Norfolk County is full of ghosts. The Pajor House has been rebranded as a haunted house in recent years.
I'm from the Waterford area, have been a journalist for a long time now (including at small- to mid-sized dailies) and write fiction. I'm pretty sure I've interviewed you at some point. Anyway, I'm reading Precious right now and realized I should be following you on Substack.
Samantha, Very nice of you to write. I wonder if we have met. Are you at CBC in Windsor? I'm charmed that you are reading Precious. My first novel. A newspaper novel.
There are lots of ghosts and stories around Norfolk, more stories than ghosts. But I am pretty sure there are no ghosts in the Pajor house. I think Stan has more trouble with people hunting for ghosts than with ghosts themselves.
The same Scottish stone masons who built that house also built our stone farmhouse just down the road, the house where I grew up. Fascinating pieces of architecture.
I am indeed at the CBC there. I'm enjoying that about Precious - the grizzled cast of characters you find at newspapers. They're still around but they're slowly dying out and being replaced by a wildly different new generation, or no one at all. I did quite a bit of the packing up and moving to a new town in my newspaper career too. Every time trying to find new friends, a new little apartment, a new stove to cook SpaghettiOs and Sloppy Joes on, and carve out a bit of a life for myself for as long as I was there.
I thought that when I saw it on Facebook. I drove by there a few months ago and saw the sternly worded No Trespassing sign. That masonry is beautiful. Norfolk has a few rural gems like that.
Ah, now, those are some memories. That's pretty much what it was like. I have a good friend from those days. Then she was a young woman going from one paper to another. I remember her stories about the first "dates" in a new town. Hilarious and sad, too. It'd be fun to sit and talk about those days.
What a fascinating read. I appreciated how you point out the profound shifts in spiritual perspective and connections to mother culture between MacDonald and Galinee. I often reflect on how the world, in all its dimensions, gets strained through our own particular place-time filters. Consensual reality is pretty narrow and a lot of lively who-knows-what stuff just roils around out there ... including the Wild Huntsman!
That "who-knows-what stuff" is my favourite category of existence. Thanks, Sharon. One thing I've been noticing lately in my reading is the profound Christian piety taken for granted in the past. De Galinee's group had an altar set up in one room of their cabin. They used the winter hours for Bible study, praryer and meditation. I'm reading Mina Hubbard's account of her adventures in Labrador. A big thing is Sunday camp, when they stop traveling, put on their Sunday best (which they brought despite having to leave from necessities behind), prayers, hymns, Bible study. No arguments about this. A surprising reality, not my own. But reading about it (on these twin canoe trips) makes me SEE it.
My favourite category as well. That is really interesting. There's so much that's utterly baffling (to say the least) and impossible to sort out in these early accounts of weird intrusions into the 'new' world. The altar in the cabin - wow.
A wonderful read. That McDonald should encounter the ghostly huntsmen without knowing the legend almost makes me a momentary Jungian. Somewhere, Joseph Campbell is smiling….
It is mysterious how these legends survive and spread. I have another example from Norfolk but didn't use it because it's even more of a stretch. As I say, we don't really know what folk tales and legends these settlers kept alive in their cabins. The Wild Huntsman had a wide distribution in northern Europe. So maybe not Jung, just something their grandmothers talked about. The witch doctor Troyer is the local nexus for an intense cluster of European folklore.
Norfolk County is full of ghosts. The Pajor House has been rebranded as a haunted house in recent years.
I'm from the Waterford area, have been a journalist for a long time now (including at small- to mid-sized dailies) and write fiction. I'm pretty sure I've interviewed you at some point. Anyway, I'm reading Precious right now and realized I should be following you on Substack.
Samantha, Very nice of you to write. I wonder if we have met. Are you at CBC in Windsor? I'm charmed that you are reading Precious. My first novel. A newspaper novel.
There are lots of ghosts and stories around Norfolk, more stories than ghosts. But I am pretty sure there are no ghosts in the Pajor house. I think Stan has more trouble with people hunting for ghosts than with ghosts themselves.
The same Scottish stone masons who built that house also built our stone farmhouse just down the road, the house where I grew up. Fascinating pieces of architecture.
I am indeed at the CBC there. I'm enjoying that about Precious - the grizzled cast of characters you find at newspapers. They're still around but they're slowly dying out and being replaced by a wildly different new generation, or no one at all. I did quite a bit of the packing up and moving to a new town in my newspaper career too. Every time trying to find new friends, a new little apartment, a new stove to cook SpaghettiOs and Sloppy Joes on, and carve out a bit of a life for myself for as long as I was there.
I thought that when I saw it on Facebook. I drove by there a few months ago and saw the sternly worded No Trespassing sign. That masonry is beautiful. Norfolk has a few rural gems like that.
Ah, now, those are some memories. That's pretty much what it was like. I have a good friend from those days. Then she was a young woman going from one paper to another. I remember her stories about the first "dates" in a new town. Hilarious and sad, too. It'd be fun to sit and talk about those days.
What a fascinating read. I appreciated how you point out the profound shifts in spiritual perspective and connections to mother culture between MacDonald and Galinee. I often reflect on how the world, in all its dimensions, gets strained through our own particular place-time filters. Consensual reality is pretty narrow and a lot of lively who-knows-what stuff just roils around out there ... including the Wild Huntsman!
That "who-knows-what stuff" is my favourite category of existence. Thanks, Sharon. One thing I've been noticing lately in my reading is the profound Christian piety taken for granted in the past. De Galinee's group had an altar set up in one room of their cabin. They used the winter hours for Bible study, praryer and meditation. I'm reading Mina Hubbard's account of her adventures in Labrador. A big thing is Sunday camp, when they stop traveling, put on their Sunday best (which they brought despite having to leave from necessities behind), prayers, hymns, Bible study. No arguments about this. A surprising reality, not my own. But reading about it (on these twin canoe trips) makes me SEE it.
My favourite category as well. That is really interesting. There's so much that's utterly baffling (to say the least) and impossible to sort out in these early accounts of weird intrusions into the 'new' world. The altar in the cabin - wow.
A wonderful read. That McDonald should encounter the ghostly huntsmen without knowing the legend almost makes me a momentary Jungian. Somewhere, Joseph Campbell is smiling….
It is mysterious how these legends survive and spread. I have another example from Norfolk but didn't use it because it's even more of a stretch. As I say, we don't really know what folk tales and legends these settlers kept alive in their cabins. The Wild Huntsman had a wide distribution in northern Europe. So maybe not Jung, just something their grandmothers talked about. The witch doctor Troyer is the local nexus for an intense cluster of European folklore.
fabulous story. thank you.