I love to do spooky things. Walk through a cemetery in the dark … sure. Go ghost hunting in an old Fort …yes, please. Watch a scary movie…100%, but my shirt will probably be pulled up over my nose so I can hide. The weird thing is I am very easily scared. I will scream when I’m startled, which makes my friends and family try to find ways to do it. Don’t worry; I find it funny, and sometimes they don’t even mean to do it.

I’m very fortunate to have had the same best friends since we were about 14. Please don’t ask how many years it has been. No matter our age, in my mind, we are still those young kids sometimes.

The best thing about having friends for so long is they are more like family. We don’t talk every day or even every week, but when we get together, it is like no time has passed, and we always have fun.

Luckily, they also like spooky things. In 2020, Christine, Isobel and I did a girl’s weekend in Kingston, Ontario. We stayed in a haunted boutique hotel, did a haunted trolley tour, a haunted walk, a magical escape room, and a ghost hunt in Fort Henry with a paranormal group.

One thing to note is that as easy as I am to scare, they are just as bad, and we usually end up screaming and running like little kids.

So, what did we find on our weekend adventure?

While we were on the haunted trolley, the guide started telling stories about the hotel we were staying in, and Christine finally asked him to stop as we were sleeping there that night. He thought that was the funniest thing as he had never had people on the tour who were staying there. I did leave a voice-activated recorder in the room when we went out that captured some creaking and the sound of glasses clinking together. We were too nervous to leave it on overnight while we were sleeping.

We learned some interesting history while on both the haunted trolley and walk but did not experience anything unusual.

Then there was the ghost hunt in Fort Henry…The paranormal group gave out equipment for people to use. Isobel had a spirit box—one of those devices that searches radio frequencies to see if the ghosts can speak words through it. Christine had a special camera. The group had also set out different devices in rooms that would do things if a spirit interacted with them.

In one room was a teddy bear that would ask questions. If it made a statement, that meant something had made contact with it. Isobel and I were sitting near it, asking questions to see if anything would come through the spirit box, when the bear suddenly said, “You tickled me.” Being the not-so-brave souls we are, we quickly left the room. In another room, the spirit box turned on by itself, but nothing was said through it.

The other strange thing that happened to us, well mostly to Christine, was at the end of the night. One of the paranormal group guys put us into a dark room and shut the door. There was a teddy bear in this room with a red light in its stomach that would change to blue if the temperature dropped. Isobel and I were sitting on a bench at the back of the room, asking if anything was in the room and, if so, can you make the teddy bear turn blue while Christine walked up to the bear filming it.

Suddenly Christine started yelling at us to stop touching her hair. We were nowhere near her. She backed up to us while brushing the back of her head with her hand and fell onto our laps, still telling us to stop touching her hair.

She ran to the door but couldn’t open it. It was one of those old doors where you lift the bar out of the holder on the wall by pressing the button. She was still yelling about her hair, and Isobel was trying to find the flashlight, so I went to try the door. I also couldn’t open it. Imagine three grown women laughing so hard while one can’t find the flashlight, one can’t open a door, and the other still feels something touching her hair. When Isobel turned the flashlight on the door where Christine and I were, I could open it.

Christine ran out so fast, and one of the paranormal group members came over to see what was happening. They had not locked the door.

Did something really touch Christine’s hair? I’m going with no. Maybe there was a breeze; it was late at night, it was very dark, and, like I said, we scare easily.

Do we still do things like this? Yes, we do, and we love it.