Bluenose Ghosts

by Helen Creighton

  In this case there were the two mothers both caring for the child, a love which they shared. They were both good women. Not so a stepmother reported from Sambro. She had beaten her stepchildren and then had thrown them in the same crib. They cried but she paid no attention. When midnight came she heard a little sound and looked up. To her horror the children’s own mother was standing looking down at them. She was so terrified that she persuaded her husband to leave with her the next day and the children were left to the care of neighbours. Perhaps that was what their mother wished for them when she allowed herself to be seen bending over their crib.

  Spry Bay also has a story of two mothers. Here a mother had died and the father was being married again. The child was to be sent away to be brought up by another woman. One day the stepmother-to-be went to the well and the child’s mother appeared to her. She advised her not to send her to the place they had planned, and said what they should do for her.That was done, and the story has been told in Spry Bay for years.

  My singer, Mr. Nathan Hatt of Middle River in Lunenburg County, was getting close to his proud record of recording eighty-six songs. He had just sung one called “The Dreadful Ghost” which turned his thoughts to something he had once seen. His face could change suddenly from the merriest laughter to the most solemn expression and it now became sober. His aged, blue eyes looked into mine intently.

  “I saw a woman one time dressed in white in the noonday. She had a white nightcap on her head and two long white ribbons hanging down over her bosom. I didn’t say anything about having seen her at the time but later I got talking to a friend and I told him. He said, ‘I believe I know who that was. I believe it was my sister. She married and she had a foolish girl (mentally deficient) and, just before she died, she called this girl to her side and said, “What’ll become of poor Ruth when I’m gone?” So you see she had trouble on her mind and that’s why she came back.’ The place I saw her was at Beech Hill, just a little piece from where she lived. Ruth was there at the time and the young fellows were tantalizing her.The woman was pale and deathly and I could see she was no living person. She watched those fellows with her eyes and she whipped away so quick I didn’t see where she went to. Her eyes looked natural.The man I spoke to was sure she was Ruth’s mother, and well she might have been but, as far as I know, I’m the only person who ever saw her.”

  Was the mother able to protect her defenceless child? Could we but know the answer to that question!

  Marion Bridge has a story of a mother who died many years ago at Trout Brook. “She had been a good living person and would not allow any card playing in her house. After her death her son and daughter did all the things their mother had objected to and the house became known not only for its card playing, but for its general depravity. One night John, the son, was coming home from Mira Ferry when he saw his mother coming towards him. He took to his heels and ran, terrified, and he kept on running the whole way home. It happened a second time and a third. By the third time he felt he must speak to her and end this business of being followed, so he said, ‘Hello mother, what do you want?’

  “‘I wondered how many times you’d have to see me before you’d speak. If you and Cassie do what I tell you, you’ll never see me again.’

  “‘Well tell me what it is, but hurry up.’

  “‘You must give up your card playing and live decent lives. If you do that and live right, I’ll never trouble you.’ He went home and told his sister what had happened. He also told his friends and for years they would tease him and say, ‘John, have you seen your mother lately?’ Needless to say they obeyed her wishes and she was never seen again.”

  How much do the dead see of what their loved ones do on earth, and to what extent do our misdemeanours keep them from their well earned rest? Such isolated instances as I have been able to give you may well make us stop and think.

  In both song and story the idea is put forth that the dead cannot rest if the living grieve too much for them. In the First Great War my brother Terry and his dearest friend Jack Carson enlisted and served overseas. Jack was killed and his mother in some way knew this immediately. I did not hear of this until after her death, so I do not know how the information came to her. But a few weeks later she was walking alone through the grounds of Dalhousie University, dressed in deep mourning, when Jack appeared to her. He assured her that all was well with him and that her grief was holding him back from his new life. His mother immediately changed her way of thinking and no doubt was comforted in the knowledge that she could still serve her son. I have placed this story here because it follows our train of thought.

  Most women who return seem to do so with a desire to be helpful as we have seen. Another pleasant story of a helpful ghost comes from St. Isidore, New Brunswick.

  “I was fishing with me father way back of Shippigan and that night a big storm come and we had a very small vessel, about thirty feet long and three sail on it. We were not coming very fast but we got lost and we couldn’t see the Tracadie light. We looked and there was a woman dressed in white and a torch in her hand and her two feet dragging, and she was canted this way.” (Here he held his hand up to show that she was not standing upright, but at a slant.) “Me father took the wheel then and he followed her for twenty minutes and then she disappeared and, as she went out of sight, the Tracadie lights came into view. I was about fifteen years old then. I’m eighty-eight now, but I never forgot that. I don’t know who she was, but I guess she saved our lives all right.”

  An odd thing happened to a cousin of mine about fifteen years ago. She was doing clerical work in one of the big Bermuda hotels and she worked every second night. Her afternoons were spent playing golf, and then she slept. At exactly three minutes to six each evening, at the time she was due to arise, the figure of a woman with her hand upraised would come to her in her sleep, and waken her. She was never able to distinguish her features because all she ever saw was a shadowy form. This went on for the whole six months she was there, and it always happened at three minutes to six and never at any other time. There was never any sensation of fear about it; on the contrary, Marjorie was grateful. When she returned to Nova Scotia she wondered if the woman would follow her, but she has never seen her since.

  A family named McDonald lived at Trout Brook many years ago and, after Mrs. McDonald died, they began to have unusual disturbances in the house. Then she was seen walking near the house and finally appeared sitting on the railing of a little bridge nearby. A man who knew her well confronted her.

  “What do you mean,” he said, “coming around here frightening people?” She gave him a message to give to a certain person at Donkin (then Dominion 6.) The next morning he harnessed his horse and went to Donkin and delivered the message. That much he told, but what the message was or to whom it was sent, he kept to himself. After that she was never seen again.

  This reminds me of a strange thing that happened to Mr. Alex Morrison’s brother. It frightened him nearly out of his wits.

  “At that time John was courting a girl named Belle who lived at Hillsdale. Country roads can be awful dark at night, you know. They used to be pretty rough and, with a horse and buggy, the going would be slow. It was pretty late, and John was driving home alone when he saw a woman walking ahead of him dressed in black, and the next thing she was sitting alongside of him in the buggy. It was light enough for him to see her, and who should she be but someone he knew who had died a few years before. She told him she wanted him to go to see her daughters, and to tell them to take care of themselves and be good, but he must never reveal to anybody else who she was. He never did. He came home and unhitched the horse and was too scared to take the harness off, and he got into bed with all his clothes on. He went to see the family and told them what had happened, but nobody ever knew who they were.

  “Any time after that when he wanted to go that way some–body had to go with him. I know that well enough because I came home about that time and it was usually me. He would never
go that way alone again, and perhaps that is why he stopped courting in that direction. If he hadn’t delivered the message she would have come back but, after that night, he never saw her again.”

  Most people think of ghosts as apparitions that float through the air and appear at unexpected times and places but do nothing that a human would do. At East Petpeswick a fisherman told of seeing a ghost in an unusual position. He was rowing by when he saw her walking along the shore with a pair of stockings in her hand. He kept his eye upon her and said he distinctly saw her stop and sit down on a rock and put her stockings on. As so often happens in these stories, his attention was diverted for a moment and, when he looked back, she had disappeared. Others had seen her with her stockings in her hand and it was always supposed she had something to do with buried treasure.

  Anne Boleyn may be the most famous woman in history to be seen without her head, but she is far from being the only one. “There was an old gentleman who lived at Wild Cat, Head Jeddore, and he was walking along a road where people used to see a woman with her head off. He’d heard the stories and thought they were pretty crazy, so he thought this would be a chance for him to see for himself. The faster he went the faster she went, but in time he caught up with her and put his hand on her shoulder. Then he got the surprise of his life because there was nothing there, so he said, ‘That’s the ghost all right.’ ”

  Perhaps this is the same woman who was seen at nearby Oyster Pond. “One evening a young couple were sitting on the bridge below my house when a woman came down from the field and seemed to step right over my fence. She was in white without a head and it looked as though she was coming right for them. They’d often heard of her because she’d been seen before and was supposed to be concerned with buried treasure. The girl was so frightened that she fainted.”

  Also connected in the minds of local folk with buried treasure, and thought perhaps to be its guardian ghost, is another woman who appeared at Oyster Pond. “One time Mrs. Sydney Myers and I were coming by the United Church wall and a woman was there in light grey. Her dress was long, and her head looked draped in the same colour as her dress. We both saw her and thought it was somebody from around (from that vicinity). Just before we got to her she started to walk ahead of us, and her dress shimmered like silk in the bright moonlight. All of a sudden she disappeared. Do you suppose she was trying to get rid of a treasure?”

  Duck Island in Jeddore Bay has been mentioned before, as being on the way to Goose Island. “A man went there once and a woman appeared to him. I don’t remember how she was dressed but I think it was in white. She had buckle shoes on I know, and she told him to get off the island or he would starve the same as she done, and he had to leave.” In all these accounts of female revenants their dress seems to be remembered in detail. It seems odd in this case that buckle shoes were such a noticeable feature of her apparel.

  Many years ago a girl from Granville Ferry used to drive a double-seated wagon and a span of horses. One of the horses was known to be frisky and her parents had warned her not to drive it. With the high spirits of youth she felt herself equal to deal with any horse and drove off quite happily to a picnic at Victoria Beach. It was a good picnic and she left to go home with a feeling that all was well in this best of all possible worlds. But on the return trip the frisky horse got out of control and, before she could get command of the situation she was thrown out of the wagon, dashed against a tree, and killed. It happened by what is known now as Johnny McGrath’s house. Since then every seven years a horse and team are heard going down the hill clatter clatter. People step off the road to let it go by although they never see anything. The ground shakes and they feel a wind like that of a passing vehicle. According to some, you must be close to hear it.

  Women ghosts in the old days liked to run along beside moving vehicles. About fifty years ago a woman in black used to be seen at Port Wade near the scene of our last story. She would appear about nine o’clock in the evening. One man tried driving so quickly that she couldn’t keep up with him, but she was able to match his pace. He decided then to go to a friend’s house for a while. He stayed until he felt he had shaken her but, when he started away, she was at the horse’s head again. If he had any idea who she was or why she was there, he did not reveal it.

  Modern transport in its swift movement is no deterrent to restless spirits. This has been demonstrated in the United States by the frequent appearance of what has come to be known as The Vanishing Hitchhiker. I have often inquired for such a story here and finally got one from Mr. Earl Morash of East Chester. The hitchhiker, of whom he had never heard before, appeared to a Toronto man about ten years ago in Winnipeg. He told Mr. Morash who passed it along to me.That is its only relation to our Province.

  “This friend of mine had seen a girl at a railroad crossing and he stopped to pick her up because he could see that it would be a long walk for her to go from there to anywhere. He asked her where she lived and, as it was not far out of his way, he decided to drive her home. They talked all the way in the ordinary conversation of strangers but, after they’d arrived at her home and he had opened the door to let her out, she wasn’t there. He couldn’t remember afterwards whether his arm had touched her as he reached across to open the door or not. He couldn’t understand it, so he got out of the car and searched everywhere. She couldn’t possibly have left the car without his knowledge, but she had disappeared completely. He was so mystified that he decided to inquire for her at the house. A woman of about fifty answered the door and he told her what had happened. She said to come in, and then he saw her husband sitting in a chair. He started to cross the room to shake hands with him when he saw the girl’s picture in a frame. ‘There she is,’ he said. ‘That’s the girl I drove home.’

  “‘That’s our daughter,’ they said. ‘She was killed two years ago at the railroad crossing.’” This tale follows the usual pattern reported as having occurred in cities from New York to San Francisco except that it is usually a car that has killed her. Neither Mr. Morash nor his friend had ever heard of it happening before.

  It may have been a would-be hitchhiker who stopped a team with a man driving and two women in the carriage at Salmon River. They were too frightened to take her in, so they failed to learn her story.

  A woman at Clarke’s Harbour told a strange story. It is one of many in which the man was more frightened than the woman. I have ceased to be surprised at this, for I have found in so many cases that women will face a supernatural ordeal that men find completely devastating.

  “There is a big rock at Centreville Woods called the Ghost Rock. When my mother was a girl about fifteen she was at Centreville visiting her sister. When she decided one night to go home, my uncle said he would go with her rather than have her go through the woods alone. They were walking along without saying very much when all of a sudden they saw something white crossing the road ahead of them, over and back.

  “‘Did you see what I saw?’ my uncle said.

  “‘Well, I saw something white crossing the road,’ she said. They walked on a little further and it came again in front of them across the road, and it looked like a woman dressed in a white gown and the tail of it was long and sweeping and trailed along behind her.

  “‘You can keep on going to Stony Island or come back with me, but I’m not going any further,’ my uncle said. My mother decided to keep going and, just as he was turning back, she saw it in front of her again and from then on she knew nothing until she lifted the latch of her own front door. When she told what had taken place her mother asked her why she hadn’t stopped at her brother’s store, but she had no recollection of having passed any store. It was as though she had been picked up and carried home. It was not until the parcel she was carrying fell to the ground and startled her as she touched the latch that she was conscious of her surroundings.”

  We hear occasionally of people wanting to come back after death to warn their friends or to convey some message about the future life. “Al
Pearl, Al Langille, and Bella Young all lived on Tancook Island and they made a bargain whatever one died first would come back and let the others know if you could come back. Bella was the first to go. She was a little crooked woman and couldn’t be mistaken for anybody else. One time a few years after she died the two Als met on top of a hill. They looked down by a brook and they said, ‘There’s Bella.’ It was just getting dusk. She was dressed like when she was alive. She had said she’d come back if she went to heaven.There was no conversation; just seeing her told them what they wanted to know.”

  Similarly at Jordan Falls two young women were talking and one said if she died before the other she would come back to apprise her of the event. It so happened that this young person died at some distance from the other. That night, just after retiring, the friend felt a hand slapping her gently on the side of her head. For some reason she could not understand it made her think of the other young woman. It transpired later that she had died at just that time.

  The Acadians left treasure buried in Nova Scotia, not all of which has been recovered. At Pubnico, Cyriac d’Entremont’s wife said before she died that the first thing she would do in the next world would be to find out where this treasure was buried. A couple of weeks after her death some of the men of the village were at St. Anne’s Point digging for kelp when she appeared before them. They were so frightened that they dropped everything and fled. When they told about her visitation people recalled what she had said, and they supposed she had come to take them to the spot. But alas, this explanation was not thought of for some time and, by then, the men had forgotten the exact place where they had seen her.