Until I was eight years old, we lived in a small town about an hour or so outside of Winnipeg, not really that far from where I am now. In the fall of 1980 we were ‘between houses’, having had to move from that town to an uncle’s house next door to where we would eventually settle. My grandparents lived on the other side of what was becoming our yard.

What I will always consider my hometown – Thornhill – is but a speck on a map, and although it has grown in the past four years, the population still struggles to pass 100, and there are no more than maybe 30 houses, including the two outlying farms that butt against the town limits. When certain people call me rural, not only do I laugh because they have no concept of exactly HOW rural, I flush with pride. Their perceived insult is my foundation. I am rural. And that’s neither here nor there… *ahem*

Back on track… Thornhill has three burial mounds and what has been presumed to be a hunting trail. The mounds are practically flat now, and only sharp eyes can even see the third sitting where it does. The fields that have grown for the last century on those sacred hills have always been blessed with lush crops, and are stunning just as it comes time to harvest. Once the fields and mounds are ready for winter, Halloween is not too far away, and spirits tend to become restless. I’ve always believed that the spirits of the Aboriginal peoples from that land come out to play and to speak to us, every fall. Now, as an adult interested in the paranormal and spirit worlds, I’m far more comfortable with it than I was at eight. Meeting The Chief then is probably what brought me to my interest in ghosts and hauntings, so I suppose I really should thank him.

The Chief
Was it a real apparition, or the result of a fevered imagination?
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