Bluenose Ghosts

by Helen Creighton

  We may speculate upon the source of treasure, but there is no doubt that money and other wealth have been extricated from the ground and washed up on our shores. People known to be poor have suddenly grown rich like a couple at Clarke’s Harbour who were seen through a window drying bills on the oven door. Another man there found a bag on the shore in the eel grass, kicked it, then opened it, and hastened to get his wheelbarrow to take it home. He and his family have prospered ever since. At Clam Harbour a woman dreamed of buried treasure and a man went with her and found it with a mineral rod. They unearthed a copper bake pan full of English sovereigns. It must have been a sizable amount for they divided it and the man was able to buy horses and also to send his sons to college. A transport struck off Egg Island loaded with soldiers for Halifax, and the payroll was on board. The captain and mate got the money chest and made off with it but nobody knew where they went. Fifty years later a small steamer went into a cove at Laybold Island. In the morning fishermen went out and saw the skids where an iron box had been taken from the ground. They have wondered ever since if this was the missing payroll or some other treasure.

  At Indian Cove a man and woman went to get treasure revealed in a dream, but a ship’s boat with ten men, each rowing a single oar, arrived at the same time. When these had left, there was nothing there but the hole and the skids. In a similar case at East Chezzetcook a man and his wife were just starting to dig and had actually got as far as striking the chest with their pick when they heard a boat coming. They did not want to shed blood to get their treasure, nor were they prepared to risk their own lives by claiming it for themselves. They hid in the woods and, when this boatload of men went away, there was nothing left but the imprint in the ground where the chest had rested and an empty three-legged iron kettle which they had left behind.

  A man at Sambro picked up a gold statue from the ground; another at Ball Rock who never did anything but dig suddenly became prosperous with no rich relation to account for his changed circumstances.

  This also happened at Blandford. Just a few years ago two powder horns full of gold coins were found by two children playing in a quarry at Yarmouth. A chest filled with coins was taken from a stone wall when the Imperial Oil Refinery at Dartmouth was about to be built, and the owners of that property have prospered ever since. A Mochelle field is supposed to have given its pot of gold, and three silver spoons hidden by the Acadians, were dug up at East Pubnico. Men came to Victoria Beach and asked permission to dig on a certain property. They left before daylight, but not before placing two twenty dollar gold pieces on the owner’s gatepost. How much had they taken away that they could afford to be so generous? At Berwick a story is told of a family who came to the eastern end of the Province soon after the Acadians left. They hired a yoke of oxen and a French plough from a neighbour. They were brought up with a jerk as the plough caught in the bail of a huge iron pot.The farmer suddenly realized what it was and sat on the ground to hide it. He said to the boy working with him, “Unhook the oxen and take them home.You can leave the plough where it is. I have a violent cramp in my stomach and when I recover I’ll let you know.” As soon as the boy left he unearthed the pot and with its contents, he and his wife bought a fine house. When they died they left a property worth $12,000. The pot was about two feet across and was kept in the family for many years. The story was told me by the descendants. Other French money was supposed to have been found on Goat Island by men named Delap and Holliday.

  These are just a few instances to show that stories have some basis of fact and are not mere imagination and desire. We would know more if people were not so secretive about their financial affairs. They regard the finding of buried treasure as a personal matter and of course, in the days before there were banks to safe–guard our wealth, it was dangerous to tell that one had it.

  In the preceding stories the extrication of treasure was not fraught with any danger because presumably it had been buried in the normal way. Pirates, however, were not content with this and, to make sure that their booty would have an added safeguard, they turned to the supernatural for aid. Stories in support of this come from all races throughout the whole Province, and are so much an accepted part of their thinking that they deserve considerable attention. Because we have this deep-rooted belief, and because eye-witness stories have been handed down and do not vary, we must acknowledge a custom which could have originated only in a diabolical mind. The following story in explanation of this came from an Indian and had descended through several generations of Micmacs from one of their members whose name was Glode.

  “There used to be pirates around on the south shore of Nova Scotia and one day this Indian named Glode was out in his canoe. He had his little girl with him and when they got to a place where there is a point of land, he saw a ship sailing towards them. They were scared of strangers in those days, so he paddled into a cove and hid his canoe away in the woods.Then he climbed a tree. From there he could see everything that went on, and he watched that ship. It stopped and the pirates on board took down the sails, lowered a rowboat, and four or five of them came ashore. They came straight to that point, chose a spot and started digging. The captain gave the orders. After they got a trench dug big enough, he sent two of the men to the boat for a big chest. After they had brought it up and put it down beside the hole he lined them all up and said,‘Have you got everything ready? Who’s going to keep this money?’ One of them says, ‘Well, the other fellers don’t say much. I’ll look after it.’

  “‘All right,’ said the captain, ‘You’re to guard it for a hundred and fifty years,’ and before the man realized what he had got himself into, the others grabbed him. They cut off his head then and they put him in the hole with the chest. After that they drew a map, covered up the hole, and went away.

  “When the ship was out of sight, Glode came down from the tree. He didn’t know what the dead man was supposed to do, so he wasn’t afraid to dig him up. He wanted to see what was in that chest. It was mostly gold. In those times Indians used to wear a sort of gown with no sleeves, so he took that off and piled in all that he could carry. Then he covered the place up again and got his little girl and the canoe. As they paddled towards the open water he got thinking that it wasn’t safe for an Indian to have money and he’d be better off without it. By this time he’d reached a great big ledge two or three feet wide, and he’d made up his mind. He poured that money down in the split of the rock, and he never went back for it. For all I know, that money is there yet.”

  Mr. Enos Hartlan of South East Passage had been the first to tell me about the pirates’ custom, but he varied his story in one point. He said that when the man volunteered to stay with the treasure “they had a party and they soused him (made him drunk) and buried him alive with the treasure.”

  At East Petpeswick a man named Stingles lived to tell of his narrow escape in one of these episodes. He was new to pirates’ ways and was just about to offer, “but a darkie said it first and they off his head an’ fired him down the hole.” And at Port Hastings a story has been handed down, through three generations, of a woman who was in her barn when she saw a coloured man running down over the hill. He told men in the village that he had heard the pirates planning to kill him and bury him with a treasure and he had made his escape. He told them they had killed another coloured man the day before.

  The burial of a human being with the treasure has led to many strange beliefs and there are countless stories of his obedience to his orders. Whether he ever actually functioned as a guardian is an open question, but the fact that he might do so had an extraordinary psychological effect. Many a time a group of men have got as far as finding the chest, and one of them has spoken, thus breaking an inviolable rule. Without waiting to see what would happen they have simply dropped their shovels and fled, confident that the whole expedition was ruined by the indiscretion of one spoken word. For with human speech the guardian ghost was given power which, until then, it could not use. After this power w
as released anything could happen and, if our tales are to be believed, things often did.

  The stories can be sifted fairly easily, taking into account the natural temerity of the informant and the extent of his superstitious belief.We know of many cases in which the digging has been interrupted by pranksters who could not resist the temptation to howl from a nearby bush or throw a pebble and sit back laughing as they saw the treasure-seekers flee in terror. As all digging must be done at night, any least sound would be heard by listening ears. It would take very little to frighten away anybody brought up on the potentialities of the guardian ghost.

  As a result of these beliefs stories like this occur, the first one coming from French Village, by way of Mr. Boutilier.

  “Every Sunday a man named Dauphinee, a friend of ours, would come down here, and one Sunday a storm blew up, and father and mother wouldn’t let him leave. About twelve o’clock it cleared and he started for home. The wind had gone down and it had stopped raining. When he got between Clam Island and the main (mainland) he kept close to the island and he heard somebody hollering and he turned and looked and by and by the man told him to ‘come ashore and take me off this island.’ He got frightened and took to rowing hard but the ghost came abreast of him and said, ‘Come ashore and take me off this.’ The third time the man said, ‘You’re not going to take me off this island? Do you mean to say I’ve got to stay here for another hundred years?’

  “Another time three other fellows went to this same island and they started digging and one fellow was in the hole and he saw something and he was struck paralysed. The two others had to drag him to the shore and put him in the boat. He didn’t know what he saw. It seemed to have struck him.”

  They said at Glen Haven, “If you talked while you were digging for treasure the money would sink down, or the devil would come with his head bare, or the man buried with the treasure would come with his sword in his hand to kill you.” These are all fearful things to contemplate, so it is little wonder that at the snapping of a twig or the rustle of a leaf the stoutest-hearted men might scamper.

  Because blood was shed in the burial of a treasure, there are those who believe that it must also be shed to get the treasure out. Also it would seem that the guardian ghost is not always a man. There are instances where a woman has been reported in that role.

  “On Red Island at Chezzetcook Mr. Roast went out for his cows and a woman chased him around the island three or four times. He stopped for breath and she sung the pitifullest song he ever heard. She said, ‘I’m in trouble. There’s money here and I want you to get it. You’ve got to draw blood from two twins.’ He could have drawed it from two lambs but he never bothered.” (The guardian ghost’s existence seems to be a strange contradiction. It may plead with the human to remove the treasure and even explain how it can be done but, when the attempt is made, it will carry out its orders in all sorts of terrifying ways.) In similar cases of “not bothering,” and there are many, I have wondered if the thought of the treasure did not in itself bring joy to the person. It would be a profound disappointment to dig and find nothing. Why not enjoy the illusion and drift along, knowing that if the need for money became too great, the experiment could then be made and the risks encountered. Why chance the spoiling of a pleasant dream?

  There are a few people however who know how to dispel the power of the guardian ghost so that digging may be done in safety. This curious belief has turned up four times in Nova Scotia but the only other parts of the world where it has been reported to my knowledge are Finland and Estonia. Each of ours is a separate story, and they come from Dartmouth, South East Passage, West Jeddore, and Port Wade. The most complete one comes from South East Passage through a family of German descent.

  “A poor man from Rose Bay in Lunenburg County was out getting firewood when he saw a treasure chest being buried. After they’d killed their man and buried him with the chest and covered up the hole the pirate threw down his shovel and hoe and said, ‘Now devil, you take the keys until such time as a rooster will plough and a hen will harrow. Then, deliver up the keys.’

  “So the man went home and he told his wife what he was going to do and he made a little plough for his rooster and a harrow for a hen. He took them then to the place and made motions for the rooster to plough and the hen to harrow and what should appear at his feet but a shovel and a hoe. He knew then the ghost wouldn’t trouble him, so he dug and he found a chest full of money and jewels and he never wanted again all the rest of his life.”

  The Port Wade version adds that he was to spill the blood of the rooster as a final act to dissipate the evil of blood having been spilled when the treasure was buried. Another story where blood must be spilled comes from Ship Harbour. “There’s a flat rock between Musquodoboit Harbour and Jeddore. A sailor with a bundle in a handkerchief tied to a stick carried over his shoulder used to be met there. If he liked you, he’d tell you how to get the treasure, but if he didn’t like you he’d disappear. He said you had to kill a baby and let the blood spill on the rock to get the treasure, but people thought it didn’t need to be a human baby.”

  It was fortunate that I had a good background of these stories before I met Mr. Isaac Doyle and his family at West Jeddore. I might explain here that all along our southern coast there are points of land jutting out into the sea and that these form separate bays and harbours. You get place names like East Jeddore on the eastern side of the harbour, West Jeddore, and Head Jeddore, the head being at the land-locked end of the waterway. Mr. Doyle is an elderly fisherman and, like many of his craft, he has a gentle, kindly manner and a quiet sense of humour. He also knows all the customs and beliefs so far related in this chapter except that of ploughing with a rooster and harrowing with a hen, and he is also a singer of folk songs. When our talk turned to the supernatural he told me so many stories about a place called Goose Island that I felt I ought to see it for myself. Consequently an expedition was planned with Mr. Doyle as guide and his son Arthur and grandson Sheldon as boatmen. There were eleven of us in all, seven of them children.

  Goose Island is not more than 200 yards long and 100 wide, and it is six miles out in the Atlantic from our starting-place at West Jeddore. As we approached it from the distances of Egg Island and Duck Island it looked completely unapproachable. At the eastern end however an opening appeared in the rocky shore. It was large enough to take a small boat, but not the large fishing craft we were in. That meant that we must go ashore in relays, rowed in the small boat we had towed behind us for this purpose.

  Before the use of engines made it so much easier and safer to move about on the sea, men used to go out to Goose Island for a whole summer, leaving it only to go home on Saturday night. There would be as many as eight or ten of them and they lived in wooden camps. The island is almost flat and it is covered with a low scrub of weeds and grass, and it is protected all around by a rocky cliff.

  Strange things have happened on this island. For instance different men have heard a boat rowing but, upon investigation, there was no boat there.

  “My father walked all around the island, looking for the boat,” said Mr. Doyle, “and suddenly his cap was taken off his head and clapped back with the weight of lead. When he got back to camp he heard a noise like fifty wine bottles being broken against the clift on the western end of the island. He thought afterwards that he might be hearing the sound repeated of a boat burying silver in that hole, as it might have done in pirate days.

  “Another time some of the men went out there and they had a boat with a capstan for hauling the smaller boats in. There were three little trees on the western end of the island at that time and on that day three birds came and perched on the only three spruce trees on the island. They were unknown birds. No one had ever seen their like before. One was blood red, one jet black, and the other snow white. From the trees they flew to the capstan but, when the men tried to catch them, they flew to Black Point and were never seen again. The men all saw them and talked about them
a lot. They decided they were three pirates, and that they were trying to show where treasure was buried. There are initials carved on the clift on the eastern end of the island and all kinds of plans, and we’ve always supposed they were French. They are all over the clift.”

  We were all over it too, up and down, scrambling from one craggy rock to another, trying to make some sense out of all the markings. I took tracings and photographs and sent them to the National Museum but there they remain, as much a mystery to scholars as they are to our fishermen. Mr. Doyle continued his story as a gentle wind blew in from the quiet sea and the sun shone upon us from a cloudless summer sky.

  “With all these marks on the eastern end of the island we were sure there must be marks on the western end to give us our direction, but they couldn’t be found. But when I was a boy we were there one handsome day with a spring tide and at about half-tide I was on a clift. I see this pretty thing on the clift like a butterfly, only bigger. I went down and looked up at it. Its wings were opened but it never moved. I went in and told father and Uncle Joe to come and look. It was brown and was about two inches long. It had four wings and a looking-glass on each wing, and the wings were purple. It was the handsomest thing you’d ever want to see. I said, ‘I’m going to get that,’ but they said not to touch it. But later I thought, ‘I am going to get that,’ and I put my hat over it and where it rested were the letters no one had been able to find. I went into the camp and I said, ‘I got him and I’m going to put him in an old cigar box. I’m going to get a pin and stick through it so it won’t go away.’ It just laid there and never moved. Uncle Joe took his pipe and just touched it. It flew to the eastern end of the island and I after it, and then it flew to Black Point where the birds had gone and that’s the last we ever saw of it. We decided it must have come like the three birds to show us how to find the treasure.