The Golden Leg

by Dale Jarvis

  “The conductor who worked this line before me told me the entire story. You could not have described the events better if you had been there to see them for yourself.”

  The Isle of Skye was a fishing schooner, owned by the Mackey brothers. Each summer they would sail to the coast of Labrador to fish for cod, which were plentiful in the cool waters. They would fish off the coast for the entire summer, and then return home in the fall of the year, their hold packed full of dried and salted fish.

  One summer, one of the Mackey brothers fell ill. His siblings waited as long as they could, but in the end, they had to set sail. The sick son stayed at home with his mother to look after the family business, and soon made a complete recovery.

  The brothers fished all summer. That season, even without the help of the brother they had left behind, they took in a remarkable amount of fish. The fish was salted and dried, packed into barrels, and loaded into the ship until she was almost awash with fish.

  The Isle of Skye left Labrador with its load of fish late in the month of October. As they sailed toward their home, a terrible storm whipped up on the North Atlantic. Because the schooner was so deeply laden down, she was unable to weather the storm. As the wind roared around them, and the giant waves crashed against her timbers, the brothers knew that they would never see their home again. The ocean’s fury pounded the ship to pieces, and all her crew went down to a watery grave.

  Wreckage from the ship washed up along the shore, but there was no way to get a message back quickly to the one surviving brother and his mother.

  A few nights later, the brother looked out to see the lights of a schooner out on the water. He looked it over carefully as it drew closer, and studying the cut of the sails, he thought it to be the Isle of Skye. He heard the sails being lowered, and the sound of the anchor chain being run out.

  The boy told his mother to put on the kettle to make up a pot of tea, and left the house. He got into his boat and rowed out toward where he had seen the lights of the Isle of Skye.

  When he reached the area there was no schooner. There were no lights to be seen, and nothing but complete darkness was there to meet him. Terrified, the boy rowed quickly home, and told his mother what had happened.

  Several weeks passed. Eventually, the family got word that the Isle of Skye had been lost in a terrible storm.

  From the time of the awful disaster onward, the phantom image of the ghostly schooner was sighted from time to time, always displaying her port and starboard lights. The vessel would appear whenever the wind whipped up the seas. Those who witnessed the scene thought she was a real ship, about to run aground, but at the last moment, just before the vessel was smashed against the rocky shore, the image would disappear, like dust in a storm of wind.

  Asoldier was sent home on a month’s leave from the army. The soldier was young, in his late teens, not yet having reached twenty years of age. As chance would have it, the soldier had a sweetheart who lived nearby. The girl’s father did not approve of having a poor soldier for a son-in-law, and he refused to allow the two of them to see each other.

  The progress of true love, however, is rarely slowed by the words and wishes of one’s parents.

  The homes of the two lovers were separated by a long stretch of fresh water. But luckily for the would-be couple, the soldier’s leave had been granted toward the end of a particularly cold winter. Low temperatures had frozen all the local rivers and ponds, icing over the gulf that kept them apart.

  “Ice is so much better than water,” said the young man, “for skating is much faster than rowing would be, any day.”

  He and his sweetheart arranged to meet safely away from the eyes of her father. Their meeting place was to be a secluded spot known to both of them, where as children they and their friends had often gathered to swim during the warm summer months.

  The soldier laced on his skates, and at about seven o’clock in the evening, he set off to meet his longed-for partner. When he got to their arranged spot, he gave a long whistle to attract his lover’s attention. When she heard the call, she answered back, and came out from where she was hiding in the trees.

  From that evening on, on those nights when the weather was fine enough to permit it, the soldier laced on his skates and sped off into the night to meet his love. Weeks passed, and the time when the soldier would have to report back to his regiment started to draw closer and closer. At each opportunity they had, they would meet at their secret spot and exchange sweet words and vows of undying love.

  As the passion between them grew warmer, so too did the weather. On the night before he was to return to his barracks, the soldier knew he had to make one last journey to see his heart’s desire. The sun had been pouring out its warmth all day long, and the soldier’s friends warned him that the ice was no longer safe for skating.

  The soldier would not listen. For the last time, he laced on his skates, and sped off to meet his love. Somewhere along the way, his friends’ fears about the safety of the ice proved to be well-founded. The ice cracked underneath his flashing blades, and the soldier fell down and through. The shock of the cold water knocked the air out of his lungs almost at once, and after only the shortest of struggles, the soldier perished in the frigid water.

  When the soldier did not return home that night, an alarm was raised. A great search was organized, but by then the ice was too thin to walk upon, yet still too thick to row through in a boat. As a result, the frozen body of the dead soldier was not found for several days.

  All of this happened many years ago. Today, it is said that on crisp, clear nights toward the end of winter you can still see the ghostly figure of the drowned soldier. If you time your search right, early in the evening, at about seven o’clock, you may just see him careening across the ice at full speed. He skates this way and that, blades flashing, forever looking for his love, a love whom he is fated to never meet again in this world. As he skates along he whistles to attract her attention, but she, long since dead and buried herself, never answers his call.

  Many years ago, before houses had electricity and before ghosts became harder to see, a young married couple went out one evening to visit Aunt Beatrice and Uncle Eli.

  When they got there, there were eight people present. The eight included the married couple, Aunt Beatrice, Uncle Eli, along with a few friends and relations. All of them loved to play cards, so they decided they would sit down and have an eight-handed game. Little did they know that their game was to be interrupted in a rather odd way.

  It was getting dark, so Uncle Eli lit the lamp in the kitchen and carried it into the living room. Everyone gathered around, sat down, and got ready to play. As soon as they started their game, however, the lamp went out. It was just as if someone had blown it out.

  The lamp was an old-fashioned Aladdin lamp. An Aladdin lamp is a type of lantern with a wick that burns kerosene, and where the flame is protected by a glass globe. The glass globe acts to shield the flame, making it very difficult to simply blow out. So, for the lamp to go out was slightly unusual.

  While it was unusual, Uncle Eli did not think much of it. He struck a match, and lit the lamp a second time. As soon as everyone picked up his cards, the same thing happened again. The flame in the lantern flared up brightly for a second, illuminating the room, and then went out again.

  Everyone sat there in the darkness and stared at the lantern. But Uncle Eli was having none of the lamp’s antics. He spoke up loudly, and challenged the force responsible for blowing out the light.

  “If you belong to God, go back to God,” directed Uncle Eli. “If you belong to the Devil, go back to the Devil!”

  After he said these words, Uncle Eli then lit the lamp a third time. That time it did not go out. They were able to finish their game in peace, with no more ghostly interruptions.

  According to a local legend, the house had once been owned by a family named Parker. The Parkers had been very strict people, and had not approved of anything that even resembled g
ambling. People said that their ghosts haunted the house, to make certain that no one gambled or played cards in their home. Apparently, those ghosts were no match for Uncle Eli!

  One night, many years ago, after their work was done, the village men gathered at the old store to swap stories. As the night wore on, talk turned to tales of the supernatural, of strange sights men had seen, and ghosts met on late-night walks.

  One man, well-known in the community as a storyteller, thrilled the crowd with the story of a great beast known as the “Black Bear,” which appeared every five years. It could be seen rushing along the street at almost lightning speed, and rattling its chains, which could be heard a hundred yards off. So true was his telling that you could almost hear the clattering of that iron chain yourself. Men who had heard the story before nodded sagely, and boys who had not listened in open-mouthed amazement.

  “Bah!” exclaimed a disbelieving voice from the corner of the store. The voice, deep and gravelly, belonged to a man known to all as Crusty Harry. Crusty Harry had been given his name because of his gruff manner, for his mood was always as black as the hair on his head.

  “Bah!” he said again, “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  No one paid the skeptic much attention. Instead, the crowd urged the storyteller to spin another yarn.

  The man began again. This time he told the story of a lady in white, who would appear halfway up the stairs of a certain house, a woman who had fallen down the staircase and broken her pretty white neck. So solid was the ghost that the homeowners would have to turn sideways, their backs to the wall, to pass by her going up the stairs.

  “Bah!” said the voice in the corner once more. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  This final interruption was too much for the man telling the tale.

  “” If you ‘Bah!’ one more time,” said the storyteller, shaking his finger at the man, “I’ll put you out to pasture with the rest of the sheep!”

  Everyone laughed, and with a great scowl on his face, Crusty Harry rose to his feet and made for the door.

  “Mind the ghosts now, Harry!” shouted a man’s voice after him, and as Crusty Harry left the store and walked out into the moonlight, he could hear another muffled chorus of laughter from the men.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” grumbled Crusty Harry, and he started walking home along High Street.

  As he walked, he suddenly felt an intense cold that chilled him to the very bone. Listening, he heard a great rushing noise behind him, like the sound of wind filling a sea of canvas. Crusty Harry slowly turned to look back up the street, and when he did, he beheld a most miraculous sight.

  There, against all things right and logical in the world, was a fully-rigged ship sailing up the middle of High Street. Its portholes were all aglow, the masts and rigging possessed of an eerie luminescence of their own, the black topsails silhouetted against a glowering moon. Standing on the deck was a figure that could only be its captain, dressed in a long, blood-red coat with shimmering brass buttons down the front.

  “Ahoy, Harry!” shouted the captain. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” said Crusty Harry, and he turned his back on the ship and kept walking. With this, the great ship’s anchor was let go. It fell downward, passing through the surface of the road as if it was water, dragging out the phantom anchor chain behind it. Almost immediately, a score of spectral sailors, each one more gruesome than the one before, leaped into action, lowering a longboat from the side of the ship. The captain took his place in the stern, and a crew of phantom rowers propelled the boat in hot pursuit of Harry.

  “Do you believe in ghosts now?” shouted the captain, his ghastly rowers keeping pace alongside Harry as he quickened his step along the road.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” panted Crusty Harry, hurrying along and trying his best to ignore the boatload of decomposing sailors alongside him.

  With this the captain swore a most blasphemous oath, and leaped from the boat, leaving his sailors behind. In an instant he flew in front of Crusty Harry, blocking his way forward on the path. The captain leaned in close. With only inches separating them, the ghost’s long, dank hair smelled like mouldy straw.

  “Now Harry,” said the spectre with a terrifying snarl, “you say you don’t believe in ghosts, but do you believe in me?”

  The captain glared at Harry, its eyes burning like coals in dark sockets, daring him to respond.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” said Crusty Harry, “and I don’t believe in you.” He raised his arm into the air, and hit the ghostly captain a great blow on the head with his walking stick. The ghost’s skull rattled like an old iron pot, fell off its shoulders, and was caught in a pair of bony hands. With a great shriek, the captain vanished, as well as the longboat, the ship, and all his ghostly crew. Crusty Harry ran the rest of the way home, as fast as his long legs could carry him.

  A few days later, after their work was done, the men gathered at the old store to swap stories. Eventually, someone spoke up and shared a ghostly tale. When the yarn was finished, a voice, deep and gravelly, rose from the corner of the store.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” the voice said.

  But say what he might, nothing could disguise the fact that the hair on Crusty Harry’s head had turned from black to the purest snowy white.

  ABOUT THE STORIES

  THE GOLDEN LEG

  “The Golden Leg” is a world folk tale found in many variants in many places around the globe. According to Stith Thompson’s Motif Index of Folk Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955-58), the story is a blend of motif E235.4.2, “Return from dead to punish theft of leg from grave,” and motif E235.4.1, “Return from dead to punish theft of golden arm from grave.” I have heard storytellers tell wildly different versions of this tale, including versions from Trinidad and from Newfoundland. A version from France can be found in A Book of Ghosts and Goblins by Ruth Manning-Saunders (London: Methuen & Co, 1968).

  I have told this story hundreds of times, including one storytelling performance at Virginia Park Elementary School in St. John’s, Newfoundland, at Halloween, 2006. After I had finished, and after all the kids had filed back to class, I found that a very quiet and very tiny grade three girl had lingered behind.

  “Mr Jarvis, the house in that second story you told?” she asked.

  “The one about the golden leg?” I clarified.

  “Yes,” she said, in a voice barely above a whisper, “I think that was my father’s house.”

  I like to think that, just maybe, it was.

  THE PHANTOM LOCOMOTIVE

  Clarke’s Beach, Conception Bay, Newfoundland

  Based on the article “A Phantom Train” printed in the Daily News, St. John’s, Newfoundland, April 3, 1907. Thanks to W. Ritchie Benedict for bringing this story to my attention. In the 1907 article, the name of the clergyman is not given, and I have taken it upon myself to name him after Samuel Smith. Mr. Smith was not a clergyman, but he died and was buried in the Clarke’s Beach cemetery in 1904. Through the window across from where I sat writing this, I could see the trees that shade Mr. Smith’s grave, and the tombstones of his neighbours in death. Clarke’s Beach cemetery, incidentally, is said to be haunted by the ghost of a man wearing a top hat, but though I have looked, I have not seen this rather debonair ghost. The locomotive itself is an example of folk literature motif E535.4, “Phantom railway train.”

  THE FLOATING HEAD Dundee, Scotland

  Elliott O’Donnell included his version of this reportedly true tale, written in beautifully Gothic Edwardian prose, in his book Scottish Ghost Stories (London: Kegan Paul, 1911). Floating heads and screaming skulls are common motifs in ghost stories, but this particular specimen, with its “faint, phosphorescent glow of decay,” is one of my favourites. Dundee has attracted some wonderfully creepy stories, such as the tale of a demonic black crab described by Lily Seafield in Scottish Ghosts (New Lanark: Lomond Books,
1999), and the story of Logie House, haunted by the ghost of an Indian princess captured by one of the family while working for the East India Company, described by Martin Coventry in Haunted Places of Scotland (Musselburgh: Goblinshead, 1999). The floating head story includes motif E421.3, “Luminous ghosts,” and motif E422.1.11.2, “Revenant as face or head.”

  GRANDFATHER KING

  Various locations, Newfoundland

  A version of this story can be found in Michael Taft’s article “Sasquatch-Like Creatures in Newfoundland: A Study in the Problems of Belief, Perception, and Reportage,” pages 83–96 in Manlike Monsters On Trial (University of British Columbia Press, 1980). Taft gives the location of the story as “Battle Point” but notes that he changed the original name of the community. The description of the monster used here is based on two different accounts of Sasquatch-like creatures reported in Newfoundland: one from the late nineteenth century, and the other from the 1930s. Aside from the Sasquatch-like elements of the tale, the guardian is similar to motif E291, “Ghosts protect hidden treasure,” and motif E291.2.2, “Ghost animal guards treasure.”

  THE CLUTCHING HAND

  Harris, Outer Hebrides, Scotland

  “The Clutching Hand,” or An Lamh Sanntach in Gaelic, is a traditional ghost story from the Outer Hebrides. It was originally collected and published by R. MacDonald Robertson circa 1961, and then reprinted in Travellers’ Tales: Western Isles (Clydebank: Lang Syne Publishers, 1991). It is unique in the stories present in this book in that it is the only one where a haunting is the result of a direct curse, a remarkable example of the old woman’s magic knowledge. The idea of only the clutching hand returning as a ghost is motif E422.1.11.3, “Ghost as hand or hands.”