MY UNCLE THE WITCH HUNTER

Was nineteenth-century settler John Troyer a target of supernatural evil — or just paranoid?

- ROSEMARY COUNTER

IN THE summer of 1829, in a sleepy Ontario sheep-farming settlement called Baldoon, the McDonald family found themselves tormented by their two-storey home. Without warning, beams would drop from the ceiling, and at night, the kitchen filled with the noise of marching feet. Over the years, the disturbances grew more terrifying. Fires spontaneously ignited. Rocks and bullets rained down on the house. Once, a twenty-five-centimetre hunting knife tore through the air.

News of the paranormal attacks spread, with dozens of people narrating firsthand accounts of what the Detroit Gazette called “the pranks of some invisible and mischievous visitor.” The pranks converted the staunchest of non believers. Even a reporter for Toronto’s Globe, bragging of his “well-rounded distrust of ghost stories,” ultimately changed his mind to become “skeptic of skeptics.” By 1831, a desperate McDonald family realized they needed professional help, so the patriarch, John, travelled 200 kilometres — three days on horseback, riding dawn to dusk — to consult with a highly recommended healer. According to an 1871 account by John’s son, the diagnosis required gazing into a moonstone, which revealed “a long low log house” where lived a witch and the source of the McDonalds’ suffering. The witch took the form of a black-headed stray goose, and it was decided that, if they shot the goose’s wing with a sterling silver bullet, they’d at once stop her — which they did. The ghost never struck again.