Bluenose Ghosts (13 page)

“We saw the scene re-enacted. If it wasn't that, what was it? That would be about 1936 or 1937. It was September and we were going to Herman's Island in our yacht. When we left, the moon was out and we sailed out the Bay. We sailed in the moonlight until the wind dropped when we decided to anchor off Black Island and spend the night, proceeding to Herman's Island in the morning.

“There were just the two of us on our yacht and there were no other boats in sight. I was on deck furling sails when I looked up and there was an immense fire going up all of a sudden. It might have been fifteen or twenty feet in diameter. There were Indians dancing around the fire holding tomahawks in their right hands, and their right arms were held up and they were yelling. The Indians that weren't dancing were getting wood and throwing it on the fire. One second the fire wasn't there, and the next second it was. It came up too quick for it to be people out from Chester and, even if it had been human people, where would they have put their boat? There was nowhere to beach it that we could see. We watched for an hour or more and then we got tired and went below to sleep.

“The next winter some friends were here and they said, ‘You gave us quite a fright that night you anchored off Black Island.We were hand-potting lobsters on the other side and didn't see you till the morning.'

“‘If you were there, you saw the fire then,' I said.

“‘No, we didn't see any fire.'

“‘Well then, tell me, could there have been a picnic on the island that night?'

“‘No, there was no picnic because there wasn't a boat.' So that settled any picnic, with both sides of the island being seen. We have often thought about it and talked it over. If the fire had been real, they would have seen it too, but with these supernatural things it isn't everyone who's able to see them. The only conclusion we've been able to come to is that we looked back that night into time.” Mrs. Morash nodded her head in agreement.

On the road between Halifax and Chester there is a village called Boutilier's Point, and an unexplained story comes from there.

“My mother was teaching school at Oakland before she was married, and she started out one Saturday afternoon to walk to her home in Lunenburg. It was early in the day and, when she came to the short hill at Mader's Cove, she saw two army officers riding on white horses coming towards her. They rode so easily and so gracefully, and were so completely unaware of her, that she stood for some time and watched them. Who were these handsome strangers?

“When she got to Lunenburg she asked her father about them. He was a constable and would be sure to know but he had not seen them nor even heard of them. She asked everybody she saw after that, but nobody had seen them. She decided then that they must be known at Mahone Bay because there is only one road in that town and they would have to take it to go anywhere. But again she met nothing but negative replies. Nobody had seen them. Although she lived to be over eighty she was never able to discover who they were or where they had come from. She always wondered then if they had gone that way before. Had their spirits returned to ride once more over the familiar roads.” Or was she seeing an event from out of the past?

You will find many stories in this book from Shelburne, which is largely a United Empire Loyalist town.

“A dwelling known as Shelburne House was erected at the time of the Loyalists but it was torn down many years ago. The sound of the front door opening and of an officer's sword clanking as he ascended the stairs was heard at times, but only by certain people.

“One time a lady who had never been in the town before was a supper guest at Shelburne House and, during the evening, she heard this same mysterious interruption. When her husband called for her later, she asked if the house was supposed to be haunted. He asked her whatever made her think such a thing?

‘What did you hear?' he said.

“‘I heard the front door open and it was followed by the clank of a sword on the stairway,' she said.

“‘I can't say you imagined it,' her husband said, ‘for it's been heard before.' Nobody knew the reason for it, or whether this was a restless ghost or a scene reenacted from the past.”

There is little doubt in the next case, which comes from a man of Scotch–Dutch descent in Chester. “My wife's grandfather was a ship's carpenter, and he lived out on a point at a place called the Half Moon. It was a back harbour and formed a little cove. From this little cove, he said, different people have seen old-fashioned longboats row away on certain nights. They always claimed they were repeating either the burying of a treasure or the hunting of it.The last time it was seen would be about eighty-five years ago.”

At Ballast Cove in Queen's County people used to be seen in old-fashioned clothes coming up from the beach, and it was thought they were carrying a corpse.They would always disappear in the woods. The people got used to seeing them, and presumed they were re-enacting a real event.

At Ditch Brook in the same county an engineer once plotted out the land. He has been seen making his survey and his chain is heard rattling.

At Seabright they used to see a chest of money crossing the road by itself, but nobody has attempted to stop it. Presumably a real chest had gone that way before.

At Hartlan's Point, now Devil's Battery, there used to be a flat rock and, according to my friend Enos Hartlan, they used to see two men as big as a thumb sitting on the rock playing cards. Could this ever have happened in the past?

A bit inland from Seabright two boys were coming along the railway track and, at a culvert, they saw a big black dog. (Ghosts often appear in the form of dogs.) One of them said, “I wonder who owns that dog?” and just then it brushed past them and they got a feeling of rushing wind. A man had shot himself at that culvert. Different ones have seen him at twelve o'clock as he must have been sitting that night with his gun across his knees planning his own destruction.

At Glen Margaret there is an old house with a brook running along beside it, and here the owner and his wife have seen a big man “rounded like he was hauling a chain down over the rocks by the brook,” while at Victoria Beach an artist was sitting at his easel painting when he swore he saw forms on the cliff that looked like pirates. This happened more than once. Treasure is supposed to be buried there, and he thought he must have seen them as they put it there many years before.

In a fish house at New Harbour a light like a lamp has been seen many times on a table in the place where it must often have stood; and “one fellow came down to go fishing and a longboat rowed out and the stern fellow had a three-cornered hat on. There were four men on each side pulling their oars. Then the boat disappeared. ”

When Annapolis Royal was taken over by the English in 1710 a number of the people who came there to live brought slaves with them. Some of their descendants are there to this day and they are quite a superior strain. I visited one of the older women one day with the following result.

“When I was first married I lived in a house on the left hand side of the Granville road above the railway tracks. One day I was in my kitchen when I looked up and saw a man standing in the doorway with a chain around one leg and a dog sniffing at his heels, and I could hear the sound of the dog sniffing.That seemed so strange to me. I wasn't frightened, but I must have moved because suddenly they disappeared and I have never seen them since. He must have been trying to lift the wooden latch to come in. I didn't like to say anything about it to anybody until one day the rector's wife came to call. I thought she would laugh at me but I wanted to tell her and I did. But she didn't laugh. She knew the history of the houses in Annapolis and she said that years ago that house had belonged to a general and that he was known to have had a slave who was chained by the leg.”

Finally, they used to say in Halifax that if you went to the Willow Tree after dark on Hallowe'en and had the gift, you would see a man hanging from a gallows.

Chapter FIVE

DEVILS AND ANGELS

DEVILS

It is a risky business
to challenge the devil or to call upon him in time of trouble. It would seem that he is always close at hand, ready to appear at your side to carry out your slightest wish, suave, handsome, and obliging, anxious to serve, but at a terrible price.

A few years ago there was a dance hall on the outskirts of Sydney. It may be there yet, for the events I am about to relate happened quite recently. The story was kept quiet at the time because it could conceivably injure the business of the hall, although the location had nothing to do with it. The incident could have happened anywhere under the particular circumstances.

On the evening in question a girl started off for the hall against her mother's wishes. The objection was based mainly upon the fact that she was young, and dancing had become almost an obsession with her. During the evening in a moment of complete abandon, she stood in the centre of the floor and said, “I love to dance. I love to dance so much I'd dance with anyone, even the devil.”

Then from the side of the room a fine looking stranger appeared and her invitation was accepted. He danced superbly. After a while however she happened to glance down and she caught sight of one foot. It was cloven. She stopped and screamed and in the ensuing confusion the stranger disappeared. Whether he went out through the side of the wall whence he apparently had come, nobody seemed to know. From all I could learn, the girl suffered no further ill effects than a very bad fright and I presume it was a salutary lesson. In a case very like this reported from our neighbouring Province of New Brunswick the girl did not get off so lightly. There the imprint of the devil's hand was burned into the flesh of her back and she was so disturbed by the dreadful experience that she died of shock.

Another story of the devil and a girl who loved to dance came from a former resident of Diligent River. My informant was a child when she heard it. This fearsome tale was one of the many ghost stories of the district, the type of bedtime fare which children of that time heard before going to sleep. She could not tell the actual location of the event except that it was in the Parrsboro area, probably between that town and Diligent River.

“Many years ago a girl was to have been taken to a dance but, at the last moment, the young man turned her down. She loved dancing and, in her disappointment and distress, she said petulantly, ‘I'd go with anybody who would take me. I'd even go with the devil if he came.'

“Very shortly after this a fancy rig drove up and a charming dashing young man got out and came to the house and invited her to go to the party. She was delighted. What an impression she would make, not only upon the boy who had rejected her, but upon the whole gathering. She accepted readily, thinking of nothing but this fortunate turn of events.

“The evening went off happily and she enjoyed her handsome light-footed partner. But shortly after she came home the whole house was startled by a noise like thunder. It seemed to centre around the girl's room to which she had just retired. The family rushed in to investigate and found her lying dead upon her bed. Upon her forehead was the devil's mark, the imprint of a horse's hoof. They looked up then and saw a great hole torn in the roof and recalled her rash statement when she had said she would go to the dance with anybody, even the devil. It was presumed he had answered her challenge and then had exacted his price; that he had come for her soul and had taken it with him through the great rent in the roof.”

In a Shelburne Negro story told to Mr. Arthur Huff Fauset, the devil did not wait for the girl to go off from the dance floor, but removed her then and there. These places, Sydney, Diligent River, and Shelburne are widely separated, yet the incident is supposed to have happened in each place.You will notice that the devil is always handsome, and he is always recognized by his feet.

Many people connect dancing and card playing with sin, so it is not surprising to find him next as a gambler. The most famous story of his appearance in this role has a European origin, but people who know nothing of the story in its traditional form, report it as an incident from their own community. Mahone Bay insists that it happened at Fobo; Blandford says it was Dover, while Lunenburg town and East River Point tell the story without naming any specific place. At Mahone Bay I was taken to the site and shown where the building stood before it was abandoned as a result of the devil's appearance there. Upon consideration, if the devil went to one dance floor or sat in upon one card game, why might he not have done the same thing in other places? At all events the card playing story, except for a few minor details, is always the same, and it goes like this.

“At Fobo there used to be a little store and people would go there at night and play cards Sunday and Monday. It was a terrible place with drinking and gambling. One night when it was all filled up with card players a knock came to the door.

“‘Come in,' they said, and in walked a fine looking stranger. He said, ‘Can I have a game?'

“They said, ‘Yes, sit down.' Before very long the cards started to fall to the floor and one or two men stooped to pick them up and they saw that the stranger had horse feet (or more often, a cloven foot.) You talk about getting out of that building. After that the shanty was boarded up and never used again. I heard my own father tell that, and he swore it was the truth.”

An amusing story comes from St. John as a result of this belief being known by a visiting clergyman, and was told to me by Dr. R. C. Archibald of Brown University. The clergyman who had a club foot and wore a great heavy boot, was passing a place on Sunday evening when he looked down upon a basement room and saw a number of men playing cards. For the fun of it he went in, a stranger among them and, after a little while he lifted his foot quietly and placed it upon a chair. One look was enough and out they went. He waited until they had all disappeared and then went chuckling upon his way.