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GHOST STORIES Hidden deep in the boreal forest north of Lake Superior, at the end of a long road that follows moosepaths to seemingly nowhere, is a picturesque wilderness lake and a cozy mining town that was built around it in the 1950's. Manitouwadge, in the local aboriginal language, translates as "Cave of Manitou." Manitou, to the Canadian aboriginals, is the equivalent of God in Christian, Muslim and Judaic religions. The legend was that his spirit lived in a cave at the bottom of the serene wilderness lake that the town was built around. As spiritual as that is though, my experiences with spirits in Manitouwadge occurred on dry land. When I arrived there to work, there was a quaint cottage Hospital on the side of the lake, and a nurses Residence that sat on the edge of the same property. Jeannie Kittner came to work in Manitouwadge, many years earlier, when she was a young nurse and the town was merely a few scattered tents. She stayed until she died as a seasoned veteran in her early 60's, shortly after I arrived. The stories that the miners told of her caring nature, and her rescues and heroism, made her a legend. Many of them said, in those early days, that she knew more than the Doctors she worked with. Her caring continued though, even after her slow painful undeserved end. I had a few brushes with Jeannie, after her death. I was living in the Nurses residence, a 3 story building comprised of bachelor apartments. One evening I was relaxing, watching TV, and I suddenly felt a hand pressing down lightly, protectively, on the top of my head. There was no-one in the room but me. On another occasion, I was in the neighbour's apartment, tending to her plants while she was away. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a large woman sitting on the couch in the livingroom. Startled, I turned to see who was there, but the woman was gone. A new nurse moved to town after Jeannie's death. She also lived in the Nurses Residence. We became friends and I learned that she was psychic. She eventually told me that she had not only seen Jeannie, but had conversed with her. Jeannie was just watching us, caring for the people in here community as she had done when we was alive, she said. She surprised me by saying that Jeannie was not the only 'spirit' residing in the Hospital. She had seen an older gentlemanly doctor in the halls, but had not communicated with him. My neighbour did have a pretty convincing communication in the Residence with something spiritual when a Doctor that had lived there and dated her a few years earlier committed suicide near Toronto. On that night, she woke up and rolled over in bed, and saw a man standing at the bottom of the bed. It was the Doctor. She passed it off as a dream. The next night she was sitting in the bathroom chatting with her boyfriend who was in the bathtub. The towels on the bar near the door suddenly flew sideways as if caught in the wind. The boyfriend looked up and saw a man's face through the reflection of the door in the mirror. He described the dark man to the nurse, and she recognized it. They were terrified. He dressed and they ran from the apartment. She stopped to phone her parents, scared and looking for a safe place to go. The phone wires had been ripped out of the wall. They ran down the stares. When they got to the front door, the window in the door was broken. They ran to her car and jumped in. The windshield was smashed. The Doctor didn't come back again. Life went back to abnormal. I got accustomed to being watched in the Residence, to seeing someone out of the corner of my eye but seeing nobody when I turned my head to look directly. I thought, ok this is normal. It's an eyeball thing. But now that I think about it, that hasn't happened since I moved out of the Residence. It, and the hospital, are gone now. They were torn down around 1990 and replaced by a modern edifice. I moved away shortly after. Who knows what's going on there now? I can't imagine they tore down Jeannie with the buildings. Or the other spirits. A place that spiritual just doesn't dry up and go away. And I bet there are other untold stories around that Cave. Who's out there with stories to tell? |
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Bill Rinehart |
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