Saturday, April 7, 2012

Ghost Stories

Find all of my posts on Swords in one place - The Swords Project



We drove up to Swords late yesterday afternoon to walk down the Seguin trail.  After our walk we poked around the old buildings a bit, because I can't go to Swords and not look around.

Looking east down the Seguin trail on the West side of Tally Ho/Swords Road.



The stone house on the east side of the road was built along with the enormous red barn by David Sword after his orginal "Riverdale" home, a two story brick house, burned down in 1918.

The stone house.


Crumbling outbuildings between the barn and the stone house.

The barn.

My husband, reluctant to come along with me in the first place, has had his curiosity piqued. He shares my wonderment at the memories that have been abandoned here.  Shook his head at the projects left to rust in the front yards of the two houses. The layers of new upon old tell a story of attempted restoration, and then abandonment once again.

He commented that he wanted to go see what is in that old barn. As soon as he said it, the wind started working on the mammoth structure. Creaks and groans and bangs emitted from it's depths. We moved on.

Back across the road we looked again at the old general store, and then moved down the road a bit to look at the old houses. I wanted to get some pictures of the outbuildings that are crumbling into the ground on the farthest side of the second house.  

The two houses directly to the south of the general store were built in or around 1894 for the employees of the lumber company.  Originally there was a third house, but I don't know what's become of it. 

The house immediately beside the general store.

The second house.

If you look closely you can see clothing hanging on the wall. 
These clothes still have dry-cleaning tags attached.

Sheds and other unidentifiable structures to the south of the second house.

Of course my camera batteries died during this trip. This seems to happen to me frequently, doesn't it?  Walking back to the car, it hit me.  Every single time I've some to Swords I've battled dying batteries.  When I visited the Swords school, I even popped brand new batteries out of the package into my camera - they died.

I'm not saying that there are ghosts up at Swords; I'm not even sure I believe in them.  I'm just saying that it seems odd that for whatever reason, events and coincidences align themselves in such a way that my camera batteries will die every single time I'm at Swords.  Strange, right?


Source of information -
Christie Historical Committee, Meanderings and Memories, 1894 - 1995, Christie Township

3 comments:

  1. That is SO interesting. I am a very big fan of ghost towns and once spent an incredibly memorable week visiting ghost towns in northern Ontario - including Nicholson, which was only accessible by train.
    I am going to have to pay Swords a call - and I will make sure I take an extra battery!
    Nice work.

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  2. The second house was built by a family from Toronto. My father got in contact with the owner early on just as people started to break into it...the owner then was the daughter (in her '80's and in a nursing home). From what I recall, she said her dad built it in the 1910's and they used to walk along the railway tracks and swim/fish in the river between Maple Lake and Marsh Lake (now called Mutton Lake). She still went up with her family until the 1960's then they stopped going. She used to pay the family who lived across the road in the raised bungalow to keep an eye on it and make sure it wasn't vandalized.

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  3. I should have added: the second house was issued a demolition permit over a year ago by the township because it was deemed unsafe. Shortly after that it was demolished.

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