Doctors Do Not Believe in Ghosts
By Angela Joynes
The non-ghost story began as a love-at-first-sight, whirlwind, long distance romance—in 1990, with three-thousand miles between us.
Young, single, and practicing medicine in rural Nova Scotia, I fancied a break, so I booked my first overseas trip. I promise I wasn’t looking for a mate, but before I knew it, I had fallen for a man in a London pub. Bryn was an engineering student, a tall, handsome Welshman with brown ringlets cascading halfway down his back. I called him my British rockstar. I was decidedly smitten, and the feeling was mutual.
During long phone calls and letters, Bryn related historical stories and legends from Wales, most plausible, some not so much. His mother, his mam he called her, supposedly had the gift. Many times she’d experienced accurate premonitions of tragic events, Bryn said, and she also possessed the ability to detect the presence of spirits. I paid it all little heed. After all, ghosts were fictions not facts. I had studied science and medicine in university. Nonetheless, the tales made excellent campfire entertainment. But that’s all it was. Amusement.
Wisely or unwisely, I bought a 130-year-old Anglican manse in the village of Shubenacadie shortly before our September wedding. The white, five-bedroom house with blue gingerbread trim perched on a manicured hillside with mature trees and flowering shrubs. It was stunning. My dream home.
With so many original features intact in the house, I was almost tempted to slip into garters, corsets, and stays. The details included a dank, stonewalled cellar and cistern accessed by an outside trapdoor, a pastry board in the kitchen, and in the spacious front parlor a set of French doors, original hardwood floors, beveled glass windows, and a grand spiraling staircase.
The layout certainly reflected the Victorian era and its divisions of rank and social class. In the back of the house, off the kitchen, stood a very steep staircase for servants to use out of sight. Each stair tread was deeply sculpted into a groove from decades of footsteps. These stairs led up to a cramped servant’s bedroom just large enough to accommodate a single bed and a small dresser.
A few days before the wedding, I was cleaning at the new house when a knock came at the back door. The well-meaning, middle-aged lady launched right to her point. “You haven’t bought this place, have you?” She asked.
“Yes,” I said slowly.
“Oh dear.” She offered a twisted expression, then a deep sigh. “You really shouldn’t have done that.”
Like most doctors, I’ve never relished being told what or what not to do. But I said nothing.
“Didn’t anyone warn you?” She now appeared so sincere, so distressed on my behalf.
“Warn me about…?” I was becoming impatient, and the rag in my hand began to drip soapy water.
Finally, she burst forth with her ultimate statement. “This house is HAUNTED.”
I spit. Literally, unattractively spit. I couldn’t hold in my laughter. How absurd, Ludicrous. Ridiculous. “Well, no worries there,” I managed to wheeze. “I don’t believe in ghosts.” She stomped away.
The rest of the day, I laughed.
A few days later when Bryn arrived in Canada for the wedding, I relayed the whole hilarious tale.
He laughed lightly. “Don’t worry, honey,” he said. “If there’s really a ghost in the house, my mother’s supernatural abilities will detect it.” Fine, knock yourselves out, I thought. Believe if you want, but I wasn’t worried at all.
The next afternoon, Bryn gave the house tour to his parents while I finished at work. He showed them the entire floorplan, front, back, up, down, even the cellar just to be sure.
“All is well,” Bryn reassured me later. “Mam didn’t sense any spirits or ghosts. Not even a whisper. And trust me, if anyone would know, it is her.”
I was glad for the sake of any and all ghost believers. But for me, I didn’t care. I hadn’t been fretting to begin with.
After the marriage festivities, we moved into our beautiful Victorian home. Everything was fine that first day until sundown. Then something strange happened.
At bedtime, I headed from our bedroom to the bathroom. Situated in the rear of the house upstairs, it had a gorgeous clawfoot bathtub. But something made me stop two feet short of the door.
I felt a distinct creepy feeling which was hard to describe. Uncomfortable, disturbing maybe? Anyway, I certainly felt an unequivocal disinclination to go there alone. Although it seemed incredibly foolish and inexplicable, I asked Bryn to come with me. And he did. Blaming the new house, I assumed it would improve over time.
It did not.
Night after night, month after month, anytime I needed to use the bathroom, I asked Bryn to come with me. And bless the man’s heart, he actually did. Awoken from sleep, sometimes soundly asleep, Bryn hopped out of bed without complaint and trundled down the hallway with me. I couldn’t have explained my bizarre behavior if he had inquired. Nowhere else in the house seemed eerie to me day or night. When we visited other old homes or hotels, I could go to the bathroom in the dark unattended. It was embarrassing, but thank goodness I had nabbed such a sweet, obliging husband.
Four years later we moved from Nova Scotia to Middle Tennessee. We packed up our dream home, and I peed for the last time. We finished the pizza, locked the door, and watched the huge moving truck pull out of the driveway. Then we sat in the car admiring the house we had loved once last time.
Before putting the car into gear, Bryn turned to me, looking more than a little sheepish. He said, “I guess I can tell you now, honey.”
I knew guilt when I spied it. “Tell me what?”
“You remember when that lady said there was a ghost?”
“So? Your mother said there wasn’t one.”
“Um, that’s just what I told you.” He paused to choose words. “I didn’t want you to be scared.”
“Scared of what?” I was smelling a rat. The dog even whined.
“Mam felt a very unhappy, strong female presence in the rear of the house upstairs, especially in the maid’s bedroom straight across from the bathroom.”
“Are you telling me there was a ghost? And you’ve been lying to me this whole time?”
“Well, not lying, just not saying, really.”
“So you knew all along that the reason I was too scared to go pee was because I was feeling that presence too?” I was not happy about this, not happy at all.
He nodded. Looking relieved to come clean.
“And that’s why you never once complained about all those bathroom trips?” My voice reached a high pitch.
“That’s right.”
So there I was. What choice did I have? Without a smidgeon of doubt, I had felt that strong spirit presence myself. So, now I have to be the doctor who does believe in ghosts.
Angela Joynes is a disabled Canadian writer now living in Tennessee. She holds a BA, MD, and a Certificate in Creative Writing (MTSU). She has published short fiction internationally in The Ilanot Review, The West Trestle Review, and the National Flash Fiction Day UK Anthology 2023, among others. She married a Welshman, enjoys hooking primitive rugs, and is just foolish enough to believe she can write a novel.
