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12 -- PORT PERRY STAR -- Wednesday, December 28, 1968 Ghost Hoa Scugog Island's Ghost Road has become a popular leg- end in these parts. Everyone has heard of the mysterious light that haunts a deserted sideroad, supposedly the spir- it of a dead motorcyle rider. But as time goes on, the in- famous Ghost Rider is becoming a celebrity in other, far- away, places. In November, reporter lan MacLeod, a feature writer with The Ottawa Citizen, a major daily newspaper serving the nation's capital, spent a few days in Port Perry, doing research for a lengthy story about our infamous spook. The story was published on the front page of the Satur- day December 10 issue's Feature section, complete with photos of the light, Allene Kane, a group of teenagers on Ghost Road, Joel Aldred and Cathy Olliffe. The editorial staff of the Star was so impressed with Mr. MacLeod's writing, they decided to re-run the story, with The Ottawa Citizen's permission, in this issue of the Star. It's a great holiday read--just sit back, relax and enjoy! by Ian MacLeod Citizen staff writer After dark, you can almost hear a haunting whisper in the icy wind swirling around this bleak landscape. The gusts are twisting and churning along a lonely dirt road and into the moonlit faces of three high school girls from nearby Bowmanville and their Oshawa boyfriends. Like countless others before them, from as far as the United States, they're here to witness a legend, to see the headless corpse that lurks around the shores of Lake Scu- gog. Before long, in a field a few hundred metres away, an eerie ball of yel- lowish-white light floats silently out of the darkness. "Oh my God," says one hushed girl. "It's him. It's really him." The light vanishes for an instant, then reappears. It's still a long way off, but it's moving in their direction. The 16-year-old girls scream. One tugs on a boyfriend's arm and begs to be taken away from this strange place. Then, like a dying candle, the light flickers and fades and slips back into the blackness. Some people, including a psychic and Niagara College film students who photographed the light, claim it gets much closer, brighter and bigger. Welcome, some say, to what may be an open door from this world into the next. - Welcome to The Ghost Road. Across the shallow lake, on the southwest shore, lies Port Perry, a tidy, prosperous town of 5,000 that's slowly being swallowed by Oshawa and Toronto. And perhaps that's why Port Perry likes its ghost so much. "We're losing our small-town -identity," says Jerome Taylor, who steps down this month as Scugog Township's mayor of 10 years. But The Ghost Road, famous for generations as a lovers' lane, will always be here. Like the giant muskellunge said to inhabit the lake, and true of not, it's a co- lourful bit of small-town lore that sets this community apart from the blandness of burgeoning sub- urbs in the distance. Taylor, 49, and a busload of Scugogians used to don costumes at Halloween and head out to The Ghost Road for a few thrills and chilled drinks. Someone came up with "Ghostwatchers" sweatshirts. School children started doing classroom projects on the phe- nomenon. "I'm surprised some entrepreneur hasn't set up a hot dog stand," says Cathy Olliffe, reporter for the Port Perry Star, which has fol- lowed the yarn for years. There was even talk about an of- ficial, old-fashioned road sign, un- til someone pointed out it would be swiped the second night. "We consider it a kind of leg- end," says Taylor. "It's kind of a uiet tourist attraction," ki So Mr. 'Mayor in all this supernatural hyberbole and psychic turbulence? Has the devil really got someonen's soul? "do you believe He clears his throat. "I'm a prac- tical kind of a guy. There's got to be a practical reason for this." What? "I don't know." The most plausible is car head- . lights. They can be seen travelling north down the hilly West Quarter Line, which runs almost directly in the same north-south line as The Ghost Road, a few kilometres across the lake. When a vehicle moves down the West Quarter Line, which reaches an elevation of more than 1,000 feet, it appears on the lower Ghost Road as a single light coming out of the darkness near the tree line, slowly moving downward and seemingly closer. If there's a fog or mist over the lake, it can diffuse the beams of light, causing them to mushroom in size. And if the car windows are steamed up, there's no telling what sort of creature might be seen roaming up the road. On two recent nights on the mile-long road, the light definitely a to be headlights from the West Quarter Line. The story should end here. It t. Taylor: "All the experts who've been out there, who've all worked hard to discredit this story of The Ghost Road light, haven't been able to pin it down and say, "this is what's causing that light." Others say there is no way what they've seen is headlights. Too big. Too close. : ' Ian Currie, 52, is a Toronto par- apsychologist, former wiivereily professor and co-author of a boo called, You Cannot Die. He's also a ghostbuster, who dehaunts hous- es for $400. Says he's met dozens of spooks. 60 % of ghosts don't realize they're dead "The only difference between you and me and a ghost is that they haven't got a body to go back into," he says matter-of-factly from behind a big, floppy handle- bar moustache. "They're perfectly ordinary peo- ple. If I had to think of two adjec- tives to describe the majority of them, I'd call them pathetic and confused. The idea that ghosts are terrify- ingly malevolent black occult creatures who are going to turn your car upside down and light your house on fire just isn't true. About one out of 10 people don't make the normal transition," into The Light, the hereafter. And about 60 per cent of the ghosts he's dealt with don't even realize they're dead. They see themselves as whole people with a body and clothing, he says. They get extremely upset when strangers move into their old homes, completely ignore them and start rearranging the fur- niture, tearing down walls and let the dog eat the tulips. "Most of them are unhappy. They can't do anything. They're in a physical world without any physical equipment and everybody ignores them. They're very, very confused. Something is wrong, but they don't know what it is." The other 40 per cent of the ghosts he's known "have some- thing on their mind they want to convey. They're worried about some loved one, or they want to convey information about a will." Accompanied by a psychic who draws the ghost into her mind and voices its thoughts or lets it speak directly, Currie convinces the spir- it to go into The Light. Currie hasn't been to The Ghost Road, but says light apparitions "are not particularly unusual in hauntings. People often talk about balls of light floating around." "It's horsecrap." --Joel Aldred On a farm about a kilometre north of Ghost Road, Joel Aldred, of Aldred's general store, is work- ing around his barn. What does he think of the night- ly manifestations? Aldred, 68, star of the old Sun- .day night Chevrolet TV commer- cials on Bonanza, walks over to a tap and rinses the cow manure off his rubber boots. "It's horsecrap," he says in a deep, silky voice. "It's just a great yarn that's built up over the years. A lot of young bucks have taken gals down there to look at it. The girls get ner- vous and get closer for protection. "I used to go down there. But it wasn't to sce the ghost." Besides, Aldred already has an- other spirited old legend next to his barn. As a tribute to his good friend John Diefenbaker, who used to visit here, the top of Aldred's 26-metre silo--in foot-high white letters facing The, Ghost Road-- reads: DIEF THE CHIEF, Just north of the haunt lives Al- lene Kane, 54, the acknowledged queen of The Ghost Road. "I don't know why," she says. aaa Our thanks to lan MacLeod of The Ottawa Citizen for allowing the Star to re-print his highly detallled story about Scugog Island's Infamous Ghost Road. For an enlightening look at an "outslder's point-of- view, see story. "Probably because I've got a big mouth. "But there's definitely some- thing out there, a spirit of some kind." 'The legend started gaining local notoriety about five to 10 years ago, although some say it's been around for at least 20. Parents sometimes load the kids and grandmother into the station- wagon and come out for some cheap entertainment. Others, mostly weekend party animals, come from around southern Onta- rio. A few years back, Kane invited two amateur psychics to do inde- pendent appraisals of the ghost light. "They both said it was a young man in his early 20's, with light curly brown hair, on a motorcycle and wearing a gold helmet." He was heading south on the road at high speed. About 100 metres from the south end of the road, near a big old willow tree, he lost control, barrelled off the end of the road into a field and was decapitated by a rusty wire fence. "When we see the light coming toward us, he's returning up the road (to near the willow) to turn around, gather speed," and tear down the road and back into the field, says Kane. Some people re- port seeing a small red light, sup- posedly the tail-light, moving south down the road. "I was standing on the road when this red light (a few inches in diameter) just simply went right by me about three feet away," says Kane. No body has ever been found. Another psychic from Oshawa visited three times and agreed something was out there. A Dan or Dave Sweeney, she sensed. Says Currie: "There are car acci- dent and highway accident cases, quite a number, where somebody has been killed at a certain point and then for years after, they ap- "This motorcyclist probably died young and suddenly is very confused, totally out of it. He probably doesn't realize he's dead. There's no other reason for him to do what he's doing unless he wants to tell his story." No one can explain why no body or motorcycle was ever found. Why police have no record of an accident. Why no one re- a son or relative missing. Perhaps, says Kane, the head- less rider was from Toronto or Oshawa and wandered out here one night without a soul knowing. Jack, her husband, says years ago the field was swampy in the spring and fall. Maybe, he says, the body and the bike were swal- lowed by the mire. Neighbour Ross Carter, whose grandfather used to own the field, laughs. "If somebody's killed on your property, you're damn well going to know about it because the in- surance boys are going to be scampering to make sure there's no liability. "It's a damn good story, but there's no ghost.' --Ross Carter "There's no ghost. It's a damn good story, but there's no ghost." He admits, though, there's al- ways the nagging doubt in the back of his mind. "I get a chill driving down that road late at night. What if I'm wrong? What if there is some- thing?" People also wonder why some dogs don't like the road. Port Perryite Dave Obec says his pet sits up in the car and whines. Kane's daughter's dog, Just goes absolutely bananas," she says. In 1986, six Niagara College film students showed up to do a short documentary and capture the ghost light on film. : One student, stationed in the field at the south end of the road where the rider supposedly hit the fence, claims a sphere of light the size of a basketball popped out of thin air and hovered about 60 feet away for a few seconds, (Turn to page 13) 1 3 i 7 { 1 : | AN "| 4