Urban Legends and Myths

The Ghost In The Wall

This tale begins in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1973 or 1974. My mother had just left my step-dad, and my mom, brother, and I moved into a rooming house on Berthmount Ave. We lived on the second floor, and we boys shared a room at the back of the apartment.

The first day we moved in, a few dozen maggots came crawling out from under the floorboard of the back wall of my room. Aside from that, things seemed fairly normal... until one day I was alone in the room. I heard the faint sound of someone weeping. I thought at first it was some kind of prank. I had trouble locating the source of this mysterious weeping. It seemed to be emanating from the same wall the maggots had crawled out from under, which had no room on the other side.

From what I remember, I was in grade five, so I guess I was 8 or 9 at the time. I began communicating with this weeping spirit. To do so, I had to lean with the top of my head against the wall and listen intently. Needless to say, communication was very difficult and time consuming.

So it offered a solution. It requested that I should find an idol and rub some of my blood onto it. Now I had no idea what an idol was, but I guessed it meant something my mother would have called a knick knack. Anyway, I figured out what it was requesting. I procured a figurine that came in a box of Red Rose tea.

I did what it asked and left the figurine by the wall. That turned out to be the biggest mistake of my childhood. Because the next night not only could I hear this spirit, but it was talking directly into my ear. And it didn't matter if I covered my ears with my hands.

I asked my mother if ghosts exist. She told me it was a load of hogwash. My teacher said the same. So in my eight-year-old mind, I came to the conclusion it was some kind of imaginary friend.

Well, my mother worked nights and left us boys in the care of woman who lived downstairs with two boys of her own. Which meant we were left alone upstairs, and this woman would come upstairs to check on us every so often.

That's when the horror started. I mean, what do you do if your imaginary friend doesn't like you anymore? I mean, this ghost -- or demon or whatever -- kept me up all night. It loved to pull the covers off me and rattle the dishes that were left to dry on the kitchen counter.

I can remember many things this spirit did to me, but the one that sticks in my mind the most was the first time it revealed itself physically. It manifested itself into this glowing orb of electrical energy on my bedroom wall to show me its power. And I knew enough about electricity that if I touched it, I would die.

So my lack of sleep progressed and I became accident prone, which culminated into me being poked in the eye in the schoolyard and having to wear a patch on my right eye for at least 30 days, so mom sent me to grandma's house to heal. And once there, all communication with the spirit was lost.

But eventually I healed and went back to that horrible place. Needless to say, the spirit was furious that it had lost contact with me during that time, and it questioned me endlessly about where I had gone. I prayed to Jesus to deliver me from this terror, and the spirit laughed and said plain as day, "For that to work, you have to have faith. Furthermore, I will follow you wherever you go now."

That's when I began to become very afraid and started to cry. As I was weeping, I noticed a hot air ballon hovering over the city out my window, and I remember yelling, "I'm going to imagine myself on that balloon, and it will take me to heaven where you can't touch me."

And I did just that. Now I wasn't aware that I had the ability to travel out of my body, but I concentrated all my thoughts out to that balloon, and before I knew it I was in the basket of that balloon. I still remember how loud it was up in that thing, but also I could feel the spirit hovering around the balloon.

Then in a flash I was back in my room, and that spirit was still up above a city of 2 million people... and I can only speculate that because it had no physical body to return to, it had no idea how to get back. And I'll tell you this: that whole place brightened up, and it seemed like gold dust was falling from the ceiling.

We lived there for a few more months, and during that time there was no more ghostly presence. So in conclusion, the spirit world does exist because everything in this story is true. It happened to me and I'm 46 years old... and I still sleep with the lights on. One more thing I must add: I think there is someone buried in the back wall of that house. And I think it's a child. But I know the spirit has moved on.