while we were out and caused a lot of damage. I was quite surprised one day in the kitchen when I heard the back door slam open and someone run downstairs to the granny suite. I though how the heck did they get though that door when we have a brand new lock!  I had heard the exact sounds manytimes in the past when one of the tenents had come in.  I went out to the landing and the back door was still shut and locked. I check downstairs just incase but no one was there. I remembered another time,  Arthur came home from work he had complain loudly to me about something the tenents had done that was bothering him.  I asked him to quiet down because someone had come in a just before he got home.  He said that was impossible because he had passed them a while ago on his way home from work.  At the time I thought "Well I know what I heard."  Now I wondered if he had been right.

Something else I noticed happened Halloween night. I was handing out candy and so was my friend across the street. It was very warm that evening and she was staying out on her poarch and asked for me to come over. Arthur took over handing out the candy and I went across the street to my friends. As we we chatted and she handed out treats I noticed a lot of kids were by passing my house. I mentioned it my friend and she said was aware of it. I started yelling across the street to kids to point them in the direction of the house. I said chocolate bars were being handed out there and that there were lots left. Some of the kids did go up to the door but most of them totally ignored me and continued on their way. How often do kids pass up the chance to get free chocolate bars? My friends daughter told me it was because the kids in the neighbourhood thought our house was haunted.  I told her she was very brave when she went over to the house to get some chocolate for herself.

Next thing that happened was that I was in the kitchen doing the dishes and the kitchen door was open. As I was doing the dishes I realized I could hear whispering. I stopped doing the dishes and looked over towards the kitched door. The whispering seemed to be coming from there or more specifically the landing that goes down to the granny suite. It sounded like more than one person whispering, but they were both whispering at the sametime over top of each other. I walked towards the doorway as I was drying my hands off on a towel and stood there. I don't know if it was because I walked over to the area or because the whisperers realized I could hear them but it seemed to get much louder. I shut the kitchen door. You wouldn't think that closing the door wouldn't make a difference but it did. This happened countless times usually because the dogs had been out and the kitchen door was left open. The whispering itself is unintelligible. Sometimes they were louder than other times but still not loud or clear enough to comprehend. I found it very annoying and kept the kitchen door closed most of the time.

Eventually I asked Arthur what was up with the whispering out on the landing? I definately caught his attention with that question. He was quiet a moment and then smirked. He said he had been hearing the whisperers since he moved in when he was eighteen years old. His solution to the problem was to run an electric fan in his room when he went to sleep because it drowned them out. His bedroom is a few rooms away from the landing so I thought he must hear them louder than I did. I asked if he understood anything that was being said. He said he gave up trying because once in a while he would felt he was on the verge of understanding, but then it would be gone and it was just whispering again. By the way the electric fan is still turned on everynight.

Quite often my friend Diane hung-out with us on weekends and if it got late she would stay over night. She would let our dogs out sometimes during her visits. I noticed that every time she came back in she would talk very loudly to the dogs, get them in the main part of the house and then quickly shut and lock the kitchen door. The fact that she was talking so loud to them was what got my attention. She isn't usually loud when she talks. On subsequent visits I noticed she acted the same way everytime she came in from the landing and that she seemed nervous. I didn’t say anything to her but I told Arthur how she was acting.

Next time she was over we had dinner and I let the dogs out afterwards and got busy doing the dishes. Our German Shephard started barking and Diane let the dogs back in. I was still at the sink which is just to the right of the kitchen door, as she was letting the dogs in she started talking really loud to them. I though she looked spooked. She locked the outside door and quickly came up the stairs from the landing and almost slammed the kitchen door before she locked it. At this point I said to her: "What's up Diane, are the whisperers being too loud for you?" She stood stock still, looked confused and said: " What......how is it you know what I hear?" It's odd to have to explain to your friend: "Okay Diane this is the thing, Arthur and I can hear people whispering on the landing, even though we can't see them." She looked so relieved!

I asked her to describe what she heard and it was exactly the same as what Arthur and I hear. Two people whispering hurriedly like they are excited and talking over each other. No definable language just a mess of whispers garbled together.

A friend of Arthurs came over to have a couple of beers watch the game kinda deal. He wasn’t in the house five minutes and he changed his mind about having a beer, asked for a glass of water and left. We found his behaviour very strange and we both wondered if the whisperers were responsible. I would have asked him about it if he visited a few times and acted the same but he hasn't been back except when we have a bunch of people over. We haven't had odd reactions when we have a party ofcourse general party noises would drown out whispering.

Another odd thing that frequently happened was that I kept finding pennies on the floor. I’m sure now and then a stray penny could have escaped from Arthur’s pocket, but I was finding them all the time all over the place. After vacuuming through the house I wash and wax the floors once a week. I can’t tell you how many times after cleaning the floors I would find a penny laying about. It wasn’t there before so where did it come from? Sometimes it was one, sometimes more. Within a few days I had collected a pile of pennies. I counted them and there were about fifty five. I lost count of how many after that because I started putting them in the change jug. The last time I picked up one of these stray pennies I said out loud: "If you’re going to have me bending over to pick money up off the floor could you at least make it worth my while and leave Loonies (1 dollar) or Toonies (2 dollars) instead."

That was the end of the pennies until the next week on laundry day. I was changing the sheets on the bed when I stubbed the bottom of my slipper on something on the floor so I looked to see what it was. It was a Loonie. I put it on the night table and got on my hands and knees to look under the bedskirt to see if there was any more money on the floor. I could see clearly under the bed and there was nothing else. As I was putting clean sheets on the bed I stubbed my foot on something again. I looked and this time I found a Toonie. Where the heck had that come from? Since then the amount of change I find is not extreme.

Again I was up in the night to go to the bathroom and had the feeling someone was standing in my way. I thought it was a man but then again I figured it was a left over memory of the tenent. The next time Diane was over though I asked her if she had ever felt a presence that seem to be in the way. She said: "You mean the guy beside the closet?' Me: "What closet?' Her: "Beside the bathroom door?" Me: "Yep, that would be the one!" She also thought it was a male!

This may sound silly but Diane and I burned candles that night and I told the presence he had died and it was time to go into the light to loved ones and relatives that were waiting for him there. Diane got upset that the whisperers out on the landing were not happy about this. I was hoping they would go also and opened the kitchen door to repeat what I had said. I was also thinking, well look at this, Diane didn't even want to admit she could hear the whispering and now she's telling me the whisperers aren't happy! Quite the turn of events!

Next occurance, I was in the kitchen getting some pop out of the fridge and heard the back door open. I paid attention and didn’t move a muscle or even breathe. It sounded as if someone came in, left the outside door open, slammed the inner wooden door against the wall and ran down the stairs. Also it sounded as if they grabbed on to the hand rail and the hardware that holds the railing in place made a click sound. I checked downstairs again from one end of the apartment to the other and no one was there although I didn’t feel as though I was alone. This time I went as quickly as possible up the stairs and shut and locked the kitchen door.

The weirdest thing about those noises aside from the fact that they shouldn't happen was that when tenents were living there they removed the hand rail to get their bed down stairs and never put it back. I searched for it to put it back in place but never found it. Strange, did they take it with them when they moved?  I guess you never know when a spare hand rail might come in handy.

The next day there was a repeat of this performance. This time I opened the kitchen door and yelled down the stairs. "I know what game you are playing and I'm not interested!" That was the last time it happened.

I looked for and recieved some advice from others that were interested in what was going on in my home.  What follows is pretty much what I was told. This haunting is unusual because more than one person is hearing or feeling the same thing. Maybe because the spirits are strong or because of the location of the  house. I was given a warning to proceed with caution and not to do anything that could make the situation worse. For instance if I used a Ouija board to try to get them to tell me what they wanted I could unintentionally invite in some other and possibly not so benign entities. I was also asked if I ever tried taping the voices.

How silly of me. I have one of those sound sensitive tape recorders for meetings and I never even thought of the idea. I would definately have to give that a try, although if I actually caught them on tape I figured it would really scare the heck out of me.  I asked Diane to stay over the next weekend so we could try it out and see what would happen.  She said she would be very interested and would definately be over.

To be continued...