It’s Halloween tomorrow and there sure are some fabulously decorated yards out there!
Halloween apparently originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts.
I’m thinking it was probably about the same time my dear old Celt ancestors invented Scotch — looking for something to drink around that bonfire — but I digress.
Not that I don’t believe in ghosts. I’ve lived in a couple of houses that definitely had harmless entities knocking about, and one that had a very dark, almost demonic feel at times.
Did any of those ghosts ever offer a cent towards the rent? No.
Earlier this week, I asked a few of my friends if any of them had any local spooky experiences they’d like to share with us, and a friend, former Winnipeg Rusalka dancer Mary Manzij, who reports she is a Ukrainian White Witch (the only daughter of an only daughter of an only daughter), and let me tell you, I sat at a Ouija board with her once and it wouldn’t shut up.
Manzij sent the following for us to ponder:
"When I was a teen, a group of us went to a friend’s (David) grandma’s old house in the North End. We thought it would be a hoot to have a seance, even though none of us had any idea what we were doing. Well… the table rocked that night… so hard… it lifted off the floor and kicked a non-believer (Chester) in the shin! He was squat-sitting beside us, watching to see if we were moving the (round) table…and it kicked him! We had flickering lights that night, along with lots of strange moans, groans, and then a lady’s voice, clear as a bell, say ‘David, do you know me?’ He looked around, of course we were all laughing. The table rose and thudded down, and again the voice said, ‘David, do you know me?’ "Dave turned kind of white and said, ‘Who the hell is this? Who’s doing this?’
"The lights went out, totally dark, seemed like forever. Then on. Then off. A candle on the table kept going out and lighting back up. We all took our hands off the table and it stopped shimmying. The voice never came back. The next week we were invited to Dave’s grandma’s for latkas. About six of us went and when we walked in we saw there was a new table.
I asked, "Baba, where did the round wood table go? It was lovely. When did you get this one?"
"Round table?" she replied. " Well my grandma had one years back but when we moved in we gave it to my brother. Since then we’ve always had this one."
"What year was that Baba?"
"Oh, let me think. About 1930 something."
Oh my.
Some of you will be "pffffffting" about now, but if you knew my White Witch friend as I do, and sat working a Ouija board with her as I did (I threw ours out when we got home), you would know she has no need to make spooky stuff up.
If she says it happened, it happened.
The Ouija Board? I decided to test her secretly. The plan: I’d ask a question she didn’t know the answer to, then just not move my hand. But then we all started chatting (there were four of us there), and I forgot. All of a sudden, the pointer on the board started moving. I wondered why she was moving it. I knew it wasn’t me. And the board spelled out the answer to the question I hadn’t asked and she didn’t know the answer to.
Things that make you go, YIKES!
The spirits we talked with that night through old Ouija spanned many centuries and some were Stephen King weird. She shooed those away.
Unforgettable freaky fun. Happy Halloween!
Comments and column suggestions welcome!
lmustard1948@gmail.com
