Wicked Woods
W
ICKED
W
OODS
Ghost Stories
from Old New Brunswick
Steve Vernon
Copyright © Steve Vernon 2008
E-book © 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission from the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, permission from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, m5e 1e5.
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Vernon, Steve
Wicked woods : ghost stories from old New Brunswick / Steve Vernon.
ISBN 978-1-55109-666-7
E-book ISBN 978-1-55109-810-4
1. GhostsâNew Brunswick. 2. LegendsâNew Brunswick. I. Title.
BF1472.C3V476 2008 398.2097151'05 C2007-907556-8
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp) and the Canada Council, and of the Province of Nova Scotia through the Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage for our publishing activities.
I
'd like to dedicate this to my mom, who was Yarmouth's storytelling lady long before I figured out which way to swing a vowel; and to my dad, who didn't have nearly enough time to tell me all his stories; and, as always, I'd like to dedicate this book to my wife, Belinda, who puts up with everything I dream up.
S
tories grow like forests â
the best of them
run their roots bone-deep.
C
ONTENTS
1 The Dungarvon Whooper (Dungarvon River)
2 Footsteps Leading Nowhere (Richibucto)
3 The McNamee Swinging Bridge (Priceville)
5 Clutch and Claw (Wolf Point)
6 A Treasure Dowser's Boomerang (Apohaqui)
7 The Codfish Man (Saint John)
8 The Keyhole Mine of Red Head Harbour (Saint John)
9 A Rope for Madame La Tour (Saint John)
11 There Will Be Blood (Catons Island)
12 Ghost Hollow (Carters Cove)
14 The Pickle Barrel Wife (Campobello Island)
15 The Lake Utopia Sea Monster (Lake Utopia)
16 The Bloody Stump of Bonny River (Bonny River)
18 The University Ghost (Fredericton)
19 The Howling Ghost of Howland Ridge (Howland Ridge)
20 The Dark Chuckle (Lower Woodstock)
21 The Shiktehawk Vikings (Bristol)
22 Echoes in a Covered Bridge (Johnville)
23 Malabeam of the Maliseet (Grand Falls)
24 The Cannibal She-Queen of New Brunswick (Dalhousie)
25 The Phantom Ship of Chaleur Bay (Bathurst)
Listen closely.
There isn't a single one of us, man or woman or child, who doesn't have our own kind of ghost story. Some of you will tell me that you've never seen a ghost. Some of you will say that you don't even believe in them.
But we've all got them â ghosts and dreams and memories that we carry with us wherever we go. I'm talking about unfinished business, and that's what most ghost stories are all about. Break it down into bare bones and you'll see what I'm saying is surely true. The treaâsure that was never found, the burning ship that's forever trying to safely find its way to shore, the fellow looking for his missing head â they're nothing but examples of unfinished business. And unfinished business leads straight to regret.
Not too long ago I was camping in the New Brunswick woods regretting that I hadn't brought along some marshmallows. The campfire had burned itself down into a lovely bed of glow that just cried out for a marshmallow or two, and there I was with nothing but a tin of beans.
I leaned back against a rock and listened to the campfire talkâing. Campfires can tell you stories if you learn to listen hard enough, but there's more to a campfire than just the sound of the thing. There's the glow and flicker of the flames musing over the coals and painting elusive pictures on the faces of those who cluster about it. There's the warmth and the way the firepit seems to pull everything together on a lonely dark night.
Yes sir, there's a gravity and a wisdom in that trembling focus of light, heat, and sound that comforts a wandering man. The fire will laugh at you and listen to your songs and stories, and wink at you from a sleepy bed of coals. It reminds you that despite the encroaching darkness, there's a reason to smile. It assures you that in spite of the screech owl and the rusty crickets and the hungry, lonely howl of the coyote, there's nothing in these woods to fear.
Except maybe ghosts.
Only I wasn't thinking about ghosts just then. The campfire was burning there in the heart of a dark New Brunswick forest clustered with cedar and poplar, birch and maple, and the faster-growing spruce and fir. I was hunkered down amongst clumps of wild roses, pitcher plants, cranberry, bakeapple, blueberry, and raspberry bushes, and curled green fiddleheads. Yes sir and yes ma'am, a man could live fat and easy in those woods if he knew what to look for. It makes me hungry just talking about such abundance.
I was really wishing I'd brought those darn marshmallows.
I startled as the snap of a fat resinous pine knot cracked loudly in the laughter of the campfire flames.
“You startle easy,” a voice from the darkness said.
I looked around and was surprised to see the shape of an old man standing there in the shadows of a lonely Jack pine.
“Mind if I come on in?” he asked.
“A campfire has a lot of sides,” I said. “Pick one and sit yourself down.”
He stepped closer and I could see him. He was dressed in fringed buckskin like an old-time trapper, and he was wearing some of the nicest moccasins I'd ever seen. You don't see that much any more. Folks wear sneakers and hunting boots and gum rubbers when they go walking in the woods. They hardly ever wear something as humble and comfortable as a pair of worked-in moccasins.
He walked on into my camp, smooth and quiet, like he was born to the forest. I could tell this man had lived in the woods for a very long time.
“Are you hunting?” he asked. “It isn't the season, you know.”
“Hunting for stories,” I said. “I'm a storyteller.”
“A storyteller?” the man asked. “You mean a liar, don't you?”
I smiled, not taking his comment personally. With the work I do, you learn to grow a sense of humour early on or you don't make it through at all.
“I've been known to stretch the truth a bit, now and then,” I answered, “but I try and stick as closely to the historical facts as I can.”
“Truth's made to stretch,” the man replied with a shrug. “Sometimes, so is history. So what are you going to do with these stories you're hunting, once you catch them?”
“I write them down in books,” I said. “I'm working on one right now.”
“You write them down? I thought you said you told them?”
“I tell them too, but my voice isn't loud enough for everyone to hear and these stories are awfully important.”
“Important?” he said with a snort. “Who says so? They're nothâing but stories, aren't they? Just a pack of lies wrapped up in a happy ever after? Who says they're good for anything at all?”
He asked the question like he didn't believe in stories, but I had the feeling he was just testing me.
“They're history and geography and folklore,” I answered, just the same way I'd answer a sixth grade student who asked me the same question in a school. “They're a piece of the country where truth and imagination come together. They're stories folks have been telling for a long time. It's important that folks keep on telling them. In this day and age of computer games and colour television folks need to slow down and hear the magic of the spoken word.”
“History?” he laughed, but not in a mean kind of way. “You know what history is, don't you?”
I knew he had his own answer to tell me, but I figured he wanted to hear mine first.
“It's a recording of past events,” I said. “Things that happened long ago, some told and some written down.”
He laughed all the harder. There was something in his laughâ a little summer thunder and a shivery kettledrum rumble that made me want to laugh right along with him.
“I'll tell you what history is,” he said. “History is a campfire. It's a many-sided creature, but we usually only get to see the side that belongs to whoever won the war and talked the loudest about it. History is just what it says âhis story. That's why stoârytelling is such a dangerous practice to indulge in. Folks fight entire wars just for the right to tell their own stories in their own kind of way.”