The Paranormal & Public History

Whether or not you believe in the supernatural, ghost stories can offer valuable insight into the past. Haunted histories often feature real people, places and events - the ghostly tales serve as the medium for sharing. Hamilton and Niagara-based podcaster and Ghost Walks leader Ghost Guide Daniel takes a tour of the John Brown House and considers his approach to storytelling through the lens of the paranormal.

Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:18] ANNOUNCER: Welcome back to The Open Door, brought to you by The Brown Homestead in the heart of the beautiful Niagara Peninsula. 

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:16] SN: Hi, everyone. Sara here, bringing you The Open Door podcast. Now, it's been a minute since the release of our last episode. We're taking a few moments behind the scenes to really consider what we want the future of The Open Door podcast to look like, the stories we'd like to tell, the people we bring on in conversation. I'd like to bring you this special episode in honour of spooky season, my favourite season.

You might recall, last year around this time, we released an episode on the mysterious death and controversy surrounding E.A. Brown, a descendant of the Brown family, who had moved to Vancouver at the turn of the 20th century. If you'd like to give that a listen, head to our episode notes and we'll give a link to last year's release. But today, we're going to do something a little bit different. 

One of the most common questions we get at the Brown Homestead is whether the house is haunted. People love ghost stories. They love being scared and spooked. I've always thought of ghost stories and the paranormal as a way to bring people into history, to engage people in the stories of our past. I thought of no better person to explore this idea with than Ghost Guide Daniel.

Now, if you've been on a Ghost Walk in Niagara-on-the-Lake or Hamilton, then you've likely met Ghost Guide Daniel. He is steadfast in the Ghost Walk community. He's been leading tours across Niagara and Hamilton for over 20 years. He has a podcast called the Ghost Guide Daniel podcast, where he features dark and haunted stories from the past across Canada.

Now, we brought him to the Homestead to explore the John Brown House, to share stories of the families that once lived here while also chatting to Daniel about his approach to storytelling through the lens of history and haunting. He offers such a great perspective of how ghost stories can be both educational and entertaining, as well as what we learn from and what we get from telling history through a haunted or paranormal perspective. Let's bring you that conversation.

Welcome, Daniel.

[0:03:06] Da: Thank you so much for having me. Just this initial, because we're sitting in, I guess this was the original dining room.

[0:03:12] SN: Yes, exactly.

[0:03:12] Da: Oh, I'm very excited, because you just did – a lot of the original history still seems to exist. I hate it when people come in and they just try and modernize a historic house, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. I'm excited to get the tour.

[0:03:27] SN: Oh, yes, yes. I'm excited to have you. Yes, you're right. The dining room here, what I love about this space is, it's been a gathering space for people to share meals for over 200 years. We've kept and restored the space back to the original layout. We've knocked out walls to create that expansive area for people to gather. Even today, our staff continue to have our – whenever we have a staff party, we'll have the meals in this room. It's really neat to be in a historic house where we're able to thread the uses and how these spaces have been used
across time into today. That's definitely an exciting thing.

I guess I should share a little bit about the history of The Brown Homestead with you. John Brown, a United Empire loyalist, he and his family, Magdalena and his children, they fled Western New York during the American Revolution. They found themselves in Fort Niagara. John Brown served with the Butler's Rangers. By 1783, when the war was over, Loyalists spread out across Niagara to settle. John Brown, he finds himself in this part of Niagara and it's unique. We're right across from the Short Hills, which is just as it sounds. It's like these rolling hills with lots of waterways going through when there was potential for milling.

The road that you took, Daniel, to get here, Pelham Road, that is the historic Mohawk Trail. That's been a transit way for Indigenous people for centuries, connecting Niagara River all the way to Dundas and beyond. When the Loyalists arrived, they said, "Yes, let's continue to use this as a roadway." John Brown would have thought it advantageous to be on a road like that because it was so significant. Right down the road, they would have built some mills that he would have been able to use. The land was quite fertile for farming. We know that Indigenous people for centuries before were growing food, they were trading, they were travelling, they were gathering in this area. The Loyalists would have identified that and they would have settled here.

[0:05:41] Da: Yes. What amazes me is historically located versus moderately located. So, if you ask me a question about Niagara-on-the-Lake, which by the way was founded by John Butler, the head of the Butler's Rangers. So, I love how this whole area is connected, but it's so awkwardly located at the top, like where they needed to guard the space. That's where the Fort for George would have been in Fort Niagara. You look at these houses now today, I drive here and it's in the middle of nowhere. But back then, this would have been a hub of activity.

[0:06:12] SN: When I think about the nature that is around us and the setting that we're in here at the Homestead, I get called back to that history of what it was like for the Loyalists to be here to settle the land. Even when I think about, it's all farmland now with the vineyards. But when John Brown would have come here in the 1780s, it would have been old-growth forests. Like the trees would have been massive, and tall, and so daunting to clear the land to build his house. 

We see that in the foundations of the house itself. If you go into the basement and you see the wood beams that are keeping the house upright. Those beams are huge. It's because of the wood that they had at the time that we just don't – we can't even comprehend that now with the forest that we have. 

[0:06:59] Da: I always say that with - because I lived in an older house for a little while. It's trees, it's like real tree wood, as opposed to the particle board, or whatever you call that they use today. I always say that too, is like, where are those houses, the modern house is going to be in a hundred years. I think they're going to be crumbled messes on the ground, and these houses are still going to be standing because of how well they're built, especially the foundations. I mean, it was real stone masons who made the foundations. I said, like, if you have an old house like this, if there's like a hurricane, or a nuclear attack or something, you just go into basement and you'll be 100% safe, because they're built to survive everything.

As nowadays, you look at it funny, and there's a crack. It's just that, yes. There's a different feel, like just sitting inside The Brown Homestead right now, it's almost like these older houses, they vibrate, as opposed to the newer houses, they feel a little bit more calm or like there's nothing there. But it's almost like the house itself is a character, like a living thing.

[0:08:01] SN: I love that. What did you feel when you first came into The Homestead then?

[0:08:06] Da: Well, let's just say, I don't want anybody getting a confusion. I'm not psychic in any way. If anything, I'm the anti-psychic. I'm so bad at it. But any historic house, you don't need to be psychic for this, like if you don't go on museum tours, I say, do it now. Go inside. Sometimes the stories can be a little bit boring. Use those, the moments, the boring stories to feel the space. It's just like, it's been lived in, right? It's hard to explain, but anybody who's been in an old house knows that feeling. 

It's just like you're walking into somebody's home, like you're being invited inside. It just, yes, maybe some houses, I don't want to get on a tangent here. But if you look at some historic houses, let's take the Amityville House because everybody knows that. Bad things happened in that house historically, proven, no question. That leaves kind of like this cloud over top of it, so that everybody who visits afterwards is going to pick up on that restless/anxious energy from those tragedies of all those people dying. That's not every house. So, you walk into most houses from the 1800s, it was family, they went through happy times, they went through sad times, whatever. It gives it that buzz. Like I said, it feels like something that's alive.

[0:09:23] SN: I love that. I love what you say about it feeling alive. I think a house like this, The Brown Homestead, that's been around for 220 plus years. So much lives have been lived here.

Three different generations of families. We have the Brown family, so this is again the Loyalist family that's coming to the site, clearing the land, building the house, farming here for a couple generations. Then, they sell the house to a family named the Chellew's. They are English immigrants. They first buy a house down the road when they first get to Canada in the 1840s. They have a lot of kids, they have 11 kids. By 1858, they're looking to get into a bigger house, and they buy this house from the Brown family.

The Chellews move in, and we consider them our Victorian-Era family. Because they're here through the 1860s, through the rest of the 1800s, and they do a lot of Victoria era. I like to call it like, fancifying the house, they add pretty elements to the outside. They put on a pretty porch, they change some things especially in the parlour to make it a fancy sitting room. So, they add these Victorian flares to the house, change up the rooms to accommodate all of their children. 

Then, by 1902, they sell the house to the Powers family. The Powers family, they are our 20th century family. So, they come and modernize the house. The Powers are the ones that are adding electricity and plumbing. They're expanding the farm, putting in fruit orchards, having a radio for the first time, television. They're kind of bringing those 20th-century technologies into the house. Also, modernizing and creating the house to mean something completely different, because this was a family house first. From the time it was built, or the 1796, the first part of the house. It was built and they lived here, the Powers lived here until the late '70s. That's so much history, and lives, and changes, and that's what I like about old houses too, is you can really identify different eras when you look really closely, and you can see the different changes that have been made, modifications to adapt, and to serve the needs of the families that live here. 

That's one of the things that we like to do here at The Brown Homestead is, we're not here to restore the house back to one era, or one period, or one architectural style. We want to pay homage, and look at all those different layers, and all those different changes.

[0:11:59] Da: Because we get this obsession with the oldest, what it would have been like during those times and you kind of forget the newer generations. You said the Powers family was here until the '70s. Then, what happened from the '70s to you guys coming in?

[0:12:14] SN: Yes. After 1979, when Charles Powers, kind of the head of the household, he passed away. The daughter sold it to – actually, it's a unique story. A heritage conservationist professional in the area named Jon Jouppien. He created a whole career for himself with heritage restoration and learning about different heritage techniques. He purchased the home with the intent to restore the house back to the Georgian Era, and make it into a historic house museum. He spent decades on this project, which was an incredibly vast, and overwhelming project for one human. He actually did a lot of the early restoration work that allowed us to kind of continue the process. He was working on this, and then The Brown Homestead.

We purchased the home in 2015. That's even in itself an interesting story. Some of our listeners know this, but Andrew Humeniuk, who's our executive director, he is a descendant of the Brown family. He's the fifth great-grandson of John Brown. Still in the family, so it's this really cool full-circle moment where the house is now back in the Brown family.

Andrew, his wife, Jennifer had this vision to create the house into a community gathering space, a cultural space that could have legacy beyond the Brown family. So, to open it up to the public, it gets people learning about the heritage conservation process, as well as culture, arts, local history, that kind of stuff. Creating this as a hub for learning and for engagement. Again, that legacy is something that can showcase through the house, through our restoration, and allowing those stories to be told through the walls, and the floorboards, and the ceilings, and all the changes that you see when visitors come here.

[0:14:08] Da: So, there are people coming just the tour of the house to get in the history. You guys give tours, I assume. Just so everybody knows I'm coming in very green on this. I didn't ask any questions because I wanted to be surprised. But yes, no, I always say to folks during the tour, the ghost tours that we do, is one of my pet peeves with museum tours. I'm going to throw it out to you guys. You might be angry at me after this, but I do it anyway. Is that, if you get too far into the weeds with general stories that all houses have. Oh, that fireplace was made in that design because of Victorian, whatever, tends to lose the interest of folks like myself who have very little patience in this world. It's a problem. I'm working on it. I love it. 

I'll give an example. Shout out to White Heron Mansion in Downtown Hamilton. They've gone a different route, which I highly respect. They talk very little about the house itself, but more of the families who lived in there. So, it's like personal stories, and I adore that. That's all I want to say. I just want to say, if you have personal stories of the family, people standing in the room where it all happened, that will keep my attention for hours on end, as opposed to what type of wood is in the wall, then, I should fall asleep.

[0:15:22] SN: Yes, fair enough, fair enough. That's the types the stories we're trying to tell here, is we want personal stories where people can come into the space and see themselves in the stories that we're telling. We are really interested in history's continuum and threading the stories of the past into our present. We really emphasize that history is ongoing and our understanding of the past is constantly changing as we get new stories, new voices, new perspectives, new sources. We are constantly retelling our understanding of history here. I'm interested in your approach to history, and how you marry history, and storytelling, as well as the paranormal. 

[0:16:05] Da: It was kind of a suggestion I got in the past. I've always been very much a storyteller. Even when I was a little kid, I used to write these amazing stories. I should have been a writer, but then, I realized that I would also be poor. So, I decided to go into computers instead, which is – that's where all the money's at. So, that was my motivation. But it's funny how if you're meant to do something in life, you eventually find your way back. 

As I mentioned, I wrote a lot of fiction, but I also had a love for history as well. But like I just mentioned a second ago, I was always searching for the more robust stories, because I wanted to learn from the past and hear what happened in these spaces. I always thought, with the ghost tours, a lot of them will go down the road of, okay, here's a historic building, this is what it was, and this is what it is now, here's the ghost. That's not like the most efficient way of doing it. That's not the most interesting way. 

The best way is that, if you can weave in the ghost stories exactly where they belong, as you're telling the history, it amazes me. People will come away from the tour remembering the stories so much easier. Our memories flow in a certain way, so should the story. I always saw it in that regard, that the history should prove the ghost. Then, even the skeptics in the group, maybe, will find it harder to disbelieve and put me down in the process to hurt my feelings. That was always been my approach, is the story should be as vivid as possible. It's almost like this movie going on in your head.

On top of that, the history should be true and the history should affect the ghost story's level of belief. You know what I mean? In the same time, and the same processes, show off the building in the most interesting way. Not always the best way, because the history is not always good. I've never been one to cover that up. I always say at the beginning of the Dundas Tour, there's two names in the story that history hates. Canadians would hate them. They see them as villains in the past.

Some tours, they would avoid that. I never do. Just go ahead, belong into it, because people accept flaws. You think if you tell flaws, it's going to make you look bad. No. You're not responsible for what they did in the past. So, you shouldn't cover up history. You should tell it as it was and let the other people kind of convert it in their own way. Otherwise, you're hiding what actually happened.

[0:18:38] SN: That's also when history becomes interesting when we tell kind of problematic stories, or we don't shy away from problematic past because that's actually where the real human stories are. The people that we're talking about from the past are human like we are, and we have flaws, and they had flaws. I think we're actually able to relate to that a lot better and see them as people. When we tell those human stories, we can see ourselves in that history more and we can kind of see that connection between the past and the present because we're reminded that, no, these were just people doing their best.

[0:19:15] Da: It's true, and consider morality is different from every point of view. Your morality shared in the story – I'm not saying you, I'm saying the royal you, in the sense that if you're the one writing that story or it's your point of view on the history that happens, you might inflict your morals onto it. But then, somebody will come along and say, "I don't agree with that," and all of a sudden, it's a battle. I always say, "You just tell it like it is," and then people will convert it in their own way.

[0:19:43] SN: Yes. You kind of keep it open to interpretation. We all learn something when people share their interpretations of the story too. We learn different perspectives that I might not have thought of because I don't have the same experiences that they have coming into the story.

[0:19:58] Da: Actually, that's a perfect way to put it, not to drag this on a bit more, but it's a sense that you got a picture, not only what they did, but the times they were living in. So, their "you"; moralities back then were so much different than ours. If you don't have the entire context, if you just look at what they did as an action, I'm not saying Brown was a terrible person or anything like that. I'm just talking about in general. To know what was surrounding them, the lives they were living, the dangers that they were facing were so much different than us today. I mean, we're so coddled, and it's so like easy now compared to what they had. I mean, death was all around them all the time. They would have done different things. So, I just say, consider the whole context.

[0:20:38] SN: Yes. I absolutely agree with that. One thing I am interested about your approach to the storytelling, and I like what you say about how you ground the ghost story in history and in sources. I find it so interesting how ghost stories and the paranormal in general are used as tools to kind of draw people into the history of people and places. I see Ghost Walks as a form of public history, as a form of engaging the public with history in a way that kind of piques their interest, and doesn't really seem like a history lesson. I wondered if you had thoughts on that also.

[0:21:21] Da: It was always in the sense, like you said, you're telling the story, and you're trying to tell the story in the most interesting way. So, this only comes with time. If somebody's a writer, they know what I'm talking about, is you can have the exact same story told from two different perspectives. One being boring as hell, and the other one being so very interesting. But it's the exact same story because you've ordered it in a sense that there's mystery, there's a climax, there's the twist. There are certain things. I always looked at the stories like, what's the best way to tell this?

I'll give a quick example. We just started a tour in the town of Dundas, which by the way, beautiful town, very historic. There's this story of a murder mystery, that this dismembered corpse that was found on the train tracks. If anybody knows where Dundas District School is, it was just beyond that. It got into this whole thing as, how did he die? Who killed him? Was it a train accident? Was he murdered? The history that they presented was so confusing because it was never solved. It remained a mystery to this very day. I had to figure out the best way to tell it.

In regards to that, I think I did it well, even though I still think it's still confusing. I need to make it less confusing. But it's really good, guys. Dundas Tour is awesome. I told in a certain way where the order starts with the mystery, the death, how he died, then getting into the supposed suspects, and what he was doing that night, and then finally presenting a theory in the end of it all. My original point at the beginning of this was, you've got to tell in a story, because that's what we react to. Every movie and TV show is the same in that regards for a reason, because that's what we find most interesting. I see history is the same way.

[0:23:08] SN: Awesome. Okay. Maybe we can start our tour and take you into our summer kitchen to tell some of those stories there and see what comes out of it. 

[0:23:18] Da: Let's go.

[0:23:26] SN: We are in the summer kitchen of The Brown Homestead. This is actually the oldest part of the house. This room that we're standing in was built in 1796, and it would have been the second home the Browns would have lived in. They would have come to the space, or to the land, cleared enough land to build a log cabin. That was probably in the 1780s. Lived in the log cabin, literally bursting at the seams with their nine children. As they lived there, they were building their one-and-a-half-story stone house in 1796. In this room that we're in now, it feels different from the rest of the house, right?

[0:24:10] Da: It does, yes. Even when you're just walking into it, just the general feel, but the look of it, and the fact that you're stepping down onto another level, it just seems like, yes, a bit disconnected. 

[0:24:20] SN: Yes, the ceilings are low, the windows are smaller, it's a little bit darker. I'm fascinated because it feels colder in here, and it feels a little bit emptier somehow from the rest of the house. But the Brown family, it was not empty to them. This room would have been where they ate, they would have cooked, they would have sown, they would have played, they would have socialized in this space. At nighttime, John and his wife, Magdalena, would have slept downstairs. Then, we have a very narrow staircase going up to what it would have been a loft where the Brown children would have slept.

They would have lived here until the big house was finished in 1802, 1804. It's quite a bit of time, about six to eight years living in these quarters as they continue to farm and build a community here. 

[0:25:19] Da: Yes, it was. Since folks are just listening, the stairs are very impressive. It just looks like a closet, and then these stone and wood creepy-looking stairs going up into pure darkness. 

[0:25:30] SN: Yes, that's exactly it.

[0:25:31] Da: By the way, it's daytime right now. It's crazy. They're so creepy-looking. I was like, "Your staff should be paid extra just for having to go up and down those stairs." 

[0:25:38] SN: Danger pay, right?

[0:25:40] Da: A danger pay, yes. Exactly.

[0:25:42] SN: This space, after the Brown family built their big house, this room was used as a summer kitchen. We have a nice big hearth where they would have cooked. Later on, during the Powers family era, especially where they build their modern kitchen inside, this room is used for fruit packing, and storage, and more of that, the farm elements of the house. Why do you think people are drawn into stories of the paranormal?

[0:26:10] Da: Well, I mean, I got to give it to the old horror movies, going back from when all of us were kids to now. I mean, you grow up with that. Then, on the other side of it, fear is very exciting. So, your fear of ghost links from everybody's general fear of death. The fact that you're seeking out the past, but if ghosts are real, it's scary. Then, you go through and you feel alive again afterwards, because you're so focused on death. That's just a completely random thought on it.

But, when it comes to these older houses, I mean, just seeing death as being final, but maybe there's something else to it. I think that's the general idea with the fear of ghosts. But yes, no, you're drawn to it because unlike just saying, this is what happened, like you told me everything happened in this room, the family was here. Well, if I'm here at night, and all of a sudden, I hear a voice of somebody saying, "Hey, where's the meat for the table?" or something, then it's like on a different level because now, they're here with you. Even though their bodies are somewhere as rotting corpses or skeletons in the ground, not to get dark. There's the sense that they're still here as well. It's kind of terrifying when you really think about it. 

[0:27:29] SN: Yes. You think it's a fear that draws us into the paranormal, and maybe looking to explain away some of those fears. That's a question that we often get when visitors come to The Homestead is, "Is it haunted?" Do you have any ghost stories? I think people are looking for that because it's an old house. I find it interesting because when I go to different spaces of the house, I get a different feeling and I don't know how to interpret those feelings sometimes. But when I come into the summer kitchen, it feels different from the rest of the house. I don't know if I just know that this is the oldest part of the house, it physically looks different again. It has lower ceilings, the floors are very uneven, the windows feel a little bit deeper, so it's a little bit darker in here, you have this massive hearth. The stairs, of course, which as you mentioned are a little terrifying. I find some people also want to add a story, or explain those feelings, and kind of connect that to a larger story or a larger explanation about why we feel differently in different spaces.

[0:28:42] Da: Well just the side of it too, it'd be so cool if there was still somebody here from the Brown family, especially if you really love that kind of history. Not only are you here hearing about it, but they're also here with you, kind of this remnant of the past that still remains. It just adds to it. So, if it's possible to prove that to be true, it's the two sides of it. There's the fear, but then there's also the fascination that we're still energetically connected to them today.

[0:29:12] SN: It kind of brings history to life in a different way, right? 

[0:29:15] Da: Yes. It's funny how death brings history to life, but you're right, you're absolutely right.

[0:29:20] SN: Okay. Let's then move on to one of my favourite rooms in the house with one of my favourite stories. We'll head to the parlour next. We've made it into the parlour, and I mentioned that this is my favourite room in the house, and that's for many reasons. But the history is really cool, and that the Brown family, they operated a tavern on this site, because we have the Mohawk Trail, Pelham Road, which was very active transportation route. Because we are this landmark stone house in the middle of nowhere, as you mentioned earlier. People travelling on that route would have needed a place to stop overnight, just a place for a meal. Also, a place just to gather for business dealings, for voluntary association meetings, even for church gatherings.

This became a community hub in the early 1800s before we had purpose-built buildings for those organizations. So, this was a tavern from about 1809 through to about the 1840s. Adam Brown, who was the son of John Brown, he goes on this venture. That's a unique part of our history here.

[0:30:48] Da: Did Adam and his family still live in the house while the tavern was operating? 

[0:30:51] SN: They did, yes. 

[0:30:52] Da: Wow.

[0:30:54] SN: When John Brown, when he passed away in 1804, by 1809, Adam Brown opened the tavern, likely just to pursue some entrepreneurial adventures. The Georgian house, its design is really well-suited for public and private spaces, because you can just shut a door, and that becomes a public space, and other spaces become private, despite shutting doors and opening different ways through hallways. So, the parlour and the summer kitchen were public places for tavern patrons, and the rest of the house was private spaces for the family to use.

[0:31:33] Da: See, that's why I always think of in the sense that you don't want to have a bunch of rough, drunk hooligans wandering your house. I assume they had locks on the doors, or something to keep them from – I guess, they wouldn't know what they were doing at that point. 

[0:31:48] SN: Exactly. Exactly. Again, it was keeping the lives separate, while also generating income for the family, which was really important, and becoming that landmark community space where people would see. There would likely be a sign on the front of the house that said, license to sell whiskey, and liquor, wine, and that would have been enough to draw people in. Letting this be a landmark for people passing by will also - allowing this to continue to be a family home for the people that lived here. It would have been farmland also. The Browns were farming wheat and grains. So, they would have continued that work while also operating the tavern.

[0:32:28] Da: It's pretty awesome in the sense that, making money off of your space. I mean, nowadays, I would never think, I wouldn't put a tavern in my home. But back then, I mean, you could do it. Like you said, being on a main road, I'm sure everybody was respectful, right? 

[0:32:41] SN: It is funny. I've been going through court records for the area, for Niagara. There's always a whole section that dealt with taverns, and inns, and all of the drama that would come between drunkenness, disorderly behaviour, and who's calling who names, and who's picking fights. So, it definitely added some colour to the lives of the people of this area, by having a tavern here, I'm sure.

[0:33:10] Da: Definitely.

[0:33:10] SN: The idea of the tavern here too, it's an interesting story, because for so long, we really just had the physical evidence of the tavern with the bar still being here. But it was really exciting for The Brown Homestead, like our researchers to find the sources that told us that this really was a tavern. We found a still license, which meant that Adam Brown had a license paid, a license in order to produce distills on whiskey on the property. Then. we've also found tavern licenses. So, he had to pay money every year just to open a tavern on-site. So, we have those licenses. It's not for every year, because not every record exists, but from 1809 until the 1840s, we've been able to find records, which is kind of exciting for us.

[0:33:57] Da: Wait. So, the bar was found before you knew that it was a tavern?

[0:34:01] SN: Yes.

[0:34:02] Da: So, that led you down the road of checking if it was – that's pretty cool.

[0:34:05] SN: Exactly.

[0:34:06] Da: Usually, it's the other way around where you like, you know the history, and then you seek it out. But this is the opposite, like the history just spoke to you.

[0:34:13] SN: Exactly. The history spoke to us, and that's exactly it. We found these clues, we had an idea, and then we were able to piece together the story with the sources by going back into the archives. You mentioned earlier about using historical sources to ground your ghost stories. I wanted to ask you about that. How has it been like going through the archives, and finding those sources, and finding those clues to tell you. Did that kind of inform the ghost stories that you tell on your tours?

[0:34:42] Da: It's definitely a good feeling. I'll say that for sure. But there are a lot of ghost stories and related ghosts. Like it'll use Niagara-on-the-Lake, for example. The Angel Inn has a story of Captain Swayze, the most popular ghost in the town, most talked about, et cetera, et cetera. However, when we tell the story on the tour, we always state, "This is a legend," because there's a difference between your historical fact and your legend. Your legend has just been passed down through the generations, and it could have changed – like the telephone game. It could be a completely different story by the time it gets to us now.

When you actually delve into the history, and there was, like to say, we actually found a Colin Swayze in the past who actually existed and used to drink at The Harmonious Coach House, which is now the Angel Inn. It'd be an amazing feeling. We haven't found that, but we're still, fingers crossed. But I will tell you that what we did find, there is a Swayze family that lived in Niagara-on-the-Lake because there's the graves at St. Mark's with the Swayze name on it. So, if you add that, then maybe there's more validity to it.

But then, there's other stories like – trying not to ramble here – The Apothecary in Niagara-on-the-lake, where the main ghost is said to be a fellow named Judge Edward Campbell. Now, we didn't know at the beginning, it was just said, "Oh, the judge haunts this building." I asked the question, "Why? Why did he haunt it?" We couldn't really find any information about it until later, we were doing some deeper research into the building that was there before The Apothecary. It turns out, and this is like one of those eureka moments, that Judge Campbell had an office inside that original building when at the same time he was serving at the judge at the courthouse across the street.

Then, we found the connection that, why, this tall guy has been seen in there, who's been believed to be the judge. So, there's a perfect eureka moment. Yes, it's a huge rush. The greatest that a historian researcher can get in his life unless he decides to go skydiving.

[0:36:45] SN: Do you find that people on your tours, are they ever asking for sources or like how you find out the stories or prove the stories? Are there any skeptics that are like, "I need to see the evidence." 

[0:36:57] Da: Only the really angry ones. No. I've had folks, most people are absolutely awesome and many people, like I always do surveys for myself. I'll ask, "Well, how many you believe? How many you don't? How many think you were drunk?" Whatever. I'll get the majority of the hands go up for the belief in ghost. So, we are getting a lot of the believers coming on. But then, yes, you got your odd skeptic. I find private tours, especially when you do them for serious businessmen or women. I'll get the most skeptics on those. It's always a lot of fun, because they'll kind of make fun of it. And then I'll just poke back at them a little bit. It's like, "Yes, it's more than our material world. You're animated, you're moving around. Explain that one." I say, "There's something to this. There's something else to this." But never have I ever gotten anyone angry. Usually, even the most ardent skeptic loves a good ghost story.

[0:37:50] SN: Well, I know even in myself, whenever I go to a new city, or I'm travelling, I always seek out the ghost stories and the ghost tours. I learn about the local history of a space while also being entertained, and scared, and curious, and interested, and kind of get goosebumps. Also, learning about the key historical figures, and key events, and key dates of that place that I'm in. They're so important as a way to kind of draw people in. to learn about the history, while also kind of get challenging themselves a bit, and saying like, hey, maybe there is validity to a feeling a spirit in a space, or something of a haunting, or if there is some sort of traumatic. Thinking of the murder that you mentioned in Dundas, on the railroad, the death. That's some traumatic history, but there's still something that we can learn from it and take away from it. 

Because you've been in a lot of haunted spaces in your career, do you feel anything going through the homestead? Is there anything calling to you?

[0:39:03] Da: Again, I will reiterate that I am not psychic in any way. Although – see, there's a thing, there's two sides. The people who build their psychic abilities and are sensitive to everything or the people who aren't psychic, who have had experiences related to the paranormal. I'm in the second, I'm in the latter camp. For that regard, I've been in truly haunted places, and when an entity is in the room, I felt it. It's just like you sitting in front of me right now, it's that same feeling, but you can't see who it is, which is the most terrifying part it. I've also had some stuff follow me home in the past as well, too.

For that regard, I can feel the difference. But most, if not all historic houses that I've been in that we haven't stirred stuff up, we'll only feel that just kind of general energy buzzing that's different than the modern houses we talked about before. But coming into The Brown Homestead, I haven't felt anything like over the top. Again, it's the morning time. Usually, at night time, things are a little more heightened because the world's more at rest on a material plane. Then, the ghosts tend to go out for a lack of a better term. But no, nothing, nothing in The Brown Homestead, yet.

[0:40:15] SN: Yet.

[0:40:16] Da: Yet.

[0:40:17] SN: Interesting. I know personally I haven't pursued paranormal, psychic things. But I really get a sense that I do feel things in different spaces, like what you said. When I came to The Brown Homestead for the very first time, I felt a sense of being welcomed in, and I felt a sense of home the minute that I walked through the door. That's not the first time that people have said that. So, I like to think that if there is a ghost in The Brown Homestead, they're very friendly and they want us to be here.

[0:40:49] Da: Yes, you can believe that until something happens, and then you don't believe it anymore. I know that. For the most part, yes, the energies are very welcoming. For the most part as well, not to dash anybody's hopes is, usually it's residual anyway, in the sense that the Brown family's not actually here anymore, but you're just experiencing almost like a movie playing. So, there's no interaction, it's just leftover energy. I say, 99% of energy in homes is just that, it doesn't mean they're not technically here. It's just consciously they're not here.

[0:41:24] SN: That's interesting. The fact here, we have an old home that's, again, since 1796, there's also been more families. It wasn't just the Browns that were here. We have the Chellews, and we have the Powers family. So, I do wonder if some of that residual energy is here as well from maybe as late as the 1900s. I'm curious in that as well. I guess, there are spirits that have unfinished business. And yes, maybe they are hanging around, who knows.

[0:41:53] Da: Well, that's it. On the other side of it is, you can go to specific areas of the house too. You look into the history. For example, Dundurn Castle in Hamilton has a sick room. So, every person from the MacNab family on – we don't know, it's just the MacNab family. But every person from them went to that room when they were very sick. Usually, most of them would end up dead. That's the room they died in as well. So, it's no surprise that there are a couple ghost stories from inside that room, because that's where all the tragic energy happened. 

On the other side of it, they usually held the wakes in the parlours. Wake being, if listeners don't know, it's like people show up to say goodbye to the person at the same time. They want to see if they're going to wake up, to make sure it wasn't just some kind of bug bite, or disease that caused them to look dead, because there was a big fear of being buried alive back in those days. On top of that, that's another whole other podcast, is the sense that the sadness that the people are feeling when they're visiting and saying goodbye can hang over the room as well. Any room that has that build-up of tragic energy from emotion can tend to be more haunted than others.

[0:42:59] SN: That's interesting. That, again, makes me wonder about old homes, like The Homestead here, where spaces have had different purposes over time. We're currently in the parlour. So, if the Chellew family would have had a wake, it would have been in this room. But this room also was a tavern the generation before, where there was all this liveliness, and energy, and camaraderie happening here. So, it's kind of interesting the different experiences and feelings that this room would have held at different points in its life. 

[0:43:34] Da: There is a perfect reason to become more psychic. Because imagine just walking in a room and just being attacked by those feelings all at once, it would be so exciting.

[0:43:45] SN: Okay. Since we've been talking about energies and spirits, the liveliness of being in a public space like the tavern and the parlour. I'd like to take us upstairs to our ballroom and our loft, where also a lot of people had their bedrooms at one point. So, I'll get into some of the more private space of The Homestead. 

We've made it to the ballroom, and as you can tell, currently, under restoration. We have lots of construction pieces, we have scaffolding up, floors are covered for protection, we have our plaster table, lots of plaster work in the process. So, it must be a fun space for you to get to come into.

[0:44:32] Da: It's really cool. I'm going to tell you, I love seeing the rooms as they originally were stripped down. Like you said, you get a lot of the history just looking at it. Then, you walk in, you look, you see the beautiful windows, and then you look over and see this tiny little baby door. I asked if it was the children's bedroom, because it's like, what is that, about three and a half, four feet high? So, is this original?

[0:44:56] SN: I guess. Yes, it's original. I'll share a bit about the space. This little door that you see and the stone wall that it's on is the exterior of the original house. This little door I think used to be a window overlooking Pelham Road. I've been challenged on that. But if we were to open the door, which we will in a bit. We'll open it up to the loft that is above the summer kitchen, where we were a little while ago. 

[0:45:23] Da: The creepy stairs.

[0:45:24] SN: The creepy stairs.

[0:45:25] Da: Okay, got it, got it. The little tiny door leads to the creepy stairs. That's exactly what I expected.

[0:45:32] SN: Exactly. Now, what I like about showing you this room as it's currently under restoration is, it shows – this is an ongoing process, and we want to invite the public into our restoration process. We don't want to be like, "Oh, don't look at us. Avoid your eyes while we make this a perfect space." We want people to feel like they're a part of the work as it's getting done.

One of the values of The Brown Homestead is embracing uncertainty, and kind of bringing the people along our journey as we restore the house, as we uncover things that we didn't know was there. Then, changing our approach to the restoration project to tell those new stories that come to light. So, this room that we're in, the ballroom, we call it the ballroom because when the Browns built the house in 1802, 1804, this would have been an entertaining space and a community gathering space for them. We know that because the windows that you see, the beautiful bright windows, the window casing, the woodwork is very elegant, and it goes right to the floor. This is the only room in the whole house that has the elegant woodwork.

The idea here is that this would have been a public space that they really wanted to show off. If there were church gatherings that would have happened at the house, voluntary associations, they would have been using this space for meetings, for social gatherings, social celebrations, because there just wasn't another space in the community. They weren't building churches quite yet at that point. They built their houses first.

Then, again, the purpose of the rooms or the spaces change as the family needs change. You can kind of see on the floor where there used to be walls, where they built walls, and kind of chopped up the room into different bedrooms.

[0:47:14] Da: You can see the line right there.

[0:47:15] SN: Yes, exactly. So, this was chopped up into a few bedrooms, because, as I mentioned, the Chellews had a lot of children, so space was high real estate for them. Again, the ballroom would have been changed over time. The uses of the space would have been changed over time to fit the needs of the family. The same goes for the loft. So, behind us here, we have the stone wall, the original exterior of the house, and this little baby door. We open the door.

[0:47:42] Da: Okay, that's really cool. Yes, I guess there's a baby door, because there's steps going down. Just like on the first floor, right? So, the back area is a little bit lower than the area we're currently in. So, the two sides of it. It looks like an old attic, in like an old house with the wood beams, low ceiling, and then just a couple of small windows in the distance to make a little bit of light coming in, to make it look creepy.

[0:48:06] SN: Yes, it's a very creepy. We're currently using it as storage, and very rickety floorboards. We won't go in, but we can peek in, and kind of envision what it would have been like for the Brown children to sleep up there in the late 1700s, and they're still building the big house. Oral history tells us that this room would have been used later on for farm hands to sleep. The Powers family, when they start growing orchards, and fruit on the property, they get a few farm hands to help with the process, with the harvesting and the growing. Oral history tells us that, a farmhand or two would have slept up in the loft.

This is kind of our only real tragic story that we have here at The Homestead, that we know only through oral history. The Powers family, the daughters of the family, they came to the site a little bit after Andrew and Jennifer acquired the house, the executive director of The Homestead, and told a quite tragic story of a fire that took place in the loft, and a farmhand dying. So, that's a story that was told to us, and the only evidence that we have to corroborate the story, if you will, is evidence of a fire that did take place in the loft. So, there is a bit of charring, a little bit of wreckage that tells us that, okay, maybe a fire did take place. But we haven't been able to find any sources yet about who might have died, who even the farmhands were, how many there were, what it was like to sleep in the loft, what that looked like, and if someone really did die. We haven't yet been able to find the sources.

I did want to ask you about that in your own research and in the own work that you do. What happens when you don't find the sources to create the evidence for the stories that you're telling? 

[0:50:03] Da: Well, it's got to be good enough. When you're doing the research, it has to be robust enough to warrant the location we're going to. It's not like you guys, where you're in the house, or you're forced to do the research about the house. You can't just ignore something because you don't have the information. So then, you can take what normally happens at similar houses from the same time period and guess what was going on. When you tell me all the stuff you told me, I say, "Okay, that makes complete sense," because I know other stories from other houses. So, that's one side of it.

The other side of it is, if there isn't enough information, then usually I personally won't cover it. So, if it's like a little bit lighter, maybe just be a quick mention. Oh yes, over here, the farmhands supposedly slept in there, and then that's the story. So then, you move on to the next one. Hopefully, there's a few really good ones as you're going throughout a tour. But from the other side of it, and I learned this from a historian in Toronto. I went to her as she was speaking at an event, and there's the idea that, okay, you can take that logic, and if you have certain aspects of the story, you can kind of see where the story's going to go.

So, there's certain things you can add to something that you might not know for sure, but you can guess good enough that it's most likely true because you just use logic, and then you can make the story more rounded that way. But then, just be careful not to go too into the weeds with it, and it has to be believable, and it has to seem right. So then, that's a good way to round it off. If you don't have the source for something, sometimes you can add in through logic. Otherwise, it's a legend. Otherwise, as you just use the term oral history, people are going to take that with a grain of salt. 

[0:51:44] SN: Yes. Again, I think it's worth sharing those stories for the learning opportunity that they are. I think when we are embracing uncertainty, I think a part of that is embracing that we don't know everything, and kind of opening up for conversation, for dialogue. When we open it up, then we can learn from other people. You're saying here that, you've heard of other stories like that happening in old houses and old farms. I'd be interested to learn about those stories and what their sources were that might help us. 

[0:52:14] Da: Yes, it guides you in the right direction. But then on the other side of it, the part I didn't mention is, other people. I'll start a tour that's maybe an hour long, and within three years, it can be an hour and a half because so many people go, "Oh, yes. I went to that place when it was a school" or "I'm related to the family that used to live in that" and then they share their stories, which just adds more light. So, if you have more folks from the Brown family coming, or they might have their own stories to tell or just regular folks who just know the history.

[0:52:46] SN: I think there's so much value in that too, and why I think things like ghost tours, walking tours, tours of old houses, it's so important to open up for conversation and for dialogue. Because, I think our visitors and the people that go on these tours, they have so much to share too, and they have so much knowledge, and so much interest, and insight that we might be overlooking or sources that we just don't have.

I think there's definitely value in listening. Obviously, you want to parse it out and still find sources to show evidence, written evidence. But still, I love the different stories and the different experiences that visitors bring to the work that we do as public historians, sharing history with the public.

[0:53:29] Da: Exactly. The sense that you've got professional historians who do it for a living, and you've got amateur ones who just have an interest in it. Then, you've got people who listen to podcasts like this one. They just want to learn about it, and who knows, maybe something we said is going to ring true with somebody else, and then they're going to send you a message and shine more light on the history.

[0:53:47] SN: Yes, exactly, exactly. Well, it's been so much fun to talk to you, Daniel. I really enjoyed our time together. 

[0:53:54] Da: Me too. Thank you so much for having me. This has been great.

[0:53:57] SN: Oh, good. I do have one last question before we wrap off. That is, why should people go on ghost tours and ghost walks?

[0:54:04] Da: Because they're awesome, end of story. In the sense that, I mean, we've already mentioned everything, I'm probably going to forget some. It's like, you come on it, you learn history in a really interesting way. We try not to get into the weeds and stuff that you won't like, because it's more over the top. Then, you hear the ghost stories, you get a little scared on that too. But just in the sense of learning about a place, it really is one of the more interesting ways to learn about the history of a place. Because, again, the ghost kind of connect you to the passed in a different way that most people don't think about. I say that's a good reason that I would go on a ghost tour and maybe others would think the same.

[0:54:43] SN: I love that. Okay. Then, how do we find you? How do we get on your ghost tour?

[0:54:47] Da: Very easy. Just ghostwalks.com. Everything's there. The tours, the events, podcasts that I do, everything you can get off of ghostwalks.com. Well, Hamilton and Niagara are the main areas, and then there's this one little child that we love is in Kitchener. The Castle Kilbride, a beautiful location. We're inside the house.

[0:55:06] SN: Wonderful. I'm so excited. I know I'll definitely have to go on one of your tours. It's been such a pleasure to chat with you. I hope you come back to The Homestead soon. 

[0:55:14] Da: Thank you so much.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:55:19] ANNOUNCER: Thanks for listening. Subscribe today, so you won't miss our next episode. To learn more, or to share your thoughts, and show ideas, visit us at thebrownhomestead.ca on social media, or if you still like to do things the old-fashioned way, you can even email us at opendoor@thebrownhomestead.ca. 

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