Sacred Suzie's Page

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Me, Jamie and Shannon have already gone out shopping and for a massive lunch and are now getting ready for our Thanksgiving Dinner!


As you can see, we are thrilled to be all together again after being separated for two years!

The travel has been a bit of a challenge but I'm doing great and loving being here (although missing my sweetie so much) and tomorrow I leave for Kingston and will be offline for a few days.

I hope everyone is getting beautiful weather like we are (it's crummy out in NS, big surprise) and are doing great.

Didn't want you to worry about me, I'm having an awesome time and even picked up my Halloween costume at Value Village. I'm going as a Salt Spring Island (BC) hippie who has been exiled to the east coast, temporarily.

Hugs to everyone!

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There are farm owners down by my husband's cottage and they were selling their crop of pumpkins and this sweetie showed up

So it's official, I am packing my bags and getting ready for my flight tomorrow. It's kind of ironic, it has gotten so beautiful here and I'm leaving for a couple of weeks. By the time I get back I bet this place will be bare to the bones and the colours faded away. Still, I've been lucky to really experience autumn here even if it was just for a couple of weeks. Out back on Vancouver Island the rainy season will have started and the wind storms will begin their chronic lashings.

As I said, I will try and post when I can but just in case there is a bit of a lag check out some of my previous posts that are very ghostly and spooky:


The Haunted Maritime Museum


The Victoria Ghost Bus Tour


Hatley Castle and Ross Bay Cemetery Ghost Tours


Orbs at Craigdarroch Castle on Vancouver Island


Ghost Investigation: Admiralty House


All month make sure to go visit Mrs. B's 31 Days of Halloween for her free giveaways!

Plus you will probably see me over and Jamie and Shannon's blogs since we will be spending so much time together. Which rocks!



So this is my official online farewell for a bit. I really do want to post as I go but we'll have to see. Enjoy October! Gather leaves in your hands and breathe in the colours. Put on a sweater and go for a walk in the windy air. Start baking again, now that it is finally becoming crisp and cool. Most of all, have tons of fun and I will be back for Halloween. Work on those Halloween collages while I'm away and we'll celebrate when I am officially back.

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I know a lot of you have been concerned with my health (because you are the sweetest blogging friends) and I am happy to report that I got a clean bill of health yesterday after my "procedure". It was a very difficult day but I got through it and am now healing. I seem to still have a persistent cold on top of everything else but the worst part is over (knock on wood). I will spare you the horrid details.

It feels as though I jump through a lot of medical hoops only to find out that the doctors have no idea what is wrong with me. My body just seems to have a hard time functioning, a turtle's pace healing. I often feel like a breathing medical anomaly. It's frustrating to go through procedures that are considered painless by most but overwhelming painful to me. Yet I do believe it is essential to listen to the body. To not ignore warning signs, even if it's just a safety exercise and there is nothing seriously wrong.



Today I continue to heal and tomorrow I begin packing for trip to Ontario. I have saved the Halloween issue of Martha Stewart Living Magazine for the flight, which has not been easy! I may get a second to try and find a fall jacket which has been increasingly challenging to do around here. Otherwise I'll be living in layers of sweaters and turtlenecks to stay warm.

Even though I will be online less, I will still be taking all my jewellery with me so it'll still be up for sale on Etsy. I am planning on posting as often as I can to show you all the crazy adventures in store for me in Ontario. Then I will be back home to give out candy in my new neighbourhood on Halloween. After that, it's Soul Coaching with my sister Jamie! I don't know about you but I think joining a book club to get over my November blues sounds like perfect timing to me. It's not too late to join!

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"My witches are flying on their broomsticks, and the ghosts are quaking in your windows. All is well, Halloween is here..."

The month of October ~ Hecate ~ The Grandmother of Time

I thought this was just the cutest image ever, a little girl sweeping the sidewalk with her new witch's broom for Halloween. As you can tell, it was still warm then. The cold has found us here. The temperature is falling fast. Soon the leaves will all have fallen from the trees and Halloween will have been here and gone. I think it's one of the reasons why I find November so hard, Halloween will be so far away!

When I was a kid in Toronto, some of us would go out but it was considered a dangerous thing to do and yet, I don't remember being chaperoned after I was six. Me and my best friend Rhona would go through the streets of North York alone in the dark and one year we were followed all night by a guy from my school who put his jacket over his head and carried a hatchet up in the air. I wasn't going to let him bully me out of my Halloween fun even though he was very scary and he remained 20 feet behind us all night.

We finished at Rhona's house and looked at all of our loot when the doorbell rang. Rhona's dad went to answer the door and there that guy was with a hatchet! That's when we lost it and ran up the stairs screaming to get away.

Most of the time I just loved walking at night as a little girl listening to the leaves scrape against the pavement when the wind caught them. I thought it was amazing to have one night a year where we were rewarded with candy and freedom I hadn't experienced in a long, long time. When I was a wild child in Montreal.

More than that, it was as though I could touch magick in the wind that night. The spooky bare trees shaking free of their leaves, the bright lights coming from the dark houses like a jack-o-lantern, the smell of candle-cooking pumpkins filling the air... This felt like old magick. Like I had done it before for centuries, out in the cold night air with the energy swirling all around me.

Now as an adult I give out Halloween candy. I look forward to the costumes, to see the kids and teens daring to trek out in the fall air to strangers' houses looking either beautiful or scary. I will also feast on hot fabulous food, drink spiced apple cider, do tarot readings and connect with those who have passed on.

Can you feel that energy now? What does it remind you of? What did you do as a kid on Halloween? Was it just about the candy?

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This is probably the only way you will see my husband on my blog, LOL. He's the one of the left!

We drove into Mahone Bay at a snail's pace because of all the crazy traffic of all the other scarecrow enthusiasts that were out with us on Sunday. It is probably the only time this small town has traffic at all. Again, we were lucky to have the most beautiful autumn weather and made it in good time for the 1 pm tour of the town.



We began the tour inside the graveyard and were told that one of the churches used to be at the top of this hill and they rolled it down the hill with logs over a century ago. I guess before all these people had died, LOL.



Here I am listening intently to the story of the recluse who even in death, made sure his grave was fenced off away from the other bodies. Now that's a loner!



As you leave the graveyard to go to the town, you find this giant witch scarecrow that at night in the dark, must look incredibly wonderfully spooky all lit up! She was my favourite scarecrow but that probably won't come as a surprise to all of you!



In town there were all different scarecrows everywhere, I liked the spooky ones more than the pretty ones.



And here we find another witchy scarecrow but in a tree this time, I love her candycorn tights!



Here's Marilyn Munroe making an appearance on top of the market.



As we made our way out of the madness of town and back to the car we saw this lone crow in the cemetery and the sunlight just bloomed behind him. We felt it was the perfect time to head back home from the Mahone Bay Scarecrow Festival.

After a quick lunch in Lunenburg of course! Any excuse to also hit Lunenburg for some seafood while down the south shore is just fine by me.

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UPDATE: All of my Halloween pendants are up! I'm finally done. You can see them on the right hand site of my blog here. I'm so happy I did it, I got them ALL up!

Here I am all bundled up, ready to go on the Ghost Walk of Historic Halifax by Tattle Tours of Nova Scotia. We had perfect weather, the autumn evening was crisp and clear with a touch of wind. I was so happy we finally had good weather for a change. I could finally get out and do something I've been wanting to do since we got here! Look for ghosts.



We made sure we had time to pick up some hot apple cider to keep us warm during the tour and climbed up the hill towards the old town clock on Citadel Hill where the tour starts at 7:30 pm. The sun was going down and I was with my husband and a dear friend and everything smelled like apples and cinnamon.

The walking tour started with the tale of the first murder in Halifax history happening right below the town clock. We learned just how rough, tough and nasty the history of Halifax was, including people who decided to destroy brothels for fun with their bare hands. There is also of course all the ghosts and haunted residual energy as a result of the Halifax explosion on top of the kidnapping of drunken men by the press gangs and put into the navy. The more I listened to the stories of Halifax, the less I was surprised at the spooky and intense energy I feel when I am downtown.


Click image to see in full

One of the most famous stories when it comes to ghosts AND the Halifax Explosion is the silhouette of a man's head broken in the window of St. Paul's church. I had heard of this story from my husband who is a local and was never sure which window it was so this time I made sure to take a photograph of that particular window and see what I come up with. In this photo it's the top middle window, do you see red coming from it? I do! And you know what? It kind of looks like a face:



There is also an orb coming from one of the windows at the bottom. I am so thrilled that I actually caught something unusual. Perhaps the face is just a tulpa, a physical manifestation caused by the belief in something being real, therefore it becomes real. Without the belief, it wouldn't exist. Either way, it's very cool!



We went around a very old graveyard downtown and funny enough, I didn't capture anything on my camera here at all. My five sets of batteries quickly drained that evening as well, a sign of paranormal activity but super frustrating. How often will I get a chance to go through a cemetery at night?! Darn. Oh well, the cemetery was still amazing and a neat experience.



As we walked down to the waterfront area, my camera started to do a little better and I'm so glad it did. I caught this giant orb floating down from the Alexander Keith's brewery building and sign. Considering there was a riot in downtown Halifax that lasted two day when all the restaurants and bars closed when WWII was officially over and the service men couldn't find a place to drink and celebrate, I can see why ghosts may hang out at the old brewery. This town is CRAZY.



Sorry this is so blurry, I considered not posting this photo of the HMCS Sackville but this part of the tour was my favourite. I loved being down at the water, it was so much quieter than the rest of the tour which was interrupted constantly by buses and motorcycle revving. The traffic made hearing a lot of the stories quite a challenge so to get by the water and listen to the ship making the most unusual spooky sounds that sounded sometimes like a singing whale and then a crying wolf...well, it was perfect for me so I had to include a picture of my favourite part of the tour.

In general, if I had to rate this tour for "spookiness" factor I would probably only give it 2 1/2 skulls out of five. It was more of an historic tour of downtown than it was a ghost story telling experience but when it comes to being entertaining, I give it 5 out of 5. I had lots of fun going all over downtown to areas I have never been and learning about this city's dark and disturbing history. No wonder it must be one of the haunted places in Canada. It is so old and the history so violent and tragic... you will never run out of stories to tell and everyone knows, Nova Scotians are the best storytellers in the world. Especially if you're a Haligonian.

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Thank you all so much for your outpouring of love and support with your comments and emails for my post Retrieving the spirit from Vancouver Island. It meant the world to me. It was a heart wrenching post for me to write but I could hear in my mind all week that I needed to post about it and then I found the right image and it wrote itself.

I am super excited about tonight, it's the ghost tour downtown! Woowee! I promise to write about it as soon as I can. Tomorrow it'll be the scarecrow festival which will also rock. Last night I hung out with a friend drinking my spiced apple cider and eating oatmeal cookies and even though it's hard being here, for a while I was OK with it even though I still feel lost. At least I am not alone. That helps a ton.

If you're in the mood for good fall food, check out a couple of recipes I put up at FoFF. I have my Taco Crockpot Chili recipe up and OMG, so good. It was inspired by a Paula Deen recipe and came up with really good, spicy chili. You can easily make it a vegetarian version by omitting the beef. I also made homemade/breadmaker (LOL) thyme rolls that were the best buns I have EVER had and I'm super picky about my buns. Ha!

This is my last weekend in Nova Scotia before my big trip next week and the sun is shining and the air is crisp. I'm going to take a lot of cough drops with me and will my health to improve. I think the sun and the autumn air are the best medicine for this pagan spirit. I hope you also have a wonderful weekend, whever you are and whatever you're doing!

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I believe it was Carolyn Myss who first introduced me to the term "Spirit Retrieval". When something traumatic happens, sometimes our spirit decides to leave. This is a Shamanic Native American belief that resonates with me. I have had a lot of issues with wanting to run away. To escape from my surroundings. As an empath, life can be so overwhelming. You can feel so out of control.

I did a lot of spirit retrieval on my own last year. I went to a grieving group to get over the loss of my brother which happened a long time ago. I wrote in a grieving journal, mourned my loss and asked for my little girl spirit to come back. I told her I was strong enough to take care of her now. That the sadness was easier to handle, that I let go of other people's grief and we can now move into happiness together.

The body can not survive without the spirit. The longer the spirit is separated from the body in any way, the worse the body will do. I have a hard time thriving and knew that I needed my spirit back in order to tap into my vitality. Plus, I wanted to be whole again.

Now I find that my spirit seems to be a little lost. I think she is still hanging out with the herons and bald eagles on Vancouver Island. She doesn't want to be where I am, even though fall is quite beautiful. She hates Nova Scotia and absolutely refuses to come back to me. And I feel my health draining from my body.

So I write her a letter today and tell her we have many adventures waiting for us here, places we have never seen. Our favourite thing in the world! I tell her the leaves are changing, the colour red is everywhere. We haven't seen that in a long time. There is delicious lobster, the mussels tastes much better on this coast and the pubs have the best fish and chips in the world. There are ghost stories, scarecrow festivals and a wild, wild ocean.

She reminds me of the trash, that there are no parks where we live, no real nature, only churches and cemeteries. I don't shy away from the truth. This is the truth. But we have our own home. That is a dream we have always wanted and now it's true. Our own home with a beautiful kitchen, our crafts room where we can make crazy thing we can think of and trees outside every window.

She kicks the ground, considering coming back to me.

"You promise it isn't forever?"

I take a moment and really consider her question. The spirit only resonates with the truth.

"I promise. We will go back home one day."

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The ancient primal season of the witch is here, and you welcome me. Yes, you love to be frightened by me. I force you to laugh at your own death, to dress up your children in ghostly guise. Now comes your first sense of the coming cold season, chilling to the bone. I bring the harvest, and if you haven't harvested your apples, I'll nip them with frost. After Halloween, all that's left in the fields is mine!

One thing I truly love about this time of year is how everyone seems to embrace witches. At least here in Canada. I haven't had troubles with people trying to convert me and tell me about "the fate of awaiting sinners" like Judith has experienced. I don't know how you lovely and amazing spiritual people south of our border must feel all the time, censored. I know that I tend to keep my spiritual witchy path to myself for fear of judgment but as far as I know we don't have witch hunters praying over our politicians.

It is my hope that soon, people won't be frightened of wise men and women. Yes, there is a spookiness to October and Halloween but that comes with the changing cycle of the seasons. We are unafraid of the coming dark. We sense the veil thinning between our world and the other side. We are conscious of the approach of the primal challenges of survival during winter. Perhaps this makes us scary to some but it is a part of the path of life, whether we like it or not.

I have lost a lot of friends because of my spirituality. I do know what it is like to be judged and found evil. It is a very painful thing, to be called evil and told you are damned. It is the ultimate painful rejection. I have come to realize that these are their fears, not mine. Their issues, not mine. If they can't see I'm about helping and supporting and caring...that my path is one of light and theirs is of judgment there's nothing I can do about it.

Yet I won't walk in fear. I don't advertise my beliefs but I do not shy from them either. I think during a time of extreme religious pressures our tendency is to hide. That just isn't my style and as I said back in August, I am out of the broom closet. And you know what happened? I received an outpouring of love that I had never seen before! Only one person told me I was going to hell. (You won't find the comment, I deleted it.)

What I have learned is the more you are your true self, the more the universe resonates with you. Embrace what is special about you that you have been hiding. Fear keeps us very small!

Check out my pendant at Mrs. B's 31 Days of Halloween!

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How I love October. Its spookiness. Its colours. The cooling air. The thinning veil between worlds. So imagine my joy of finding this little guy at a new store near my doctor called The Pumpkin Patch. I love crows and the ones around my neighbourhood keep me company, I'm so on my own these days. More and more I feel connected to these birds, like they're calling me. So I bought this crow to perch above me in my crafts room as I continue working on my Halloween pendants. It is my Samhain/Halloween gift to myself this year. I still have to name him, any ideas? Maybe she's a female? What do you think?

Do yourself a huge favour and check out Mrs. B's 31 Days of Halloween. Every day she is giving away Halloween-inspired stuff that people have donated every day of Halloween. She's amazing! I have personally donated two items this year so check it out! There are fairy wings up there that I know are going to be hugely popular. I got dibs on the orange apron!

I'm hoping to do some Halloween-y stuff this weekend, my last in Nova Scotia before my big trip back home to Ontario. There is a scarecrow festival happening in Mahone Bay I would love to check out as well as a ghost walk downtown. A lot depends on my health of course but man, I really want to go. Nova Scotia is so haunted and downright creepy in the fall, I must admit that I am enjoying it. Weirdness happened just yesterday when I was having an Oovoo conversation with my sister Jamie. My monitor would shift from red (it's red a lot so that part is normal) but then all of a sudden it would go this crazy supernatural blue! Very weird and very cool.

Is anyone else excited October is here? Are you going to do anything special? Are there any local ghost tours for you to go to? Any paranormal stuff happening around you these days? How are you going to celebrate October?