Bluenose Ghosts (27 page)
Similarly at Jordan Falls two young women were talking and one said if she died before the other she would come back to apprise her of the event. It so happened that this young person died at some distance from the other. That night, just after retiring, the friend felt a hand slapping her gently on the side of her head. For some reason she could not understand it made her think of the other young woman. It transpired later that she had died at just that time.
The Acadians left treasure buried in Nova Scotia, not all of which has been recovered. At Pubnico, Cyriac d'Entremont's wife said before she died that the first thing she would do in the next world would be to find out where this treasure was buried. A couple of weeks after her death some of the men of the village were at St. Anne's Point digging for kelp when she appeared before them. They were so frightened that they dropped everything and fled. When they told about her visitation people recalled what she had said, and they supposed she had come to take them to the spot. But alas, this explanation was not thought of for some time and, by then, the men had forgotten the exact place where they had seen her.
Bridges are favourite haunts for spirits, largely because they have so often been the scene of tragedies. Lank's Bridge at Parrsboro is supposed to be haunted following a murder many years ago. A horse is supposed to come by with a headless driver. And at Frog Hollow Bridge a girl has been seen and heard screaming. She had fallen off the bridge one Hallowe'en and had been screaming when she touched the water before being drowned. At Sambro I heard of a man named Bill Gray who used to see his mother at the bridge. He talked it over with a friend and they concluded she must have something on her mind she wished to tell him. He therefore said in the approved words for addressing a ghost, “In the name of God what do you want?” No message was forthcoming but she was evidently satisfied, for she disappeared and was never seen again.
The bridge at Blockhouse Creek also had its ghost, such a sad, unhappy wraith. “Long ago the road went up around, not where it is now. This woman was murdered and they used to see her ghost down by the bridge. She was dressed in white, and you would see her running up the creek, always going away from people.” Still afraid, or shy of humankind?
I often wonder what happens to ghosts when the place they frequent is taken away or changed completely. Until very recently there was a covered bridge at Avonport. Here, according to a man from East Walton, a woman in white used to appear not only at night, but also in the daytime. He said she walked along the bridge and disappeared. The bridge near his own town also had its woman in white as well as other disturbing phenomena. A team of horses would come down the hill and disappear, car lights would come and vanish, and a man has been seen dancing and on fire on the hillside. Add to this the sound of chains rattling as you come up the brook and you have a lively setting. A girl told me that when she was in her late teens she saw the woman in white standing on the bridge at night and she was so frightened that she ran. When she went back later, the figure was gone. At Amherst I was told, “a girl at Rockport drowned herself and they always used to say they'd meet her on that bridge but nobody would speak to her for fear. She just walked by, dressed in white.” As my friend Enos Hartlan said, “People who take their own lives can't rest.”
You will have noticed that women appear in a variety of wearing apparel, usually the clothes associated with them when on earth. At Martock in Hants County a man named Wilkins was said to have had a house where officers from Halifax used to visit many years ago. One time two of these officers were sitting having tea when two nicely dressed ladies walked into the hotel and just vanished. “I've heared that since I was small,” said my informant. “I don't know whether anybody else was ever known to see them. Nicely dressed they were.”
White and grey are popular for colour, but there is no set rule about it as this Seabright story testifies.“About fifty-five years ago when I was seven or eight I was walking with my mother and sister along the road. It was twelve or one o'clock at night. We met two women in long black dresses that glistened, and black hats. They were very tall. They passed us but there wasn't any sound from their feet or the ground or from their dresses. We all three of us saw them.” There are two interesting features about this story. One, that the women were seen by three people, which some say never happens, and the fact that two women were seen together. Only one other story tells of women in company. It came from Mahone Bay where a man saw two women in white walking around a vacant house. Men are not so lonely, and a whole ship's crew may be seen at one time; women always seem to be solitary in their peregrinations.
When Mr. Caspar Henneberry of Devil's Island was going past Fort Clarence on foot at a very late hour many years ago he saw a girl who, he learned later, was supposed to have been killed at that place. She had a round face, long black hair, black eyes, and she was dressed in black. She faced him on Battery Hill first and then walked along beside him. He was so frightened that he took to his heels and returned to the house he had been visiting, and all the way she ran along beside him. He then did a most unmanly thingâhe fainted.
In the summer of 1939 Mrs. Reva Marshall was working at the Ashburn Golf Club in Halifax and, at half-past six, she and a friend named Joan left to go out for the evening. As they were walking down the woodland lane Joan saw a woman coming towards them and said in a startled voice, “Look, she's not touching the ground.”
In the light of the summer evening every detail of her dress was plainly seen. She looked wrinkled and very old and she wore a black skirt, a white blouse, and a black shawl over her blouse. The blouse had a little piece of lace at the top of the high neck. On her head she wore a bonnet with a hood and the bonnet had ribbons under her chin. It had a wide brim at the front and tapered down at the sides.
As she came towards them she looked neither to right nor left and her feet, which did not touch the ground, made no sound. In her excitement Joan pushed her companion so that she almost touched her and, in her embarrassment Mrs. Marshall said, “Good evening madame.” The old lady paid no attention to this greeting but went on her way to the end of the lane and then up a driveâway and finally disappeared in the woods. As far as Mrs. Marshall knew, this was her only appearance.
Victoria Beach reported a tall woman in dark clothes, a former resident, and Mill Cove told of a woman dressed in brown. Our next was dressed in a sugar bag. An organist told the grandmother of my informant that she was going through the lower hall of a house in Annapolis Royal when she met a coloured child dressed in a sugar bag. The child not only walked towards her, but right through her. When the grandmother heard the story she did not seem greatly surprised. She explained that a former occupant had kept slaves and one day she had tied this child up by the thumbs and locked her in a closet. She went out then and forgot all about her. When she returned and went to release her, the child was dead. Others had reported seeing her, and that is why the grandmother was not surprised. Miss Charlotte Perkins, Annapolis Royal historian, carries the story a little further and adds that after the mistress found the slave dead, she sealed her body in the fireplace.
In this same house, the oldest in the town, an old woman often used to be seen sitting in a rocking-chair wearing a plaid or grey shawl. According to the writer, Beatrice Hay Shaw, this was not the owner of the slave, but a sister of one Andrew MacDonald who always appeared in the dress she had died in, and in the rocking-chair where her death had taken place. Women who saw her used to be filled with fear, but she did not have this effect upon men who always spoke of the kindly smile upon her face. She was first seen before 1821 and she was known as the Chequered Lady on account of the pattern of the dress she wore. The story, in the Sunday Leader, May 8, 1921, goes on to state that in all her appearances the chair continued to rock for some time after she left it.
It seems possible to me that the chequered dress would have a shawl-like collar which, from the street, would give the impression of a woman wearing a shawl. All stories agree upon one point; that is, that it embraced several of the quieter colours.
A story in which the reason for the appearance is far more important than the description of the dress, comes from Pugwash. “One time a man came here who had been in Rockhead Penitentiary and I asked him what he was there for. He said it was for stowing away on a ship from Newfoundland. I said if he'd been a stowaway they'd send him back; it must have been more than that.
“Well, one night we were both out seeing girls home down the same road. I waited for him and it was very late when he came. We were walking along and I saw a woman coming towards us and I thought she was one of the MacLeod girls and I thought I'd see if it was and why she was out so late. I went up close beside her and looked right in her face. It was as white as these gladiolas there. If she'd been real she'd have stepped to one side, but she kept right on. Her hair was coal black. You remember those basques women used to wear? Well, she was wearing one of these and a black skirt. She was neat and well dressed. The other fellow was with me when she came along but he had taken to his heels and run. When I got up to him he was standing at the corner shaking.
“âWho was that?' I said.
“âI don't know,' he said, but I think he did know, and that it was because of her that he'd been in Rockhead Penitentiary. I didn't go out with him any more after that.”
We have several cases where the gift of seeing has been given to children. This is from Tangier; “When Uncle Bill was a small boy he was one of a large family and was put to bed with the hired help. At dawn he woke up and looked towards the door and saw a woman looking in. Then she left. In the morning he told the girl and described the woman whom she recognized as her mother. They learned later that she had died at that time.”
At East Chester a story is told of a Mahone Bay woman who had always wanted a new house. She dreamed of it, and planned how she would fix it up, and the thought was so dear to her that she could think of little else. In fact it was almost an obsession. Finally the dream came true and the house she had longed for became hers. She moved in and was happier than she had ever been in her life. It lived well up to her fondest dreams and she loved the new house with all her heart. But alas, she had been living there only for a short while when she fell ill with tuberculosis. In those days little was known about this disease and it caused many deaths in the Province. She realized that her days were soon to end and her one sorrow was that she would have to leave her house. After she died, the woman who had nursed her stayed on and she told that every once in a while the face of her former patient would appear against the wall. No more of her was seen, and nothing happened, just the face.
Sometimes a sound is heard, and that is all. Pity the poor soul told about at Tatamagouche who drowned over a hundred years ago at Blockhouse Creek. She has never been seen, but she is still heard to this day wailing as she must have done at the hour of her untimely demise.
One evening a group of girls decided to regale one another with the sort of ghost stories they had heard so often in their homes in various parts of the Province. They got a delicious thrill from most of them, but that ended with the tale of a spectre from Springhill.
“My father went out one evening and he had to cross a meadow. On the way he met an old friend who had been dead for some time. He said she was dressed in the old-fashioned clothes he had last seen her wearing, and that she carried an umbrella in her hand. When they were through talking they shook hands and went their different ways.” It was the thought of a hand-clasp that frightened the girls and, to this day, it sends shivers up the back of the one who told it to me. The father however suffered no ill effects.
Finally we have a story from Prince Edward Island, given me by Mr. Neil Matheson, M.P. It happened in a Scottish settlement called Strathhalbyn. Duncan and Flora had been sweethearts in their earlier youth, but in time Duncan's affections changed and he married elsewhere. Flora sickened and died, and many said it was from a broken heart. One day Duncan was driving between Hartsville and Rose Valley when he noticed a good-sized pig following him. Although he had a speedy trotting horse the pig kept up with them, with its snout just under the rear axle of the wagon. It finally got on his nerves and he stopped the horse, took the whip from its socket, jumped down, and struck the pig several solid blows. Then to his astonishment a woman's voice came from the pig. Flora's voice. She said, “Why did you strike me, Duncan?” Now why would a woman slighted return to her former lover in this ungainly form?
In Nova Scotia
there are many instances of things having been seen which, upon investigation, were not there at all. Take for instance the strange occurrence on L'île à Frisée as reported by Mr. Stanislas Pothier of Pubnico. This is a small island which may once have harboured buried treasure. A hole lined with beach rocks indicates that a chest once rested there. It is also thought that a Frenchman had been murdered on that island, although that probably has nothing to do with our story. What is important is the erection of a lobster factory which took people to the island and resulted in one man seeing something that has puzzled him ever since. Mr. Pothier's story follows. “This man had come on a vessel and on landing decided to go for a stroll. He was walking along by himself when he came to a place with no trees or grass, but with a beautiful flower garden in the middle of a clearing. He couldn't understand how such a garden could be in such a place, particularly at that time of year when it was too cold for flowers like that to be growing along our coast. He didn't touch the garden, but went back to the vessel and told the other men about it. They thought it very strange too, and a few of the crew went back with him to see it for themselves, but he couldn't find the garden then or at any other time. As far as we know, nobody else has ever seen it either. It's a belief here that flowers represent buried treasure, or the ghost that guards it. That's the only explanation any of the fishermen have ever been able to give for it.” (You will observe how often ghosts and buried treasure tie up together in the thinking of our people.)