Welcome to this Halloween special edition of the Skylark Bell podcast! In today’s episode you will hear a series of stories from my time working the overnight shift at a Convent tending to the aging and ill nuns who lived on the third floor. The building was ripe with history, and there were multiple inexplicable events over the two years I worked there in my late teens.

Music: Nightbridge and Les Soeurs by Cannelle (www.cannellemusic.com)

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Things with Wings Productions, with the support of Whimsical Productions and Collected Sounds presents: The Skylark Bell, Fantome Friday.  I am your host, Melissa Oliveri.  

Welcome to this Halloween special edition of the Skylark Bell podcast! In today’s episode you will hear a series of stories from my time working the overnight shift at a Convent tending to the aging and ill nuns who lived on the third floor. The building was ripe with history, and there were multiple inexplicable events over the two years I worked there in my late teens.

This is a spooky one so prepare yourselves! Get settled in. Grab a blanket, a warm drink. 

Now, let’s get started…

It was the late 1990s. I had Bjork and PJ Harvey on repeat in my discman as I rode the bus from my apartment in the old town part of Quebec City down to the Convent where I worked in one of the first ring suburbs. The convent was established over 100 years prior by an order of nuns who were based in old Quebec.

My aunt had been working at the convent as a caretaker for years, and got me a job there when I moved to town after high school. I worked the overnight shift from midnight to 8am. The bus would drop me off on the main road across from a large field behind which was a hospital. I would walk across the field and across the street from the hospital to the convent, then ring a bell by the massive front doors and wait for one of the nuns to let me in. I always dreaded the walk from the bus stop to the convent, for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which were the time of night, and the fact that on multiple occasions I had overheard orderlies from the nearby asylum telling each other disturbing stories about things that had happened during their shifts.

My first few shifts, I was always relieved to be let into the solid wooden doors and stone walls of the convent. I thought I was safe once I was inside…

I started out working alongside the other nursing assistant who worked the nightshift. She showed me the ropes. The most challenging part of the job was staying awake past 4am. Despite doing this job for 2 years my biological clock never truly adjusted to going to bed when everyone else was getting up for the day.

The nuns were in varying states of physical and mental autonomy, ranging from being sound of mind but needing help to get out of bed and into their wheelchair, to being physically mobile, but suffering from the ravages of Alzheimers. 

My first few shifts alone were uneventful. I don’t recall when the first strange occurrence happened, but I know it was a full moon. Over time I realized the full moon definitely had an effect on the nuns – whether they had restless sleep or vivid dreams. One night a heard a nun calling for me down the hallway. The rooms on the third floor of the convent were equipped with call buttons similar to what is found in a hospital, but for some reason she was calling me by shouting. It must have been 2 or 3am, not quite halfway through my shift. I walked into her room, immediately noting that the curtain across from her bed was drawn – this was strange because we always close all the curtains when we put the nuns to bed, and this nun is physically unable to get out of her bed. I choked down a growing sense of unease and asked her what was wrong. She told me “The Holy Father is dead”. By this point in my time at the convent I had learned to try and keep things casual and ask follow-up questions that might alleviate confusion, so I asked her “really? Well, who told you that?”. Her response sends shivers down my spine to this day. She turned to look at me, her wide eyes illuminated by the light of the moon coming through the window that should have had a curtain pulled over it, pointed a bony hand toward the corner of the room and said “the two nuns standing over there”. At this point I want to grab my bag, my discman, my Bjork CD and skedaddle out of there, but there’s no way I can just leave these nuns unattended, they are relying on me for the safety and well being. I offer to get her a glass of water, close the curtain and get her settled back into bed. The rest of the night was uneventful, as were my next several shifts.

The next time something unusual happened was probably around the same time of night, and was a somewhat similar situation, but with a different nun. This time, rather than calling for me, I could hear a nun singing hymns, rather loudly for the time of night. Afraid she would wake up the other nuns in the surrounding rooms, I went to her and asked what she was doing. She told me “I was trying to sleep, but the nun in my room keeps singing.” In fairness, this nun did suffer from the terrible disease that is Alzheimers, so some confusion and occasional odd behaviour was to be expected. Still, hearing something like that is disconcerting. I asked her to politely tell the nun in her room that it was the middle of the night and to stop singing. The nun nodded and looked toward the darkness at the foot of her bed and repeated my words out loud. Next thing I know, she’s nodding off to sleep as if nothing happened.

The call system is set up so the nuns have a handheld button attached to the rails of their hospital-style beds that they can push if they need something. When that button is pushed it triggers a red light in the office that corresponds to the room number of the person who pushed the button. The system also emits a beeping sound in the patient’s room. The only way to turn off the call button is to go to the room and push an off button located on the wall high above the head of the bed. 

Several weeks after the singing nun incident, I was alone in the office working in my sketchbook to pass the time when I saw the call light for that same nun light up. I immediately got up and walked to her room. The first thing I noticed when walking in the door was that her alarm was turned off. This was puzzling because there is no way this nun could reach the off switch, and I always worked the night shift alone. I didn’t have time to think about it though, because she immediately turned her head to the side to look at me and in a shaky voice simply said “I’m scared”. Well, now I was scared too. I stayed with her until she fell asleep then returned to the office and stayed there with all the lights on until morning came.

One of my tasks at the convent was to walk down the long, wide stairway from the third floor to the basement kitchen to gather breakfast food for the nuns when they woke. I typically would go down there between 4 and 5am before any of the nuns got up. There was nothing specifically creepy about the stairway or the dining area and kitchen, but I always felt tremendously uncomfortable there and always dreaded this part of the job.

One weekend I was covering a daytime shift for one of the other nursing assistants. As I was slowly helping one of the nuns take a walk around their garden she began to tell me stories of her time at the convent, how she became a nun, her family, her childhood, etc. At the very back of the expansive garden was a small stone shrine with religious artefacts. Nearby were two small rectangular grave markers, the kind that sit flush to the ground. They were too worn and faded to read the inscriptions on them. The nun stopped at the shrine, then glanced down at the gravestones before she proceeded to tell me a story that made my blood run cold.

Apparently, decades prior two nuns were working in the kitchen in the early morning hours when an intruder broke into the convent and attacked them. The nuns did not survive and were buried on site in the garden.

Why did I always feel so uncomfortable in that basement kitchen? Who were the invisible nuns disrupting the nuns in my care in the middle of the night? Who turned off the call button in Sister Cecile’s room that night?

I will never get answers to my questions. These events happened over two decades ago now, and the convent has since been torn down and replaced with condos. The chapel that was attached to it has been converted into a gym for the condo residents. The only thing left from my time there is the garden and the shrine. I wonder sometimes, when the moon is full, if the residents of the condo building find their curtains open to let the moonlight in, and if they hear a woman singing hymns, or the clicking of block heels walking down the hall, or the beeping of call bell that somehow turned itself off… All sounds that are burned in my memory, forever.

Thank you so much for listening.  Join me next month for a Thanksgiving special edition where I will read The Moonlight Parade, and original, nostalgic story about life and love and loss and renewal. 

Before I go, I’d like to thank Phaeton Starling Publishing for this fantastically eerie story, and Cannelle for composing equally fantastic and eerie music for this podcast. If you enjoy this special edition of the podcast, please consider leaving a rating or a review, they are greatly appreciated. You can also support my work by becoming a Patreon subscriber, just go to www . the skylark bell . com for more information. Thank you.

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