Years ago in Bay de Verde, there wasn't any running water, like many other places in Newfoundland back in the forties and fifties. Some homes had a sink in the kitchen for washing dishes, but there was only a straight plastic hose connected to the sink for the water to run out, and the water went underneath the house. When I was about 11 or 12, I discovered that you could pick up the end of the hose and hear the people talking in the house. My father lived next door to his brother, and both houses had a sink. So one night I decided to play a trick on my uncle. I waited until it got dark and went in under his house and picked up the hose that hooked to the sink; it was just a straight piece of hose. When I put the hose to my ear, I could hear my aunt in the kitchen. I put my mouth to the end of the hose and called out, "I'm here but you can't see me." Then I put my ear to the hose and I could hear my aunt saying, "Come here, I can hear someone, there's someone here." My uncle came in and said, "There's nobody here, you must be hearing things." I put my mouth to the hose again and repeated the same thing, and she called him in again, saying, "There's someone here!" He said, "There's nobody here, you must be crazy woman!" The next day, I told my father what I had done the night before, and he told my uncle. They both had a laugh about my aunt thinking she had heard a ghost in the house!
Stan Walsh Bay de Verde