“Did you know this place is haunted?”

The kindly owner of the bed and breakfast where I had just spent the night turned his eyes to me and smiled. “If it wasn’t haunted, I’d have to make it up,” he said. “Good for business, you know. Why do you ask?”

For a moment I hesitated. More times than I can recall I have opened up about a psychic insight to strangers, only to have them react with fear or skepticism. And this particular story was one of the more unusual. I’d just spent the night tossing and turning, but not from insomnia. His particular resident spook had kept me up all night, regaling me with tales of the quaint inn on the riverside. She wasn’t alone. At least one older spirit also kept residence there.

He looked friendly enough though, so I shared the stories she’d told of the historic background of his B&B. In the early days she had run the place as a “proper Victorian Inn”. After her death however, it was used by organized criminals as a stop on the “prohibition trail” from larger towns down south. She wasn’t too fond of those “party boys”, nor of some of the residents during the 60’s and 70’s. I told him this was an odd spot for a “party place” being in the middle of nowhere, but he confirmed that to his knowledge everything I’d said was true. He asked me to describe her. To this day I can still recall her hawkish face and bright, sharp eyes. She was a typical regal Victorian-era British woman. The owner of the inn just smiled and pointed to a picture behind me. “That’s her, there.”

I turned around. I’d been so tired from my long drive the day before and my sleepless night that I hadn’t noticed the old picture when I sat down. But there she was, clear as in my vision the night before, staring out at me in black and white with those same sharp eyes, wearing the same outfit I’d seen in my mind. I told the inn-keeper that she was most fond of him and his family, especially “the children”, though I hadn’t seen any children during my stay. She’d told me they were “nice decent folks” that she could approve of. We left him grinning from ear to ear, with a bona fide ghost story he could share with his family and guests.

I didn’t tell him much about the other spirit though, a sad, lost, lonely soul, a native woman who had been brutally murdered not far from the spot of the inn, long before it was build. She had been killed on a large slab of rock that I later noticed on our way back to the highway. It had been pitch black when we’d stumbled across this place the night before. There was no way I could have seen it without her guidance. I did not want him to know how horrible her passing had been. I could only hope I’d brought her some peace and comfort that night.

I felt at this place, as in so many others, that the reason that the spirits were so eager to speak to me was that so few people had been able to communicate with them over the years. They were simply desperate to tell their stories, to be “heard” and “seen”, and my compassion for them was more important than my need for a good night’s sleep.

I have been working in the spiritual and psychic realm for more than 20 years, and have a special talent for finding haunted homes and businesses. Whenever I travel, the first thing my friends and readers ask me is “What did you ‘pick up’ in that place?” And when they ask if I met anyone interesting in my travels, they usually mean someone from the “other side”.

At MysticWanderer.com I hope to share some of my best “ghost stories” and psychic impressions from my travels in Canada and around the world. We’ll explore places, both sacred and mundane, that have powerful spiritual or historical energy, look into the mysteries of places where strange and unexplained events are known to happen, and rediscover some of the magic in our everyday world. We'll also ask other traveling psychics and intuitives to share their special experiences and adventures as we build a collection of special places we all hope you will one day visit.

Brandi Jasmine
Editor and Writer, MysticWanderer.com