Ghosts of Government House Read online

  “The one we were just talking to,” said J.J.

  But when Sam turned back to point, he’d disappeared.

  Grandma Louise gave them a quizzical look.

  “The bandaged man in the wheelchair,” Sam added.

  “I didn’t see you with anyone.” Grandma Louise turned to the commissionaire. “Did you?”

  The commissionaire shook his grey head. “No one that I saw.”

  “He’s a guy, a teenager in a wheelchair. He seems to know the place really well, so he must come here often,” said Sam.

  The commissionaire shrugged. “Don’t know anyone like that.”

  “But he was…”

  J.J. nudged her to be quiet. She had an odd expression on her face. Sam stared back at the spot where the man had been. The little hairs on the back of her neck rose.

  “Do you think…?” J.J. whispered.

  Grandma Louise hadn’t noticed. “Guess we were busy chatting and didn’t pay any attention to you girls,” she said.

  Sam let out a breath of relief. Beside her, J.J. relaxed.

  Of course, that would explain it.

  Grandma Louise and the commissionaire were at the other end of the hall, and couldn’t have seen them. And the guy had obviously turned the corner before they had time to notice him. Too bad he wasn’t a ghost, though. It would have been fun to talk to a real one…

  “You can wait for the visitor experience host by the main doors near the conservatory,” the commissionaire said. “Or if you like you can go ahead into the main house and Kathryn will join you.” He indicated the corner where the bandaged young man had gone.

  “Does she know about Howie?” J.J. piped up.

  The commissionaire chuckled. “Your grandmother mentioned you wanted someone who knew about ghosts. Kathryn has been with us for the past eight years. I’m sure she can tell you all about our ‘resident’ ghost, Howie.”

  “Has anything strange happened to you?” asked Sam.

  “Not to me, but some staff have mentioned mysterious things that happened to them in the old house, and lately at this end of the building too.” The commissionaire tapped his fingers against the desk. “When this part was built a few years ago, nothing strange was going on at first, but maybe Howie has moved down this way now.”

  “What kind of things?” J.J. stared at him with keen interest.

  “It actually happens in Coquette’s Gift Shop.” The commissionaire pointed towards the shop at the entrance, near the open French doors.

  He continued, “Mrs. Hart, the manager, says when she comes in some mornings everything from one of the bottom shelves is on the floor. She has to put it all back. She says it’s happened several times.”

  “Whoa!” said Sam. “What else?”

  “Oh, she’s mentioned that things go missing—like maybe she’ll be cutting a ribbon with a pair of scissors and she’ll put them down beside her while she ties the ribbon. When she goes to pick up the scissors again, they’ve disappeared. Little things like that.”

  “Freaky,” said J.J.

  Sam glanced at J.J. “Do you think it’s Howie?”

  The commissionaire shrugged. “Could be—if you believe in that kind of thing.”

  “You don’t believe in ghosts?” she asked.

  “Not particularly,” he answered.

  “So how do you explain what happens in the gift shop?”

  “I think she’s maybe a little forgetful, is all,” the commissionaire replied with a slight smile.

  “So you haven’t heard or seen anything strange?” J.J. interrupted.

  “Not personally. Not anything that I figure couldn’t be explained.” The commissionaire winked at them. “You’re lucky; you’re the only ones touring right now, so Kathryn can tell you all about some of the other incidents.”

  J.J. whispered to Sam, “What about the guy in the wheelchair?”

  Sam shrugged. “Maybe he gets special treatment or likes looking around on his own.”

  “Girls, we’d better go meet Kathryn.” Grandma Louise started down the hall.

  Sam sprinted to catch up with her. She barely noticed the ballroom on the way to the conservatory and the main doors of the older part of the house.

  “Oh, aren’t those flowers lovely,” said Grandma Louise, wandering into the colourful, sunny greenhouse. “I think I’ll just take a peek.”

  “We’ll meet you in the library,” said Sam. Grandma Louise probably wanted to reminisce about Grandpa Frank. She pulled J.J. through the open doors into the mansion.

  A pert young woman in a long black skirt and white-bloused costume glided across the spacious main floor hall towards them. Her dark hair was swept up in the fashion of the Victorian age and pinned in place with a little black hat. Her skirt shimmered.

  Sam introduced herself and J.J.

  “We’re interested in your ghost, Howie,” J.J. said.

  “Can you tell us about him?” asked Sam.

  Kathryn gave a faint smile. “No one knows too much about him as a person, but I can tell you about the things he may have moved around from time to time.”

  “Awesome,” said Sam. She squeezed J.J.’s hand in excitement. “My grandma will be coming in a minute,” she added. “Do you mind if we wait in the library for her?”

  “Not at all. I’ll watch for her.” Kathryn drifted towards the entrance in a haze of sunlight that streamed in from the drawing room.

  Sam followed J.J. into the library with its huge oak desk and large, comfy leather chairs. A small white rocking horse sat in front of the desk. A sign reminded them that the lieutenant governor’s family had once had a very mischievous pet who liked to ride it.

  “It’s so cool that the lieutenant governor had a monkey back then,” said Sam. She could almost see the little creature riding on the toy horse.

  “For sure,” said J.J.

  A moment later, Sam heard a woman’s voice say, “Follow me.” Grandma Louise must have arrived.

  The voice continued, “This room was the original ballroom before the new one across the way was added in 1928 when Henry Newlands was lieutenant governor of the province.” She pointed to the huge opening to the second floor directly above them, “Guests used to stand around the railing up there and watch people dancing down here.”

  Sam nudged J.J. “We better join them.”

  When she looked into the main hall, Grandma Louise was talking to a woman dressed in a costume similar to Kathryn’s.

  “So everything in here is all original from that time?” Grandma Louise asked.

  The woman shook her head. “No, many changes and additions have been made to this place over the years, but it’s been restored to look the way it would have when Lieutenant Governor Amédéé Forget lived here back in 1905,” she explained. “He was the first official Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan. Before that, this province was part of the Northwest Territories.”

  “Oh, there you are, girls. Here’s our host,” Grandma Louise introduced them.

  “But where did Kathryn go? We were just talking to her,” said Sam.

  The woman looked puzzled. “I am Kathryn.”

  Sam eyed J.J., who looked stunned.

  “Are there two of you with the same name?” J.J. asked.

  The host shook her head.

  Grandma Louise gave Sam a questioning look.

  Sam shrugged but she felt a slow shiver snake up her back and neck.

  “What just happened?” whispered J.J. Her eyes gleamed with excitement.

  “Maybe our host was a ghost!” Sam looked over her shoulder.

  Kathryn continued chatting to Grandma Louise as they moved across the hall. The host looked back at them.

  “You go ahead,” Sam said. “We heard the talk last night.”

  Kathryn nodded and led Gr
andma Louise into the library.

  Sam turned to J.J. “Such freaky things are going on here!” she whispered. “Do you think Howie’s watching us now?”

  Ureek. Clang.

  Sam jumped. The clanking noise came from above.

  She peered up two storeys to the large, rectangular skylight. Two huge circular chandeliers hung on chains from the second floor skylight, dangling down through the centre well. Suddenly a black monkey with white head and shoulders lunged onto one of the chandeliers. He swung back and forth, and then leapt for the second one.

  “Oh, my gosh!” J.J. squealed.

  Sam held her breath. Would the monkey make it?

  Ureek. Ureek. Clang.

  “Yes!” Sam cheered.

  The monkey swung back and forth between the two chandeliers, chattering at them.

  Sam laughed while J.J. clapped.

  Grandma Louise and Kathryn rushed out of the library. “What’s going on out here?” Grandma Louise asked.

  Sam glanced upwards. Kathryn and Grandma Louise followed her gaze but obviously couldn’t see anything. The capuchin monkey was swinging wildly overhead, hanging onto the chandelier by one hand and his tail.

  “The…skylight is amazing!” said Sam.

  “Yes,” said J.J. “We were imagining what it must have been like to live here.”

  Sam grinned as the monkey leapt to the other chandelier.

  Kathryn noticed their interest. “The light fixtures were modified from the originals, because Lieutenant Governor Amédée Forget had a pet capuchin monkey…”

  “Jocko,” Sam chimed in.

  J.J. added, “And he used to swing from the chandeliers. We heard about it on our tour last night.”

  They had, but they sure hadn’t seen him. Now Sam watched as Jocko leapt to the banister around the centre well and looked down at her with an inquisitive expression on his cute little face.

  “The Forgets had to make the chandeliers sturdier to stop him from swinging,” said Kathryn. “So they replaced the chains with these poles.”

  Everything went quiet. When Sam looked up again, Jocko had disappeared and the chandeliers’ chains had become solid shafts. Sam stared at J.J. Not only had they seen the monkey, but the chandeliers had transformed right in front of their eyes.

  Grandma Louise looked up and then glanced at them with a little smile.

  In a whisper, Sam told her about Jocko.

  “Wish I could see him,” said Grandma Louise wistfully. “Seems only you young people hang onto that ability.”

  “Didn’t you even see the chandeliers change?” said Sam.

  Grandma Louise sighed. “Unfortunately not.”

  “Hey, maybe I should ask for a pet monkey instead of a rabbit,” J.J. said.

  “Good luck trying to convince your dad,” Grandma Louise chuckled.

  “Shall we take a look in the drawing room?” asked Kathryn.

  Sam glanced at J.J.

  “Is it okay if we make a few notes before we go on?” J.J. asked quickly.

  “We’ll catch up in a minute,” said Sam. “You’ll love the drawing room, Gran.”

  J.J. dropped to the floor and pulled the notepad from her backpack as Grandma Louise and Kathryn drifted away.

  Sam pulled out the magnifying glass. “We might need this too,” she said, setting it on a rose on the patterned rug. Maybe they would find Jocko’s paw prints somewhere.

  “Wasn’t Jocko adorable?” whispered J.J., making a careful note.

  “Obviously he’s a ghost too,” said Sam quietly, watching as Kathryn and Grandma Louise examined the piano, then moved towards the dining room where the table was set with china and crystal.

  “Uh-huh,” nodded J.J. “I wonder if he moves things around too? Or if it’s all Howie?”

  “And what happened to Kathryn—the first one? Was she a ghost too?” Sam asked.

  J.J.’s eyes widened. “Maybe she’s the one doing it.”

  “Let’s see if this Kathryn knows,” Sam said, and made another note.

  A moment later, Kathryn and Grandma Louise reappeared. “Ready to go upstairs?”

  “Sure,” J.J. said.

  “Kathryn,” Sam asked, “Is Howie the only ghost that moves things around?”

  “That we know of,” the host answered.

  “But are there any other ghosts in here?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” Kathryn replied as she and Grandma Louise wandered towards the staircase.

  Sam sighed and stared at the floor. “Did you pick up the magnifying glass?” she asked.

  “Nope,” said J.J. “I didn’t touch it.”

  “But it’s not here!” Sam began searching frantically. “That’s my dad’s good one. If I lose it, I’m dead meat.” She looked in a wide circle, even lifted their backpacks, but the magnifying glass wasn’t there. She shoved the last of the stuff into the backpack.

  “Where could it have gone?” she muttered, sitting back on her haunches. She glanced down again to the patterned rug.

  “Oh my gosh, it’s here now.” Her dad’s magnifying glass lay on top of the rose, exactly where she’d put it a minute ago.

  Feeling foolish, Sam stowed the magnifying glass in her backpack too. There wasn’t anyone else in the room with them. Grandma Louise and Kathryn’s voices drifted from the top of the grand staircase.

  “That’s just like what happens in the gift shop with the scissors!” J.J. whispered.

  So maybe it hadn’t been her fault after all. A tingle raced up Sam’s spine. “Howie must be here!” she said.

  “Or Jocko,” J.J. added, and raced up the stairs.

  Sam followed close behind. Who wanted to be downstairs alone with a bunch of ghosts?

  chapter four

  upstairs, Sam kept her eyes open for Jocko and Howie as she and J.J. caught up to Kathryn and Grandma Louise, who were in the first bedroom. Neither ghost was in sight. Nor was the host ghost.

  “In the hallway, and here in this room, is where Howie has been heard on different occasions,” Kathryn was saying.

  Sam glanced at the spot where she and J.J. had been paralyzed against the wall last night. Now there was only wallpaper. In the daylight things didn’t seem as spooky.

  “So Howie’s real?” Sam asked.

  “Yes, and no,” laughed Kathryn. “Something is going on, but we can’t prove how it’s happening or ‘who’ is doing it, so we say it’s Howie.”

  “Huh?” asked Sam.

  “A few years ago strange things started happening,” Kathryn explained. “People blamed it on the ghost of the only person who was known to have died on the premises. It was a man, but at first they didn’t know his name.”

  “Research was done, I’d guess,” said Grandma Louise.

  Kathryn nodded. “Yes, they discovered he was the former Chinese cook of Lieutenant-Governor Archibald McNab, who presided at Government House between 1936 and 1945. The cook died of pneumonia in 1938.”

  “So why is he called Howie?” asked Sam.

  “Yeah, it doesn’t sound like a Chinese name,” said J.J.

  “Well, his name was Cheun Lee. But every time something happened, the staff would say, ‘how’d he do that?’ ” Kathryn smiled. “Try saying that quickly and see what happens.”

  Sam practised along with J.J. and Grandma Louise. She said the phrase faster and faster, until her tongue got all twisted. Suddenly she was saying, “How-ee do that?”

  Kathryn laughed. “See what I mean? The incidents happened so often eventually they’d look at one another and simply say, ‘Howie!’ ”

  Thinking about Jocko and the other “Kathryn,” Sam chuckled with the others. “Are you sure there haven’t been any other deaths here?” she asked.

  “Nothing in the records suggests it,” Kathryn replied.
r />   “Has anyone ever seen Howie?” asked J.J.

  “Oh, no. We just hear him in his flip-flop slippers going along the hall right…”

  “Through that closed door,” Sam said, staring at the curtained glass door at the end of the hallway.

  Kathryn looked at her in surprise. “How did you know?”

  “Lucky guess.” Sam shoved her hands into her pockets.

  Grandma Louise gave her a secret smile.

  “Why does he go that way?” asked J.J., pointing towards the north end of the hall.

  “On the other side is a stairway leading to what used to be the servants’ quarters. His room was down there,” Kathryn said.

  “What else do you know about him?” asked Sam.

  The host shook her head. “Not much. Only that he immigrated to Canada without his family.”

  “Did they ever join him?” asked Grandma Louise.

  “We believe he died before they could come,” said Kathryn.

  “I bet he was lonely,” said J.J.

  “He probably was. But don’t look so glum, girls,” Kathryn continued. “It happened a long time ago. It’s all over and done with now.”

  Sam scuffed her feet and glanced at J.J.

  Kathryn directed them through the connecting door to the middle room. Sam lingered behind with J.J.

  “I wonder if Howie knows Jocko?” Sam whispered.

  J.J. chuckled. “They could have some fun together.”

  “Reminds me, I wonder where that grumpy guy got to?” said Sam. “I figured we’d see him up here—he wasn’t downstairs.”

  “Maybe he left already,” J.J. suggested. “I wouldn’t want to see him again, anyhow.”

  “I suppose,” said Sam. “Except it’s funny that we didn’t see or hear him leave.” She wandered into the Victorian morning room as Kathryn and Grandma Louise moved into the southeast bedroom.

  Sam stopped short. J.J. almost ran into her.

  Pulled up to the table in the centre of the room was the young man in the wheelchair. A delicate teapot, tea cups and other china breakables sat on the lace-edged white tablecloth.

  “Yikes,” said Sam. In the next bedroom, Grandma Louise and Kathryn didn’t seem to hear. Had the guy heard them talking about him?