Born visually impaired in Grand-Barachois, a small eastern New Brunswick community on the Northumberland Strait, Ysabelle Vautour connects with herself — and with others — through art.
My Favourite Short Scary Stories!
There is nothing I love more than scary stories. The adrenaline! The rush of fear! If you know me then you would know how much I love telling creepy tales, especially during a sleepover with my friends. What I enjoyed the most were the short collections that I collected online as a kid, and I thought it might be fun to share these stories with everyone. Until this day, whenever I tell these stories it never fails to impress so here they are, five of some of my favourite short scary stories!
Who’s in my bed?
A father went to say good night to his seven year old son, very well knowing that if he didn’t his son would have trouble sleeping. It was a nightly routine between them. He entered the dimly lit room where his son waited under his blanket. With the first glance the father could tell there was something unusual about his son tonight, but couldn’t put his finger on it. He looked the same but had a grin that drew from ear to ear.
“You okay, buddy?” the father asked.
The son nodded, still with the grin, before saying, “Daddy, check for monsters under my bed.”
The father chuckled a bit before getting on his knees to check only to satisfy his son.
There, under the bed, pale and afraid, was his son. His real son. He whispered, “Daddy, there someone on my bed”.
The Cabin
A hiker decided to go on a hike by himself. Something he was not very used to. The whole day was normal. Trees and bushes engulfed his surroundings. He enjoyed being outdoors in the mountains. Nothing seemed strange to him, that was until he was making his way back to his car. He figured an eight hour hike was good enough. The sky was already getting dark and he needed to get back, fast. What was odd was how much he didn’t recognize the trail back. He began to panic.
Night had already taken over and all he had was a flashlight and no clue on how to get back. He knew it was already too late and too dangerous to keep going through the perilous forest. He began to worry that he would have no shelter for the night when almost luckily enough, he stumbled across a broken-down cabin. It was dark, and seemed like no one had visited it in years, but he knew it was the only place where he could rest until daylight, especially since his flashlight was running out of battery. He knocked on the door a few times but no one answered, so he let himself in where strangely enough, a perfect bed fitted for one person awaited him in the center. He knew that if the owner came back he could explain himself, he was sure that the owner wouldn’t mind, or was even probably dead. So he went ahead and got himself comfortable in bed. As he tried to sleep, he couldn’t ignore the collection of paintings around the room; portraits of strange looking people all peering at him, each wearing a smile that sent chills up his spine. Not too long after his exhaustion from the hike got the best of him and he was able to ignore the faces.
The next morning he got up early and was shocked to see that there were no paintings around the room, but windows…
The Red Wristband
A doctor was working at a hospital, a hospital where the patients were tagged with coloured bands. Green: alive. Red: deceased.
One night, the doctor was instructed to get a few supplies from the basement of the hospital, and so he headed to the lift. The lift doors opened and there was a patient inside, minding her own business. Patients were allowed to roam around the hospital to stretch, especially those who have stayed long. The rule was to be back in their rooms before ten.
The doctor smiled at the patient before pressing the number for the basement. He found it unusual that the woman didn’t have a button already pressed. He wondered if she was heading to the basement too.
The lift finally reached the floor where the doors opened. In the distance a man was limping towards the elevator, and in a panic the doctor slammed the elevator button to close. It finally did and the lift began to ascend back up, the doctor’s heart pounding.
“Why did you do that? He was trying to use the lift.” The woman stated, annoyed.
“Did you see his wrist?” The doctor asked, “It was red. He died last night. I would know because I did his surgery.”
The woman lifted her wrist. He saw red. She smiled. “Like this one?”
White with RED
A man just moved into an apartment and heads to the receptionist to get his keys. The receptionist gave him the key with a smile but warns him not to disturb the door with no number on his floor. He wondered why but didn’t bother to ask, he was too busy with his new apartment to care. After he finished unpacking he began to get curious. He questioned why the receptionist would warn him of such things, and so he stepped out of his apartment to check the door with no number.
He tried the door knob first but it was locked, so instead he got onto his knees and peeked through the keyhole. The apartment he was looking into was empty. His eyes scanned the whole place before stopping at a woman, standing face against a wall, in the corner. He noticed her pale skin and long black hair before stepping back, suddenly feeling perverted in a way for invading someone else’s privacy. He brushed it off, assuming she was someone that did not want to be disturbed.
The next day he got more curious about the woman and eventually went back, straight away getting onto his knees. He peeked through the keyhole and saw all red. Red. He assumed that the pale woman must have caught him peeking the last time and covered the hole with something red.
He left the door alone and instead went down to the receptionist to ask her questions. The receptionist sighed and asked, “you looked through the keyhole, didn’t you?”
He admitted to it and so she felt obliged to tell him the story. She told him that a couple used to live in that apartment a long time ago, but the husband went crazy and killed his wife. However, this couple wasn’t normal.
They had pale skin, black hair and red eyes.
A mother’s call
A daughter was in her room upstairs, doing her homework, when suddenly she heard her mother call to come down for dinner. She jumped onto her feet and began making her way towards the stairs, but before even took a step, hands grabbed her and pulled her into the laundry room besides the staircase.
She panicked before realizing it was her mother, her real mother, eyes watery and bloodshot. “Don’t go down there honey, I heard it too.”
Ditch your breakup timeline
Are you telling yourself that you need to update your dating profile by next week, or go out to try to meet a new partner IRL? Are you angry that even after a month, you still feel queasy every time you pass your (former) favorite date spot? Go easy on yourself. “Sadly, there is no mathematical equation to calculate a finite timeframe to recover from heartbreak,” says Amiira Ruotola, coauthor of It’s Called a Breakup Because It’s Broken. If it takes you weeks or months to truly heal, so be it. There’s no rush when it comes to inner peace.
Cori Dixon-Fyle, founder and psychotherapist at Thriving Path, agrees that you shouldn’t put pressure on yourself to “feel better” about someone by a certain time. “It can cause shame,” she says. “In order to move forward, you have to give yourself permission to grieve.” Instead, she encourages her patients to feel empowered by allowing themselves the space and vulnerability to feel their feelings. Chatting with a trusted loved one and sessions with a therapist can help you work out your feelings, no matter how difficult it might seem to discuss them.
Remember: There are no rules about how you should feel
If you’re stuck on someone who cheated on you or you’re blue because someone you, err, never technically dated isn’t reciprocating your feelings, you may wonder why you’re so upset. Just as there’s no set timeline for grieving the end of a relationship, there aren’t any rules about what you should and shouldn’t feel, either.
“Take time to embrace your feelings,” says Sullivan. “It’s okay to be sad, mad, frustrated, or even to still long for the person. Let yourself feel your emotions. If you do, it will be easier to move on and heal.” Journaling can be a great way to get out your feelings and put them in a safe place without fear or judgment.
Take time to grieve the loss
Did you plan a future together? Did you break up after a betrayal or because you learned too late that your relationship was one-sided? “The length of time it takes to get over someone depends on how integrated your partner was in your life and what caused the friction,” says Dixon-Fyle. “Depending on the depth of your relationship, it can feel like you’re losing not only your ex but part of your identity as well.” As with any loss, grieving can be overwhelming—you may flip-flop between sad, angry, and anxious, and it’s all okay.
Fire up your favorite angry music, or lean into your big feelings by way of Adele. Reading new books, listening to music, watching movies and TV shows—especially if they deal with heartbreak—will not only help you pass time but might actually help you handle a breakup and heal.
‘It almost talks back to you’
Vautour’s art is mainly inspired by her love for people and their faces.
“I really like people. The fact that I don’t see very well, I tend to take a lot of pictures, so that I can zoom in and it’s very easy to zoom in on the face,” she said.
“And the face is kind of like a complete thing and it’s the most interesting part, sometimes if I’m feeling an emotion it almost talks back to you.”
Vautour chooses to paint with plain colours in boldly-labelled containers and is more focused on how the painting process makes her feel than its outcome. Other times she asks people to help her identify colours or to give feedback on her initial drawings.
Community building
In 2021 Vautour started the New Brunswick Disability Art Collective. The group now has more than 50 members from across the province who advocate and celebrate disability culture through the arts.
She said the group is made up of photographers, painters, musicians, poets, writers, graphic designers, comedians, writers, textile artists and more.
Painter and group member Cass Maz said meeting Vautour and joining the group is “nice because when you get there you get more purposeful ideas.”
Maz, who uses a wheelchair, said she had a stroke in 2013 that resulted in a number of chronic health conditions including involuntary muscle movement, twitching eyes, high blood pressure, motor speech disorders and numbness on her left side.
She started painting after meeting the instructor of her 26th birthday sip-and-paint party.
“The artist that came showed us some different techniques to make a picture and I was surprised,” she said.
“So I went on the internet like YouTube and was looking for different techniques I could use for painting and I found a bunch and I just kept painting.”
Vautour has now had her art showcased in several Canada cities and had her first solo show at the Charlotte Street Arts Centre in Fredericton.
For her, becoming a visual artist has helped her reconnect with herself. She hopes her art becomes more accessible to everyone and their perception of disability art becomes more accepting.
“It’s kind of like writing in a diary . it feels good,” she said.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sophia Etuhube works with CBC News in Fredericton. Sophia worked as a video producer in Nigeria before joining CBC News. You can send story tips to [email protected].
