Dufferin Avenue

I live in one of the oldest incorporated cities in canada, founded by loyalists. My City is not estranged from despair what with being a city upon the harbor that has seen many fatalities and lonely hearts waiting for the loves of their lives to return. My City has also been victim to a fire that has wiped out the entire portion of our uptown area. So it's no small wonder that 80% of the homes here are several 100 years old.

With that being said, it should come to no surprise that I have lived in many "haunted" houses. For as long as I can remember I've been hypersensitive to the paranormal. I've had psychics tell me I in my last life was a psychic who used my abilities selfishly so as she explained it, (remarkably correct I might add) my abilities in my past life were like a running tap, meaning I could use it whenever I wanted, and unfortunately in this life my tap only leaks every once in a while. I have dreams that turn into events or conversations weeks or years later, and I also feel emotions of certain energies around me.

When I was eight my family and I had moved into a duplex that was owned by a pair of rich 80 year old brothers as an escape from their wives, they'd call it. We rented the attic, the top floor, the workshop and the basement. We moved in february after a severe ice storm that put my city in pause, so feeling cold in that house only seemed normal. The first night I was setting up my books and toys in my new room when I heard my hangers in my closest move by themselves and stop as soon as I looked at them. I had hung a grocery bag on my door handle for junk and when I turned around to put trash in it the bag had been taken off the door knob and laid on the floor, ends tied. I didn't think much of it at the time, I never felt threatened.

Years passed in that house and I always saw flashes of light walk across my hallway, footsteps at night on the stairs and attic, my back door rattling when there was no wind and whispers. I felt several spirits in that house, one mainly in the washroom. I always felt the presence of an older woman who seemed very lonely and upset. When I would be in there, I would find my eyes tearing up in sadness for no apparent reason, even when I was the happiest I could be.

My little sister was born when I was twelve, I took another bedroom (for about a week) on my first night in that room that was seldom used. I felt a tingling sensation in my toes that coursed through my body almost feeling as though I was paralyzed. When I felt someone sit on my bed. I could feel that this presence was not that of the woman I always felt, she was comforting. This presence who I always assumed was named ray seemed not to be evil, but frustrated and a trickster. The cupboards in the kitchen would be open etc. But one day ray got angry. A friend of mine was with me in the kitchen, and was walking by my cats water dish, when from two feet away from her feet, the dish exploded with the force of it being thrown against the wall without ever being touched.

We had to move from that home when I was sixteen due to the death of the home owners, when my skeptical parents began to experience things. When packing up the attic my mother felt a hand press on her shoulder and no one was home, footsteps on the stairs and a goodbye whispered as she left. I never felt comfortable in that house especially in the attic, kitchen and the bedroom I stayed in that night...

But I did find out that there was an old lady who had lived in our home before us, who had died in the bathroom. And there was a ray that had also lived there as well. When we moved that day I thought that my ghost stories would end... I couldn't have been more wrong.