"I was standing by the display board that lists all the ghost sightings. It's right by the spot where (Ann, the ghost) died. All of a sudden, I broke out in goosebumps," he says. "It was one of those feelings you get when someone comes up behind you quiet-like. I could feel that something was there."
Ellis turned around, but failed to catch a glimpse of Ann Crosby Currier, the Ghost of Watson's Mill.
Local legend has it that Ann has been roaming the second floor of the mill for decades in a long white dress, causing disturbances and minor damage. Her story is included in the recently-released Ontario Ghost Stories by Barbara Smith. The book is a collection of paranormal tales.
Ann Crosby Currier was the second wife of Vermont immigrant Joseph Merrill Currier. Currier was a lumber tycoon whose Manotick Mill was once the largest of its kind in Eastern Ontario. Ann was born in Lake George, N.Y., in 1841 and her father owned a hotel with room for 250 guests. That's where she met Currier in late 1860. The couple was married Jan. 25 of the following year.
After a month-long honeymoon spent criss-crossing the northern U.S., Currier took his young bride to Canada for a celebration of his mill's first anniversary.
During a tour of the upper floor, Ann's billowing crinoline dress was caught on a piece of working machinery, catapulting her against a support beam and killing her instantly. "You can still see the dried blood and fingernail marks on the post," Ellis said on a recent tour of the mill.
After Ann's death, Currier lost interest in the mill and sold the remaining shares to his partner, Moss Kent Dickinson. The mill has since fallen into the hands of several owners, the latest being the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority, which bought the mill from the Watson family in 1972.
As for Currier, he moved to Ottawa, where he remarried and went on to have a successful political career. He died in 1884 and is buried in Beechwood cemetery alongside Ann. "He never set foot in Manotick again, but Ann seems to really like it here -- she seems pretty content," Ellis says.
According to Ted Ross, director of fundraising for Watson's Mill Manotick Inc., Ann's first reported activity took place in 1920, when a fisherman ducked into the mill to get out of the rain. He heard unearthly screams coming from the second floor, but didn't stick around long enough to investigate.
In 1980, Ross says two local boys were walking across the dam behind the mill when they haphazardly glanced up at the building. They saw a shadowy spectre staring mournfully back at them from a second-storey window.
Between 1980 and 1986, there have close to a dozen reported sightings.
Despite never having seen Ann, Ross agrees there is a presence on the second floor of the mill.
"We have a vendor's market here on Saturdays. One of the vendors said she was up (on the second floor) and she felt a presence," Ross says. "It wasn't threatening, but it was telling her that it was not a good time to be there. The spirit didn't want her there. I haven't gotten any feelings like that, but I'm not psychic or anything. Of course, I haven't gone up there in the nighttime, at least not by myself."
Ellis is no longer as unbelieving as he was before. "I've never had any other sightings or feelings of any kind. But why did I have goosebumps -- I wasn't cold," he says. "I don't believe in ghosts, but there are things that are unexplained and better left that way."
The Haunted Mill
Larry Ellis never believed in ghosts. Until recently, he was equally skeptical about reports that Watson's Mill in Manotick [Ontario] is haunted. But three years ago, the local historian who has lived in Manotick since 1945 felt a "presence" on the second floor of the mill while researching a story about the ghost.
[Original headline: Ghost of a chance:
Local legend has it that Watson's Mill in Manotick is haunted]
[Source published - October 24 1999]
