Post #263704 by Cammo on Tue, Oct 31, 2006 5:30 PM

The Haunted Farmhouse
Part 7

One of the greatest things about the city of St. Catharines, and believe me there ain’t many, is the Avondale Dairy Bar.

It was constructed in 1955 as a place to sell ice cream. They could have built a nice little stand somewhere close to a main road and got all the customers they needed. Instead they basically went out into the middle of nowhere, right smack in the middle of a cow pasture, and cut a barn in half. They got rid of one half, and then painted the rest a bright ‘50s cyan color. Then they put up enormous pink and orange signs all over the inside, cripes these look cool, advertising the different types of fresh ice cream available every day. Peach, Tiger Tail, Blueberry, Chocolate, whatever. And oh yeah, they’ll make you any kind of sundae you can think of. You sit out there, eating the stuff in a farm field with the cows that produced the cream. It was an instant success, a landmark, and lead to the chain of Avondale Convenience stores that are everywhere in Ontario now. They had the good sense to not change a thing at the Dairy Bar, though, it has never been updated or altered. (I tried to find a shot of it somewhere on the net, but struck out.)

The place looks like a Happy Days set, only better, cause it tastes good.

The Avondale Dairy Bar is at 461 Stewart Road, St.Catharines, Ontario Canada.

It’s about 3 miles from the Haunted Farmhouse, which is east of it and on the north side of the road.

Years later, after Mark and Wendy and Sara had moved and the Haunted part of the Farmhouse had been kind of figured out, we were sitting around in their apartment on a Saturday with nothing much on the agenda. My friend Colin was in town, and we decided to take him to the Dairy Bar, which never fails to delight. Besides, we wanted some Tiger Tail; black licorice and orange sherbet mixed with vanilla ice cream, mmmmmm.

It was a bright, cool, beautiful spring day. We rode out into the country, chatting about work and school, and Colin’s mom. His mom never seemed to let him do anything, and it’s an unending source of amusement to us about her newest schemes to say no to anything that might be interesting or fun to him in any conceivable way. She was a genius at it, she could sense a party from days before it had been planned and would have some strange thing for Colin to do at exactly that hour the party was scheduled for. She was also the worst cook on This Blue Planet, she would make Kraft Macaroni Dinner for … dinner, six days a week, and undercook the stuff every time. Eating there was torture. I thought she was kidding the first time I had dinner there. She wasn’t, she was dead serious. Colin just about went into a coma the first time he had dinner at our place, with roast chicken and three-berry pie for dinner. “What’s the special occasion?” he kept asking, mentally refusing to believe that other people ate like that every day.

Anyway, we hit the Dairy Bar and had these huge double-scoop cones. We were hungry; they were big but we had them licked.

After, all sugared up, we came up with the idea of driving by the farmhouse, just to look at it to celebrate old times. It was a fun place to us, we didn’t even talk about the ghost. It took a while to find the right road, then we knew we were getting close because there is an avenue of birch trees lining the road to the right.

We looked to the left. There was nothing there. We drove right by. We reached a farmhouse on the right side of the road, and realized something was wrong. We had gone too far. My brother turned the car around, and we headed back slowly. There was the barn that was on the property, but…

He stopped the car. There was no farmhouse. The pear tree was still there, but nothing was behind it. We looked and looked, then Colin noticed the boards. Burned black boards sticking up out of the ground. We all got out of the car, and walked onto the grass.

The whole place had burned to the ground. Colin thought it was really interesting, but we started getting that same feeling all over again, Wendy looking at us with big eyes and not saying anything. We went a bit closer. The siding had all been pulled away, but around the edges the framing was still there.

We all stood looking down as Colin walked around it, trying to figure out what had started the fire.

“Look.” Wendy said, pointing down.
“What?” Mark said. He thought she had seen something, maybe a piece of furniture or a doorknob, anything we’d remember.
“The only thing left,” she said, “is the cellar.”

She was right. The cellar was made of big untrimmed stones. It was totally untouched, the rest of the house had burned to ashes and collapsed into the cellar. Most of the timbers had been cleared away since, leaving a perfect swimming pool-sized pit.

“Colin, c’mon! Lets get OUT of here!”

We got in the car, and looked at each other again. Mark started the car, and we drove back the way we had come. When we approached the next farmhouse, Mark slowed down.

“I’ve got an idea,” he said. He stopped the car in front of the house.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to ask them about the house,” like this was obvious.
Wendy looked at him like he was crazy. “Why? Who cares? Lets get going!”
“Oh, come on, lets ask them if they know about the fire.” I put in. ‘It’s a good idea.”
“You want to know about the fire?” Wendy looked doubtfully at this farmhouse. It was a pretty depressing place, small, beat up but not abandoned. Somebody was probably inside, a car was in the driveway. ”Go ahead. I’m not going.”
“Alright, fine.” Mark got out of the car. I wanted to go, but we were in the back seat in a two-door car and Wendy didn’t look obliging. Mark rang the bell, and we could see the inside door open a bit, a person standing there, talking to him. It didn’t take long, Mark gestured to the old farmhouse site, then he came back to the car.
“Nice old buzzard,” he said.
“What did she say?” Wendy asked.
“ I thought you didn’t want to know.” he was trying to grin.
“FINE! Don’t tell me.”
“You wanna know?
“NO.”
“Sure?”

“Um,” Colin piped up, leaning forward, “we’d like to know what happened.”

“Okay. Well, nobody was hurt. You know why?”
“No.”
“Because nobody was living there when it happened. It was vacant.”
“Oh jeez. Ooooh jeeeeezzz…..” Wendy whispered.
“And you know when it happened?”
“No.”
“Right after we left.”
“Alright, that’s ENOUGH!” Wendy yelled now.

And that’s about all we know.

If you’d like to visit the place, go ahead. I gave you the only directions we know. The place is still there, at least the cellar is.

It’s waiting for you.

Happy Halloween!