Toronto sociologist’s business specializes in busting ghosts.
Published: The Globe and Mail Report on Business, October 31, 1987
BY DEBORAH JONES/HALIFAX
In the heat of late August, Jane and Jim MacLean and their two children moved from Halifax into a venerable old house on Nova Scotia's historic South Shore. It was, for them, a home ownership dream come true. Except that within three days, they started getting the feeling they weren't alone.
The first signs there might be more to their new house than met the eye were subtle.
Cupboard doors slammed in the night. Water ran where no pipes existed. Television channels and volumes changed haphazardly. A mandolin played itself. There was an almost tangible but inexplicable chill, and sometimes, the sound of footsteps.
The MacLeans (not their real name) were initially reluctant to accept their suspicions of ghostly doings. "You make up all kinds of logical reasons why things happen," Mrs. MacLean said in an interview. "Besides, this is a house we fell in love with and we were so happy to get it that my husband, especially, didn't want to make any assumptions about anything being wrong."
But by the third week, she said, "I was getting nervous. Every time I went to the bathroom it felt like somebody touched me with their fingers, that they put water on my arm."
And then she awoke one night to hear a woman's voice calling to her 7- year-old son. "That's when I got scared," Mrs. MacLean said.
To make matters worse, both the boy and the couple's 4-year-old daughter awoke red-eyed and exhausted every morning and the boy occasionally reeked of rum.
So the MacLeans had several crosses blessed and began sewing them into their clothing. They began keeping a Bible in each room of the house. It helped, but the disturbances continued.
"A couple of times, at night, I heard my husband talking German. He can't talk German. But I heard him."
In the hit movie Ghostbusters, comedian Bill Murray wondered, under similar circumstances, "Who you gonna call?" If a spirit really does appear, just who do you call?
Mrs. MacLean went to a Halifax priest, but he declined to get involved. Then she heard about a radio interview with a Toronto man named Ian Currie who dehaunts houses as a sideline to his main business as a past-life therapist.
Mrs. MacLean ended up telling her story to a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. radio producer, who was intrigued about the possibility of turning the MacLeans' predicament into a radio segment.
So the CBC hired Mr. Currie and his associate, Toronto psychic Carole Davis, to fly to Nova Scotia and dehaunt the MacLean house. The experience was nothing like the exorcisms depicted in movies, Mrs. MacLean said. "It was more like sitting at the table with friends over coffee during the day."
She said what impressed her most was that Ms Davis seemed to know without being told about things that had happened in the house.
Mrs. MacLean, for instance, had had headaches and a sore left hand and arm after moving into the house, and she was told by her son that she "stunk like smelly feet, only worse."
Ms Davis's explanation was that one of the two spirits inhabiting the place had died of gangrene after being wounded in the left hand by a bullet or a knife. That was the pain Mrs. MacLean felt and her son was smelling the gangrene.
Mrs. MacLean's stomach pains and the constant coughs and moans of the two children at night were explained by their sympathy with the other spirit - a woman who had had tuberculosis.
The MacLeans were told that both spirits lived at the place more than a century ago, in a house that stood there before the present 100-year-old structure was built.
While there is no way of confirming Ms Davis's scenario, Mr. Currie said his associate "just knows this. She just picks it up."
Mrs. MacLean said the actual dehaunting was short and simple. Everyone sat at the dining room table while Ms Davis became the medium through which Mr. Currie talked to the spirits.
First, Mrs. MacLean said, Mr. Currie talked to the male spirit and told him he was no longer experiencing pain.
"The female then came into Carol - she was very tired and kept saying she had to protect the male from the law, that he kept waking her up."
Mr. Currie told the female that she was dead, and to leave. Mrs. MacLean said the female didn't leave that day, but waited until she was certain the male was gone. Two nights later, Mrs. MacLean was woken up by someone blowing in her ear and by the gurgling sound of her stomach and her husband's. Then a feeling of peace descended on their bedroom, she said. The episode, she said, was the spirit's "way of saying goodbye."
While few people will admit to a belief in ghosts, the MacLean family's problems are not uncommon, Mr. Currie said. He said 10 per cent of all Canadian houses are haunted and in some areas, such as Nova Scotia's folklore-rich South Shore, the percentage is even higher.
He added in an interview that hauntings are not common knowledge because people either delude themselves into thinking nothing is happening or they sell their house as quietly as possible before the property value falls.
"Haunted houses turn over quickly . . . often within two months," Mr. Currie said.
"I'm positive quite a few people must be experiencing things like this, but it's a hard thing to tell people," Mrs. MacLean said. "A lot of them would think there must be something wrong with you."
Mr. Currie said he only works with Ms Davis at the business of ghostbusting. There is no professional association and advertising is by word of mouth, he added.
He said he is the most active participant in the business that he knows of. Mr. Currie, 51, trained as a sociologist and taught sociology for 20 years at the universities of Toronto and Guelph. He is now a full-time consultant in parapsychology. Ms Davis is an ophthalmological technician by trade and works as a psychic part time.
Mr. Currie and Ms Davis charge $250 for a dehaunting, plus expenses and travel time if the work is away from Toronto. Their work is guaranteed. Out of 55 dehauntings the team has done, only one turned out to be a person having delusions, Mr. Currie said.
Most dehaunting involves telling the spirit it's dead - something spirits are often surprised to discover, Mr. Currie said. "The longest I've ever had to talk to a ghost was about four minutes."
While most spiritual disturbances involve phenomena like doors slamming, some can be dangerous, he said. A ghost can occasionally summon the energy to push a person downstairs and, in one case, a spirit's dog left teeth marks on a small girl's neck.
Despite her recent bout with the supernatural, Mrs. MacLean feels good about her new house. "Maybe it was meant for us, just to help those two spirits get out. Mr. Currie said they needed help, they were in distress."
The family's chief worry now is that others in their small community will discover what they went through and ostracize them, or that their children will learn that there were indeed ghosts in the house and become afraid.
Only last week did Mrs. MacLean summon the nerve to go upstairs alone. The house is finally starting to feel comfortable, she said.
NB: An editing error removed a reference to Arthur Black’s CBC show, which aired a story about the MacLean’s.
Copyright Deborah Jones 1987
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