We all do things at times which seem to have little meaning and then are explained soon after. “A man in Ellershouse was looking over his ties the night before his nephew died, a thing he hadn’t done for years. He picked out a black tie and, for no reason at all, put it to one side. The following day he got word of the child’s death which was totally unexpected.” Similarly a cousin of mine was looking through some trinkets one night when she found a ring given her by an old sweetheart some sixty years before. She slipped it on her finger and her mind drifted back to those far off, happy days. Shortly after, she went to a friend’s house and picked up a magazine and there she saw the photograph and read of the death of this same man.
At Cape Mabou they used to see an old man standing along–side the road. Sometimes in his place they would see a fine-looking rig, horse and carriage, but it went only one way, and it never left any track.That went on until one time an old school inspector was driving over the bridge and fell out of his carriage and off the bridge and was drowned. After that they were never seen again.
One November day I went to the supermarket where I met Rev. Grant MacDonald, minister of the United Church in Dartmouth. I had addressed a group in his church hall one evening, and had found him one of my most attentive listeners, particularly on the subject of ghosts. On Hallowe’en night he had heard me again on this subject, this time by way of television. He began to ask questions, and I thought how surprised other shoppers would be if they could hear our conversation. Being of Cape Breton birth he had heard stories of the supernatural all his life and had learned to discard those that were mere superstition or the result of overwrought imagination. Two stories, however, could not be dismissed, and these he very kindly recounted as we stood at one side of a busy aisle.
He had been born at Fourchu on the southern coast of the island. Not far from there the land jutted out into the sea and formed what was known as Winging Point. A man named Fred came there to live many years ago and settled in one of the small fishing shacks beside the water, but he could not remain there. Sounds came to disturb him, and these were so noisy that it was impossible for him to rest. He used to go to the nearest village and tell how he heard the voices of men shrieking as though in agony. His stories were not taken too seriously because he was an outsider and little was known of his background, but people encouraged him because he would be almost beside himself as he talked, and they were greatly entertained. Finally he could take it no longer and he moved away and nobody knew what became of him. In former days there used to be many wrecks along this rocky shore, and in the spring of 1924 a trawler named Mikado foundered a few hundred yards from the place where he had lived. The sea was too rough for any of the crew to be rescued, and the people on shore looked helplessly on as sailors and all dropped one by one from the masts to which they had been clinging, shrieking with despair. It was thought some may even have gone insane before they finally lost hold.
The fishing shack had been unoccupied for five years, ever since Fred had left it. Now it was opened up and, as soon as weather permitted, the bodies were brought in and placed upon the floor. As they were going about their sorry business the men recalled the sounds that Fred had reported. Ever since then the people roundabout have concluded that he had heard the fore–runner of this event.
Another incident came from Mr. MacDonald’s grandmother, an upright realistic woman who was not given to fancies nor to making up tales for her own or other people’s entertainment. She had five daughters, and one evening as she and her husband were driving home by horse and carriage they came in sight of their house and were surprised to see it all lighted up.
“The girls must be home,” they said but, when they turned the final bend in the road there were no more lights and, when they arrived, there was no one in the house. They were at a loss to account for it. There was no moon that night, and it was long before the days of automobiles when there might be a reflection.
A year later one of the daughters died and people came from far and near to the funeral. The house was filled and all the rooms were occupied. Therefore anyone approaching the house as they had done the previous year would see it exactly as they had done. The question then arose. Had they seen a forerunner of this sad event? It was generally supposed that they had.
A man and his son in Oakland had the same experience of seeing their house on fire as they approached it, but they were never given an explanation. Or if anything happened to account for it, they failed to recognize it as such.
Mrs. McGillivray of Marion Bridge, whom we have already met in this chapter, told of another strange occurrence.
“One evening many years ago Uncle Neil was visiting us and I went to the window to draw the blinds. I stood there for a moment looking out at the night, when I saw a light moving up by the apple trees. I said, ‘I think you’re having a visitor. It must be someone carrying a lantern.’ He said, ‘I must go.’ (Cape Bretoners are always considerate of visitors and would not dream of being away when a call was made.) I said, ‘No, don’t go. I’m making the tea.’ (That too is a Cape Breton custom; they always make tea , for their guests.) But he felt he should return home.
“The next time we met he looked at me strangely and said, ‘Was that a trick you played on me the other night when you saw a light going up my place?’ I said, ‘No, I wouldn’t do such a thing when you were out ceilidhing (visiting). Mother and I were so glad to have you.’ When he had arrived home that night he found no visitor there, nor had any of the neighbours called. That was October. In December his daughter died. It was probably a forerunner of her casket, for it had looked like a light carried by a person on a wagon.”
The sound of a horse galloping got Willie out of his bed at Elton, P.E.I. It came right up to his door and he jumped to see who was there. He found no person and no tracks.The next night at the same time the sound was heard again, but this time in reality, and the rider brought a message that Willie’s uncle had died during the day.
If this Clam Harbour man had known the meaning of various signs he might have saved a life although in all probability the man would have died anyway.
“Some years ago another man and I went to pick our crews and afterwards I was eating my supper when outside my window I heard the awfullest noise of a man gasping for breath. It faded away and I looked and there was no one there. The next Sunday the man who had picked his crew when I picked mine died of a heart, attack and he gasped for breath just as I heard him. I never guessed it was a forerunner for him.”
Many people think that birds are forerunners of death and if one beats against the window pane or comes into the house they are sure bad news will follow. I would have thought so too if my father had died on a day in May when he was stricken, but the swooping of a bird against our window seemed to startle him so that his weary heart revived again, and he lived until the following October. It could still have been a forerunner although death was delayed. A friend of mine had a similar experience before her husband died, but I was in her house at a later date and twice heard birds beating against the window. I do not take birds too seriously. However other people do, and we get stories like these from Middle Musquodoboit.
“One time when dad was away from home a dove came into the house and flew around it. My mother said, ‘Someone is going to die,’ and my father had no sooner come back than a call came to tell him his mother had died.”
“In Ship Harbour two young men were returning home one cold icy night. After the driver let his friend out he drove on alone and must have gone off the road. At that time his mother was walking down the road when a huge bird that was more like an owl than anything else swooped out of a tree and nearly knocked her down. It was an odd time of year for a strange bird to appear, so this was supposed to be a forerunner.
Many people are deaf to forerunners. Of six people sitting in a room with the body of a man who had just died, only three heard him call the name of his wife. Similarly when Indian sisters, Mary Ann and Kate, were si
tting together making baskets at Mooseland and a friend of Kate’s died in another village, only she heard a sound as of gravel rolling off the roof.
This reminds me of a tape recording I made of a Micmac Indian from Middleton. I expected it to be a moose call such as hunters make, but that was only part of it. “If the moose start to answer the call, then stop and fight and go away from you,” Mr. Peter Michaels said, “it means there is trouble at home. It happened when my father died and this is the Indian’s ‘telegram.’”
Chapter TWO
LEAVE ’EM LAY
The summer of 1950 was spent largely along the shores of St. Margaret’s Bay and I often used to drop in at the Boutilier home at French Village. Mrs. Boutilier kept the post office and had a number of supernatural experiences to recount. Her husband, known locally as Sydney Pete, was a man in his late eighties who sat for long hours every day beside the kitchen window, his crutch by his side, and an expression on his face that was dour and forbidding. I learned later that this was caused by continuous pain, and that he was a man highly spoken of by all his friends. It was a further surprise when they said that he had been a fine singer in his day. I wondered then if I could break through his barrier of silence.
On my next visit I therefore turned my attention to the old man, only to discover that he was stone deaf. This meant that everything I said had to be shouted at the top of my voice but he was willing to talk and soon seemed to be enjoying it. I gradually brought the conversation around to songs and told him about visits I had made to his friends in that community. It occurred to me that if I could get him to hum a tune this time, he would sing for me on my next visit. It took time and patience, but he did it without being asked.
I waited a few days before returning and upon the next visit carried my tape recorder into the house and set it on the kitchen table. No longer was I given a disgruntled nod as my only greeting. He spoke, and his words might have dismayed me if the foundation of our friendship had not been firmly laid. He pointed to the machine and said, “I’m not going to sing in that thing.”
I said, “You don’t have to, but you’d like to hear your old friend John Smith, wouldn’t you?” At that he nodded happily, for Mr. Smith was also aged and infirm and it was some years since they had been together. We chatted away as I got the tape recorder ready, and then I played Mr. Smith’s repertoire. These were familiar to Mr. Boutilier and he was happier than he had been for a long time, just sitting and listening.When we came to the end I said, “You’re not going to let Mr. Smith get ahead of you are you? And besides, think how pleased he’d be if he could hear your voice.” These thoughts evidently appealed to him and, to my great delight, he began to sing. I had to manipulate the machine quickly to catch him in time and my hands trembled because, in spite of his great age and infirmity, his voice was incredibly sweet.
At the end of the first verse he had to stop and cough and I took that opportunity to play his voice back to him. It was clearer than any of us had expected and he was delighted. He went on then from one song to another until his limited strength rebelled but, from that time, he bent every effort to record all the songs he could remember.When I left after my final visit he thought of all he had sung after his unwilling start. He then laughed heartily in a way that was good to hear from one who laughed so seldom now and said, “You’ve got a way with you, you’d bewitch the devil.” I looked at Mrs. Boutilier doubtfully, not knowing quite how to take this, but she was smiling and assured me this was a great compliment. This singing and story-telling were probably the last real pleasure he knew. A few months later I learned with genuine sorrow that I would see my old friend no more.
With an old man like this there are many lapses between songs when I guide the conversation into channels that will be fruitful. It was on one of these occasions as he sat in his chair by the window that he recalled an experience of his youth. It embraced an old belief that there are those among the dead who will not tolerate any indignity to their mortal remains and that upon occasions some will even come back to protest actively.
“One time a friend of mine, named Henry, and I were digging a grave and we dug up some old bones. I brought home a piece like a rib bone, and Henry took some pieces home too. In the morning it was pouring rain and I looked out this window and saw a woman going past the house. She was a tall woman in a long black coat. I turned to stir the fire to make the room more comfortable, intending to ask her to come in out of the weather but, when I went to the door to call her, she had disappeared.We can see a long distance from here, and I couldn’t think where she had gone. I told Henry about it, and he said she had walked past his house, too. In fact three of us had seen her.
“We got talking about her and the more we thought about it, the more we didn’t like it, so we decided the bones might have something to do with it and we’d better throw them away. We wondered if they might have belonged to a woman pedlar who went around here years ago and, while she was missing, nobody could give an account of her. There were Indians a few miles out the road and it was claimed they had killed her. We calculated that was the woman. After we put the bones back, she was never seen again.”
Another story of protest came a few years later from a fisherman at Spry Bay on our eastern shore.
“What I did see, brother Uriah and I. When my mother came to Mushaboom there was a place called Black de Cove and she dreamed there was money buried there. One foggy evening Uriah said to me, ‘We’re going to hunt for this money,’ so he took a hoe and I took a shovel and we dug. The tide was low and we wasn’t to speak to one another. After we got so far down we got a bone a foot long like a man’s bone from the wrist to the elbow. The minute we got to it Uriah said, ‘We’re getting close to the money,’ and I out the hole. You dassn’t speak, you know, when you’re digging for treasure. (The reason for this will be explained in the next chapter.) In five minutes the hole was full of water.
“Uriah should have thrown the bone back, but he didn’t. He took it with him and, when we got home, he showed it to an old man we had in the house to teach school to the family. He was scared to death of it and told Uriah to take it back, but he didn’t. That night it was dark and foggy and when he went out in the yard something chased him and it was as big as a puncheon. He claimed that after he went to bed he saw it come into the kitchen and he looked and saw it setting on a chair. He decided then that he wouldn’t fool with it any longer and the next morning he took the bone and put it back in the hole.We never went digging again for the treasure, and the owner of the bone never troubled us any more.”
From East Ship Harbour which lies along this same shore, Mr. Bert Power had this to tell.
“I lived on the west side of the harbour one time in Wes O’Brien’s house. I was working up at the head of Ship Harbour and the missus was home. I used to come home weekends. One foggy night in winter time when I came home she said, ‘Bert, I saw a ghost.’ I said, ‘Go away, what did you see?’ and she described it. She said it was a light like a candle and first it was on one side of the screen and then on the other. I talked her out of it, and then didn’t I see it myself.
“The very next night I went to the spring for water and there was this very light on the gatepost, and it was about the size of a candle. I kept thinking about it and expecting something to happen like it was a forerunner, but nothing did. Not any more than a trunk belonging to Wes O’Brien’s boy who had been drowned in the harbour. It was here in the house and had his watch and some of his clothes in it and we had shifted it. I put it back, and that was the last we saw of the light, but that wouldn’t be it, would it? It makes you think, that’s all. With things belonging to the dead, whether it’s their bones or their belongings, you should leave ’em lay. They don’t like what they’ve left behind being disturbed.”
We go inland from the Bay of Fundy now to Bear River, whose verdant hills and gently flowing waters make this one of the most idyllic villages in this Province. In these tranquil surroundings it seemed s
trange to talk to a Micmac Indian about fearsome things like ghosts and witches, but he said the Indians believed in them and that when old Jim Muise was their governor, he had a strange and frightening experience.
“A man at Weymouth wanted to buy a canoe and asked Muise to bring it to him. Jim got a boy to go with him, and told him he could have all the trout he could catch. He kept going and going as far as he could and, when it was coming dark, he saw an opening and turned his canoe in to the shore. After they had taken their gear out of the canoe, they turned it over for the night. They were both tired, the boy especially, and soon he was snoring.
“Jim had made a fire and he was dozing beside it when he heard somebody coming. You can’t fool an Indian in the woods you know, and he could easily tell the difference between a human’s steps and an animal’s. This was a person all right, but it was different and didn’t ever get anywhere. When it got too close and he still couldn’t see anything he woke the boy for company and said, ‘Make some more fire.’ They could both hear the thing all night making just enough noise to keep them awake but never coming in sight.
“In the morning when it got light enough to see, there were two feet sticking up out of the ground in front of them. They belonged to a fellow named Black who had been drowned and was buried with his feet sticking out. When they realized there was a dead man right beside them they packed up and got out of there in a hurry, because by this time Jim was sure it must have been this man’s ghost that had given them the fright.
Bluenose Ghosts Page 4