The Golden Leg

by Dale Jarvis

  His friend shook his head, sadly. As the ground was not consecrated, no burials were permitted in the new graveyard.

  “If you don’t have me buried there, I will come back and haunt you,” swore James Curran. Upon uttering this oath, he died, only a few days before Christmas, 1867.

  The friend went to the parish priest, and told the man of Curran’s final request. He also told the priest of Curran’s dying vow.

  “Let him come back and haunt me,” mocked the priest, “and I will take care of that ghost.” With this, he ordered the body to be buried at the old Northside Cemetery.

  So Curran was buried, and that was the start of hard times for the old priest. One night shortly thereafter, the priest was called from his home to see a seriously ill man. On his return home, he was forced to pass along the Northside Cemetery.

  As they passed by, the horse stopped at the cemetery and refused to budge an inch farther forward. Harry, the priest’s driver, goaded the horse onward, but with little success. The horse only moved forward after the priest rose, blessed the cemetery, and said a short prayer.

  Their trials were not yet over. They approached the priest’s house, and set out over a frozen pond. A strange storm whipped up across the ice. They could not find a clear path off the pond, and there are those who said it was the ghost of James Curran that led the horse astray throughout the night.

  It was not until daylight that the helpless travellers found their way to safety. The priest’s hair had turned completely grey during the night.

  Exhausted, the priest entered his house, and climbed the stairs. At the top, he heard banging noises, the sound of some great commotion. Frightened, he searched the house, only to find that he was alone in the building.

  The priest ran back to where Harry was stabling the horse. He ordered the driver back to where they had come from, and sent instructions that the local men should dig up the body of James Curran and take it to the new graveyard.

  It was a cold, wet, late-December day when they dug up the coffin of James Curran and loaded it onto a cart. As the men hauled it to the new cemetery, countless icicles formed on the coffin as they slowly made their way through the miserable weather.

  The priest met them at the graveyard, and said the proper prayers to consecrate the grounds. James Curran was reburied, becoming the first person to be buried in the new cemetery. After that, he seemed to rest in peace, and never bothered the priest again.

  Mr. Gilbert, a civil engineer, was out of town on business. Through an error of his own in reading the railway schedules, he found himself stranded, for there was no train southward until the following morning.

  The unfortunate man wandered around the town, trying to find a hotel room for the night. But every hotel he tried was full, as it was the middle of the busy tourist season. He gave up, and decided to return to the railway station and spend the night there. A local man, however, having seen him turned away, asked the engineer if he needed a room.

  “Why yes, I do need a room,” said Mr. Gilbert.

  “You’ll find it difficult to get one this time of year,” said the stranger. “The town is very full, but there is one place you might try. It isn’t anything fancy, but the people who own it are good, honest people, and keep it very clean.”

  The engineer thanked the man, and taking down the address hurried along. When he got there, he saw that it was a very plain building on a rather rundown street. The landlady, however, was a kind, neatly dressed woman, who fussed over Mr. Gilbert pleasantly as she showed him to his room.

  The room, Number 14, was at the top of the stairs. The landlady brought him a cup of tea and a light meal, and then bustled off. Mr. Gilbert drank his tea and ate his supper. As he finished, he thought he heard a low, sniggering laugh from behind him, and suddenly felt something flick against his ear. The engineer whirled around, but there was no one there. Laughing a bit to himself at his own tiredness and imagination, the man settled into bed, and soon fell asleep.

  Several hours later, the man awoke with a start to the sound of a curious humming noise. He looked across the room, which was full of moonlight. As he did, he got an even bigger start.

  In the centre of the room, some strange object was spinning around and around. It was too shadowy to determine exactly what it was, but to the man’s eyes it looked like, yet not quite like, a giant spinning top. It was like a top in terms of its shape and movement, but unlike a top in that the man could sense it had a pair of eyes. The creature seemed to be watching the man in the bed, gazing upon him with a foreboding, evil look.

  At first the man was more curious than frightened, but as the humming rose in volume and the sense of being watched increased, the man began to grow deeply afraid. For a few minutes the spinning horror kept to the centre of the room, but then it start to approach the bed, the droning noise becoming louder as it approached. Much to his horror, the man realized that he could not move. His entire body, from head to toe, seem paralyzed, and all he could do was watch the dark form spin closer.

  With a supreme effort, Mr. Gilbert willed his body to move. He jumped out of the bed on the side farthest away from the dark being. To get to either the light switch or the door he had to pass by the thing, an idea that held no great charm for him. He paused, uncertain what to do. The whirling phantom, however, did not hesitate. The humming increased as it got nearer and nearer to the foot of the bed. In a panic, Mr. Gilbert made a dash for the door, grabbing his coat, and as he did, the spinning horror shifted directions and started to come after him. He ran for the door, chased by the thing. He sprinted through, slammed the door shut, and did not stop running till he reached the end of the hallway.

  The twirling ghost, or whatever it had been, did not follow him. The man wrapped himself up in his coat, and slept on the staircase landing for the rest of the night. In the morning, he tip-toed back to Room 14, opened up the door a crack, and peered inside. The room was empty. He entered cautiously, and gathered up his belongings. As he hurried down the hallway, he once again heard the same low, sniggering laugh, and again felt something, or someone, flick his ear. When he swung around he saw no one.

  Mr. Gilbert hurried down the stairs, paid the landlady, and against her protests did not stay for breakfast. He rushed to the railway station and caught the first train out of town. As the train pulled out of the station, heading south, he fell into conversation with his fellow passengers, and told them of the strange events the nights before.

  One passenger, a native of that town, revealed that the house in question was well-known to be haunted. Local folklore claimed that a woman had murdered her husband in the building many years previously, and that she had somehow avoided arrest. What became of her was unknown.

  What strange connection there might have been between the spinning horror of Room 14, the murdered man, and his missing wife was never fully explained. Some things in this world, it would seem, must always remain a mystery.

  Jake was a strong young man, and well enough liked by everyone. There was a great spirit of fun in him, and he was always ready for a prank. But at the same time, and in spite of his love for a joke, he was a trustworthy sort of fellow.

  Jake got a job with a merchant, and served him well. Every time the merchant needed to send someone to pick up supplies, or if he needed an important message delivered, he would send Jake. It was on one of these errands that Jake had the good fortune to meet young Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth was a fair young maid, and Jake fell head over heels in love with her. Elizabeth herself was mighty impressed with Jake, and they started to spend all their available time together. Before too long, word spread that Jake had asked fair Elizabeth to marry him.

  It was in the month of November that Elizabeth decided one evening to visit Jake at his house. It was around the time of the full moon, so there was plenty of light to guide Elizabeth’s way.

  To get to Jake’s house, Elizabeth had to follow the path as it led through a marshy piece of ground. It was c
old that November, and the ground had frozen solid. There were no trees and only low bushes around her. There was not a soul to be seen.

  Elizabeth hummed a tune to herself and hurried on her happy way. In front of her along the path, who should come striding along but Jake himself, a smile on his face and his gun slung over his shoulder.

  “Hello Jake!” cried the girl. “Wait for me, won’t you?”

  Jake did not stop. He moved a little farther along the path, and Elizabeth noticed that he moved with a strange gliding motion, rather than his usual jaunty walk. Then, before the astonished girl’s eyes, he vanished completely.

  Elizabeth looked around, but there was nowhere he could have hidden in the frozen marsh. The girl felt faint. She gathered herself together and hurried as quickly as she could the rest of the way to Jake’s house. Expecting the worst, she burst in.

  There sat Jake, as calm as anything. He was seated, in his stocking feet, at a little table fixing a pair of boots. He had not been outside that night, and Elizabeth knew immediately that she had seen something unnatural. It was not one of Jake’s usual pranks.

  Weeks passed, and one winter’s day Jake’s boss sent him out on one of his regular trips to buy supplies. Jake set off, a smile on his face, and his gun slung over his shoulder. But Jake did not return. When he had been gone for some time, the men in the town got together and sent out a search party.

  Only a short distance from the town, the search party found Jake. He had stumbled on the ice, and as he fell the gun had gone off. The shot had ripped through his body, his blood staining the white snow red. The men carried him back, and Elizabeth flew to his side, but it was too late to help Jake. That night he died.

  From that day to this, people have said that the figure Elizabeth met on the marshy path that November night had been a token, or a sign, of Jake’s coming death. But that knowledge brought little consolation to Elizabeth, who mourned the loss of her own true love to the end of her days.

  Among the great unknown’s many strange ghost stories, there is a great tradition of what are known as “anniversary hauntings.” An anniversary haunting is exactly what its name might suggest; it is a type of haunting that occurs during the anniversary of some important event.

  The event itself could be a birthday, a specific holiday, or the anniversary of some great historical occasion. Quite often it is a haunting that occurs annually at the time of the ghost’s death.

  One evening many years ago, when a moonless night was twice as black as the bottom of a coal bin, a man was walking home. As he walked along the path, he heard the footsteps of someone else walking along with him.

  He looked ahead but could see nothing in the darkness, and so he drew his coat closer around himself and kept walking.

  Eventually the path curved a bit, and then crossed over a little footbridge. When he reached the bridge, he could see standing in the middle the figure of a woman, wearing a long grey dress.

  The woman was not known to him, which was odd for such a small community. She stood in the centre of the bridge, blocking his way, and was weeping loudly. Great sobs wracked her body, and tears flowed freely down her cheeks.

  Surprised by this sight, the man asked the crying lady what was wrong. She did not answer, and made no move to shift out of his way. She simply stood there weeping, one hand on the railing of the bridge, blocking his path.

  When the woman did not answer, he reached out his hand to touch hers where it rested on the railing of the bridge. Her fingers were icy cold. Only at the touch did she move, turning away from the man, and drawing her body close to the railing, giving him just enough room to pass by.

  The man stepped carefully around her, and she continued with her lamentations as he passed her by. He tried to speak to her again, and when she did not answer a second time, he continued his homeward journey, troubled by the woman’s obvious distress.

  When he reached the warmth of his own kitchen, he told his wife and his mother-in-law what he had seen, and how he did not recognize the woman as being from the community.

  The older woman, the man’s mother-in-law, seemed unfazed by the story of the man’s strange experience. In turn, she revealed to the man that what he had seen was no earthly woman, but instead the phantom of a woman who had died many years before.

  According to the old woman, the ghostly figure on the bridge was the spirit of a local woman who had died during childbirth. Every year after her untimely parting, she would appear on the anniversary of her death somewhere in the community. She would be seen weeping and wailing, bemoaning her own demise and her separation from the child she had lost.

  Once, long ago, in a time when water was not quite as wet as it is today, there lived a fisherman and his wife. They were not a wealthy couple, but in their hearts they were good people, and they were very hard workers, which is what mattered in those days.

  In the fall of the year when the fishing was done, the fisherman and his wife got in their small boat and sailed across the bay. There, on the far side of the bay, the wife picked berries while the man went out into the woods to cut timber for making a new home. He cut the logs, trimmed them, hauled them back to the shore, and together he and his wife built a tiny house.

  One evening when the house was finished and a fire was burning merrily in the stove, the man decided he would go visiting the neighbours who lived just down the shore. He put on his cap, kissed his wife goodbye, and headed off into the night.

  The woman sat down to do some sewing. She made herself comfortable in the old rocking chair by the woodstove and began to work. She rocked and she sewed, and she sewed and she rocked.

  As she sewed, the door to the tiny house swung open and a stranger walked in. He was a tall man, so tall that he had to duck his head to get in through the door. He was dressed in a black suit with a black tie knotted neatly around his neck, and he carried an old black hat in his hands.

  The woman was startled, like you would be if a stranger walked into your house, but she put down her sewing and remembered her manners.

  “Well hello,” she said, and she offered him a cup of tea, which was the only proper thing to do.

  The stranger said absolutely nothing. He looked about the room, then turned his body around and stepped back out the door, still holding his hat in his hands. He closed the door behind him, and that was the end of that visit.

  When her husband returned home, the wife told him about the man dressed all in black

  “It seems as if he left as soon as he saw I was alone,” she said.

  The next night, when the fire was burning merrily in the stove, the husband said he was off to visit the neighbours once more. He put on his cap, kissed his wife goodbye, and headed off into the night.

  The woman sat down to do some sewing. She made herself comfortable in the old rocking chair by the woodstove and began to work. She rocked and she sewed, and she sewed and she rocked.

  And as she sewed, the door to the tiny house swung open and the stranger walked in, ducking his head to get in through the door. He was wearing the same black suit with a black tie knotted neatly around his neck, and he carried his old black hat in his hands.

  This time the woman was not quite as startled as she had been the night before. She put down her sewing and spoke to the stranger.

  “Hello,” she said, and again she asked him if he would like a cup of tea.

  The stranger said nothing. He looked about the room. Then he turned his body around and stepped back out the door, still holding his hat in his hands. He closed the door behind him, and that was the end of that visit.

  When her husband returned home, the wife told him about the man dressed all in black.

  “He left as soon as he saw I was alone,” she said, “and tomorrow night you better be here, because if he comes again, you should stop him and see what he wants.”

  The next night, the husband did not go visiting the neighbours. He sat on the daybed by the stove and waited while his wife made herself
comfortable in the old rocking chair and began to sew. She rocked and she sewed, and she sewed and she rocked.

  As she sewed, the door to the tiny house swung open and the stranger walked in, ducking his head to get in through the door. He was wearing the same black suit with the same black tie knotted neatly around his neck, and he carried his old black hat in his hands. He came right into the house and stood in the centre of the floor.

  “Well, my good man,” said the husband, “what do you want from us?”

  “Sir, “spoke the stranger, in a deep, hollow sort of voice, “I beg of you to move your door somewhere else. If you do me this favour, I will never bother you again.”

  The husband said he would do just that. At this, the stranger nodded. He then turned around and stepped back out the door, still holding his hat in one hand. He closed the door behind him.

  That was the last of his visits, for the very next morning the husband went to move the door. As he looked around, he discovered an old grave, right where he had built the door to his tiny house. Every time anyone went in or out the door, they were walking over the grave of the man with the hat.

  Needless to say, the man lost no time in boarding up the opening of the old doorway. He moved the door around to the other side of the house, and they never saw the stranger again.

  When the following incidents occurred exactly, I cannot say, but I can assure you that they were related to me as a true tale. The story goes that in a certain place not too far from here, a ghost suddenly started to haunt a location where a ghost had never been seen before. Travellers coming home late at night were terribly frightened by the ghoulish apparition, for it was a truly unusual figure, even for a ghost.