Bluenose Ghosts (28 page)

Mr. Pothier also told of Spectacle Island in the same vicinity. “A few years ago a man from Clarke's Harbour was going along the shore of Spectacle Island in a skiff with his boy and they saw the prettiest flower in a pot on the bank. He said, ‘Look a here, we'll get our firewood and when we come back we'll find our flower pot and take it back with us,' but when they went back, there was nothing there. He told it to a lot of people, and nobody else could find it either.”

Men who live in the country know their way around and are not likely to get lost any more than a city dweller would in his own metropolitan area. This Annapolis Royal man knew his territory, and that is why his experience seemed so puzzling to him. “Some years ago I found myself in a place where a ring of spruce trees had been set out close together in a circle about the size of an ordinary room. I thought the spot was about where the Catholic church bell had been buried by the Acadians. I knew the spot well. A few years after I'd seen it, I took two other men with me to see it but it wasn't there. I looked and looked and I've gone back since and there's not a trace of it. I never could find those trees again.”

Duck Island has been mentioned in connection with buried treasure, a tiny place off the eastern shore. “Uncle Joe and Uncle Arthur were out there one day and they saw a human bone, a leg bone. They overhauled it and Uncle Joe said, ‘We'll take that up and we'll bury it when we've had something to eat. We'll lay it down here until we're ready. It looks as though it's been washed ashore.' Uncle Joe thought the owner would probably like to have it put under the ground. After they finished their meal they came back to get the bone but it wasn't there. There wasn't a dog or a crow on the island to have carried it away, nor any other human being. Where had it come from, and where did it go?”

Mr. Sydney Boutilier of French Village also knew of a mystery. “Two young fellows, brothers of mine named Sandy and Will, were digging around for a cabbage bed. We always sowed cabbage seed on Good Friday. They cut up some seaweed for fertilizer and carried it up to mother but she wasn't ready just then to help them. There were two big willow trees near the house and, while they were waiting they sat down, and there was a hole underneath one of those trees, and in the hole there was an egg. They both saw it, but Sandy said, ‘It's my egg. I saw it first.' They both ran their hands in the hole then, but they couldn't find the egg. Sandy thought Will had taken it, but he hadn't. They went in the house at last and told mother and she came out and looked too. One other time three of the most terrifying howls were heard beside those willow trees, and we never knew what they meant either. All the rest of their lives they wondered about that egg, but it was never seen again.” It was like the gold pieces that surrounded a man named Misener at Lower East Chezzetcook “one handsome moonlight night. He shouted in his excitement and bent over to pick them up and they disappeared.” Could it be that the egg and the gold pieces indicated treasure, and that speaking had caused them to be removed?

Far more extraordinary however is the appearance of a person in one place who is known to have been somewhere else. Anybody in a small town is bound to be well known by all the other residents. It is not only the face that is familiar but also the manner of walking and even the clothes that are worn. I was greatly surprised therefore, when I went to Digby in the year 1947 and talked to Rev. Mr. Gaskell. He told me of an incident that had happened there. One of the towns–women had been on her deathbed and, the day before she died, she was seen walking up the main street of the town. He said there was no mistaking her, but of course, she wasn't there.

The mother of Mrs. Fred Redden of Middle Musquodoboit had an experience along these same lines, but with a more definite purpose.

“One day a man came to our house and asked for eggs. My mother went to get the eggs but when she came back he wasn't there. She looked everywhere and couldn't find him and she was afraid he was hidden somewhere in the house. She kept the children in two rooms until my father came home and she made him go through every room but he couldn't find him either. She knew who he was; he lived alone but at a little distance. Everything was too open around the house for him to have got out of sight in the short time she was away from him.

“My father couldn't understand it any more than she could, so the next day he got his nearest neighbour and they went to see this man. When they got there they found that he was dying. In his weak condition he couldn't possibly have come to our house, yet my mother had answered his knock on the door and had gone for the eggs after he had asked for them. He must have been thinking of her, and wanting someone to come and help him.”

Then we have this from Ingramport. “Not long after I was married we lived in a little cottage that had four rooms and, from the kitchen, we could look into all the other rooms. One afternoon I was ironing when I saw a strange man walking from one room to the other. He was wearing dark trousers and a white shirt and he had his braces down over his hips as though ready to shave. Then I didn't see him any more and I began looking and I couldn't find him, and there was no way he could have left the house without me seeing him. I got scared then, so I called the men from the mill and they came up and searched. There was no trace of him anywhere. That night there was a man hanged himself in the mill. He was a stranger and when I went to see him, who should he be but this same man.”

Mrs. Sydney Boutilier of French Village had this experience. “One day I took the milk pail and went for strawberries. When I started home I had the pail in my hand and, at the gate of Will's house, I saw a woman coming towards me. I recognized her right away as Mrs. Keddy who had lived there, but she was at that time in Halifax, and dying. She wore a long dress and a coat to her knees. Her hat hid her face, but I could see that she had a long chin. Her shoulders were rounded as she was going through the gate. I looked at her, but I didn't realize she couldn't be there until she went through the gate. I didn't exactly see her disappear, but all of a sudden she wasn't there. A couple of days later she died in Halifax where she had been all the time.”

Mr. Earl Morash of East Chester said, “The night before Mrs. Charlie Bond died I was driving home from Mahone Bay. Near the church a woman appeared at the side of the road and suddenly she glided out in the road right in front of the car. I jammed on the brakes but there was no one there. She was the same size and built as Mrs. Bond, but she wouldn't show her face, but kept it away from me. I heard next morning that she had died, but it was after I had seen her.”

Another living woman was seen at Big Pond and was reported from Victoria Beach. She came up out of a corner of the pond wearing a cotton dress, and the man who saw her recognized her immediately. He was very startled, for he knew it was a forerunner of her death, which soon followed.

No one could look more jovial one moment and so serious the next as Mr. Richard Hartlan, brother of Mr. Enos. Even his moustache caught the feeling of solemnity and bristled against his ruddy face as he prepared to talk of the unexplainable things in his life. He said, “Before me brother died they seen him in the evening. He walked past the house with his hands in his pockets, and him too sick in his bed to move out of it. They said, ‘It's a forerunner; he's going to die,' and the next day he was dead.”

Going now to Tiverton, we find there is a story of a haunted house at East Ferry where people, or a person, are heard walking upstairs. “A bus driver was staying there once and one morning he came downstairs and he saw walking past the door an Englishman who was a boarder but, at that time wasn't there. The sounds are always heard in the morning.”

Most of my Shelburne stories came from the Allen family, who had more than the usual gift for seeing things. They said there was always one member of the family who had second sight, and that their grandfather would sit at the table and talk to what would seem to be only a chair. But to him there was someone in that chair, unseen by the others. Their stories go like this:

“We used to get milk at the south end of the town on winter nights. The girls in our family wore tobogganing suits such as nobody else wore. One time I was coming home with the milk when I saw my sister approaching from the opposite direction, so I waved to her and shouted, ‘I'll race you to the house.' But when I got to the house and put my hand on the knob, she wasn't there. She hadn't been there at all, yet I saw her until the moment when her foot was lifted towards the step. Then she disappeared. I wouldn't tell about it for ten years because it was considered such bad luck to see a person who wasn't there.”

And again: “One day when we were youngsters I was steering the toboggan but after a while I suggested somebody else do it, and I passed it over to my cousin. She said, ‘No, I don't want to take it.' I was surprised because she never refused anything if there was fun in it, so I said to her later, ‘Jessie, why wouldn't you take the toboggan down?' She said, ‘Because there was a man standing there.' So I said, ‘That's why I wouldn't go.' There was no human there of course but, for our eyes only, there was a strange man. Nobody saw him but Jessie and me.”

A strange thing happened to a man from Peggy's Cove. “A friend of mine was a great hunter, especially on a Sunday. One Sunday he and two other men were off hunting and they got separated. Soon afterwards my friend saw one of the other men coming towards him, and suddenly he disappeared. Later, when they were together again, my friend asked him why he hadn't come all the way. He said he hadn't come at all; he'd been off in another direction. Well, they talked it over and it puzzled them, so they all went to the place where he'd been seen. It was winter and there wasn't a track in the snow, yet my friend had seen him as plainly as could be. It scared the other man so much that he took it for a warning and, since then, he has never hunted on a Sunday.”

Another warning, which unfortunately was not recognized as such, came to Earl Henneberry of Devil's Island. Or was it a forerunner? To put it down as a warning would be less frightening. “Earl was eating his supper one day when he looked out and I saw his brother Ben coming up the road, but Ben didn't come. Earl was frightened and said, ‘Mum, something's going to happen to Ben. I'm going after him!' Ben had rowed some friends to the South East Passage shore. Earl borrowed a boat and two of his sisters asked to go with him, but he said, ‘No, one of the family's enough to go at one time.'” (By this you will see that he anticipated a calamity as the result of having seen his brother when he was not there.) “After Earl left, Ben came home and was surprised to hear what had happened because he hadn't come before. They waited for Earl to come back but he didn't come. The men went out then to look. You know how high the waves can get off that South-East Passage shore?”

Indeed I did know, only too well, for two friends and I had been all but swamped there ourselves. Apparently Earl had not been so fortunate, for they found his overturned boat. The following day they dragged for him, and Edmund Henneberry and Ken Faulkner brought his body to the surface. I do not know how the brothers missed each other on such a short run. It was probably fog, but that is a minor point. Why had Ben appeared?

At French River in Colchester County Mrs. Tony Tattrie said, “Tony's mother was reel-footed (club footed). I seen her coming towards me and I went to meet her, and my sister and I both saw her plain. Then she disappeared. That was before she died and we knew she was somewhere else. After she died I saw her only once. She was coming across the field after sundown. One time three of us started down the road and we saw George Tattrie crossing the field and he kept on going, and all the time he was home in his bed. That was after twelve at night.”

A fisherman at Paddy's Head had an experience with a boat. “I came in one time after fishing and there was a boat hanging to her club (mooring). I steered straight up towards her and I could see her all the way, but when I got up to it there was nothing there at all. That boat didn't come in till later.”

And from Glen Haven, “Before my brother died a woman in white came to my doorway, and suddenly disappeared and, before my sister-in-law died a woman with a shawl over her head went down the hill ahead of me. I wasn't exactly frightened in either case although I was pretty sure something was about to happen.”

One bright moonlight night at Victoria Beach Buzz Ring said he had gone down the steep hillside to the wharves, and he walked along by one of the sheds. He was only a boy at the time, but it was not unusual for a lad to go fishing with the men. He saw a man in yellow oilskins walking ahead of him so he called out, but the man did not speak. He thought it was one of the Everett men and, since they are all friends in this small community, he wondered why he didn't answer him. He kept his eye on him, however, and distinctly saw him go through an open door. This too seemed odd, but Buzz supposed he intended to jump out and scare him. He therefore lit a match which he fully expected to have blown out by the other man, and peeked cautiously around the door. Nothing happened, so he drew the door back carefully and there was nobody there; neither was there a place to hide nor any other way to get out. He was dumbfounded. Shortly after that, and at about the same time of night, an older fisherman saw a man walking at the same place. He called, “Clifford,” thinking it was a friend of that name, but he, too, received no answer. He was angry at being ignored and said, “Can't you speak to a fellow?” at the same time catching him by the arm to stop him. But there was no arm to catch. Nothing was there.

A man from Wallace having put his hand on the shoulder of a man who wouldn't speak to him and finding nothing to grasp, said in describing his experience,

“Do you known what it was? It was a nawthin'.”