December 27, 2004
A GLENCOE TALE: THE GHOST OF CHRISTMASIt was Christmas eve in the year 2010, a snowy year by Glencoe standards, and Kaitlyn was spending her first Christmas eve in Glencoe. While she was in Glencoe by choice, she was not really finding it very comfortable or enjoyable as she was camped out in front of the Becker store, in her car, waiting for the ghost of Alex Fraser to appear.
Kaitlyn had been chasing ghosts since she graduated from The University of Western Ontario in 2004. It was in a course in ‘The Para-Normal’ at Western that she first heard the tale about the ‘ghost of Glencoe’, and now she was determine to see for herself whether or not it had any validity.
Alex Fraser was a night clerk at the Becker Store on Main Street in Glencoe. The store was the only one in town that stayed open all night. It was on Christmas eve of 1984 that Alex was working alone in the store when, some time around 2:30 AM, a person came into the store, walked up to Alex, shot him with a .22 caliber rifle, emptied the till, took all the Players cigarettes from the shelf, and disappeared. To this day the murderer has not been apprehended so an open file still exists on the case.
The next year after the murder, on Christmas eve 1985, the owner-manager of the store, Murray Kellar decided that he would work the night shift because he could not, in good conscience, ask anyone else to take the shift since the murder of the previous year had never been solved, and obviously the murderer was still at large.
Murray did not have many customers on Christmas eve, and by 2:30AM the streets of Glencoe were deathly still. Murray was watching some Christmas movie on TV and at first did not notice the car that had pulled up in the parking lot outside the front door of the store. As awareness dawned on Murray that a car was there, and that some one was in the car, just sitting , he tried to make out the details of the person, but was unable to get a clear enough view to determine anything about the occupant . Just as he was turning back to his movie Murray became conscious of a bluish light above the car. As he watched he was astounded to see a transparent, ghost-like embodiment of Alex Fraser appear. Alex began pounding on the roof of the car, although the only sound that Murray could hear was a raspy repetition of “MURDERER!” “MURDERER!”
Murray looked away, then quickly looked back to try to convince himself that what he had just witnessed was real. The car, its occupant and the ghost of Alex Fraser were still there. Murray reached for the phone and decided that he should call the police. By the time he got through to the O.P.P. dispatcher, located in who knows where, he was wondering if he was doing the right thing. Both Alex and the car had disappeared when his attention was focused on the phone.
The police eventually showed up and questioned Murray. Murray began to wonder if anything that he was telling them actually happened. The only physical evidence that the police could find was a Players cigarette butt, still smoldering, with lipstick on it.
It should be noted here that Alex Fraser was twenty at the time of his murder. He was a university student who was working over the holidays, for his old boss, to make some money to pay for his Christmas shopping. Alex had been engaged to a local girl, Sara McLean, before he went away to university, but the temptations of university life were to much, and the engagement ended, badly on the part of his former fiancé, who had been waiting for Alex to finish university and get a job so that they could get married and live happily ever after. Initial threats of suicide turned into long-term depression. She had been questioned by the police during their investigation of Alex’s murder, but not really as a suspect, but rather as some one who might have some clue as to why Alex was murdered over what would, on the surface, seem to be a few packages of cigarettes. No information of value was given and no conclusions could be drawn as to who the murderer was, or why he might have been murdered.
Bored, delusional, too much imagination, a “nut case” were things that crossed the investigating officer’s mind. The lack of witnesses or significant physical evidence resulted in report, by the officer, of an unexplained disturbance. That was the end of the incident, that was until 1986 when Murray was again working the night shift on Christmas eve, and witnessed a similar occurrence which, for obvious reasons, he did not report to the local police.
Murray was beginning to wonder if he was experiencing some form of Christmas eve insanity when it happened each Christmas eve there after.
After this happened again in 2003 he decided to approach a professor he had read about, who was supposed to be an expert in para-normal occurrences, who had a particular interest in ghosts. Professor Herman Esslink listened to his story and promised to investigate it further. The good professor read the police report on the incident and learned very little from his effort. He raised the issue in one of his classes that he taught and tried to recruit a volunteer to go to Glencoe on Christmas eve and investigate the story. It was not until 2010 that he found a volunteer, Kaitlyn, a former student and recently employed assistant. It was thus that Kaitlyn found herself in Glencoe on Christmas eve, sitting in her car in front of the Becker Store.
( to be continued )
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