Haunted Bonavisa Bay, Canada

Bonavista Bay, Canada is the site of many paranormal encounters.
One such place is the Bradley House where it is said the residents from the past are still there... in spirit. A woman stands in the top window with a light on in the room, but... there is no electricity in the house!
Thomas, a lurking spirit, told a medium his people, the Quakers, were killed by the Puritans over 500 years ago because they were viewed as heretics.
A ghostly boy appears on a rock cliff and pushes the living off to join him. Caskets have floated to the surface of the water containing the body of the deceased.

Many more stories of this area are in the text below.

Has anyone here on ATS ever visited this place?

Here are some interesting stories being shared about this area:



www.thepacket.ca...

Wilson Hayward of Bonavista has never seen a ghost, but he's heard enough stories about them to believe. "Years ago, a lot of people would be telling ghost stories. There were people who saw ghosts and had encounters with ghosts."

Light on the water:
"There was a ship comin' across Bonavista Bay one night and a young girl got killed on her. I don't know what happened to her, but they threw her body overboard. "We see a light even now. It's out in the bay and it comes right down and blazes up.
"When we used to live down on the shore people used to sit down on the flake bridges at night. This one night they saw the light in the bay. There was one feller there, he was kind of a bold feller you know, not scared of anything. So he went in and got his spyglass and put the spyglass on the light and the light started to come in. "It moved in across the water and the crowd that was there told him to take the glass down. He never took the glass down. The light came on in about 200 yards from the bank. Then one feller got up and took the glass away from him. The light stopped.
"One old feller used to tell me... he told me several times... He said, 'Wilson, if we never took the light away from him, it would have come and took him right off the bank'."

The ghosts of Mockbeggar:
"Mockbeggar, that was a good place for ghosts. There was a lot of Frenchmen buried up in Mockbeggar. There was caskets everywhere up there.
"There was one old feller who told me he used to come home in the night and when he'd open his gate someone would open his door. When he closed the gate the door used to close. When he'd go in and open his door, someone would open the next door in his porch. When he closed the door the porch door would shut. He'd open the porch door and kitchen door would open. Then he'd hear someone going up the stairs.
"His wife was gone to bed one night when he come home from a meeting. He asked his wife if she'd heard anyone come up the stairs. 'Yes', she said, 'I thought it was you'. Then they'd hear footsteps going down the stairs again. "Several times that happened.
As the story goes, one day in the spring, the fellow dug beneath the house and saw one of the foundation poles was on top of a casket. He took a saw and cut the pole off and took it off the casket. He took up the stump and never heard anything after.
"There was a house in Mockbeggar. I used to go there with my girlfriend. Her father would come home in the nighttime and sit down and he used to say, 'The old lady is restin' pretty good down there tonight. She's down there sittin' in her chair tonight'. This was a lady that died there years ago. Light on in the room and she'd be rocking away in her chair."

Camp 7:
"Seventeen miles from Bonavista there was train track," Hayward says. It was at camp 7. Where people would go for the winter to get wood to burn. There was this tree there. Several people would try to chop it down. "But when they started chopping on one side they'd hear a axe chopping on the other side. They'd get afraid and leave the tree alone. They used to get frightened to death.
"There was a man who got lost and died by the tree. This is where he used to come back when someone tried to cut the tree down." Reason for being Hayward figures there's a reason why spirits linger.
"Back then, people used to be sick a lot, and perhaps they'd have little children. Government didn't give 'em thousands of dollars then. No family allowance. Imagine a man who saw his kids going around, had nothing to give them, only what the neighbors brought them. And he knew he was going to die. "If he had any thought in this world he thought about those little children and how they was going to be hungry after he died.

"So, I always said, a man might die but his mind would never leave his family. You'd see a ghost all around his house in the night time after he died."
As far as he's concerned, this is the reason people used to see ghosts. "Something happened and they couldn't leave contented.
Today, you don't hear as much about ghosts because people knows the ones they leave behind are going to be taken care of," Hayward muses.
"I don't know if I ever heard any scary stories about ghosts. I don't know if ever anybody was hurt by a ghost or anything like that. Seemed like they was around and they minded their own business."

edit on 7/5/2013 by sled735 because: add comment

reply to post by sled735


I have been there!!
It is really creepy!

reply to post by blackmore23


Did you see any ghosts, or have any paranormal experiences?

2nd

I never had any paranormal experiences myself, just an uneasy feeling. I could feel the hairs standing up all over my body. My cousin claims he heard voices once.
We have a show called Newfoundland and Labrador paranormal that has a lot of paranormal investigation on it.
There is a ski lodge in my home town in NL that is very haunted. One time a group of teenagers snuck in there to use a ouija board and a few of them started projectile vomiting and collapsed. Plates and glasses have been known to fly across the room! I was there once at night and I swear I saw a woman in the window. I took a picture I'll see if I can find it.

reply to post by blackmore23


I see you live in Canada. Are you close to this haunted Bonavisa place?

I would not want to live in a haunted town. That would be too creepy for me.
I hope you find the picture. That would be an interesting addition to this thread. Do you think it is the lady they are talking about in the article?

reply to post by sled735


I swear if I ever get rich I am going to visit some of these places just to see what I can pick up from them.
Great ghost/haunting story Sled!

reply to post by Mindless1980


I live in the same province so I'm not that far! Newfoundland has a long history of ghost stories, there are a few stories that have been passed down in my family, along with superstitions!

reply to post by Darkblade71


Thanks, DB. Glad you like it.

You can have all the haunt hunting you want!
I have enough experiences of my own without going out to look for it.
But it would be interesting to do it with a group, I suppose.... maybe.

reply to post by blackmore23


Thanks for coming back.

Have you found the picture yet?

Originally posted by sled735
reply to post by Darkblade71

 

Thanks, DB. Glad you like it.

You can have all the haunt hunting you want!
I have enough experiences of my own without going out to look for it.

But it would be interesting to do it with a group, I suppose.... maybe.

I would wanna do it like the dead files, where it can be researched after to see how much information is accurate.
Know nothing going in, and come out to see what can be discovered from it.

reply to post by sled735


Newfoundlander here. My great-grandparents originally hailed from Bonavista, though I was very young when they died and they never had the chance to share any scary stories from the area with me.

I tend to be quite skeptical, but here on the island, with all of the history and the old homes, it's almost easier to believe in the things that go bump in the night than it is elsewhere in Canada.

I moved to a small outport community about a week ago, there are a lot of really beautiful but frankly creepy old Queen Ann-style homes that I wouldn't be shocked to learn were haunted.

reply to post by Darkblade71


I agree.

Historical evidence/validation is important. I really like that step The Dead Files takes to provide proof.

reply to post by Monger


Yes, it seems most older homes still have some spirit residents that don't want to leave.

I can usually look at a house and tell if it is haunted, or not. We have several older homes nearby where I live too.
I get that creepy feeling every time I drive past them.

Good luck on your move. I hope your house is "clean".

It's always nice to see fellow Newfoundlander's here on the boards, I am from St. John's myself. I've actually never been out to Bonavista myself, but I have had quite a few experiences here in town and out around the bay during my life.

reply to post by Armadall


Great!

Would you mind sharing what you have experienced?

Originally posted by Armadall
It's always nice to see fellow Newfoundlander's here on the boards, I am from St. John's myself. I've actually never been out to Bonavista myself, but I have had quite a few experiences here in town and out around the bay during my life.

If you don't mind, would you tell where you've had experiences around the city? Just recently moves to the east end and would like to visit some places.

The last time I was in Bonavista I was too young to remember anything really. It might have been when I was 7 or so. Do believe I have family of some kind out there still.
There is a book I have with a few local ghost stories in it including one on the Bradley House, called Haunted Shores written by Dale Jarvis. He has a few other books as well.

If anyone is interested in reading more here's a link: www.amazon.ca...

Sorry for the double post, but this island is so haunted my first job was in a haunted convienience store
True story, things happend there all the time and the manager was afraid of it.

Little history on the house, it was built by a Labez Saint in 1871 on land he aqquired from John H. Warren. It is believed that the material used to build was recycled from another, older building that once stood on the land.
The home was seized by Baine Johnston and Co. When Jabez went bankrupt, and then was bought by John Roper in 1898. The original owner(Jabez) was allowed to live there until he died in 1903.

reply to post by Smashed


Sounds like a ghost hunter's dream.

Working in a haunted store could be traumatic to some who aren't familiar with having ghosts around.

I have a ghost where I work now. He/she has been seen by many of the staff there. So far, it hasn't been malevolent, other that scaring the beegeebees out of people when they see it. But that is just a reaction from the person, not the ghost.

Thank you for the history. Interesting.

Tried to send you a message but ti seems I can't do that yet. Didn't want to get this post too off track so will only give you one story of my many

Nothing was ever seen in that store, but footsteps were hears(not by me thankfully) and the backroom where we kept soft serve mix(there is an old apartment attached to the store and it was sharing part of the kitchen) had very heavy air to it. There were times when we wouldn't go back there to fill up the machine and the manager( a somewhat cranky older lady) never blamed us a bit for it. There was also a basement that the door would randomly open too. We never saw this happen but we would find it open a few times a week(and it was open every morning despite being shut and locked with multiple locks the night before), and the air that came from it was colder than the beer cooler. It was FREEZING. Something also tapped me on the shoulder in the cooler my last shift there, saying goodbye I guess.