Bluenose Ghosts

by Helen Creighton

  A pleasant story comes from the headmaster’s house at King’s Collegiate School, Windsor, a place I mention because this incident will never happen again. It was told to me by Colonel Hebb who had the experience himself. When he was a young man he taught in the school. Another master there at the same time, a dominant but beloved character, was known by the nickname of “Pa Buckle.” They often alternated their nights on duty, but Mr. Buckle always seemed to get the stormy nights, and it happened so often that he got into the way of calling fine nights “Hebb nights.”

  After the Second Great War Colonel Hebb was made head–master and, when he arrived to take over his new duties he thought of his former days there and especially of his older friend who had since died. This was a stormy night; in fact a regular Buckle night. When he entered the house he was surprised to hear a step that sounded familiar. Surely that must be Pa Buckle; it could be no other. Then the lights switched on and off mysteriously as though someone were having a little joke with the new residents. At first he thought his daughter was doing it, but soon realized that she was as surprised as the rest of them. Nor was there anybody in the house to be walking around with Mr. Buckle’s characteristic step. He thought about it for a moment and then felt very pleased, for he concluded his old friend had come back to see him take over, and was wishing him well.

  Who of us has not wondered about the next life and wished some shred of light might be thrown upon the great mystery of our future? Two farmers in Newcastle, New Brunswick, were talking about it one day. They had been great chums all their lives and, at the age of seventy-five, they were cogitating over what might be awaiting them. Both were well versed in their Bibles and were faithful church attendants. Finally upon a summer day Rossier died while fishing, and his canoe was found by his old friend Briden on the river. Two years later Briden was fishing alone when his friend Rossier appeared before him.

  “Don’t be scared,” he said. “You remember we said the first one that died, we’d come and tell the other one what it was like in the other world? You live the same as you ever lived and you’ll go to heaven. I’m just going to heaven today, and the Lord said for me to come and tell you. I had to stay this time because I was not fit to go to heaven.” Briden had no time to speak before his old friend vanished.

  This reminds me of a lady from Newfoundland who went unwillingly with friends to a séance somewhere in the United States, and was amazed to be told that a child named Mary had a message for her. The message was, “It doesn’t matter.” She could think of no child by that name who had died, until some days later.Then she recalled a childhood friend by that name who was a Roman Catholic, while she was a Protestant. They had often wondered if it made any difference in going to heaven. She had little belief in spiritualism, but thought, could that be the meaning of that message?

  HARMFUL GHOSTS

  There are other ghosts that go out of their way to be a hindrance. For instance Captain David Hayden was going home from his ship one night and was climbing over a fence when some strong force that he could never understand pulled him back. It took all his strength to get away from it. There were no nails on the bars to account for it, or anything else that he could see. It was as baffling as the force that held a fishing vessel back as it was sailing up the La Have River. There was a good breeze, and these waters were familiar to all the crew. Suddenly the vessel was wheeled around in the opposite direction. The men were excellent seamen but, no matter what they did, they could not get that vessel up the river until daylight.

  There is a place between Rose Bay and Kingsburg that goes by the name of Goose Gutter where a phantom of a goose used to appear and bite people on the legs. It is supposed to be the ghost of Lucy Knock who perished there. Here too the traveller is held back by an invisible force. At Coot Cove in Halifax County a man said that whenever he passed a certain place his hat would fly right off his head.

  Mr. Bobby Lowe of Moser’s River said, “I was out late one evening playing cards and I hadn’t been drinking. I was coming home and my coat was torn right off my back and I was knocked down on the road. It was pretty powerful to be a person, but it was too dark to see anything. It was raining, so there was not likely to be anybody hiding in the bushes. Just before I was hit I’d heard something right by me. That was fifty-five years ago, and I came home at a gallop and over the fence. After a little while I got curious and I went back with a lantern and a gun but there were no footsteps to be seen but my own. Then I could hear it coming again and I started to holler. It had four legs because it started to run, and I could hear the steps, but I ran faster. The next night it was heard again, and that was the end of it. The funny part about it was that it didn’t leave any tracks though I looked for them that night and again the next day, and the ground was soft from the rain. I never knew what it was.”

  Our Indians experience these things too according to one named Glode at Hantsport. “I was living on a grant, a young man at the time, in Lunenburg County, and my uncle took sick. He knew he was going to die and wanted the priest. I had to walk eight miles to Bridgewater to get him but when I arrived at his place he wasn’t there, so I left a message and didn’t wait. That afternoon it rained, and it was winter. I travelled back in moonlight and at Northfield there was a church. As I got opposite it I could hear the church door open and a figure came out of it and was about a foot off the ground. He had a gown and a topknot and there wasn’t much wind and still the gown was blowing and he came right out on the road. There was ice between me and this man. I wasn’t scared then, just curious, and I waited to see what he looked like closer. I went forwards and looked up in his face and I said, ‘You’re trying to fool me.’ I thought it was someone playing a trick, but with that he tripped me and my head struck the ice. I got up and he walked with me and if I walked fast he walked fast, and if I run he run, and at last he left me. Never a word, he just left, and that was the time I got scared, when it was all over. I don’t know whether this had anything to do with it or not, but the second night after this my uncle died.”

  The next story comes from Mr. Reuben Smith of Blanche in Shelburne County in whose hospitable home I spent a pleasant afternoon. “There was an old black dog that used to jump out at people by the little bridge at Negro. One time grandfather Ross was going to Clyde on foot. It was late afternoon but not quite dark and he had his wedding suit on. He had to pass an old house with one or two tall trees beside it and, when he got abreast of the house, this thing came out and grabbed him. He could go back down the road, but it wouldn’t let him go ahead, and it tore all his clothes off.The funny part about it was that it was light all around and still there was nothing to be seen. Whether it was the Negro ghost dog or something else he never knew. Another time he was going past Ely’s woods and it was dark and dismal. He used to go by with his horse and wagon and this thing would come out and go round the wheel. It didn’t stop him but it bothered him, and he never knew what to make of it either.

  We come now to ghosts who were neither helpful nor troublesome but were content just to make an appearance. The first comes from Broad Cove, a delightful fishing village in Lunenburg County. “When we were sixteen four of us boys were walking towards Caleb Smith’s house. On the way we met a man and, when I got home, I told father about it and described him. He wore a grey homespun suit, a cap without a peak, and he carried a club for a walking stick. Father recognized him at once and said that he had always carried that club and nobody ever thought of him without it. He had then been dead for forty years. We saw him just in front of his own place, and father said he had often been seen there resting on his club and looking out over the water. He had been regarded as a respectable old man so it was not thought that he came back to put anything in order. Could it be that this was his heaven, to be allowed to come back once in a while to behold this lovely cove again?

  “A man named John lived across a bridge at Chester and he was a heavy drinker and quarrelsome. One night he was in town late and he and another m
an had a spot and he was pitched out of the house half drunk. He was gone two or three days and nobody knew what had become of him until one of the neighbour’s boys was in swimming and tramped on something and it was his body. The place then became haunted and you couldn’t get a youngster to go over the bridge at night because this man used to crawl up over the rail. He did that one evening when two ladies were going home, and he walked along the shore to the gate that took them home. He was easily recognized because everybody in the town knew him well, but only one of them could see him. I wonder if he had something on his mind and wanted her to speak to him?”

  Mrs. Bishop has a nursing home a few miles from Dartmouth at a place called the Broom Road. It got its name from people who used to live there. “In 1910 my husband was out west and I was home with the children. I looked out the window about ten o’clock at night. The moon was full and the clouds were scuttling about in the sky. The lane to our house runs down about one hundred feet where it joins the Broom Road and, just as you turn up, I saw the figure of a man with a stovepipe hat. He was leaning on a stick and looking all around. I had a little cocker spaniel, and he ran to the house to get in and, when I let him in, he crouched down as though in fear. After I had let the dog in I looked out again and the figure was still there. He was dressed in grey homespun pants, a dark coat of average length, not an overcoat, and he had a goatee and seemed to be looking around strangely. There was no one to ask what Mr. Broom had looked like, but I always supposed it was he. That is the only time I ever saw him.”

  Stories occasionally turn up in which a chair rocks with no–body in it. At Victoria Beach this happened with a cradle. It was told by Mr. Joe Casey and was added to by his mother. “My great grandfather had started out to be a priest but he changed and became a Baptist minister, and was married three times. He made a cradle that was as long as a cot and pretty soon they noticed that it rocked whether a baby was in it or not and they didn’t see how it could rock by itself. Some people who used it said that hymn music would come from it.” Mrs. Casey has seen the cradle rock but she has never heard the music, but she said that a friend who had borrowed the cradle was so frightened by the rocking that she returned it. The cradle now belongs to people who keep it in their attic. I called at the house hoping to see it, but circumstances made it impossible at the time. It has always been one of the mysteries of the village.

  We do not expect to find balls of wool in our ghost stories, yet I have two. The first is brief and came from Mrs. Joudrey at Eagle’s Head. “My mother told me once that a wool ball came in the front door and ran along the room.” The other story came from Victoria Beach. The cook at the hotel that year had come from Litchfield and she knew that Mr. Casey and others were giving me stories and songs. One evening when she started to go upstairs she saw that I was sitting alone. She had been waiting for this opportunity and started to talk. The story that she had been saving, possibly hoping that I could throw some light upon it, was this. “My mother used to tell me that years ago a squaw had buried a baby near the cemetery and it was in a red handkerchief. After that this spot was known as the Ghost Place and people used to hear a noise like a squeak when they went by. Some people said it was the fence making the noise, and others said it was the ghost of the child.

  “When I was a young girl the strangest thing happened. Another girl and I were taking cattle to the pound. In those days if people let their cattle wander they’d be put in the pound and they’d have to pay a dollar to get them out. We were walking along by the Ghost Place and it was broad daylight and I looked up and there was a little kitten with a ball of yarn coming down out of the sky, not straight, but sideways. I would have thought it was cute if I hadn’t been so frightened, because the kitten was playing with the yarn. I called to the other girl to look but the cattle were making so much noise she couldn’t hear me and by the time I got her attention it had vanished. I don’t suppose it was a ghost, but it happened right there at the Ghost Place and, as far as I know, it never happened to anyone else. Now what do you make of that?” I am afraid I was as puzzled as she.

  On the way to Sandy Cove a man is said to have come down from the sky. He said, “I came down like thunder and I’m going back like thunder,” and he did.

  There is a Nova Scotia folk song that tells of the murder of a young girl. The story is that the murderer took her to a place between Loch Lomond and Gannet Settlement. Here he dismissed the driver and beat their baby’s brains out against a tree. Then to rid himself of the mother rather than marry her, he murdered her and buried the two bodies beside the tree. But death is not always that simple, for the memory of his cruel act has been kept alive not only in song, but in rags that grow on the tree that was used for killing the baby. They may be taken down at night, and next morning they will be there. The tree is never without them, and in the snow of winter or the soft earth of spring there is never a footprint to be seen. I regret that when I was in this vicinity last year I did not have this story with me and could not recall the spot, and thus I could not see the tree for myself. However the story came from a native Cape Bretoner who is now a professor in one of our large universities and he assured me this is actually so.

  A story quite different from any I have encountered came from Auburn and concerns what is called the Caney Call. At least I presume that is the spelling. The people concerned were Irish. They lived on Morden Mountain and, on a stormy night, one of the family died. The woman of the house ran out and gave a weird call with her hair down, and it is said that she wore mourning so the ghost of the person who had just died would not recognize her. The call is given whenever a relative of this particular family dies, and it is given with the hair down; that is, as women used to wear their hair before it was fashionable to cut it. My informant knew nothing more about the incident than this.

  This story sounded to me as though it might have centuries of tradition behind it, so I wrote to the Irish Folklore Commission and asked if they could throw any light upon it. The archivist Mr. Sean O’Sullivan, wrote in part, “The word Caney does not refer to an Irish clan. From the context, it is evident that it is a form of the Irish word caoine, which means a cry of grief or mourning. In Irish tradition the banshee (wailing fairy woman; synonymous with Death) was supposed to wail when a member of certain families (e.g. O’Keefes, O’Sullivans) died. Her wail was quite distinct from the mourning cries of the near relatives or of the “keeners,” who were in olden days employed or called upon to mourn a dead person.”

  Our thanks to Mr. O’Sullivan for giving meaning to this strange custom.

  The next story comes from Mill Cove. “I was coming down from Hubbards by the bridge and I saw a man. I was going to speak but I didn’t know who he was. There weren’t as many strangers around then as there are now. His face was like that of an ordinary man and he wore a suit of overalls and a dark hat. He just stood there and didn’t move and there was something about him I didn’t understand. I told another man about him and he knew. He was dead.”

  Mr. Bert Power of East Ship Harbour shook his head and said paradoxically, “I don’t believe in ghosts; never did. But one time there was diphtheria at my sister’s house and the doctor said it would be all right for me to go in if I had rum or brandy first, so I asked Will Chisholm to get me a gallon of brandy in Halifax. He went by boat and was due back on Friday before going to Spry Bay, so I went down to meet him. On the road there was a spotted dog in the wheel rut and I walked right up to it. The dog never moved, but looked right up at me. I walked all round him and then went on and when I got down about fifty yards there was this same dog in the centre of the road and a chill come over me and I walked around him again. Then something else caught my eye and I looked towards the lower gate and a barrel rolled up the hill right in front of me. I could of picked it up but I got that scared I went home and my father said, “What’s wrong?” but I wouldn’t tell him. I couldn’t sleep all night and first thing in the morning we got word me chum Will was drowned. He was dr
owned right alongside his own door, and that barrel, it could have been the brandy. So I don’t believe in ghosts, but there was something come—something to it.”

  A man at East River Point was so troubled by a “black thing” that blocked his passage on the road that he went back to his house for his gun, intending to shoot it and be done with it. His family would not let him have the gun, for they were afraid of what might happen. He may have been well advised because at the Allen Hartley’s house I was told of a man who used to pass a graveyard at Eastern Passage on his way to work. He kept seeing a man there and decided to speak to him. There was no reply so he told his wife about it and said he was going to shoot the ghost. He would say, “If you’re dead I can’t hurt you, and if you’re alive you should be out here on the road and not in the graveyard.” He did this, and got the worst of it. The next morning it was not the ghost that was found, but the man who had shot him. He was lying dead in the road with three bullets in his heart.

  In the same house they told of a man down the eastern shore who borrowed something from his neighbour which he had not returned when the neighbour died. Every night after that when he came home from work he would meet the dead man and he was greatly troubled. He said to his wife, “I’ve got to speak to him,” and he did. Nobody ever knew what happened, but the consequences were plainly seen, for when he returned “his two eyes were twisted and his mouth was twisted, and he never spoke again.”