Ghost of Aunt Mary

Ghost of Aunt Mary

Place: Dryden, Ontario, Canada

One spring day in 1946, elderly Aunt Mary shuffled off her mortal coil. Later that night she dropped in for a visit.

In fact, several of our family members have returned after death to ensure the living kept their promises. Perhaps there’s some dysfunctionality there — and maybe control issues. Some might even say that particular family line can be hard-headed. It’s possible.

Aunt Mary was my mother’s aunt. When Margaret (my mother) was thirteen, she and her mother, Irene, moved to Ontario to help Uncle Will care for Aunt Mary who’d fallen and broken her hip. In those days, family members looked after their aged and dying relatives until they passed on.

The patient was bedridden in the living room, since her bedroom was too small to accommodate caregivers. The irascible old woman who had no children of her own made Margaret’s life miserable with her constant demands. To this day, I believe that’s the reason my mother loved to go to school. It got her away from Aunt Mary and all the cranky old people. Mary was always demanding Margaret walk to the store to buy her marshmallow cookies. Margaret wasn’t allowed to eat any of them, and they just collected in a cupboard. Aunt Mary always changed her mind about eating them after Margaret brought home a new batch.

Throughout the day of Mary’s passing, my mother told me that the old woman kept getting progressively younger-looking. The lines on her face faded, her complexion improved, and greyed red hair regained some of its colour. To a thirteen-year-old girl, this was a mystery. In fact, it would be a mystery to most of us.

After Mary exhaled her final breath, the doctor signed a death certificate, the body was removed to the morgue, and the family prepared for a funeral. After the body had been removed, Margaret eyed the stacked boxes of marshmallow cookies and decided this was her chance to have one. She soon discovered the cookies were all stale and had to be thrown away. Even after death, Aunt Mary seemed to pull the cookie strings.

Margaret had been sleeping in Aunt Mary’s bedroom since her arrival, and as she climbed into bed that night, she thought of what she’d witnessed that day. A number of older relatives, including her father, had died over the previous few months, and it was a lot for a child to digest. She looked forward to a better day tomorrow. It was finally over.

But Aunt Mary was not so easily written off. There were things to be taken care of, and she was going to make damn sure everything was done correctly before she moved on! This might give you an indication of her personality.

Sometime after ten p.m. Margaret looked up to see Aunt Mary floating smoothly across the living room floor towards her. The apparition stopped in the bedroom doorway and looked in. As she’d never seen Aunt Mary walk, this was pretty shocking to Margaret — not to mention, she believed the woman to be several hours dead.

The figure was translucent and surrounded by a whitish light with a hint of red (Aunt Mary had been a red-head). This was long before the advent of night-lights, so there was no other light source in the house.

Aunt Mary had made no secret of her dislike of Margaret when she was alive, and since Margaret was sleeping in Mary’s room, the child was afraid the woman’s ghost had returned to haunt her! As the figure continued to stand in the doorway and look in, Margaret did what most thirteen-year-olds would do. She covered her head with the blankets!

The next morning Margaret told her mother what she’d seen. As it happened, Irene, in the recently-vacated sick-bed, had also witnessed the figure as it crossed the living room. Irene’s vantage meant she’d seen the figure from behind, while Margaret saw it from the front — which made perfect sense considering their relative positions.

Although Irene had watched the figure until it disappeared, she hadn’t intended to tell her daughter. Now what should she do? Which did she want Margaret to believe? That she’d been hallucinating? Or that the ghost of Aunt Mary had been real? Either would be frightening to a thirteen-year-old girl.

Since Irene had already experienced many paranormal events, she decided to be practical about it. She assured Margaret that what she’d seen had been real, and that Aunt Mary must want something. What could it be?

Irene informed Uncle Will about the apparition, and after some discussion, he said she probably wanted her wedding ring. Over the years, the soft gold of the original had become worn, so an inexpensive replacement had been purchased for everyday wear. They’d had matching rings when they’d gotten married, and Aunt Mary had been insistent that she be buried with the original. They searched her bedroom, and in a dresser beside the bed, they found it in a small box.

Reasoning that Aunt Mary had returned to ensure her final request was carried out, Uncle Will took the ring to the morgue and placed it on Aunt Mary’s finger. That seemed to be the solution, because Aunt Mary never returned.

Since my family has experienced a long list of paranormal events, we don’t have the fear most people have when something like this happens. I expect the world would be a happier and calmer place if more people looked at such things with an attitude of exploration rather than one of fear. I don’t see that a person without a body is any scarier than a person with one. And if an apparition appears, it might be because they’re desperate to convey a message to those left behind.

Maybe we should pay attention — or risk being haunted by somebody like Aunt Mary!