Clippings From Canada & Canadian Forteana

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Leaferne

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Joined
Feb 7, 2004
Messages
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*waves to all the newbies from Canuckistan*

Emps has been collecting various geographical threads (Odd Ohio etc.) so I thought I'd start one for this place...Thought about separating it by province or region but for now we can put the bits and bobs here.

Some FTMB threads which may be of interest:

Fortean News Stories
A sign? August 19 photograph "predicts" Katrina floods
Aboriginals believe whale is reincarnation of chief
Ancient meteor blasted bits of Canada to Bristol
Baby spends most of first day of life in a bag
Body too toxic to touch
Blizzards of cobwebs
Canadian Man Caught Fiddling While Driving
Canadian naming cock up
Cow triplets
Dinosaur dung
Don't call me gay!!
Driving straight to Hell
Duck seeks police assistance
'Goat-free roads made me speed'
Ice Age River Under Toronto!
Lost medallion returned after 70 years
Made In China
microsoft.com to sue mikerowesoft.com
Mmm, thyroid burgers
Mystery Rumbling
Raelian (Clonaid) Clones?
Pardon My STD
Serial Killer Fears Vigilante Reprisals
Too cold to build igloos
Undersea Wind
Woman drives 400km the wrong way, with a grenade

General Forteana
Bank Robbery 101 for Preteens
Brain Jelly
The ELFEN Project
Giant Canadian Ice Ship!
Green goblin nabbed at strip club!
Manitou Lake- mystery solved?
Mind Reading Squirrels
Musk ox condoms
Oak Island Money Pit
Trading on up
The Vanishing Campbells
your on the air with CKLU

The Human Condition
Camp X: Canadian Secret WWII
Grant Hadwin, killer of the Golden Spruce
The Pig War of 1859
Robert William Pickton - Canada's biggest serial killer

It Happened To Me!
Algonquin Park, Ont. weirdness...
BOXERS' FURY
creepy apartment oddity
DARK RIVER
Fire... erm, over there
Fortean Group Hysteria and a Ghost?
Getting the message
Ghostly dreams
Ghostly Welcoming Committee?
Ghosts of 1812
hotel ghost
The jerk on the cell phone
Man in human suit
My 7 (or 21) UFOs
NOISY GHOST
oh funny ha ha ...
St. Francis keeps popping up
Teleport across the city
That house....
The Thing in the Lake
They Dwell Among Us

Conspiracy
1950s anthrax lab
1999 Ottawa terror plot averted
9/11 Conspiracy Theories on CBC's "Fifth Estate" program
Canada Quietly Annexes Alaska
Canada's Conscription Conspiracy
Franklin Expedition Conspiracy
Fruitcake Threat ... phase one
Knights of the Golden Circle
Police want 25-cent surcharge on phone bills to fund wiretap
Political Funding

Cryptozoology
Bank Swallow Necro Tendencies
Bay of Fundy Globster
canadian seamonster
Investigators Search for Canadian Lake Monster
The Manitoba Bigfoot Film
'Memphre': The Lake Memphremagog Monster
Michipeshu - Lake Superior monster
Ogopogo
Ol'Slavey: The Great Slave Lake monster
River monster!
Sea Serpent seen of Nova Scotia
Search is on for Caddy
Stompin' Tom Conners' Sasquatch Song
Toronto Tunnel Monster

Earth Mysteries
Ancient Arctic booty?
Bison Hunters More Advanced Than Thought
Early human impact on the climate
magnetic anomaly in canada
The Vinland Map

Esoterica
Pepper's Ghost

Ghosts
Alberta haunting
Cemetary Curve Ghost
Humourous Ghosts

New Science
Birds born with song in their head
Brain cells grown on microchip
Cetacean Culture
Electrokinetic water battery
Elite troops 0 : Car thieves: 1
Fossil points to time when fish walked ashore
Heat-seeking Beetles Enter the Inferno for Guaranteed Sex
Heavy ions damage DNA
Implanted Electrodes Combat Depression
Influenza epidemic
Marry your robot
Natural antifreeze in flatfish
Northerns are hotter
Persinger, EM and the paranormal
Polar microbes get helping hand
Researchers seek brain wave access to bank accounts and home
Resolute Bay's mid-winter sunrise
The Science of Roshambo

Parapsychology
Philip Experiment
'Psychotic psychic'

Religions & Cults
American fined $10,000 for visiting Canadian church
Brother Twelve and the Mason Jars of Gold
Death of the spirit dancers
Elvis Priestly
The Pheylonians and Philoxia
Raelians

Ufology
A New Brunswick UFO from 1611?
Abducted by a Grey Deer
Canadian PM's Close Encounter with UFO
City TV Glow
Kinross incident
My Best UFO Ever!
SHAG HARBOUR INCIDENT - UFO crashes in Canada 1967
UFOs and blackouts
Who ya gonna call?: Dan Aykroyd MUFON consultant!!
Winnipeg weirdness wave

Urban Legends/Folklore
The decapitation story
The Great Canadian Expletive
John Fare and his auto-surgery 'performances'


Fortean Times Magazine
David Sutton interviewed by the Toronto Sun

Fortean culture
Canuxploitation
Nervous System: Or Losing My Mind in Literature
Seeing Things
Steam Wars
Superstition: True Fortean Event?

UnConvention
no threads at present

Fortean Exchange
Documentary Search

Announcements
Zombie Walk 05

Charles Fort and Forteanism
Charles Fort, herring biologist

Mainstream News Stories
Ban Sharia Law... and everything else!
Canadian conmen in lottery scam
Canadian government dope dealers..and bad ones too!
Changes to daylight saving time
Hans Island: Canada v. Denmark
Jetliner pilot locked out of cockpit after toilet break
Marriage Committee Biased Gays Allege
North Pole makes a break for freedom
Paper Dolls and Paper Tigers
Phony Book Jacket Business Thriving
Question for Canadians......
Tony's dodgey used submarine dealership


Anyway, happy browsing, and please check in on the Where you at? thread too (vote in the poll). ;)

(I wish I'd called this "Uncanny Canada" instead!
 
Yay!

This is good to read - I'm a fellow Canuckistanian (ex-pat; now I live in the US) and know our fine country is full of Fortean weirdness. But I didn't realize how many threads there were!

I'm particularly intrigued by those events which happen in the wilderness of Canada. Most of Canada is remote (being far from urban areas), which is what seems to preserve its feeling of prehistoric ancientness (if that makes any sense).

I know I've had several Fortean experiences there... but then, they seem to follow me wherever I go. 8)
 
This is annoyingly vague, but years ago; probably in the late fifties, actually, I read a letter in FATE magazine about a report of an undersea or underground object detected off the coast of Baffin Island . It was huge, something like 45 miles long and "loaf-shaped". The story went on to claim that it was rising at a measured rate, and would probably surface in the foreseeable future. I can't recall l if the letter writer said where he read about the object, but he claimed it was being hushed up and that no one had published anything more on the subject.

I was an impressionable teen-ager then, having just discovered such things as UFOs and the Flatwoods Monster, and this story affected me greatly. I was fascinated, and a little scared. What could it be?

Has anyone ever heard or read anything about this object?
 
Don't know anything about giant loaves sadly.

In Dancing with the Dark, I believe it's Charles de Lint who comes up with a creepy event that happened to him - he and some friends were staying in an abandoned house on Spadina and had some weird stuff happen to him, but he's never been able to find said house since!
 
:yeay:
Wow, Leaferne! That's one heck of a list you've collected! Amazing!
Again, wow!
 
Yer welcome, eh. :)

The Vampire in Ontario - Wilno's Vampiric Legends

Settled in 1859, Wilno, Ontario is the oldest Polish (Kaszubian) settlement in Canada. Today the area is a tourist destination (southeast of Algonquin Park) that still holds an old world charm and a rich heritage. Residents are fiercely proud of their home and it's history. Indeed this pretty village in the heart of the Ottawa Valley offers much to take pride in.

However, does Wilno truly have a darker side - one that embraces the vampire mythos?

Author Jan Perkowski was employed by the National Museum of Man from 1968 through 1969. He was specifically funded to conduct research for the Canadian Centre for Folk Culture Studies. Originally a dialect scholar from Austin Texas, Perkowski was sent to the Wilno area to study Kaszubian folklore and traditions. His studies led to a 1972 publication entitled "Vampires, Dwarves, And Witches Among The Ontario Kashubs" This 85 page report later inspired articles by such diverse publications as Psychology Today, The Canadian Magazine, and The National Enquirer. In fact, the attention this report stirred up was so widespread and hurtful in the eyes of some area residents that it was denounced on the floor of the House of Commons. Not surprisingly, as it was Canadian tax dollars that funded Mr. Perkowski's work in the first place.

Perkowski's report begins with (page 2) "a picture of a small grave enclosed by a white picket fence. The quote under the photograph says that if a vampire is not destroyed before he is buried, he rises again and carries off his relatives and others in the neighbourhood."

"It happened at Wilno....They had to dig it up and cut off the head while he sat in the coffin."

If Perkowski hadn't anticipated a sensationalistic reaction in the beginning (examining just the one quote above should give the reader an idea of how sensationalistic it was) to his report, he certainly received one! However, he definitely was not the first researcher to explore the vampiric connection to Kaszubian or for that matter Eastern European folklore. Many years prior to Perkowski's report Friedrich Lorentz wrote about it in the "Cassubian Civilization." He quotes Lorentz within the body of his own report:

"The vampire is called vjeszczi or wupji by the Cassubians....The man who becomes a vampire after his death was destined to it from his birth; if destined to become a vjeszczi, he wears a little cap (caul) on his head at his birth; the future wupji is born with two teeth. The latter is the more dangerous of the two, since his becoming a wupji cannot be prevented before the death of the man; but if one takes the little cap from off the head of a future vjeszczi, dries it, grinds it to dust when the child is seven years old, and gives it to the child with his drink, all danger is averted."

"...But after death the vampire can always be recognized whether vjeszczi or wupji: he becomes cold slowly, retains the red color of face and lips, his limbs do not stiffen, spots of blood often appear on his face and under his fingernails."

"...If, however, all precautions have been neglected, there remains only one remedy; one must open the tomb of the vampire at midnight, and drive a long nail into his forehead, or, better still, cut off his head with a sharp spade and put it between his feet...."

Perkowski conducted his study by interviewing area residents whom were simply referred to as "informants". He utilized questionnaires and transcribed notes from taped conversations. The following are examples taken from the report:

Informant (8) told him:"...Something came in the night and drew blood from her arm. It was a vampire. It came to my daughter at night and took marrow. There was a sign. A ring was visible. She was weak and had all her blood drawn out...."

And Informant (12): "Mother said that I had a cap on the head and that it was burned. Such a person is supposed to be lucky, but I don't know."

"Informant (12)," wrote Perkowski under her quote, "does not recall having ingested the ashes when she was seven, but this is something her mother would hardly announce to her. The ashes were probably hidden in a favorite food."

These quotes certainly appear to strengthen a strong superstitious belief system in Wilno, however as the participants remained confidential they are impossible to verify. It is also impossible to verify if any mutilations of a corpse/s ever occurred particularly with the belief that these (the deceased) were vampires. Indeed this is highly doubtful, as surely there would be official records of such crimes and not one has ever turned up. Documentation of such acts would have existed in this country by the mid-19th century, if indeed it went beyond rumours and story-telling. Yet, the media (as they often will do.) ran with the story despite very flimsy evidence to support it.

It is my own belief that a lack of understanding of Eastern European culture and the history of the area also adds to the legends surrounding the village. One example (and I have personally been written to twice on this) involves the historic and modern crosses that dot the location. This some say is evidence of the fear of vampires! Of course this is not the case. From the Wilno Heritage Society we learn that there was no Catholic church close by and the Kaszubians were a highly religious people. "To satisfy their strong need to pray the settlers erected large wooden crosses at the intersections of main roads. This was a tradition they borrowed from the motherland. On Sundays and Holy Days the pioneers close to each intersection would gather at the crossroads and celebrate their Faith. These crosses were not used, however, for regular service. The prayer at the crosses was private prayer. Rosaries were recited and the appropriate Sunday litany was recited." This tradition has been kept alive by area residents wishing to preserve their local history and religious customs. Only six of the original crosses remain.

In 1973, Sandra Peredo a reporter with The Canadian travelled to Wilno and interviewed a local Catholic priest. His thoughts on Perkowski's report were: "We get a big laugh out of it, we know the people who have manufactured the story just by reading it." The priest went on to say that, "That nonsense of driving nails. My impression is that he probably stuck a microphone under their noses and to get rid of him they'd made up these tales." With very little to support otherwise I tend to agree with him.

Perkowski's possible embellishment of these stories can also be easily speculated on. When asked why the museum wanted to use his report as a leader in their series he stated, "They publish these dry things on Eskimo stone carvings and how the Iroquois do this and that, and they thought they'd have a slightly jazzier thing. So I went along with them. I don't mean that they wanted cheap publicity, but they thought that (the report) would have more general appeal than many of the things that they've produced. I think they're right. Ukrainian Easter eggs are interesting, granted, but of limited interest - whereas everybody likes to be frightened a little bit by the Dracula legend."

Did the Kaszubian pioneers bring their own brand of old world folklore to the Ottawa Valley? In my opinion yes they did. Does this mean the darker legends of actual vampires and vampire-slaying in Wilno hold any truth? Highly unlikely even if there are some whom still reside in this Ontario hamlet that do believe.

Sources:

COUNT DRACULA IN CANADA? They worry about vampires in Wilno, Ontario
by Sandra Peredo (c) 1973 The Canadian Magazine

Vampires, Dwarves, And Witches Among The Ontario Kashubs"
by Jan Perkowski (c) 1972 Museum Of Man publication

Mysteries Of Ontario
By John Robert Columbo (c) 1999 Hounslow Press

Online Resources:

Wilno Heritage Society
http://www.wilno.org/

Wilno Homepage
http://www.wilno.com/index.htm
Click to expand...

John Robert Colombo is a great author to start with if you have any interest in Canadian ghosts and general oddness; he's written a number of books on the subject, and I think Mysterious Canada is one of his best.

EDITED TO ADD:

Para-Researchers of Ontario
Toronto Ghosts & Hauntings Research Society
Ontario Ghosts & Hauntings Research Society
Quebec Ghosts & Hauntings Research Society
British Columbia Ghosts & Hauntings Research Society
Haunted Hamilton
Golden Horseshoe Ghost Haunts
Ottawa Area Ghost Experiences (apologies in advance because this is a deeply tacky site, design-wise)
HBCC Research (UFOs in Canada)
UFO BC
Northwest Saskatchewan UFO Research Centre
Alberta UFO Study Group
Ufology Research of Manitoba
Newfoundland UFO Research
The Maritime UFO File
Sciences de l'Etrange et Phenomenes Inexpliques (sorry, can't do accents on this computer)
Chucara UFOs (or OVNIS) in Quebec
Centre for Parapsychological Studies in Canada
 
Thanks, Leaferne. Lots of good stuff there to pass the time on these blustery March Days with no hockey.

Another Moosehead eh, and pass the poutine! [Breaks into a drunken rendition of Sudbury Saturday Night]
 
:)
(Oh, let's!)

The girls are out to bingo
and the boys are getting stinko
we'll think no more of Inco
on a Sudbury Saturday Night...

There's also The Black Donnellys, and the Witch of Plum Hollow, all sorts of Canadian Forteanisms, or Fortean Canadianisms, whichever.

Land of the silver birch
Home of the beaver
Where still the mighty moose
wanders at will...
;)
 
:nooo:
Aiee, that place has got "Blair Witch" written all over it...
 
I dunno. It looks like a good excuse for a drive in the country on a nice sunny summer's day. But, perhaps not alone.
 
Lived just down the street from this one for many years and didn't have an inkling.

Broadview Residence

I should first start with a little bit of a background . I have been a sound engineer for over 20 years. The first part of my career was spent living out of suitcases. My old girlfriend at the time, who I had known since high school, lived in a small bachelor apartment while I was out on the road. We will call her "K". One of the musicians I was working with at the time asked myself and "K" if we wanted to share a house with him and a student friend of his. It was a nice attached home in downtown Toronto.

As I stated earlier "K" and myself had been together for a longtime. I have always been interested in the para-normal, UFO's and other strange phenomena. "K" did not have the same interests in these things as I did. In fact she thought it was ridiculous. After living in the house for a few months I started to hear and feel strange things.

One night when I was out to dinner with "K" she asked me if I had noticed anything strange happening around the house. I told her that I had and she said "I think we have a little visitor in the house".

More here:

http://www.torontoghosts.org/broadview1.htm
 
dreeness said:
... and the Green Lady of Hay Swamp... no, it's just too unspeakably horrible...
:shock:
Click to expand...

Couldn't find anything on the Green Lady. Perhaps you can speak the unspeakable. Please. :)
 
(Hey, what part of "unspeakable" aren't you getting?) ;)

Well, okay, but you didn't hear this from me...

It's the kind of story that turns up in small, privately-published folklore books every once in a while, a basic haunting story, with a nasty sting.

circa 1920
An idyllic summer day in the country, meadows and butterflies, all very Norman Rockwell. Three children are laughing and playing on a raft on a country pond. The raft overturns, one of the children is tangled on the raft and begins to drown. The other two frantically try to rescue their sibling.
(You can see where this is going.) A young mother hears the screaming, runs to the pond, dives in trying to save her children, but in her terror and panic also drowns.
(There are variations where the family is killed by a drunk driver, but that's seems too much like a tacked-on morality lesson, with none of the over-the-top doom-laden gothic tragedy. Like, hit by a car, you may as well have them step on a landmine or get sucked into a mechanical rice-picker or something.)
Anyway, fast forward to some later date.
A typical rustic type is driving his truck down a lonely country road late one night. (He is going to start talking like a rustic in a minute, so brace yourself.) As he drives along through the marsh, he sees a group of children huddled under a tree by the road. He stops the truck and yells out the window "Dagnabbit, what in blazes are you younguns doin' all the way out here in the middle a'nowhere at this ungodly hour?" But the children do not speak, they huddle and shiver together with eyes wide and blank, they are drenched and covered in mossy fetid swamp muck. The rustic says "Y'all must be lost eh? Well, just git on the back of the truck and I'll drive you to the next farm." But the children seem unable to move. The rustic says "Come on now, someone must be a-worryin about you" and he gets out of the truck to help them in. But the children scamper away, deeper into the swamp, and the rustic follows, "What in tarnation, just git back here you whippersnappers, I'm too old for this kinda tomfoolery." As he follows the children deeper into the swamp, he suddenly becomes aware of an eerie green glow from the reeds just beside him. He turns around, and sees the last thing he will ever see.
A day or two later, his body is found, floating face down in an old forgotten pond.

(There are other regional versions of this story, it's probably a variation of a European folktale, most likely.)
 
Another Ontario tale that may have its roots in European folklore:

What more could a province want than a place in it called 'Spooky Hollow' that has a legend dating back through the pioneers in the early 1800's? Ontario has just that near Vittoria!

The phantom peddler might still be stalking his territory in this apt named area. The story goes that the peddler asked a local household for a nights stay from the elements with his entire life and all belongings in his backpack, it was a necessary rest which he was granted... except... after that, the peddler nor his pack were ever seen again... at least not in mortal form. The legend says that for days after the man vanishing, the chimney of the house belched a black soot into the air... sign of an amateur cremation?

According to John Robert Colombo's Mysteries of Ontario, journalist Eric McVeity wrote in 1938 that a grey spectral figure is seen wandering in the unnamed valley by travellers which is why it was dubbed "Spooky Hollow". According to the book, all that remains of the house where the peddler might have met his fate is a few chimney bricks... and possibly his ghost.
Click to expand...

http://www.torontoghosts.org/norfolk/spookyhollow.htm
 
dreeness said:
:nooo:
Aiee, that place has got "Blair Witch" written all over it...
Click to expand...

Nothing to do with the Prime Minister's wife, I'm sure.
:D
 
Here's another site from my neck of the woods:

http://hamiltonparanormal.com

With this site and Haunted Hamilton, it's my belief they're a little too quick to believe some things, but there is some good info nonetheless.
 
Andy, you say that you used to live near the Broadview residence in your original post. May I ask where? When I was a university student, I lived on Broadview (beside the church) and before that on Withrow. Is this place close?
 
downunder said:
Andy, you say that you used to live near the Broadview residence in your original post. May I ask where? When I was a university student, I lived on Broadview (beside the church) and before that on Withrow. Is this place close?
Click to expand...

If I recall correctly East York started at Danforth so the house would have been on that small stretch of Broadview north of the Danforth (maybe six blocks long). I think that you were south of Danforth near Riverdale. Thats where Withrow is.
Not sure which church you mean. Check mapquest.ca.

Lot of other spooks in East York too notably at Todmorden Mills. :)
 
Thanks Andy. I don't know about the Todmorden Mills stuff, but I'll check it out.
 
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