Peek A Boo, I See You

Lisa Green grew up on the Sunshine Coast in beautiful British Columbia. Along with her brother Dean, step-father Alex, and mother Jenny they'd recently moved into a modest 2-bedroom, 2-level home on Chaster Rd. Not too far from schools and amenities, it was a wonderful new place to call their own.

Lisa recalls that most of the activity seemed to happen around her—she was a shy 13-year-old girl who liked to spend most of her time in her bedroom reading. It wasn't long before things started to happen. One evening Lisa went to bed just after 8. Curled under her blankets nervously, since moving in she'd sensed something wasn't right, always feeling like someone was behind her, or watching her every move. Her bedroom seemed to be a hotspot for activity. She fell asleep, but was woken up later that evening. She looked around her bedroom not daring to move the blankets from her almost covered face.

“The hair on the back of my neck stood up,” she remembered. “ It's an awful feeling when you know someone is watching you but you can’t see them. It really messes with your rational mind. I looked at my closet, two white folding metal doors. I watched the left one slowly slide open, and a moment later the right followed. I couldn't move or scream out, I just watched a moment later as the doors closed.”

“It was almost like whatever it was, wanted me to know it were there. I got the impression it was a man, and my instinct told me he wasn't kind. He liked to scare me. So I would soon find out!” Lisa tells me this became a nightly event. Her family were not the only people to witness the activity. A friend of the family had come to visit one evening. “As always our friends just opened the door and hollered hello. Jason pulled into the driveway, he looked up into the living room window, and saw my mother walking past. He walked in and called out his hello like always."

“I knew the moment I walked in that something was off,” he explained. "It was like the whole house seemed cold, still, but in an unnatural way. Even Jenny’s birds seemed quiet, which was odd as they loved to make a racket when someone walked into the house.” He got to the top of the stairs and called out Jenny’s name. He went through the house. “It really hit me, that I was alone, yet I knew what I’d seen. It scared me so badly that I refused to visit without calling ahead first.”

Doors would open and close, strange smells, and names being whispered in your ear. Things vanishing, and that feeling that someone was always walking behind you, especially when you were going up or down the staircase. Lisa told me. “I remember hating the basement you always felt like someone was standing there watching you as you loaded the washer, and it was always so cold down there, even with the wood stove going full force.”

One thing Alex still remembers was the sound of footsteps. "First the basement door would open then close then heavy footsteps up the stairs, but when they got to the top and we would all glance at the staircase no one would be there.” Lisa and Dean remember one evening around ten, they could smell turkey cooking by the bathroom door. No one was cooking in the house and there was no smells coming from outside.

Jenny's husband Alex made the mistake of taunting the spirits exclaiming he didn't believe in ghosts. ”I actually said that out loud!” Alex laughs now, but that night he found himself pulled from the bed by his feet. “I’m a big guy, 6’2, 210 pounds. Whatever did it dragged me right out of bed. I woke up on the floor.”

“Other nights something would pinch my toes if they weren't under the blankets. One of the most frightening experiences happened on a Sunday right before church, I came out of our bedroom to ask where my favorite tie was, my mouth dropped open. You had a clear view of the living room from the hallway. I looked up and froze, mouth dropping open. A beautiful young woman in a long white period dress sat on our sofa. I wonder if perhaps my wife's taste in furniture had attracted the ghost. Jenny loved Victorian furniture. The ghost sat staring forward. She was very young, pretty, her hair pinned up under a small lace bonnet. She stood, turned towards me. I could see her as plain as day,” Alex recalled. "The unsettling thing was from about the knees down... nothing. She took a few steps towards me, I blinked and she was gone. You can't argue with that! The place was, is still haunted to this day. The activity seems to be less now that the kids are gone but we still know we aren't alone.”

Not long before leaving for University, Lisa had gotten home late one evening from a friend's. Her mother and father worked late hours and wasn't home yet; her brother was at a friend's next door for the evening. It was cold and wet out and Lisa needed to warm up.

“I jumped into the shower.” Not a minute after she turned the water on did she hear someone knocking on the door. "It was weird, because no one ever knocked.” But she climbed out, leaving the water running, and she headed down the stairs. She was half way down when she heard three loud knocks. By the time she got to the door and turned on the light there was no one there. “I was a little nervous, opening the door when I was along, but I figured maybe I’d accidentally locked the door.”

“Thinking too much scared me when I was alone in the house so it was best to just ignore the strange things, almost like if I didn't provoke them they would leave me alone. I was halfway up the stairs when the knocking started again. This time I ran to the door. Maybe it was my brother and his friends. I opened the door this time expecting to catch someone. I pulled the towel tightly around me and stepped outside. I glanced around the corner into the open garage, nothing. I walked around the side of the house. Nothing. I was pretty angry now, fuming in fact. I turned the handle of the front door and nothing.”

“It wouldn't turn—it was locked which was impossible because it was an old handle and you had to manually push the knob in and turn it to lock it. I had done no such thing! I walked quickly to the garage and tried the side door; it was locked too. I remember trying not to panic but inside I was screaming. It's the ghost, I know it.” Lisa tried several lower windows but nothing would open.

“By this time I was really freaked out. Not just because I knew the ghosts were playing games with me but because I was standing in a towel at 10 PM at night and there were other things to be afraid of: cougars bears, coyotes. I went back to the front door. I glanced up, my bedroom was located above the front door. My light was on, which was strange because I always turned off the lights before leaving a room. I stepped back from the door and looked up... The man I'd sensed in my room before, his head tilted downwards. He had a scruffy dark beard, thick hair tied back, his expression was blank. Well that was all I could take. I tried to scream but couldn't. I just stood there frozen for several minutes. I was just about to run to the neighbor's house when a car pulled into the driveway.

Lisa remembers rushing at the car. “My uncle Mark grabbed me. I tried to explain what was happening but couldn't get the words out.” She sat in the car while the Mark went to check the house out.

“I was so scared. I watched him open the door and my mouth dropped open. I knew it was locked. I'd tried several times to open the door. I looked up at my window; the figure was gone. Mark came out and escorted me into the house. He was so concerned for me, he even waited until my mother got home. Neither of us said anything to her.” Lisa laughed, "At least one of the ghosts had been nice enough to turn the shower off for me.”

Jenny and Alex still live in the family home today—the ghosts are still there but less active. Could the past imprint on a home? Or perhaps it was the land that they clung to, the last and fading memories of a life lived so many years ago.