Sue Darroch and Matthew Didier's Paranormal Blog

I once had a phone conversation with another small group of ghost enthusiasts who had spent some time near a small bridge in Guelph that has a "spooky" reputation.

I asked them, "So, what's the history of the place?" They started mentioning balls of light, weird noises and other strange stuff that people had claimed happened near or on the bridge.

"That's interesting," I said, "What's the history of the site?"

"I dunno. Why?" came back the reply.

"Well, what happened there in the past? Can anything from the sites history maybe explain who or what might be responsible for the phenomena... I mean, even if it is just a legend, these thing are usually attributed to a person or event from the past."

"Who cares." came back a 'matter of fact' reply, "It's just a cool spot and we..." At this point, I lost complete interest and really tuned them out. Frankly, I was angered and horrified. This is sloppy work at it's best from people claiming to be "investigators."

Nobel Prize winner, and Holocaust survivor Eliezer Wiesel said it best with "the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference." What does it say about any investigation when the investigators themselves say, "who cares," about what should be a very important component of their work?

This kind of tertiary examination of a site is a little like going to the Taj Mahal, and only seeing it as a big mausoleum, and missing the splendour of the architecture, and the tremendous love story between a man and a woman that it truly represents.

How many of these other "ghost sites" and groups go to cemeteries, and such to try to take their precious orb pictures and grab the odd EVP without stopping to note the history of the spot? Who are the people that represent the "ghosts" they are supposedly "hunting?" Do they even care? If you subscribe to the idea that "ghosts" are the manifestation of some form of energy from a living being who has since passed on, then why would you only be concerned with "them" AFTER they died? Wouldn't you LIKE to know why they may still be hovering in this spot in one way or the other?

Even if your a sceptic or simply a "thrill seeker," why not learn something en route? Would it kill you to learn why certain things may have had a practical reason for being there? If nothing else, it's fun to point out that sometimes legend and fact don't jive...

Another case in point, at Old Fort Erie in the Niagara region of Ontario, there's the "handless and headless ghosts." This is not, as I've read on a website, ONE ghost with no hands, and no head BUT TWO ghosts... One missing the head, and the other missing the hands. They have been seen for quite some time wandering the areas of the fort and the "legend" said that they were two occupying American soldiers during the War of 1812 who, while one was shaving the other, suffered a "fatal" blow from one of the cannon balls lobbed into the fort by the British during the siege. Thus, the "shavee" lost his head and the "shaver" lost his hands. According to what I've read and backed up by our wonderful guide, Jim, this legend persisted, and later on in the twentieth century, during an archaeological dig, they found a burial pit... In a line was one headless corpse followed by a "normal" corpse followed, in line, by a corpse who's arms had been amputated at the elbow. This was found LONG after the reports of the ghostly duo had been seen, therefore adding credence to the original legend. It goes to reason that the gent with no hands MIGHT have outlived the fellow with no head long enough for another chap to have passed in the interim explaining the person between them.

Finds like the one above do happen, and more often then you might think! They are one of the very reasons this type of study can be so exciting ... but then again, we do care!