I believed in ghosts since my early childhood days.   Back then, I relished tales of the dead because of the delicious wave of terror they brought.  These creatures of the dark, the horrible kind, the hurtful kind, the Stephen King images that stayed with you for decades and some that still lurk in the shadowy halls of your consciousness.  It was a world of make believe and I could stop the fright simply by closing the book.   Always forefront in your thoughts was that it was fiction.

Today, my ghosts are memories.   They are people,  both living and dead, that I have encountered in my life.   They are someone who has touched me in a special way which locked them into my sub  consciousness.   Shadowy figures adrift in the ocean of my mind.   Different from the ghosts of horror stories in that my ghosts are people who existed and some who still exist but contact has long been lost.  That being said, most of my ghosts are of the dead kind.  The inevitable advancement of age brought the realization that death was an imminent part of life.   It is not to be feared but embraced when your time comes because you cannot die before your time.   I wish I believed that completely.

My first close up encouneter with death was when I was a teenager in Newcastle, New Brunswick in summer of 1968.  I was 14 years old at the time, big for my age, and full of mischief.   I was the jokester then (perhaps some of that remains today) and a challenge for my parents and teachers.   I was always seeing the funny in everything I encountered.  Some educated folk might say there is something more to that, some deep seated reasoning to explain it but let’s just stay with fun maker.   A boy of my age, who I knew from school, had drowned.   When I first heard of his death, I thought that was strange because he had been such a strong swimmer.   A group of us learned of his wake, (a curious term I thought then and still today) and we decided we would go.   I had never been to a wake before but as an altar boy I had served for a few funeral masses.   The caskets had been closed during those services so I had never seen the product of expert embalming.  I hadn’t told my parents that I was going to this wake and I suspect most if not all my friends had not informed their families either.

The funeral home was quiet as we entered and there were people, mostly adults, sitting and standing around the polished coffin in the middle of the room.   Hushed whispers and soft words of prayer murmured through the room as we approached our deceased pal.   He was propped up on a pillow apparently sleeping in this claustrophobic bed.   I checked to see if his chest rose while we solemnly viewed our deceased friend.  His skin was pale and looked waxy almost doll like.  The strangeness of it was stressful and when stressed I always looked for humour.

I didn’t know much about these kind of events but I knew that laughter would bring the wrath of God quickly down upon the laugher and He would smite all gigglers into the dirt.   Yet, I couldn’t help my self.   He looked so fake, so unreal, that I started to snicker.   I tried to contain it but it only resulted in short snukking sounds and that no doubted turned adult eyes upon the red faced boy in front of the room.   I was not alone as my friends stared with faces of strained mirth that was waiting to burst forth and be heard.   Sensing I couldn’t control it, I moved fast towards the exit door with the others close on my heels.   Once outside and behind the home, we all broke into gales of gut busting laughter.   We didn’t  know why we were laughing but we continued doing it as we walked away from the funeral home.  I’m sure our muffled guffawing was heard in the room above where our belated friend rested,  resulting in scowls of disgust upon the faces of the adults in attendance.  In a week or so, our dearly departed buddy was the furthest thing from our minds.  Baseball games, upcoming school dances, girls and exams,(did I mention girls?) filled our heads so there was no room for him.

My policing career brought me in contact with many deaths.    Some were the peaceable kind, the old man dead on the  kitchen daybed while the electric kettle whistled on the counter next to a cup with a tea bag in it.  The elderly lady dressed in her night dress whose last dream would be unknown as she lay comfortable and cozy in her bed under the homemade quilt.   Those are the easy ones, the forgettable ones.  There were others, mostly children, that were not so easy.   Thankfully, those were few.    Many passed on to heaven, the afterlife or where ever you go when you leave this world but a few linger.  Those are the ones who wake me during the twilight hours.

Not all who come are dead or at least not that I know about.   The teenage girl, raped by her father and impregnated with his child, visits sometimes to replay her story.   The story of how he made her jump repeatedly from the basement stairs onto the concrete floor in this attempt to destroy the life within her.   The attempts were successful because she later had a miscarriage.   A struggling fetus was not the only casualty of this monster who disguised himself in the love of Jesus.   It took three weeks after I first spoke with her, for her to come forward, to tell this sordid tale which wouldn’t disappear with the closing of a book.   I went and picked her up not far from her home, the scene of her father’s depravity.    She talked for hours and then I arranged for her to stay somewhere safe for the night.   The next day when she would go to live with relatives in another community.    I enlisted some help from the Gander GIS (General Investigative Section) and we arrested the father the next morning.   Eventually he was convicted and he was sentenced to four years in prison.   I never had contact with her since the trial except in my dreams.   When I wake for the day and she fades from my head, I wonder, is she okay, did her life turn out alright?   Questions with no answers.  But that is a tale for another time.

It is the little girl from Deadman’s Bay who I see the most during the early hours of the twilight.  It was an overcast day in mid October 1982 when the call came to the Wesleyville RCMP office. Wesleyville was a small community 143 kilometres north east of Gander, Nl.   I transferred there in September 1981 as a constable on this three person unit.   Cpl. Bert Waterman took the call and he called me at my home at 8:30 am.   There was a house fire in Deadman’s Bay and two children were trapped inside.   A few minutes later, he picked me up and we drove the 30 kilometres to the scene.  As we turned onto the main road in Deadman’s Bay we could see the house was engulfed in a heavy white smoke.   Orange flames stabbed through the smoke as we approached.   Two fire trucks were on the scene and the volunteer fire fighters were battling a hopeless cause.

Bert stopped the police car on the side of the road.  I got out and walked to the closest fireman who was wearing breathing apparatus equipment.   He raised his mask and told me there were two children in the house believed to be in the middle bedroom.   No one could get in, the fire was too hot.   I heard a commotion to my left and I turned to see a man rushing towards the house.   I moved quickly to intercept him and stopped him by the front door.

“My kids, my kids…”  It was all the poor father could utter as he struggled with me.

He was strong but I held my ground, all the while telling him it was too dangerous for anyone to go in.   Then reluctantly he stopped.   The pain in his eyes was as clear as his helplessness.   His children were dying a horrible death and all he could do was stand and wait.   I understood his anguish, as any father would and I think he may have seen this because he didn’t make any further attempts.   Perhaps he just resigned himself to the fact that they were already dead.

I spoke to the parents and witnesses while the fire fighters continued to attack the fire.   The information that I was able to derive from these inquiries and the subsequent investigation indicated there were three children in the house prior to the fire.   The little girl, Patricia (Not her real name) was in the bedroom with her 10 month old  baby brother, Jamie (not his real name) and her other brother, Ronnie (not his real name).  The mother had left to run to the neighbour’s to borrow something, I presume. (my notes don’t indicate this and I don’t have access to the file).  The older boy had found some matches and a fire ignited in the baby’s room.  Ronnie  ran to get his mother, his only thoughts were no doubt that she could save the day.   The fire quickly spread and Patricia and her baby brother were trapped.

A couple of hours later, the fire was extinguished and shortly after Bert and I entered the charred remains of a home that had housed a young family.   We found Patricia in the living room on a blackened sofa chair.   She had tried to push back into the chair in a futile effort to escape the encroaching flames.  Her little body was scorched and her face was cooked into a scream.  We picked her up and gently laid her on the stretcher.  The baby boy, we found in the middle bedroom in what once was his crib, his place of comfort.  He was nothing more than a badly roasted hunk of beef.  We took his body and laid it next to his sister and carried the stretcher out to the waiting hearse and I went with the driver, Eric Hoyles.   We drove silently to Gander,  to the morgue.  An autopsy would be scheduled for later that afternoon.   I don’t remember the exact cause of death but it was quite evident to me and anyone else who saw these tiny darlings on that fateful day.

It was dark when I got home that night.  I was tired and still dirty from the fire scene.   I was quiet when I came in the house and Sharon told me our two sons, (aged 3 and 5) were in bed.   I went to the bedroom door and looked in.  I listened to their breathing as they dreamed dreams of He-Man and Skelator.  I closed the door and went to the kitchen where I ate a late supper and talked with Sharon.   I didn’t tell her everything, I never did when it came to work.

I thought of Patricia quite often usually when I was alone.  Sometimes I would wake in the early morning hours with thoughts of this little soul.   She was just two years old according to my notes but my memory argues that she was five, either way she was young.   It is not horror that I feel when I see the vison of her seared corpse, frozen, yelling at the fire to stop. It is sadness.   Sadness for a life that would never be.

I still wake from sleep in the quiet of the night with thoughts of this unfortunate toddler.   These occasions are infrequent now but always the same.  The last time was two weeks ago.  It was around 4:00 am, I guess, I didn’t look at the clock but that is usually when my swollen prostate dictates it is time to pee.  When I came through the fog of sleep, I had that vision of her.   I’d like to tell you I see her wearing a pretty blue dress with a great big smile on her tiny face but I won’t.  I see her like she was the only time  I saw her, in that sofa chair, on the stretcher, on the autopsy table.  A life lost before her time.