My previous blog entry on a spooky theme concerned a ghost I couldn’t see. Today’s entry is the polar opposite: I saw something that wasn’t there … anymore.
I grew up going to Muskoka, Ontario, Canada for the summers. My family had a cottage there on the lake and before you get any grand ideas the cottage was pretty much well-loved and beat all to pieces. Pine needles stuck out from between the ceiling boards in the bedrooms and every cupboard door had a corner nibbled out of it to make an escape route for one of the numerous hungry chipmunks that roamed freely about the place. But we loved it, and since I went up to the cottage every summer, it was my home.
We also had access to an old wooden runabout boat, which my sister Boo-Boo could drive. I never learned, mostly because it was so creaky and old that trying to drive it made me crazy. The gearshift came up through a slot in the floor, and you had to press your right foot against it to keep the gearshift in place while the boat was running. The throttle was a chrome handle on the steering wheel and it liked to stick, too, so if you weren’t paying attention and you turned the boat hard right the accelerator went right along with the turning wheel and suddenly you were going right really FAST.
Anyway, so the story goes: my sister Boo, my cousin Nancy, and I were crossing the lake to visit a friend. We were crossing the main channel and right in front of us was the old lake steamer Segwun. Originally there were about a dozen lake steamers cruising up and down the lakes delivering mail, but the other eleven blew over, burned, or sank at some point over the past 100 years. Only old faithful Segwun keeps on plugging away. If you go to Muskoka, she’s still there, and I encourage you to go for a ride and see traveling the way it used to get done before they invented roads.
So there we were, crossing the lake, and as we crossed the Segwun’s wake, we got bounced around a bit and I looked up and realized that if I had been a passenger on the Segwun 100 years ago and looked to my left I would have seen the old Beaumaris Hotel still standing on the bluff where it had stood until 1947 when it burned to the ground before I was born.
So, I looked left and there it was.
I remember thinking: Holy crap, there it is! And I was amazed because to my recollection I had never even seen a picture of the old Beaumaris Hotel before, I had only heard stories about it from my grandparents generation. I know no one ever mentioned the long rows of dormer windows I saw or the boardwalks along the shore or the pennant that was snapping in the wind from the single tower. I also knew that I was going to lose the image of the hotel as soon as I blinked and so of course, I did blink and Poof! It was gone, just like that.
This time my cousin Nancy caught the surprised look on my face and she asked me: What did you see? And I stammered: I just saw the old hotel, the old Beaumaris hotel.
She laughed and told me to have another beer but she changed her mind when I pointed out something that none of us could have known and that was where the hotel was located because I saw the hotel standing further down along the shore where the golf pro shack was instead of on the shore where everyone always said the hotel had been. When I went back and asked my grandfather about the location he confirmed that where I had seen it was correct and that in general people were wrong about where it had once stood.
11 comments:
Martha, your story gave me the shivers.
I've never had a similar experience, but a friend swears she was Marie Antoinette's dressmaker, and that she was on the guillotine with her when she was executed.
Thanks, Karen! Shivers tells me I've done my job.
Past life experiences are an amazing idea. Did your friend remember any details? (not particularly gory, just curious)...
Very cool, Martha. And what a beautiful old place!
Yes, she had lots of details, both from the guillotine and from the dressmaking. She was a dressmaker herself for 20 years, and she claimed some of her inspiration from her past life. All I know is that she was tremendously talented.
Martha, you have all the fun. I love these stories!
I saw a lot of this type of hotels on the East Coast on our trip to Maine last year. They all looked like something out of Stephen King's The Shining and I recommend staying in one of them just to test out the atmosphere.
And yes, I do seek out the fun. I figure that's why I'm working!
Oooh, cool! (And yes, reincarnation/past life stuff has always been interesting to me too!)
Martha, I loved your story. It sounds like you have wonderful memories of your time spent there. Of course your vision of the hotel gave me shivers.
Old hotels are one thing but I'd never go into an old jail or insane asylum like Tamara did. That's taking it a bit too far.
Martha -
I wonder whether there were any ghosts in that hotel? I mean, did the guests reappear, too?
I actually took a training once on how to do past life regressions and I've regressed several people. No one was Marie Antoinette's dressmaker, though! Most had boring mundane lives until they died.
Hi, Gina. Other than the movement of the pennant over the tower, I don't recall seeing any other movement. Really and truly, it was over the minute I blinked. I didn't see any other boats on the water, though, now that I come to think of it, just the hotel and it was in color, too, just like life.
Post a Comment