The Olde Angel Inn

In 2004, my wife and I were at the (now discontinued) One Minute Film Festival in Toronto, Ontario, where we had a couple of video entries up for public adoration. While our videos garnered no awards, I was fortunate enough to win a draw and received two tickets to the Shaw Festival Theatre in Niagara on the Lake, Ontario. My wife and I booked this for the following summer to see the play, You Never Can Tell.

As the time drew nearer I had to select accommodations (not included in the prize). Niagara on the Lake has quite a few Victorian era hotels that are quite extravagant and I am told are worth the money. Influenced by my Dutch heritage, however, I was looking for something a little less expensive. I stumbled upon the website for the Olde Angel Inn, their rooms were much cheaper and they had a room available for the night I needed.

There are only five available guest rooms in the Olde Angel Inn. They are all on the second floor above the restaurant and bar (I didn't sample the bar but the food is quite good). You are given a key to your room and one to the door downstairs because once the restaurant is closed for the night you are on your own, the staff does not remain. We stayed in the Colonel's Suite; in the "Irish Fertility Bed" (I think that name might have something to do with the bed's incredibly small size). We went to bed around midnight.

At around 2:00 AM I was awoken by a bang downstairs. I assumed that it was a late guest trying to check in. That is impossible at the Inn because if you are late you are locked out and there is no staff available to accommodate you. The first bang was followed by another bang then more of them. It became louder and LOUDER in rapid succession. There was then a very loud CRASH and the sound of the splintering of wood. This was followed by another series of bangs but they started to fade in volume. BOOM, boom, boom, boom, boom until the sound faded away completely. I was sure that something "big" had happened downstairs. Maybe people had broken in and were wrecking the place; I was not sure. I did have it in the corner of my mind that this may have been a ghostly occurrence.

 In either case I was not going to investigate.

My wife still seemed to be asleep so I did not disturb her. In my case I could not go back to sleep. My mind was full of questions and beside that the bed was so small that I was hanging on for fear of falling out anyway.

Twenty minutes later, there was again, a loud BANG. The exact same sequence played out. The bangs, the splintering of wood and then the trailing off of the sounds were all repeated the same way they happened the first time. My wife said, "Did you hear that?" I said yes and then asked if she heard the first cacophony. She had heard it.

I told her that maybe someone was locked out but she wasn't buying that. We both then admitted that we thought it was due to some ghostly agency. I don't know when we fell asleep but it was not a long time before morning came.

I was still trying to rationalize things so, to test my "person locked out theory", I went downstairs and let myself out. I pretended to be locked out and pounded on the door and shook the door in its frame. I then let myself in and shoved the door closed as hard as I could. I then stomped up the wooden stairs and entered my room where my wife was looking at me quizzically. She said, "Was all of that noise you?" I admitted that it was and asked her if that sounded like the sounds from the night before. She said, "absolutely not."

The Olde Angel Inn restaurant does not open for breakfast so we walked to another establishment. When we returned a woman was in the Inn restaurant cleaning it. I asked her if she found anything broken, to which she said no and asked me why. I told her about the noises and the splintering wood. She said nothing was broken and that she had only been working there a few months and heard enough tales about weird goings on. She did not want to hear more.

Later in the day I learned from others about the sad tale of Captain Swayze. He was killed in the cellar by the invading Americans during the war of 1812. It is said that he still appears in ghostly form, usually in the washrooms (which are in the cellar).

The American soldiers broke into many places that day and routed the inhabitants of the homes and businesses before burning most of the buildings to the ground. A terrible snowstorm arose and scores of the inhabitants of Niagara on the Lake froze to death that night. I wonder if the sounds my wife and I heard were a repeat of the soldiers breaking down the door all those years ago.

For anyone interested, Niagara on the Lake is a great little tourist town located where the Niagara River empties into Lake Ontario. I highly recommend you visit if you are nearby. Here are links to Niagara on the Lake, the Olde Angel Inn and to Captain Swayze.

The Man From The Picture

I have always been a skeptic about the existence of what people call ghost or duppies... Until I had my own experience.

I grew up in a common Jamaican family setting where I lived with my grandmother, an aunt, mother and brother. In Jamaica the existence of spirits is something strongly endorsed by most. Especially the people of old.

My story starts one hot summer night and if you live or ever been to Jamaica you know how hot it can get in the summer. A mere fan would not suffice. As a result of this I had to leave my window open and pull my curtain apart so I could let in as much of the cool air as possible from outside. Now my window has a passage on the outside of it and that passage is secured by a metal grill. The only way for someone to gain access to the passage was to either break in or

you would have to been given a key.

So I went to bed the usual time a girl my age would. During the night I suddenly awoke from my sleep. As I lay there I looked out my windows and what I saw I could not believe. There standing at my windows was a tall elderly man (about in his 60s). Till this day I never forgot look on his face. His face had a stern look... The one you would get from your principal if you were sent to the office for misbehaving. His hands were folded behind his back which would be appropriate for that stern look he had on his face. He looked very real except for the fact that I know he did not belong there and he did not look like your typical break-in -your-house kind of guy. His skin complexion was fair as if he was of a mixed race. His hair was golden. The colour a blonde would have when their hair greyed.

The typical Jamaican is all negro so. What was this man doing standing at my window, looking down at me as if I had just committed the most heinous crime?

After taking in this sight for what seemed like an hour I threw my sheet over my head and laid there trembling until I didn't know what time I fell asleep.

The description of the man I saw at my windows would describe someone closely related to my great grandmother as she is what you consider in Jamaica "high colour". My great grandmother's father was a half white European and she often told us stories about him and her life as a child growing up.

So I woke up the next morning and couldn't wait to tell someone of what I had experience the night before. As soon as I gave the last description of the man at my window my grandmother said to me "oh you saw Jack lastnight." WTH!...Who is Jack. She told me she was going to look for something and show me. Minutes later she came back with this picture in hand. In this picture there was a tall man whose appearance was exactly the same as the man I saw at my window. I just broke down in tears bawling. I had had my first ghost experience.

I later found out that "Jack" was my great grandmother's father and he was buried just topside our house on some other family land. Till this day I have never forgotten the image of the man I woke up to standing at my window. Every time I remember it's like I saw it yesterday andguess who is still a little

skeptic? Lol

Evil Waitress Entity

I've been all around the world; I love to travel. Ever since I was a baby I have been traveling... (when I was 3, I encountered an entity in Belize). Just recently I went to Jamaica and encountered an entity on a cruise ship with my boyfriend.

My boyfriend and I decided to have dinner on a beautiful cruise ship, and spend a few days on it. He started to act funny during dinner, and me being able to see little things like clues to his behavior, started looking for some explanation.

After an hour or so, he started to act normal. We finished our dinner and called a waitress over for desert. My boyfriend started to act funny again, just after the waitress left our table to go get the deserts. When the waitress came back, my boyfriend started acting really mean. He rampaged back to our room. I was highly embarrassed and went after him a few minutes later after paying the waitress. When I got to our room, I found him DEAD. With a knife in his hand...

I noticed this: every time he acted funny and mean, that same exact waitress was around. I am devastated of his death, and did the best I could to find out if anything went wrong on that cruise ship years ago. I found out a waitress killed herself out of the blue, in that dining hall 6 months earlier. I found pictures of the scene and she died right next to a pole in the center of the hall- the same place where our table was. What I talked to an expert and she said the spirit of the waitress was an evil entity and she was ashamed in herself for committing suicide, so she wanted to get rid of that shamefulness by making my boyfriends soul take the shame too.