The Spirits Of Roselane--Something's in the Dining Room (Part 1)

By Athlyn Green

I bought a very old Victorian house in Nova Scotia that I named Roselane. My daughter, Selena and I have had some interesting experiences in the year and a half we've been in residence.

The age of the house was listed as approximately 100 years but upon visiting the museum in Parrsboro, Ottawa House by the Sea (built around 1775), we noted that the door knobs, doors, molding, and flooring there were similar to what we had at Roselane, so we feel the house is probably older.

Before we moved in, and considering the age of the house, we joked that maybe our home had resident spirits. We'd noticed an orb on one side of the house, in the dining room, in one of the real estate photos and my daughter wondered if that was indicative of spirit activity.

Selena came downstairs one afternoon with a thoughtful expression on her face. She informed me that she had decided to avoid one side of the house--one of the back bedrooms upstairs by the old chimney. She had entered the pink bedroom and said she got the strongest chill and a creepy sensation. She seemed shaken. I told her that she was probably overtired from our long flight across Canada from B.C. and that the feeling would pass. She looked at me steadily. "I don't think so, Mom."

A couple of days later, she tried to enter the pink room again and got the same sensation. "I'm not going in that side of the house," she stated again, this time firmly.

"Selena, you can't avoid one part of the house for the rest of your life. That's not practical. For Pete's sake, show me the area that's bothering you," I said, following her upstairs. We stood near the old chimney . . .

Surprisingly, I felt it too--and the sensation was unlike anything heretofore experienced. I felt as though I was peering into a void, and the sense of finality and bleakness was almost overpowering. It felt as if . . . death . . . was reaching through the wall and coming in our direction, beckoning us to venture in. The feeling magnified and enveloped both of us. We retreated, chilled and shivering. "See Mom, I told you I wasn't imagining things," Selena said.

I decided to give it a few days, feeling that we might still be reactive after all the stress of moving. It was beyond my scope.

When we went upstairs again, the feeling was as strong as ever. I forced myself to cross in front of the chimney and entered the pink bedroom (which we'd now dubbed "the creepy room"). Although the sensation was still tangible, I realized that it wasn't actually coming from the bedroom as my daughter had thought. It was coming from the wall area in front of the chimney, which was just outside the room. I stood quietly, trying to get a handle on what was there in the house with us. What I picked up on was unmistakable.

"Someone has died in this house," I told my daughter. "On this side."

Selena pointed out that the chimney was right above the dining room. She was convinced something had happened in the dining room and had been trying to convince me of this, too. I'd been so busy unpacking and trying to settle into our new home, I had paid no heed. She had my attention now and I apologized for not validating her feelings before.

We went downstairs to the dining room and for the first time, in that particular room, I did what I call "peering," a technique I've used since childhood to "sense out" things. I could feel the highest concentration of energy in front of the chimney, and a path of it stretched towards the dining room door. I paced back and forth in front of the chimney, my arms extended as I felt out the delineation in the energy signature. A rush of sensations came in from a male energy: frustration, and an event that happened right in front of the chimney. I told Selena I sensed anger there. At least now, the sensations we'd picked up, upstairs were starting to make sense. I knew someone had passed away in the dining room and this is why we felt the death presence upstairs above the dining room. The male who died was still hanging around Roselane.

We chewed over the fact that a number of people could have died in the house, considering its age and its size (we'd heard it had been used as a rooming house). But we still felt that the person who had died next to the door, in front of the chimney, was the 'death presence' we felt so strongly.

We were working outside one afternoon and stopped to visit with our neighbor. After engaging in small talk, I finally asked him: "What's the deal with that side of the house?" I gestured towards the dining room, explaining that we felt something on the one side of the house. I asked if anyone had passed away.

He looked at me, surprised. "Oh my goodness. Didn't you know? A fellow died on that side of the house . . . about 6 years ago."