Haunted Harbours (4 page)

Someone told me a bit of this tale at a Christmas party, but by the time I'd gotten home, the memory was lost in a soft fog of festivities, food, and too much winter ale. I spent some research time at the Archives, and a whole month scouring the used bookstores for old texts. This search brought me two more sides of this story – each imperfect, each incomplete. I have taken it upon myself to weld the two sides together and I've come up with something that sounds a little like this.

In the mid-1700s Nova Scotia was billed as a promised land of milk and moose meat. Ruthless government agents travelled through Northern Europe enticing unwary settlers to pack up and venture across the Atlantic to settle there.

“Land for every man,” they swore. “Soil that parts like sea water before the plow. Fresh game and fish for the asking. Room for everyone and a chance for a brand new beginning.” Such were the promises made for money; the land agents received a bounty from the British government for every colonist they managed to seduce. However, as this mixed bag of European settlers arrived in Halifax, they were told a completely different story. Halifax had been built for the British, they were told. There was no room for Dutch, German, or Swiss settlers.

So it was that in the early summer of 1753, a group of fifteen hundred German, Swiss, and Dutch settlers sailed out of Halifax and into Malagash Bay. They settled on the shores of what would later be known as Lunenburg, determined to make a fresh start for themselves. They swore to build a new life on this cold and unfriendly shoreline.

They were harassed by the coming winter, the harsh conditions of the untilled land, and the depredations of local Mi'kmaq riled up by the French, who had their own notions of who should or should not be allowed to take root in this brand new world.

Everybody wanted a piece of this landscape, yet by the early 1760s France had surrendered the entire country to the British and the settlers had made peace treaties with the local natives and got down to the serious business of building a home.

The settlers took root mostly on the coastline, which provided a ready-made escape route. The ocean was their friend and if there was ever any sign of trouble they could simply sail away.

But Nicholas Spohr was of tougher stock. He hunted upriver, looking for a patch of land far from the crowded towns to call his own. In Germany he'd been a landless peasant, and had harboured dreams of owning his own estate.

He found his dreams made manifest far up the LaHave River on the shores of a large horseshoe-shaped cove. Here, in the wooded darkness of the Nova Scotia forest, Nicholas found an entire abandoned settlement. There were docks leading out into the river and a large clearing, containing a great blockhouse with cannons still mounted in their swivels. There was a large warehouse that looked to have once served as a church on Sundays, with a large black belfry and a great iron bell mounted therein. He could see the bell from the shore, swaying softly in the evening wind.

How long had this settlement stood here? Had it been abandoned by the French during their flight from the province? Perhaps the original inhabitants had been wiped out by a plague or a massacre. Nicholas didn't know.

He warily explored the deserted settlement, not finding a single sign of the original inhabitants. Who were they? That they had been craftsmen was evident: the buildings were well constructed. Several gardens were carefully laid out and showed signs of recent tending. The houses were unlocked and fully stocked with all manner of furniture, clothing, silverware and many household necessities.

Where had the owners gone? If they'd fled the British advance, why hadn't they taken their belongings with them? If they'd died of disease or been killed, where were their remains? If they had been massacred, why hadn't their killers taken any of their belongings?

It was a mystery, but a blessing for Nicholas that he simply could not ignore. Here was an estate for the taking. He was a landowner.

He hurried back to Lunenburg, not telling a soul of his sudden great luck. The blockhouse was apparently forgotten to all, and Nicholas intended for it to remain so. He travelled to Halifax by boat and asked the British authorities for a grant of the land located seven miles up the LaHave River.

The authorities didn't ask any questions. It seemed they had no knowledge of the previous settlement, either. They were more than eager to settle the untamed Nova Scotian interior wilder-ness. And why not? The sooner it was securely settled, the sooner the government could begin imposing taxes. They happily gave Nicholas a grant for one thousand acres of untouched land in and about the little horseshoe-shaped harbour that is now known as Horseshoe Cove.

Nicholas hastened back to Lunenburg and quickly moved his family from their temporary town dwelling up the LaHave River to take possession of the abandoned blockhouse.

Within a year Nicholas began displaying the effects of his sudden good fortune. He discarded his sensible homespun jacket, his wool stockings and trousers, even his battered felt hat and wooden sabots. He began dressing in the fancy garments he'd found in the abandoned houses of the settlement. He took to riding and spent much of his time wandering and admiring his lands and his buildings.

Instead of working the land for a living, Nicholas amassed a small fortune by selling off firewood cut by his sons. Nicholas, a land-owner now, considered himself far too dignified for such menial labor. One wonders what his sons might have thought about this.

Nicholas saved his peasant attire for the times when he would have to travel to Lunenburg. He only wore his fancy duds within the security of his own landholdings. Perhaps he feared the thought of other people learning of his good fortune, or perhaps he was afraid that they might see through his pretense and laugh at him. In any case, as soon as he returned to the sanctuary of his own lands, off would come the peasant garb, and he would immediately change back into his fancy wear, sometimes as he crossed the border of his own land. Many a hunter has told the tale of seeing old Nicholas tugging on his silk trousers in the heart of the darkened Nova Scotia forest.

Every Sunday Nicholas would ring the blockhouse bell, thanking God for his good fortune. You could hear it, clear to Lunenburg, tolling long and low.

All went well for many a year. Nicholas lived out his charade, relying on the wealth his family's efforts provided. He occasion-ally carried some of the valuables from the settlement to be sold off at Halifax. He never sold any of the clothing. He couldn't part with any of his lucky finery.

Then one night Nicholas was awoken by the sounds of a great drum beating in the heart of his richest woodlot. “Someone is stealing my timber,” he shouted to his family. He dressed himself in a combination of his finest garments and peasant wear, what-ever was closest at hand. With a loaded pistol in his hand, and armed with the indomitable sense of his own self-righteousness, he strode boldly into the forest depths, following the sound of the beating drum.

Within a half an hour Nicholas found himself in the heart of a vast Mi'kmaq gathering. Believing that his right of ownership granted by the Halifax authorities would somehow impress the Mi'kmaq, Nicholas brandished his loaded pistol and ordered the group to leave his lands.

Nicholas was inches away from his own death. Even though the tribes had long ago made peace with the British, it was still considered most unsociable to wave loaded weaponry in a stranger's face. Only the fact that the Mi'kmaq thought him more funny than dangerous saved his life. They took his pistol and turned him out into the darkness.

Nicholas brooded through long days and nights, hearing the Mi'kmaq ceremonial drum beating in his very own woodlot. Three days later when the Mi'kmaq left their ceremonial grounds, Nicholas moved in with all of his sons and cut that section bare. He even deigned to pick up an axe himself. He worked from sun-up to sundown, tearing his favourite pilfered silk shirt in his effort to make that section of land absolutely inhospitable. Nicholas hauled the felled timber to Lunenburg and had it loaded on a ship, and he personally saw to the delivery in Halifax. It was his best load yet. He returned home to Lunenburg with his pockets jingling and he grinned with the sweet taste of revenge.

His grin faded when he returned to his estate and found that his entire family had been murdered. Even his dog had been gut-ted. The furniture had been broken up and his fine clothing torn and burnt. He knelt over the ashes and howled like a gut-shot wolf. They say that the townsfolk heard his screams all the way back into Lunenburg; if they didn't hear the scream they certainly heard the bell tolling long both day and night.

Eventually Nicholas wandered back into the settlement of Lunenburg, a shadow of his former self. His fine clothing was torn into rags upon his back. His eyes were dulled with madness.

The settlers rallied to his cause and gathered a hunting party of stout German and Dutch farmers and sailors armed with muskets and pistols. They managed to hunt up several Mi'kmaq, hanging four of them in front of the site of the massacre at Horseshoe Cove. Doubtless many of these Mi'kmaq were innocent, and a lot of blood was needlessly spilled, but the townsfolk felt that justice had prevailed. They shipped two of the Mi'kmaq survivors to Halifax for trial. One died in prison and one escaped.

For a time Nicholas Spohr lived alone in the town of Lunenburg, getting drunk every night with what was left of the profits of his last wood sale. He swore that he would never return to the accursed blockhouse at Horseshoe Cove.

Then one moonlit night he disappeared, walking into the Nova Scotian woods. Most of the townsfolk figured he'd been drunk and had simply wandered off, but a few wiser folk knew better. They searched for three days and finally found him outside of the blockhouse, prostrate upon his wife's grave, dead from hunger, exposure, and the ravages of grief.

They buried him there, outside of the blockhouse that had promised him so much happiness. For many a year the site was shunned by whites and Mi'kmaq alike. Yet in the restless nights of autumn, when the wind is dancing with the clouds and talking of the snow that soon will fly, the story goes that you can hear the sound of an iron bell tolling a low and mournful dirge, even though the blockhouse has long since vanished. Local folks who hear it, even today, will simply shrug their shoulders and walk on: Old Nicholas is ringing his bell and walking a lonely vigil through a woodlot that has never grown back quite right.

5
THE
GHOST-HUNTER'S
WHISTLING GHOST
LIVERPOOL

In her 1968 collection
Bluenose Magic
, Helen Creighton tells of a lot of different ways that you can slay a witch or rid yourself of a ghost. Silver will do it; water will too. So will fire and salt. I've since heard the following old story of a rogue witch-hunter who used just such a technique to make a small living, although I have reason to believe that his motives were less than silvery pure.

Back in the early 1800s in the Liverpool area, there lived an old man named Hank O'Hallorhan. Hank was a bandy-legged fellow, not half as old as he looked, but as lazy as a fat frog wallowing in the bottom of a mossy well. Hank used to be a sailor, but no ship would have him for very long because of his bad habit of whistling too much. Hank was a nervous little man who found relief through whistling, something no sailor could stand due to the old superstition that an idle whistler could just as easily whistle up a storm as a tune. So Hank became a hunter, though of an unusual sort. He'd go from town to town and enter someone's house, making sniffing sounds and saying, “I smell a ghost,” or “I smell a witch.”

If he claimed to smell a ghost he'd fire a charge of black powder up the chimney flue to frighten the evil spirits away. If it was a witch he was chasing, he'd beg a dime that he'd cut up into slices to fire up the chimney, because everyone knew that silver was the only thing that could slay a witch. He'd beg a dime at every house, but would only slice up the one; even a witch hunter needs to make some kind of living.

One day he showed up at an old woman's house and swore he could smell a witch. Actually what he'd smelled was a brace of freshly baked apple pies cooling by the windowsill. Hank figured on making a bit of money and perhaps a piece of pie or two. He walked up to the front porch, whistling like a flock of lovesick canaries.

The old woman, whose name was Annie Tuckins, fixed Hank with a hard, sharp stare.

“Damn a man who whistles,” she said. “He's either got some-thing on his mind, or absolutely nothing at all.”

“Oh grandmother,” Hank said, figuring he'd get farther by talking politely. “I smell a witch in your chimney. She'll cast a spell on your baking for certain sure. Would you have a dime that I might use to banish her?”

The old woman looked up from her baking, half-amused by O'Hallorhan's gall and half-bothered by his unasked-for interruption.