Private Residence Upper Wellington Street - Hamilton Ontario
In June of 1971 Norm Bilotti was awakened by the screams of his terrified wife Sherri, whom lay in bed beside him. What they saw was a faceless spectre, bedecked in a long black gown hovering above their bed. The vision cleared before they were able to switch the lights on, however the terror they were feeling remained. Upset, neither husband nor wife were able to rationalize what they had witnessed.
The following month and just as the couple were beginning to put this experience out of there minds something perhaps even more disturbing occurred. The apparition reappeared as before, but this time they were able to discern the malevolent face of a woman with big bulging eyes and hair standing on end. They further described the ghostly being as being of life-sized normal proportions other than the odd feature of missing legs.
Again, the Bilotti family was quite disturbed and contacted the press.
A professional psychic by the name of Malcolm Bessent became interested in the case and decided to pursue it. At the time he was a member of the Human Dimensions Institute of Rosary Hill College in Buffalo N.Y. Mr Bessent put together a team consisting of Bernard Baskin a Hamilton-area rabbi, Dr A.S. Macpherson a former director of the Hamilton Psychiatric Hosp. and John Dryden of the Hamilton Spectator.
As the team toured the otherwise non descript two-storey dwelling on Upper Wellington street, Bessent concentrated his efforts on the upstairs bedroom where the phenomena had presented itself. He said that the haunting was connected to the previous owners - a family of four. He said that a woman had died a painful death in the home. He also stated that the date August 1947 was of significance as was green and white flowers.
The report that followed the investigation appeared in the Hamilton Spectator Nov. 27th 1971. John Dryden had done a background check and discovered the house did at one time belong to a Miss Flowers and was purchased in September of 1947. The woman did suffer a long illness while in residence, but did not die in the home. She was the mother of four children as noted by the psychic.
While only some of Mr Bessent's impressions were correct (historically verifiable) he maintained that the focus of the haunt was the bedroom and that "something" was trying to draw attention to it. Further examination of the room at the time revealed nothing unusual.
The Bilotti family remained in the house an additional 11 years with no further incidents to report.
An interesting footnote to this story:
In October 1982 the house was slated to be demolished. One of the workmen on site claimed he kept hearing "strange sounds." However, it was the discovery of the upper half of a large tombstone between the walls of the second story that really caught interest. Inscribed on the tombstone were the words "Our Baby", "Martha Louisa Young 1888," and on the other half "Emma Grace Nov, 9th 1879."
It was established by Mark McNeil of the Hamilton Spectator that this was the memorial of two infants whom had been buried at a local cemetery. How their headstone which was missing from the nearby graveyard had ended up between the walls of the house (built 1942) and remained there for such a length of time is a mystery.....
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Sources:
Mysterious Canada by John Robert Colombo
(c) 1998 Colombo & Company ISBN: 1-896308-57-0
Hamilton Spectator November 27th, 1971
Hamilton Spectator October 26th, 1982