It was the summer of 1993 or 1994 when I had first started working as tower person. I had done my training orientation at another forestry tower, when I had been given my first forestry assignment at the Hart Lake Tower, about sixty kilometres due west of Enterprise, Northwest Territories. At this time there was only six weeks left in the forestry season.
The tower location is about two kilometres off of the Mackenzie Highway, in the evenings you can hear the traffic passing by, but the traffic dies off at about twelve o’clock, because the ferries which cross the Mackenzie River and the Liard River both shut down at midnight and open again at six in the morning. The wildlife surrounds the tower in the boreal forest, and the tower sits on a cliff clearing with a drop of about seventy feet and a bare-eye view of about thirty miles. From the cliff’s edge you can see the Great Slave Lake and the seventeen story apartment building in Hay River some 26 miles away.
I soon became acquainted with my surroundings, which was the sixty foot tower, the back shed, the paths and the woods, and the cabin, which was also where I was staying. I knew every nook and cranny, everything that was already in the medicine cabinet, and the tiny touches that seemed to make it somebody else’s home that I was living in.
One night, close to the end of the season, I was writing a letter by candlelight at the dinner table, during a pitch black and eerily silent night. When I had gone out to the outhouse earlier, the low-lying clouds were close enough to touch with my flashlight beam, and all the forest was quiet with a heavy silence. Tonight it would be easy to hear a car approaching from miles away, but I knew there wouldn’t be any this late at night.
As I hunched over in writing a letter to a friend in Fort St. John, BC, I sat up because I had caught a faint whiff of a cologne. I knew the cabin in and out, and knew that there was no cologne there. I didn’t bring any because I had no need to wear cologne as I lived in isolation and only saw the occasional tourist that would come to check out the spectacular view.
I thought the smell was only in my imagination and I went back to my writing. Just after I had done this, the smell chose to get stronger, almost like someone or something was saying, “Don’t ignore me.” At that moment the hair bristled on every part of my body: my arms; my neck; and my cheeks. I also “felt” like there was now a presence immediately behind me. Mustering all my courage of saints and angels, I slowly turned around and saw nothing. I slowly turned back around to my letter, but didn’t dare ignore the presence that I still felt was there. I quickly associated the smell with a childhood memory--“Old Spice,” which my grandfather wore.
Partly in fear, partly in believing that I could always talk to a presence or ghost, especially if it was my Grandfather, I said out loud, “Grandpa... I’m a little busy right now, could you come back later?” No sooner did I say those words, that the smell of Old Spice disappeared. My fear didn’t leave me so fast, as I again said out loud (more for my own benefit), “Oooookay! It’s time for bed!”
As I took the candle to bed, every part of my being refused to let me look in the mirror that was above my dresser. I think it was a fear of seeing someone there besides myself.
It took me a long time to go to sleep, mostly because I feared to even look in the direction of the mirror (even in complete pitch black) and the incredible silence. The loudest thing that I could hear was the blood rushing in my ears and my own heartbeat.
About two years later, I talked to another tower person about that incident, when I visited them at another tower. He told me that an old Native man used to work there for years. He had worked there for so long that he considered Hart Lake his home, and he died sometime before my arrival at the tower.
As an aboriginal person, we sometimes call our elders Grandpa or Grandma, so it’s not unusual for an elder man to be called Grandpa by someone who’s not their relative. So the visitor I had that night could have been the former occupant of the cabin.
However, I had always been told by my family that my deceased relatives would always be watching out for me, so part of me believes it could have actually been my Grandfather that visited me.
In either case, I’ll never know for sure. I worked another two seasons for forestry, and spent my last four months at Hart Lake Tower without any other further incidents, which I thought was unfortunate. I wanted another chance to try and actually communicate with that presence there, and perhaps find out a little more about the resident of the cabin.
