The Lunenburg Werewolf

by Steve Vernon

  Mike MacGillivray and John F. Kenny were the first people to arrive at the farmhouse the next morning. “We saw a small black dog, the colour of soot, trailing behind us,” Kenny later stated. “It followed us to the farmhouse and then disappeared. I imagine it ran off into the woods.”

  When MacGillivray and Kenny got there, the first thing they saw was a bare arm waving a white rag from the upstairs window.

  “Are they surrendering?” Kenny asked.

  “Let’s go see,” MacGillivray said.

  When they walked into the kitchen and asked about the arm waving from the upstairs window, Leo MacGillivray assured them that no one had left the kitchen.

  “It must have been a ghost then,” Kenny joked.

  No one laughed.

  “We aren’t staying here another night,” Alexander decided. “If these fires keep up, we are going to wake up burned to death in our beds.” So the McDonalds packed their belongings and spent their first night away from home at the MacGillivray residence.

  The following morning, they moved into a house in town that was owned and rented by Duncan MacDonald. Secretly, the MacGillivrays were more than happy to see the flame-cursed family out from beneath their roof.

  Word Gets Out

  News of the events spread. W. H. Dennis, the editor of the Halifax Herald and Evening Mail, picked up the story and dispatched a Herald reporter by the name of Harold Whidden to the scene of the events.

  “Get me the facts on this,” Dennis told Whidden.

  Whidden and a photographer spoke to the witnesses and took photos of the house. Whidden took down their stories in great detail and was a little disappointed that no further blazes broke out while he was on the premises. He was equally disappointed that there seemed to be no explanation for these mysterious fires.

  But that didn’t stop W. H. Dennis. “We’ll hold a contest,” he said to Whidden. “We’ll offer a reward to the reader who sends in the most plausible explanation.”

  The answers that were mailed in were plentiful and varied. Some said it was the work of spirits. Others suggested radio waves or the presence of some sort of mysterious acid or mineral beneath the property. Others suggested a slow-burning chemical compound applied previously by some unknown enemy of the family. And one person was even convinced that the fires were caused by a firefly infestation. In all there were over 150 theories sent in to the Herald.

  In the end they decided that the theories presented still weren’t enough. So they sent for an expert.

  Call for a Detective

  In February 1922, a former Pictou police chief named Peter Owen Carroll, known as “Peachie” to his friends, declared his interest in the Caledonia Mills case. Peachie was at that time an official provincial detective.

  “I will go to Caledonia Mills and live in the house in question,” Peachie declared. “I won’t leave until I’ve got to the bottom of this.”

  Harold Whidden agreed to accompany Peachie to the Caledonia Mills farmhouse. By this time the farmhouse had been emptied of furniture and belongings, but that didn’t stop the fearless investigators. The two men set up a portable stove in the dining room and heaped fresh hay on the floor for mattresses. But a winter storm blew up and the wind howled through the old farmhouse and the little portable stove they had brought for heat proved sadly inadequate.

  “I can’t think of a more perfect place to catch my death of pneumonia,” Whidden complained.

  Later that evening the storm abated and Alexander MacDonald made his way along the wintered-over road, walking almost two kilometres to bring the two investigators a home-cooked meal. “It seemed the least I could do for two fellows who were so willing to risk their lives to get to the bottom of this situation,” he later said.

  At midnight the trouble began. It started with a banging outside, as if someone were pounding on the front door and trying to get in. Only there was no one at the door. Then they heard footsteps creaking across the floorboards. Then Peachie was slapped, as if by an invisible palm. The noises continued throughout the long cold night.

  The next morning, Whidden decided to call it quits. The weather was too much for him. Peachie stayed on for a few more weeks and over that time he continued to question all the witnesses of the fire. Although he hadn’t actually witnessed any spontaneous fires himself, Peachie had this to say about the Caledonia Mills farmhouse: “I firmly believe that neither the fires nor the strange occurrences were the work of human hands. In my opinion, no one could have any conception of the case without first visiting the house and going into every crumb of evidence with the utmost care.”

  However, the authorities were still unconvinced.

  In March 1922, the Herald invited a psychic researcher, Walter F. Prince of New York, to come to Caledonia Mills and to further investigate the mysterious fires. After a week of interviews and some time spent looking over the flame-scarred farmhouse, Prince came to the conclusion that the fires and banging and mysterious loosing of livestock were all the work of young Mary Ellen.

  “The girl has the mind of a six-year-old child,” Prince declared. “She is obsessed with the spiritual world and has demonstrated all of the symptoms of someone who is suffering from delusions inspired by childhood trauma. In my opinion the fires were set by human hand, devoid of guilt.”

  But Peachie Carroll disagreed strongly, stating, “Mary Ellen is as bright and alert as any sixteen-year-old girl brought up by her grandparents. There is no definite or satisfactory evidence that any fires broke out without Mary Ellen being close at hand to her grandparents.”

  Peachie further argued that Alexander and the other men had spent a long night fighting fires that could not have been set by such a young girl. He then went on to issue a public challenge of Prince’s findings, saying that the researcher was a fraud and a liar.

  Quiet Endings

  The next two months were fairly uneventful. In early May 1922, the MacDonalds returned to the farmhouse and put in their crops. And on May 18, 1922, the fires began again. The MacDonalds put up with the fires until June, keeping very quiet for fear of further publicity. Then they left the farm and the Caledonia Mills area and moved to Alder River, where they moved in with their daughter, Mrs. William Quirk.

  One year later, Alexander MacDonald died of influenza, at the age of seventy-six. Janet MacDonald followed her husband seven years later.

  Mary Ellen’s trail is a little harder to unravel. She lived in Alder River for a short while and then moved to Antigonish and worked as a domestic servant for the Bonner family on St. Ninian Street. She left the Bonners’ service shortly after a distant relative from New Glasgow came to her with a scheme for fame and fast money, claiming that she could make a fortune being displayed on the stage as a sort of theatrical freak show. After a few weeks of dusting and sweeping, this life sounded very tempting to Mary Ellen, so she left for New Glasgow.

  But when Mary Ellen arrived in New Glasgow, her relative quickly learned that she was more interested in kindling a series of tawdry backdoor romances than participating in a freak show. One of these romances soon took hold and Mary Ellen left New Glasgow, accompanied by a Mr. Jackson. The pair travelled to Montreal and Mary Ellen found life in the big city to be intoxicating.

  Unfortunately, when she arrived in Montreal, the only form of employment Mary Ellen could find was that of a waitress. Mary Ellen didn’t take very readily to being a waitress. Her feet hurt, her back hurt, and her pockets were mostly empty.

  She soon left Mr. Jackson to his own devices and ran off to the nickel town of Sudbury, Ontario, certain that she would strike up some sort of a relationship with a well-to-do miner. She soon found herself married to a man named Austin “Red” McGuire. She and Austin opened up a rooming house for miners, where Austin bootlegged cheap illicit whiskey and Mary Ellen peddled something just as cheap and illicit. The rooming house quickly developed quite a reputa
tion and became known locally as “The Bucket of Blood.”

  Mary Ellen died in the early summer of 1988, several years after Austin passed away. She was eighty years old. Her funeral was a quiet ceremony attended by a few friends and acquaintances.

  There were no further reports of phantom fires after the MacDonalds left Caledonia Mills, but people still keep a path beaten to the spot where the farmhouse once stood.

  I looked deeply into the story of the Screeching Bridge while I was researching this book, and as so often happens when dealing with folklore and recollection, I came across three different versions of this story. It seems that most storytellers could not determine just where in Parrsboro the Screeching Bridge lay.

  So I spoke to a Parrsboro historian and storyteller named Conrad Byers, who gave me the exact location of the bridge. I’ll tip my hat to Conrad for filling me in on the facts behind this folklore.

  As the Mill Wheel Turns

  In 1800, Josiah Davison and his family built a tidal dam gristmill across the Parrsboro River. When they were building the mill, they also incorporated a bridge alongside the dam to encourage traffic and trade. There had always been a crossing at this particular point in the river, due to a natural outcrop of base rock, but up until this point travellers had been obliged to wade across the river and the attached tidal marsh either on foot or on horseback.

  Josiah became very popular after building his bridge, which certainly didn’t hurt business. Some people thought the bridge was such a great idea that they began building their own mills in the area. The spot quickly became known as Mill Village, and the stretch of water became known as the Mill Creek. Understandably enough, Josiah’s bridge was known as the Mill Creek Bridge.

  And it was here on the Mill Creek Bridge, on a Halloween night in the mid-nineteenth century, that terror struck.

  Halloween Heartbreak

  October 31 is what the old people call “the night of the long moon,” since it’s one of the longest nights of the year. Some Christians will tell you that on the last night in October, which they call All Hallow’s Night, the walls between the worlds wear thin. According to these sources, this is the one night of the year that Satan himself is given his freedom and allowed to walk the night free and unhampered, spreading mischief and harm wherever he cares to.

  Each year on the evening of October 31, the old Druids would sing to the oak trees and the Celts would go from door to door gathering offerings of food and kindling. They did this in order to raise up sacred bonfires to light the way to the far country for the spirits of those who had died throughout the year. At the end of the evening they would carry the embers from the bonfire in a hollowed-out gourd, turnip, or pumpkin to relight each family’s hearth fire and bring good luck for all in the coming new year. Huge steaming dishes of cabbage and potato and turnip and all manner of root crops harvested late in the fall would be boiled up and a great feast would be given so people from far and wide could warm their insides against the cold to come. It was a time of getting ready and grinning against winter.

  However, on this particular All Hallow’s Eve (or Halloween as we call it nowadays), Marie MacDonald walked in sorrow. She had not felt like celebrating since young Rory had decided that he no longer loved her.

  Marie had done everything she could think of to rekindle Rory’s love for her. She had eaten salt fish in hopes that Rory would come to her in a dream and bring her a cool glass of water. Only Rory hadn’t come. She had peeled an apple and threw the peeling over her shoulder in hopes that it would spell out Rory’s name. Only whatever the peeling spelled out must have been written in some other language, because Marie certainly couldn’t read it.

  So now, while other people were out gathering the rotten cabbages from the fields and gardens and chucking them at doorways for the fun of it, Marie walked the night alone in silence. Marie felt she had more in common with the rotten cabbages than she did with anything remotely resembling fun.

  “You ought to take your hand mirror out to the river and walk backwards along the shore,” her best friend, Meg, told her. “You will certainly see your true love in its reflection.” Marie wasn’t certain if the mirror plan was going to work any better than the apple peeling or the salt fish had, but by this point she was willing to try anything.

  “It’ll be Rory,” Marie told Meg. “That’s the only boy for me. No one else will show up in that mirror.”

  “I don’t know if Tammy Whitaker would agree with you,” Meg said. “I saw her walking arm in arm with Rory over the Mill Creek Bridge.”

  Marie didn’t listen.

  Caught in Glass

  As far as Marie could tell, the wind was blowing from the coldest corner of the world right directly down the Mill Creek. She knew it was too cold to be out that night, but she was determined to try that mirror trick.

  “I’ll catch his heart in the glass of the mirror,” she told herself. “There is no other boy for me.”

  Only she had been walking back and forth alongside the water for so long that she had worn a trough in the dirt clear up to her ankles.

  “The only thing I’m getting from this river-walking is muddy feet,” Marie said. “I must be doing something wrong.”

  The old mill wheel turned in the current in front of her. Marie stopped and watched it turn for a while. Then she turned her gaze to the bridge.

  “I bet he’d be walking up there,” Marie decided. “There’s nothing more romantic than walking across a lonely bridge.”

  So she walked on over to the end of the bridge. She crossed it once. She didn’t see anything but the wind in the front of her face and it blew so cold that tears came to her eyes.

  “I need to walk backwards,” Marie said. “That’s how Meg told me to and it makes sense when you think of it. What else is love but blind faith, walking backwards on a bridge on the coldest night of the year?”

  Marie held the hand mirror up directly in front of her face and walked backwards against the wind. She had to admit that she felt a lot more comfortable this way even though it made her scared and nervous walking backwards like she was, which only goes to show you that there are a great many ways that love will lead a person to do an awful lot of stupid things.

  “Never mind,” she told herself. “If this will get me Rory than I will gladly walk backwards to the ends of the earth.”

  Which was right about when she saw something in the mirror. It’s Rory! she thought to herself. Only it wasn’t Rory.

  It was the Devil himself, out for a midnight stroll on the one night of the year that the powers above allowed him free reign on this earth. And here was a chance to make mischief with nothing more than a grin.

  “Boo,” that old Devil said.

  The Devil grinned so hard that the mirror cracked in two. His eyes blazed in the mirror’s reflection like a candle in the heart of a jack-o’-lantern.

  Marie screamed, jumped up, and ran straight off the bridge. She screamed all the way down to the frigid water and as the tide caught hold of her and dragged her down to the open sea. And that old Devil laughed and laughed the whole time.

  The Story Today

  For many days the townsfolk searched up and down the water for Marie, but to no avail. There was no trace of her. They decided amongst themselves that Marie had very likely taken her own life, preferring to jump into the embrace of death rather than to continue on with a broken heart.

  Rory thought that was pretty funny and he laughed about it often—until Tammy grew disgusted with his cold heart and slapped him in the face.

  Every Halloween night for many years after the cursed evening of Marie’s disappearance, her screams could be heard piercing the air around the Mill Creek Bridge. And so, for a long time after her death, this area was known as “Screecher’s Hollow.”

  But over the years the tide of time worked its gentle erasing magic. The mills closed down
. Mill Village became nothing more than a sleepy dead-end road with a half a dozen houses scattered down it.

  “Nothing down there but frogs croaking,” the locals would say.

  And there were a lot of frogs, which is why the sleepy little village became known as Frog Hollow, and the bridge that spanned the river became known as the Frog Hollow Bridge.

  In the late nineteenth century, Frog Hollow experienced a boom in population. Some people felt that the name “Frog Hollow” was too rustic for what they hoped was going to become a populated area, and so, on October 18, 1890—just one year after the town of Parrsboro was first incorporated—the village’s name was changed to Lower Victoria Street.

  Most of the older folk know better than that and still refer to the area as Frog Hollow. The original Mill Creek Bridge, which is now known as Whitehall Bridge, stands to this day, and some folks say that on cold Halloween nights you can still hear the sound of Marie’s screams.

  There is actually an area known as Cape Breton situated upon Cape Breton Island. It is located on the easternmost corner of the island, a little jut of granite about ten kilometres east of the Fortress of Louisbourg and west of Scaterie Island. Originally named Cap Breton, it is known for its high-breaking waves, rocky eroded shores, and steep sea cliffs. It is a hard land for hard men and even harder women.

  Local storytellers tell a tale of three brothers—Donald, Clancy, and Rook—from the area who swore a sacred oath at their dying mother’s bedside that they would all get out of trouble and become honest married men before another summer had come and passed.

  “Well, where shall we find these wives?” asked Donald one evening soon afterward. Donald was the youngest brother and he had hair the colour of dead straw. “It’s not as if they are growing wild on the Cape Breton beach.”

  There were some who said that poor young Donald had about as much common sense as a heap of mouldy summer hay, but most who knew him were kinder to the lad and just called him simple.