When Donald McDougall saw a black boat sink in a vision, he and his friends all supposed a boat of that colour would be seen by him some day. When Archie Gillis bought a blue boat they concluded the old man had made a mistake and had seen black instead of blue. The blue boat, however, proceeded on its way without accident. What Mr. McDougall had seen was a black car, but he had the vision before automobiles were known. In the place where he had foreseen it, a black car went through the ice.
Another Cape Breton story is perhaps more forerunner than foresight, and is very like the Fourchu story in that chapter told by Rev. Grant MacDonald. “One winter night the people of Boularderie were disturbed by the sound of noises on the shore. Drift ice was in, but this was a different sound. They invited their neighbours to come and listen, and they could all hear a murmur of talking and a rattling of ropes on boats. They were greatly puzzled.
“The following summer three men were out in a boat and they tried to land, but the sea was so high that they failed in their attempt and the boat capsized. Two of the men were drowned. It was at the exact spot where the sounds had been heard the winter before, and the noise made by the people who gathered there after the accident was exactly the same as they had heard then.”
A man from Sydney Mines was coming home one night and was passing a house where the inside stairway was very narrow, too narrow for anything large to be taken outdoors that way. In such cases windows were sometimes used instead. A daughter of the house was lying at that time upon her deathbed and, as he looked towards the house, he distinctly saw her coffin coming out through the upstairs window. In a few days the girl died and her coffin did come out that way.
Rory was double-sighted. It happened that a young man died and, when people went to see him, they remarked that he hadn’t lost his natural colour. It was also noted that his fingers were supple. At that time there was no such thing as embalming. One day Rory came to the lad’s home and said to his father, “And you buried your boy alive.” The father was most indignant. Rory said, “If you don’t believe me, dig him up and you’ll find him on his face.” The mother was so distressed that somebody suggested they open up the grave and find out, but she replied, “If I did and I found Rory was right I’d never come out of the grave.” So the doubt has always remained, but the benefit is given to Rory.
A woman in Sydney got up one morning and said to her husband, “I had a horrible dream last night. I dreamed your sister Martha was dead and you were summoned home. I dreamed I saw the funeral and, when the casket was being taken in the double doors, they couldn’t get it through so they had to take it back, put it down, get a hatchet, and chop enough away to make room for it to go through. The horses were grey, not black as you would expect for a middle-aged person.” That morning, shortly after the dream had been told, a telegram arrived saying, “Mother died, funeral Tuesday.” Now the dream had said Martha, but the telegram said Mother.
The husband left at once for Yarmouth and, when he had gone as far as Windsor, he met his brother-in-law. Feeling that he might have further information he said, “John, what happened to mother? She was fine when I heard from her just the other day.” John said, “It isn’t your mother. It’s Martha,” and it turned out that the operator had made a mistake in transmitting the message.
They went on then to Yarmouth and the funeral was held on Tuesday. When they brought the casket in they couldn’t get it through the double doors and they had to take it out again. In his haste, as John ran for something to open the door with, he picked up a hatchet and, as he began to use it, he thought of this dream.
Then the funeral was held and sure enough, the horses that drew the carriage were grey.
Visions of the future do not always deal with death, and may have a happy significance. “At Framboise a man was living in a new house and he died of TB (tuberculosis.) His widow and one son moved away and the house was left empty for some time. We could see it easily from our house and one night, when we happened to look out, we could see a light. Yes, there was a light in the house and there were people passing between us and the light. We saw it again, and nobody living there for a year and no way for anybody else to get in the house. The lights meant the house would be occupied again, and so it was. About five years later a family bought it up and moved in and we saw everything repeated exactly as we had seen it on those two occasions.”
At Port Hood I talked to two women who had one day seen a city and two churches on a site where there was a later drilling for oil. To date the city has not transpired, but it is expected to come some day. Train headlights were seen long before there was any train. At Wellington, Prince Edward Island, in December, 1885, a phantom train was seen by forty people.
Turning now to the peninsula of Nova Scotia, but still with people of Scottish descent, we have two women at Bridgeville in Pictou County. These sisters were awakened one night by the sound of a train and they got up and saw it running along the track. At that time there were no trains there and, although they were not far from Pictou, they had never seen a train in their lives. They described their vision and the following year surveyors arrived. Eventually the train ran where they had seen it. At Eureka in Pictou County a child had the gift of foresight and it came to her several times. She would say, “Do you see that light down there?” but nobody else could see it. At that time the railroad had not even been planned, nor did it come until she was grown up. She not only lived to see the train, but married one of the men who worked on it.
During my recent visit to Marion Bridge a huge piece of road-repairing equipment used to glide up and down the road like some great pre-historic monster. I never saw it without wondering if the Scots ever had a vision of its appearance in the community and if so, what a great fright it would have given them.
Although the Scots in this Province are far more double-sighted than other races, we also get stories like this from a Mrs. Hirtle of German ancestry who lived in Lunenburg County.
“We used to live at one time in Mahone Bay, and then moved away. One night I knelt down to say my prayers and the house in Mahone Bay came up in front of me and, as I looked at it, I saw a funeral procession leave the house and go through the field. I thought a great deal about it, but didn’t mention it to anybody. The house was then occupied by people named Evans. In the morning my father came in and said, ‘Evans’ little girl died last night.’ I said, ‘What time?’ He said, ‘Half past nine.’ I had taken note of the time and it was at half past nine that I had seen my vision.”
Mrs. Hirtle came honestly by her ability to see things. Her mother had the same faculty for she had been lying in bed one night when she felt a cold hand come down and pass over her face. She sat up in bed greatly startled to see her aunt standing over her. The aunt said, “Fare thee well.” Mrs. Hirtle’s mother was not frightened enough by the occurrence to call the family but, in the morning when she came downstairs, she announced that her aunt was dead. Word came later than this was so.
At Annapolis Royal a woman of English descent was given a visual warning. She had an eleven-month-old baby, to all appearances in perfect health. “One night I was awakened from my sleep and saw a little white coffin in front of the bed. I woke my husband and said, ‘I’m afraid something’s going to happen to my baby.’ He laughed at me, supposing I’d been dreaming. The next day for no known reason my baby died in my arms.”
A woman of French descent at Boutilier’s Point had this to tell. “My mother had been sent for to stay with my grandmother who was dying. One night all of a sudden the lamp shade at our house came apart and the crinkly part at the top flew up two feet and then came back and set on top of the shade. Grandmother died at Indian Point at that time.”
A mother at Oyster Pond said, “The night my husband’s father died there were several of us here. I went upstairs to see that my babies were all right and the three-year-old opened her eyes and said, ‘Mama, was grandpa here because I saw him beside my bed and he looked right down on me but didn’t
say anything. He had on a white shirt.’ He was very fond of the children but, as for being in a white shirt, that seemed very strange because he so seldom wore one. The child was sure she was awake when she saw him. That night he died and of course, he was laid out in a white shirt.”
Tancook Island, where the people are largely of German descent, reported this amazing phenomenon. “When Sebastian died, when his last breath came, the whole shape of him came out of his mouth like he was a young man, no longer old and wrinkled, and it went out the door. Just before he died three little taps came to the door, just a couple of minutes before. He must have heard them because he looked to the door. Sebastian’s mother was seen twice by two women after she died.”
A young man at Jordan Falls had gone to sleep after walking home from Lockport and was wakened by a light in his room. A picture of a girl friend, though not the one he was engaged to marry, floated through his room. It was not a dream, but a vision, “and later he learned she had died at that time.”
Two extraordinary stories were confided to me in the summer of 1956, both by rather shy, gentle ladies of more than usual intelligence. The first story I think had never been told to anyone before, but I was permitted to use it here as long as no names were mentioned.
“My husband had multiple sclerosis. He has always been a good-living man but has never been particularly religious. He is well educated, but not an intellectual. The doctors thought an operation might help him and he was sent to Montreal. He has always been perfectly clear in his mind. He has only once mentioned what happened, and has never referred to it again. I respect his silence because it must be a wonderfully precious memory. He said that one night Christ came and sat upon his bed. No word was spoken, but he felt a deep peace.”
Think of it. A person like that does not make up such a story, nor did the next one, told by the second lady.
“When Rev. Mr. Hares was in Windsor I attended a Whitsunday celebration of holy communion in the Anglican church. He was a deeply spiritual man. As he was preparing the elements I looked up and was startled to see a brilliant tongue of flame that rested for a brief period on the top of his head and then vanished. It did not move nor flutter, but lay flat, just as it must have done on the heads of the disciples. I watched in fear and my knees trembled. Then I looked to see what the other parishioners were making of it but I realized they hadn’t observed it. The vision seemed to be for my eyes alone and I was greatly upset. For a long while I kept it to myself, then finally told Mr. Hares. He was most disturbed. We discussed it and agreed it couldn’t have been a shaft of light through a stained glass window, nor was there anything else to explain it. This took place about a year before he died.”
The stories of Christ’s appearance and the tongue of flame came to me by the merest chance, for I had never met either of these ladies before. I have wondered since how many people have seen or heard things which they have kept locked in their own hearts for fear that the telling of them might result in their being ridiculed or misunderstood. A vision is not a thing to be talked about lightly, so it is possible that there are others who have experienced equally extraordinary phenomena about which we will never hear.
HINDSIGHT
We have just seen how some people have visions of future events. There are others who have looked back and have seen before their astonished and unwilling eyes a scene from out of the past. Mr. Earl Morash of East Chester who has had one such experience, calls it looking back into time. This is far more unusual than the perception of things to come, and it can be terrifying. It is best explained by a life-long resident of Annapolis Royal who told it as a legend of her family.
“When my grandmother was a young girl about the year 1830 or 1835, there were soldiers here. One evening when the officers entertained as they so often did in those days, she met a young man and danced with him all evening. They jokingly made an engagement to go horseback riding the next morning and, although they had spoken in jest, my grandmother took the invitation seriously, as indeed was intended. She therefore got ready and waited with more than usual pleasure for the young man to appear. Time went on and he failed to come and she was very displeased. When he finally arrived he looked ashen and distressed. He was full of apologies and told a story that none of them believed. He said, ‘I spent the night at the Inn and, after I had been asleep for a while, I woke up and heard somebody fumbling at my door. The door was bolted on the inside, so I knew nobody could get in. But they did get in, not only one man but two. I noticed particularly how they were dressed. They both wore top boots turned down, long military coats, and tricorn hats with plumes. (Uniforms of this kind might be French or English of the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. Both were garrisoned at different times at Annapolis Royal.) They appeared to be very gallant gentlemen. Then without a word to me, or any sign that they were aware of my presence, they took off their coats, drew their swords, and had a duel right there in my room. I was in such a state of terror that I couldn’t speak, and I could do nothing but watch in a horrid fascination. The duel went on until one man ran the other through with his sword, and then wiped the bloody blade on the counterpane. Then, as though that were not enough, he picked the body up and threw it out the window.’
“Well, how my grandmother laughed, for she supposed the young man had made the story up as a means of retreat from an embarrassing situation. Nothing would induce her to take it seriously although his white face and nervous demeanour should have been indication enough. The story has been told in our family ever since, and years later when the Royal Bank was built, the body of a man was found dressed as this officer had been described. The Inn where he spent the night, was near this spot.”
It is questionable whether the body that was found was this man or another, for at this point the story becomes confused. There must have been two incidents, for this is what Miss Charlotte Perkins, historian of Annapolis Royal, and I concluded after talking together. In the story that she has written, the man glided into the room and came over to the bed, holding up the stump of a bleeding arm. Then he suddenly disappeared. Several people saw him, and their description is quite different from that in the first story, for he was dressed in a torn and defaced uniform of the Royal Engineers, and wore a helmet that was thrown back and was suspended by the chinstrap over the right shoulder. Spurs sounded as he approached the bed. Miss Perkins reports that “his face was deathly white and his eyes were bulging with pain. He seemed to be searching for someone and, in his left hand, he carried an unsheathed cavalry sword. He then raised his bleeding arm which was severed at the wrist.”
Miss Perkins’ account is that of an unhappy spirit who was probably unable to rest until his body was found and given proper burial. The first story however is an illustration of the extraordinary faculty a few people possess of seeing the reenactment of an event that has actually taken place a great many years before. And, if we are to believe one story, the other is just as credible.
Another story in which a clash of arms may have played a part was told me by Mrs. Fred Redden of Middle Musquodoboit. I had been collecting folk songs from her husband for some time before she could bring herself to talk about it, because ever since it happened she has been trying to put it out of her mind. She realized however that I would be interested, and she finally gathered up enough courage to relate her experience. It took place in our own time, during the Second Great War.
“At that time accommodation was hard to find in Halifax, but it was necessary for me to spend a few nights there. I had a friend who was living in an apartment on Barrington Street towards the north end of the city. They occupied three small rooms on the ground floor that opened out from each other and were in a row. Frances and Alex slept in one room and I slept with their child in a bed that was placed so that my head was close to the wall nearest them. There was nothing between but a thin partition. A gentle tapping on the wall from my side would have awakened them. It was poor accommodation, but the best they could get at that time.
“I must have been asleep for some hours when I was wakened by the sound of bottles clinking, knives slashing, and men talking, and they were right there in the room with me. I was terrified but, after a little while, I forced myself to open one eye to see what was happening.To my surprise I saw four men sitting around a card table. I only looked long enough to get a vivid picture of one of them. He was probably the leader. I can still see him plainly today. He was a big man with an oily look about his face, and he had a dark moustache. He was a swarthy man. One thing that I distinctly noticed was either a bright red kerchief that he was wearing, or it might have been the sleeve of his shirt. He held a long knife in his hand and the blade was silver. It was the sound of cards and the whisky bottles that woke me up.
“I saw all this in one quick look. Then I closed my eyes and lay there, paralyzed with fright for the rest of the night. I was even too frightened to call my friends or knock on the wall to wake them up.When daybreak came the noise stopped, but I still didn’t open my eyes until my friend’s husband came through my room on his way to work. I kept saying to myself, ‘You’re not asleep, you’re awake. It isn’t a dream.’ When Alex went through I looked up. Men, tables, and bottles were all gone, and there was nothing in the room that hadn’t been there when I went to sleep, and there was no sign of any disturbance.
“When morning came I didn’t say anything to my friend because I didn’t want to frighten her. I’d never had an experience like that before, but I’ve had other things and I know I can see and hear things that don’t happen to other people. I could tell that she hadn’t been disturbed. I made an excuse to leave that morning, and I knew I would never sleep in that room again under any circumstance. After I got away I went to see another friend and there I told what I had seen. This friend knew the place well and said it had been a hotel at one time with a window that opened out on an alley way. At that time the apartment was all one room. One man would take it and let others in through the window and they would drink and play cards. At one time, he said, a lad of sixteen was stabbed there. Whether I would have seen the stabbing if I had kept my eyes open I don’t know, but I must have looked back on an event that took place perhaps a hundred or more years before.”
Bluenose Ghosts Page 9