YEAR: 1968

SEASON: Summer

DATE: not known

PROVINCE: Ontario

COUNTRY: Canada

LOCATION DETAILS: [Location details edited out -- Southern Georgian Bay area]

NEAREST ROAD: Muskoka 5 (which did not then have this name)

OBSERVED: I was 11 years old, and staying at our old cottage on a Georgian Bay island. It was a hot night and we slept with all the windows open. The smaller children slept in another room and had gone to be earlier. It was about 10:00 PM when I went to bed alone in another room. My door was open, and I lay on one side facing the door. About 2 minutes after my light went off, while I was listening to the adults (6 of them) away down the hallway in the family room talking and telling jokes, I got the worst feeling of being watched, from behind me, where the windows were. I remember my heart began to pound, because I was frightened.
I wanted to run down the hall and get the grownups, so I threw back the covers, and whipped around to look at the windows as I got out of bed. There were three double casements, all standing wide open due to the heat. In the far left window, between the sill and the open window pane, was a large, roundish head. I saw no features, and there were no hands at the sill. However, I frightened it, because it ducked down and banged its head, hard, on the open window--I heard it clearly. I ran out to get the grownups, but they told me I had been dreaming and to go back to bed. I made my dad close and lock all the windows.
As an adult, I stand 5.5 feet tall, and these windows are well above my head when I stand outside the cottage. You would have to be over six feet tall to peek in, and stand on something or pull yourself up to fit your whole head into the open casement.
I still go to this cottage. Sometimes I stay there alone with my kids. I cannot bring myself to sleep with the windows open on even the hottest nights. Even if my husband is there.
[You have no idea how many times I have replayed this incident in my mind--I'm sorry I cannot produce more details about the head I saw; every year when I pack for the cottage I think of it and am made uneasy.]

ALSO NOTICED: Actually, 2 somethings strange but more recent. (1)Maybe three years ago, at night, in July my husband and I had just gone to bed when there was an awful cry out in the woods--like a cross between a coyote and a bird and ghost--quite long and very loud with several pitch changes. My husband (who grew up in a city) laughed and said he thought that would have scared the Voyageurs as they sat around their fires at night, ha, ha, ha. Well, I grew up in the countryside and I know every animal and bird that lives in the northeast, and I have NEVER heard the likes of that before or since. (2) Maybe about 2000, I had just turned out my light in the back bedroom when something slammed into the side of the cottage, hard. My 12 yr old son came running down the hall from the bunk room because he'd heard it too. Whatever it was hit the side of the house about midway along the hallway. I was scared to death, alone with my kids in the dark, alone on an island, but I told him it was the siding contracting and making a noise, like the pipes when the heat turns on. All the doors in the cottage are glass & they don't lock, so I spent a horrible night. I refuse to scare the kids and I let all of them wander all over . . . .

OTHER WITNESSES: No others.

OTHER STORIES: No.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: About 10:00 PM. It was very hot, very still, and humid.

ENVIRONMENT: The island is part of the Canadian shield --the whole area is rough or wind-swept granite shorelines covered with pine and oak forests. There were large areas of swale inside the island. It is secluded enough to house deer, bear, grouse, bobcat, mink, etc., plus a huge number of reptiles & amphibians. The back of the cottage sticks out into the woods & has huckleberry bushes growing all around it and under the windows. It was quiet then-few boats on the lake at night, few lights.

Follow-up investigation report:

The witness is from the United States and has spent her summers, since childhood, in the southern region of Georgian Bay.

The area of surrounding the cottage has access to a large lake, several ponds and plenty of game such as deer, bear, raccoons, frogs, fish, squirrels, rabbits and huckleberry bushes that run along side the cottage itself.

Her first encounter in 1968 when she was eleven years old scared her to this day. Her bed was merely 5 feet from the open window where she saw the large head peering inside. She said that she could only see the outline of a very big, round head and not a small oval one like a human. She remembers having the strange sensation of being watched. When she quickly threw herself in the direction of the window she felt that she "shocked" the creature which in turn knocked it's head on the window pane as it tried to duck down. She remembers nothing after that because she ran terrified down the hall to her parents. The windowsill is 6 feet off the ground when you stand from the outside to look in. Whatever was looking in stood at least a head above the base of the window.

In 2000 she said that she was at the cottage with her 12-year-old son and 7 year old daughter when she heard something hit the side of the cottage. She said it was as if something hit the side of the cottage with the force of a baseball bat, it was so loud and hard. Her frightened son came running to her, but her daughter slept through it.

The last encounter was about 3 years ago when the witness and her husband were sitting in the living room with the windows open. They heard and unusually loud, shrill cry that lasted about 15 - 30 seconds. She said that it sounded like it came from something with a lot of "lung power", therefore dispelling any bird in her opinion. Even her husband was so shocked by this that he asked the witness what she thought it was. Neither one have ever heard anything like it. She said that it sounded like it was about 100 -150 yards away from the house.

The witness says she is afraid to this day, however, keeps coming back because of the solitude and beauty of the region.