Bridges are favourite haunts for spirits, largely because they have so often been the scene of tragedies. Lank’s Bridge at Parrsboro is supposed to be haunted following a murder many years ago. A horse is supposed to come by with a headless driver. And at Frog Hollow Bridge a girl has been seen and heard screaming. She had fallen off the bridge one Hallowe’en and had been screaming when she touched the water before being drowned. At Sambro I heard of a man named Bill Gray who used to see his mother at the bridge. He talked it over with a friend and they concluded she must have something on her mind she wished to tell him. He therefore said in the approved words for addressing a ghost, “In the name of God what do you want?” No message was forthcoming but she was evidently satisfied, for she disappeared and was never seen again.
The bridge at Blockhouse Creek also had its ghost, such a sad, unhappy wraith. “Long ago the road went up around, not where it is now. This woman was murdered and they used to see her ghost down by the bridge. She was dressed in white, and you would see her running up the creek, always going away from people.” Still afraid, or shy of humankind?
I often wonder what happens to ghosts when the place they frequent is taken away or changed completely. Until very recently there was a covered bridge at Avonport. Here, according to a man from East Walton, a woman in white used to appear not only at night, but also in the daytime. He said she walked along the bridge and disappeared. The bridge near his own town also had its woman in white as well as other disturbing phenomena. A team of horses would come down the hill and disappear, car lights would come and vanish, and a man has been seen dancing and on fire on the hillside. Add to this the sound of chains rattling as you come up the brook and you have a lively setting. A girl told me that when she was in her late teens she saw the woman in white standing on the bridge at night and she was so frightened that she ran. When she went back later, the figure was gone. At Amherst I was told, “a girl at Rockport drowned herself and they always used to say they’d meet her on that bridge but nobody would speak to her for fear. She just walked by, dressed in white.” As my friend Enos Hartlan said, “People who take their own lives can’t rest.”
You will have noticed that women appear in a variety of wearing apparel, usually the clothes associated with them when on earth. At Martock in Hants County a man named Wilkins was said to have had a house where officers from Halifax used to visit many years ago. One time two of these officers were sitting having tea when two nicely dressed ladies walked into the hotel and just vanished. “I’ve heared that since I was small,” said my informant. “I don’t know whether anybody else was ever known to see them. Nicely dressed they were.”
White and grey are popular for colour, but there is no set rule about it as this Seabright story testifies.“About fifty-five years ago when I was seven or eight I was walking with my mother and sister along the road. It was twelve or one o’clock at night. We met two women in long black dresses that glistened, and black hats. They were very tall. They passed us but there wasn’t any sound from their feet or the ground or from their dresses. We all three of us saw them.” There are two interesting features about this story. One, that the women were seen by three people, which some say never happens, and the fact that two women were seen together. Only one other story tells of women in company. It came from Mahone Bay where a man saw two women in white walking around a vacant house. Men are not so lonely, and a whole ship’s crew may be seen at one time; women always seem to be solitary in their peregrinations.
When Mr. Caspar Henneberry of Devil’s Island was going past Fort Clarence on foot at a very late hour many years ago he saw a girl who, he learned later, was supposed to have been killed at that place. She had a round face, long black hair, black eyes, and she was dressed in black. She faced him on Battery Hill first and then walked along beside him. He was so frightened that he took to his heels and returned to the house he had been visiting, and all the way she ran along beside him. He then did a most unmanly thing—he fainted.
In the summer of 1939 Mrs. Reva Marshall was working at the Ashburn Golf Club in Halifax and, at half-past six, she and a friend named Joan left to go out for the evening. As they were walking down the woodland lane Joan saw a woman coming towards them and said in a startled voice, “Look, she’s not touching the ground.”
In the light of the summer evening every detail of her dress was plainly seen. She looked wrinkled and very old and she wore a black skirt, a white blouse, and a black shawl over her blouse. The blouse had a little piece of lace at the top of the high neck. On her head she wore a bonnet with a hood and the bonnet had ribbons under her chin. It had a wide brim at the front and tapered down at the sides.
As she came towards them she looked neither to right nor left and her feet, which did not touch the ground, made no sound. In her excitement Joan pushed her companion so that she almost touched her and, in her embarrassment Mrs. Marshall said, “Good evening madame.” The old lady paid no attention to this greeting but went on her way to the end of the lane and then up a drive–way and finally disappeared in the woods. As far as Mrs. Marshall knew, this was her only appearance.
Victoria Beach reported a tall woman in dark clothes, a former resident, and Mill Cove told of a woman dressed in brown. Our next was dressed in a sugar bag. An organist told the grandmother of my informant that she was going through the lower hall of a house in Annapolis Royal when she met a coloured child dressed in a sugar bag. The child not only walked towards her, but right through her. When the grandmother heard the story she did not seem greatly surprised. She explained that a former occupant had kept slaves and one day she had tied this child up by the thumbs and locked her in a closet. She went out then and forgot all about her. When she returned and went to release her, the child was dead. Others had reported seeing her, and that is why the grandmother was not surprised. Miss Charlotte Perkins, Annapolis Royal historian, carries the story a little further and adds that after the mistress found the slave dead, she sealed her body in the fireplace.
In this same house, the oldest in the town, an old woman often used to be seen sitting in a rocking-chair wearing a plaid or grey shawl. According to the writer, Beatrice Hay Shaw, this was not the owner of the slave, but a sister of one Andrew MacDonald who always appeared in the dress she had died in, and in the rocking-chair where her death had taken place. Women who saw her used to be filled with fear, but she did not have this effect upon men who always spoke of the kindly smile upon her face. She was first seen before 1821 and she was known as the Chequered Lady on account of the pattern of the dress she wore. The story, in the Sunday Leader, May 8, 1921, goes on to state that in all her appearances the chair continued to rock for some time after she left it.
It seems possible to me that the chequered dress would have a shawl-like collar which, from the street, would give the impression of a woman wearing a shawl. All stories agree upon one point; that is, that it embraced several of the quieter colours.
A story in which the reason for the appearance is far more important than the description of the dress, comes from Pugwash. “One time a man came here who had been in Rockhead Penitentiary and I asked him what he was there for. He said it was for stowing away on a ship from Newfoundland. I said if he’d been a stowaway they’d send him back; it must have been more than that.
“Well, one night we were both out seeing girls home down the same road. I waited for him and it was very late when he came. We were walking along and I saw a woman coming towards us and I thought she was one of the MacLeod girls and I thought I’d see if it was and why she was out so late. I went up close beside her and looked right in her face. It was as white as these gladiolas there. If she’d been real she’d have stepped to one side, but she kept right on. Her hair was coal black. You remember those basques women used to wear? Well, she was wearing one of these and a black skirt. She was neat and well dressed. The other fellow was with me when she came along but he had taken to his heels and run. When I got up to him he was standing at
the corner shaking.
“‘Who was that?’ I said.
“‘I don’t know,’ he said, but I think he did know, and that it was because of her that he’d been in Rockhead Penitentiary. I didn’t go out with him any more after that.”
We have several cases where the gift of seeing has been given to children. This is from Tangier; “When Uncle Bill was a small boy he was one of a large family and was put to bed with the hired help. At dawn he woke up and looked towards the door and saw a woman looking in. Then she left. In the morning he told the girl and described the woman whom she recognized as her mother. They learned later that she had died at that time.”
At East Chester a story is told of a Mahone Bay woman who had always wanted a new house. She dreamed of it, and planned how she would fix it up, and the thought was so dear to her that she could think of little else. In fact it was almost an obsession. Finally the dream came true and the house she had longed for became hers. She moved in and was happier than she had ever been in her life. It lived well up to her fondest dreams and she loved the new house with all her heart. But alas, she had been living there only for a short while when she fell ill with tuberculosis. In those days little was known about this disease and it caused many deaths in the Province. She realized that her days were soon to end and her one sorrow was that she would have to leave her house. After she died, the woman who had nursed her stayed on and she told that every once in a while the face of her former patient would appear against the wall. No more of her was seen, and nothing happened, just the face.
Sometimes a sound is heard, and that is all. Pity the poor soul told about at Tatamagouche who drowned over a hundred years ago at Blockhouse Creek. She has never been seen, but she is still heard to this day wailing as she must have done at the hour of her untimely demise.
One evening a group of girls decided to regale one another with the sort of ghost stories they had heard so often in their homes in various parts of the Province. They got a delicious thrill from most of them, but that ended with the tale of a spectre from Springhill.
“My father went out one evening and he had to cross a meadow. On the way he met an old friend who had been dead for some time. He said she was dressed in the old-fashioned clothes he had last seen her wearing, and that she carried an umbrella in her hand. When they were through talking they shook hands and went their different ways.” It was the thought of a hand-clasp that frightened the girls and, to this day, it sends shivers up the back of the one who told it to me. The father however suffered no ill effects.
Finally we have a story from Prince Edward Island, given me by Mr. Neil Matheson, M.P. It happened in a Scottish settlement called Strathhalbyn. Duncan and Flora had been sweethearts in their earlier youth, but in time Duncan’s affections changed and he married elsewhere. Flora sickened and died, and many said it was from a broken heart. One day Duncan was driving between Hartsville and Rose Valley when he noticed a good-sized pig following him. Although he had a speedy trotting horse the pig kept up with them, with its snout just under the rear axle of the wagon. It finally got on his nerves and he stopped the horse, took the whip from its socket, jumped down, and struck the pig several solid blows. Then to his astonishment a woman’s voice came from the pig. Flora’s voice. She said, “Why did you strike me, Duncan?” Now why would a woman slighted return to her former lover in this ungainly form?
Chapter NINE
THERE AND NOT THERE
In Nova Scotia there are many instances of things having been seen which, upon investigation, were not there at all. Take for instance the strange occurrence on L’île à Frisée as reported by Mr. Stanislas Pothier of Pubnico. This is a small island which may once have harboured buried treasure. A hole lined with beach rocks indicates that a chest once rested there. It is also thought that a Frenchman had been murdered on that island, although that probably has nothing to do with our story. What is important is the erection of a lobster factory which took people to the island and resulted in one man seeing something that has puzzled him ever since. Mr. Pothier’s story follows. “This man had come on a vessel and on landing decided to go for a stroll. He was walking along by himself when he came to a place with no trees or grass, but with a beautiful flower garden in the middle of a clearing. He couldn’t understand how such a garden could be in such a place, particularly at that time of year when it was too cold for flowers like that to be growing along our coast. He didn’t touch the garden, but went back to the vessel and told the other men about it. They thought it very strange too, and a few of the crew went back with him to see it for themselves, but he couldn’t find the garden then or at any other time. As far as we know, nobody else has ever seen it either. It’s a belief here that flowers represent buried treasure, or the ghost that guards it. That’s the only explanation any of the fishermen have ever been able to give for it.” (You will observe how often ghosts and buried treasure tie up together in the thinking of our people.)
Mr. Pothier also told of Spectacle Island in the same vicinity. “A few years ago a man from Clarke’s Harbour was going along the shore of Spectacle Island in a skiff with his boy and they saw the prettiest flower in a pot on the bank. He said, ‘Look a here, we’ll get our firewood and when we come back we’ll find our flower pot and take it back with us,’ but when they went back, there was nothing there. He told it to a lot of people, and nobody else could find it either.”
Men who live in the country know their way around and are not likely to get lost any more than a city dweller would in his own metropolitan area. This Annapolis Royal man knew his territory, and that is why his experience seemed so puzzling to him. “Some years ago I found myself in a place where a ring of spruce trees had been set out close together in a circle about the size of an ordinary room. I thought the spot was about where the Catholic church bell had been buried by the Acadians. I knew the spot well. A few years after I’d seen it, I took two other men with me to see it but it wasn’t there. I looked and looked and I’ve gone back since and there’s not a trace of it. I never could find those trees again.”
Duck Island has been mentioned in connection with buried treasure, a tiny place off the eastern shore. “Uncle Joe and Uncle Arthur were out there one day and they saw a human bone, a leg bone. They overhauled it and Uncle Joe said, ‘We’ll take that up and we’ll bury it when we’ve had something to eat. We’ll lay it down here until we’re ready. It looks as though it’s been washed ashore.’ Uncle Joe thought the owner would probably like to have it put under the ground. After they finished their meal they came back to get the bone but it wasn’t there. There wasn’t a dog or a crow on the island to have carried it away, nor any other human being. Where had it come from, and where did it go?”
Mr. Sydney Boutilier of French Village also knew of a mystery. “Two young fellows, brothers of mine named Sandy and Will, were digging around for a cabbage bed. We always sowed cabbage seed on Good Friday. They cut up some seaweed for fertilizer and carried it up to mother but she wasn’t ready just then to help them. There were two big willow trees near the house and, while they were waiting they sat down, and there was a hole underneath one of those trees, and in the hole there was an egg. They both saw it, but Sandy said, ‘It’s my egg. I saw it first.’ They both ran their hands in the hole then, but they couldn’t find the egg. Sandy thought Will had taken it, but he hadn’t. They went in the house at last and told mother and she came out and looked too. One other time three of the most terrifying howls were heard beside those willow trees, and we never knew what they meant either. All the rest of their lives they wondered about that egg, but it was never seen again.” It was like the gold pieces that surrounded a man named Misener at Lower East Chezzetcook “one handsome moonlight night. He shouted in his excitement and bent over to pick them up and they disappeared.” Could it be that the egg and the gold pieces indicated treasure, and that speaking had caused them to be removed?
Far more extraordinary however is the appearance of a person in one pl
ace who is known to have been somewhere else. Anybody in a small town is bound to be well known by all the other residents. It is not only the face that is familiar but also the manner of walking and even the clothes that are worn. I was greatly surprised therefore, when I went to Digby in the year 1947 and talked to Rev. Mr. Gaskell. He told me of an incident that had happened there. One of the towns–women had been on her deathbed and, the day before she died, she was seen walking up the main street of the town. He said there was no mistaking her, but of course, she wasn’t there.
The mother of Mrs. Fred Redden of Middle Musquodoboit had an experience along these same lines, but with a more definite purpose.
“One day a man came to our house and asked for eggs. My mother went to get the eggs but when she came back he wasn’t there. She looked everywhere and couldn’t find him and she was afraid he was hidden somewhere in the house. She kept the children in two rooms until my father came home and she made him go through every room but he couldn’t find him either. She knew who he was; he lived alone but at a little distance. Everything was too open around the house for him to have got out of sight in the short time she was away from him.
“My father couldn’t understand it any more than she could, so the next day he got his nearest neighbour and they went to see this man. When they got there they found that he was dying. In his weak condition he couldn’t possibly have come to our house, yet my mother had answered his knock on the door and had gone for the eggs after he had asked for them. He must have been thinking of her, and wanting someone to come and help him.”
Then we have this from Ingramport. “Not long after I was married we lived in a little cottage that had four rooms and, from the kitchen, we could look into all the other rooms. One afternoon I was ironing when I saw a strange man walking from one room to the other. He was wearing dark trousers and a white shirt and he had his braces down over his hips as though ready to shave. Then I didn’t see him any more and I began looking and I couldn’t find him, and there was no way he could have left the house without me seeing him. I got scared then, so I called the men from the mill and they came up and searched. There was no trace of him anywhere. That night there was a man hanged himself in the mill. He was a stranger and when I went to see him, who should he be but this same man.”
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