June 1970 - September 20 1970
British Columbia, Canada
February 1998
My husband, myself and our first born Sean Thomas rented and moved into a house on Hudson Street in the Marpole suburb of Vancouver. We were very excited because it had three bedrooms, a large kitchen and a fireplace (all for less than we were paying for a one bedroom apartment just a few blocks away). When we think back on the experience of picking up the keys from the landlady (she lived next door with her husband), she seemed very nervous and he was glaring at her like she might cause us to change our minds.
All went well for a number of months. Sure the baby would cry in the downstairs bedroom and we would get up to feed him only to find he had fallen back to sleep, but being first time parents we thought nothing of it. I saw a dark shadow slide up the wall in the small upstairs bedroom a couple of times but discounted it as the results of car lights in the alley behind the house. Friends would come home for a drink after an evening out and stop short at the door with a sudden remembered task or prior engagement. The one's that stayed rarely stayed for long but never commented on why until years later when we confided in them about the following events.
My sister came to visit us in July from out-of-town and stayed in the small back bedroom across from ours for about two hours. She moved downstairs to sleep on the couch because the crying child concerned her and she wanted to hold our new son for the first time if he woke up.
My husbands ten year old nephew came to stay with us for a weekend in August. I awoke to find him at the end of the bed shaking uncontrollably and crying. He pleaded with me "Please Aunt Cynthia don't make me sleep in that room." His eyes were huge and he kept glancing back frantically across the hall to the room.
We had to move out of the house the first week of September because my husband was expanding his business to Seattle WA. It just so happens, at that time, that a friend and colleague of ours found himself without accommodation. We had paid the rent on the house until the end of the month so we let him stay there.The following is what he told us.
Jim moved a mattress and a few personal items in the night we left for Seattle. He went to bed fairly early because he was taking over the running of the Vancouver side of our business and was a little stressed and tired. Jim awoke (he said his eyes slowly opened to complete consciousness) around 1:00 am. The hair on his head was straight up and felt electrified. His skin felt like it was moving. He also knew that someone was right near him and watching him sleep. He turned from lying on his right side to see behind him. There stood a large black shadow poised with an axe. Jim grabbed his clothes, ran down the stairs and jumped into his truck naked. He felt foolish the next day but did not return, nor did he tell us what happened until years later. When I went to returned the keys and collected my damage deposit from the landlady at the end of September, I thought what the hell I'll ask if the place is haunted. She immediately cried out in relief to her husband that she was right, not crazy, like he had maintained all these years. Apparently when they first bought the house she had had experiences too and had forced her husband to buy the place next door. Apparently after a little digging she found out that a recent widow had sold the house after the tragic drowning of her small son in a swimming pool in a local park. The widow immediately put the house up for sale and left to be with her family. The landlady was sure that the child was there still in search of his mother. She would hear it crying at night, her husband never did, and once saw a ghostly outline of a small child soaking wet and shivering near our son's bedroom door. After many failed attempts to sell the house, they finally decided to keep it as a rental. It is still there.