Bluenose Ghosts

by Helen Creighton

  It was just before we arrived that the most shattering thing of all had happened and it was so alarming that they were once more frightened out of the house. (They were now occupying their own place during the daylight hours only, and were driving three miles every night to sleep in peace at the wife’s former home as they had done before.) It had been a bright moon–light night and the wife was sleeping. Her husband was lying awake when the bedclothes were suddenly lifted off the bed to the height of about a foot above them where they were shaken violently, turned upside down, and dropped back crosswise upon the bed. As they dropped, the wife awakened. At the moment of their levitation her husband did not disturb her, probably because he was too terrified even to breathe. Not then, nor at any other time, did they see their tormentor.

  All this was told by the young wife with a quiet dignity and a complete absence of anything dramatic or hysterical. I was thankful that we had come to the end of her recital before her husband decided to join us. I have seldom felt so sorry for any human being as I did for him, for he looked utterly crushed. He walked over to the couch which is part of the furniture of all our country kitchens, and huddled down in the farthest corner. I expressed my sympathy for all they had been through and said, “Do you mind talking about it?”

  He replied truthfully, “It doesn’t help any,” and little wonder. His friends, no doubt with the best intentions in the world, kept telling him he only imagined these things and he was thoroughly sick of their remarks. When I asked if any of these doubting youths would sleep in the house alone he gave the nearest approach to a laugh I’d heard, and said very definitely, “No.” The only real interest he showed was during the time I suggested things that might help them, for I wanted desperately to ease their burden. For instance I told them that I had been hearing of houses like this ever since I first went out looking for folk songs in 1928, and that my very first visit had been to the Hartlans of South-East Passage. There, I said, the family had built small houses around a dwelling which still stood in the centre and which they called their Ghost House. And, I said, they were very proud of it.

  Proud of it? The young husband looked at me with an expression of complete incredulity. Proud of owning a ghost house? How could they be? If there had been any doubts in my mind about the sincerity of their belief in what they had told, they would have been dissipated now. It was beyond his comprehension that anybody could take pride in a situation as desperate as his. This then was no act they were putting on for the sake of notoriety; it was sheer misfortune.

  We talked a little longer and then I left, but I asked if I might take photographs of the house. They showed no objection and, I think, were rather pleased although they were careful not to be taken themselves. I took pictures from all angles and, in some of these, included the little boy. I hoped they might show a shadowy figure in one of the windows perhaps. (Actually when they were developed I could see a form there, but it was caused by the draping of the curtains.) However these pictures did serve one useful purpose for, as we drove away, my companion remarked that she supposed they had shown me over the house. I said I had not gone beyond the kitchen. She was surprised because she had distinctly heard a window being raised upstairs while I was inside. On checking up later with the owners no window had been raised by them that day, nor was there anybody else in the house when I was there.Yet the picture shows a raised window.

  After that it was impossible to forget the haunted house and its unfortunate occupants. The wife was serious, but it had not upset her as it had her husband. I learned later that he had been a robust young man before this happened, but that now he was wasting away. The continuous strain of fear engendered by the unknown, coupled with the realization that he had invested in a property that might be worthless, weighed heavily upon him. He had what can best be described as a beaten look. I therefore wondered if my going there was mere chance, or was it all part of a pattern? Could I perhaps help in some way, and what would that way be?

  Not long before this I had met Mr. R. S. Lambert, and had been given a copy of his book, Exploring the Supernatural. We had also met briefly in Toronto. Since his book deals mainly with haunted houses I wrote and outlined the case, and asked what he thought about it. He replied promptly and at length. Then with his suggestions which included the assurance that nothing could happen to them beyond a very bad fright, and my own all too limited knowledge, I wrote them as reassuringly as I could. I also tried to infuse a feeling of interest in their house by asking them to write down anything that happened so it could be used in scientific research. I thought this might give them something new to think about as well as a fresh feeling of self respect which was greatly needed at that time. I also sent them a copy of a book I had written, The Folklore of Lunenburg County, thinking that perhaps some of its ghost stories might help them, and told how they could get the Lambert book at the nearest library.

  From then on whenever I settled down to my night’s sleep my thoughts would turn to the young couple and the atmosphere in which they lived, and this was also the experience of my companion of that day. I decided then to talk to everybody I could find who might have information about the place in the hope that some helpful light might be thrown upon this case. I learned first that they had both grown up in the same village, but that ghost stories were not much of a subject of conversation in the wife’s home. In the husband’s home, however, they were often talked about and believed, and many of their beliefs had been brought from Scotland by their ancestors.

  First I visited a man of middle age who had once spent a night in the house, with the intention of speaking to the ghost if it appeared. It had been a quiet night with the intense quiet you get nowhere but in the country. There was not a sound, not even a mouse, for the house is free of rodents or any other animals; he was disappointed. He told me of a friend, however, who had spent a night there when he heard steps but, upon looking back, he could not remember whether they had been going up the stairs or down. But they were indoors; of that he was sure.

  From various sources I learned about the former occupants and also that the present owner attributed the visitations to drownings in a nearby lake. In both cases these had taken place in April just before the noises were heard. I soon discounted this theory because the people who were drowned had no connection either with the house or any of the people who had lived there. The occupant immediately preceding the family I had gone to see had lived alone. He was described as a quiet, respectable bachelor, and one not likely to have left any unsolved problems behind when he died. There had been other houses on the property, but not on this particular location.

  Only one unexplainable event seems to have taken place in a former occupancy. It happened one evening when a few young men were in the house playing cards and the lamp shade suddenly lifted itself up from the lamp, rose a few feet in the air, and then returned to its place on the lamp again. This sort of thing occurs occasionally before a death in a family, but that was not the reason in this case. If this was caused by any supernatural force it would show that strange things happen whether the present owners are there or not. Rumour has it that a group of boys drove up to the house one evening this year when it was empty and heard strains of beautiful music flowing out, but I had no opportunity to check on this. What I did hear from an eyewitness came from a man of middle age, rather serious and quiet, who is deeply concerned for the misfortunes of his young friends. He said that he was driving home from work at five o’clock one evening when he and his friends noticed a door on the side porch of the house slightly ajar. There are two doors here, but the one facing the road is securely bolted and is never used.They drove up to investigate and, as they expected, there was no one home. They found a storm door out–side somewhere and nailed it over the open door so that no one could make an entrance. Then they reported it all to the owner who said he had left twenty minutes before, and everything had been intact.

  There is now no way of discovering whether the first occupants ever
heard anything because they have all passed away. If anything had happened during their lifetime they kept it to themselves. A former school teacher who spent two winters there is sure nothing happened while he was in the house. He knew its history and said that only one other family had ever lived there. They were old when they died and one, who was blind, had suffered a long illness. Another was an unmarried woman and a tyrant who made it her business to see that everybody worked hard. She not only organized the home but the people of the village as well, presiding over various organizations where she was feared by all, for her word was law. If any departed spirit had come back he felt she was the logical one. The farm had been prosperous in her day. Now it has only one man to work it, and he spends much of his time in the woods cutting timber. Could it be that she resents this fact and hopes to frighten them away, thus making it available to another family who might keep the place up according to her standards? I passed this thought on to the young couple because a crabbed old woman being a nuisance would not be as formidable as some of the horrors they had envisaged. My only other suggestion is that the house may have been built upon an unknown grave.

  In the midst of this investigation I was invited to appear on television. I told a ghost story, but not this one in case the place would be besieged with curious visitors. Later I told the interviewer without, however, mentioning the location. The following day he called on me, for he too could not get the family off his mind. Feeling sure that he would not exploit them I finally gave him the address and he wrote some months later to say he had been there and had cleared up some of the doubtful points for me. It seems they had read in my Folklore of Lunenburg County that a ghost comes only every seven years, although I am at a loss to know where they got that information. Nothing however had been heard since my visit, so they were planning to remain there as long as the place keeps quiet. Nevertheless they no longer take any pleasure in this house so they are preparing lumber for a new one and, as soon as the sawing is completed, they will start to build.

  For the present that is where the matter rests. They have promised to let us know if the sounds return when we will go there for a night or more if necessary. This ghost is unpredictable and never comes at specified times. I cannot say that I look forward to it with any great joy, but I would like to get to the bottom of it. I shall probably face it with chattering teeth and knocking knees, but not alone. Oh no! I’m not that brave. And who knows? With a prayer of exorcism in hand we may be able to release some poor earthbound soul to an eternal rest and, at the same time, make life a joyous thing again for the present owners. Confidentially however I will admit that if this can be done by other means than mine I will not cry with frustration. Would you?

  This is not the only case we have of houses in which blankets have been removed at night. They are usually pulled off rudely and without warning. A Clarke’s Harbour ghost seems to have been given to tidy habits. Here Miss Beth McNintch was sleeping in a room where an older woman had died two years before. Up to that time all had been quiet here. This night however she had her cat at the foot of the bed. “It was daylight, about eight o’clock in the morning, and suddenly the clothes were pulled off and folded over evenly as though in pleats. They went all the way to the foot of the bed and at this moment the cat jumped and fled from the room.” This was not repeated because she made no attempt to sleep again, unlike the father of my New Brunswick singer Mr. Dornan, who was sleeping many years ago in a New York house. He was wakened with a heavy weight on his chest; then the bedclothes were pulled down. He pulled them up and went back to sleep only to have them pulled down again, this time to his feet. Now fully awake, once more he pulled them up, and had a good grip on them. He held them as tightly as he could, but they were jerked away and he was left completely uncovered. He asked who was there but received no answer so he swore at the unseen intruder, also without any response. He never slept there again, and he said it was his one encounter with the supernatural.

  The story is told of a man who taught school in Antigonish and who roomed a short distance from the town. In this house the lights would flicker and go out, the bedclothes were lifted above the bed, and the bed would shake. He said nothing to the people who owned the house, but he found a room elsewhere and left. Eventually he told some of his friends about it and they thought it very funny. They dared him to go back, so he did. The owners were delighted and probably wondered why he had left and then returned. By this time the ghostly visitant had retired and nothing more occurred.

  Another house with a history of bedclothes being removed was at South Uniacke. This was a big two-and-a-half-storied flat roofed house that used to be a tavern, and a woman is said to have been killed there after a fight. “At night we would hear a rumbling. There was a winding stairs in that house that went all the way to the roof and there was a nice place up there to sit. When we first moved there we would hear a noise on the roof and go up to investigate but, by the time we got there, the noise would be downstairs. It sounded like a barrel going bumpety bump when it was downstairs, but like cats when it was on the roof. The light in our room would go out and there’d be nothing wrong with it, and once, when I was there alone, the door opened and shut.

  “My husband knew something about the house he wouldn’t tell me, any more than that I was not to go to the back end of it. Any time we went up to the roof we always took the baby with us because we didn’t like leaving it alone. The people who had lived there before us couldn’t stay, and we heard later that children who slept there after we left had the clothes ripped right off their beds. When we were there I provided meals for lumbermen and sometimes the men slept there. It was a big house and in good repair. One night there were so many of these men that the place was full and some of them had to sleep on the floor. They were still awake when a sound disturbed them and, from the one dim light that was kept burning, they saw six men in old-fashioned clothes walking through the house. They used to say too that at milking time people would hear the tinkling sound of cowbells, and several nights when the men were playing cards the door would open and shut with no wind, a stout latch, and no person to touch it.”

  There are people who get used to sounds made in their homes by phantom visitors and look upon their arrival as a sign of good fortune. At East Ferry near Tiverton one house had an occasional welcome ghost of this kind and another, where a man lived alone, had one that was there most of the time. It was company for him and, although they never talked together, he was glad to have him around.

  Such cases are the exception and certainly did not apply to a house in a residential section of Halifax. About seventy years ago a well-known family named Tuttle lived there. Miss Tuttle, who was elderly at the time she talked to me, remembered as a child being in a room and something white going through it which left a cold breath of air in its wake. She was old enough at the time to notice when this happened that the older women in the house were very frightened. When she grew older, her mother told her that the fire tongs were often moved about in that house and that in one room they were particularly active. Also that often she had no sooner put the children to bed than the clothes would be off them, but not cast aside as a child would do. This was a frequent occurrence. (I often pass this house today and wonder if these things still happen. I doubt it, for it has been occupied continuously and has a prosperous look.)

  The cold breath of air left behind by the figure in white reminds me of an Oyster Pond house and an icy hand felt there. “My daughter and her husband had a rented house. They had a little boy and they wanted me to stay with him one evening while they went to a big supper and dance at Head Jeddore. It was a rainy night and I didn’t like being there alone so I told them to be sure to shut all the doors and windows and, when they left, I tried them to see that this had been done.

  It was some time before the baby went to sleep but, after I’d got him settled, I thought I’d lay down on the couch in the kitchen beside him. After I’d been there just a little while, and be
fore I’d had time to fall asleep, there was a hand like ice came over my face. I opened my eyes and it went swish into the next room and over the piano. I got up and thought, ‘What can that be?’ I didn’t think of a ghost, but I was very frightened and I got the baby ready to leave in case we had to get out for any reason. When the young people came home at twelve o’clock and I went to let them in, my teeth were chattering. Jack said, ‘You’re cold. Why didn’t you keep the fire going?’ I didn’t tell them what happened but I had to sleep there because it was pouring rain, and the room I slept in was just above the dining-room where the icy hand had seemed to come from.

  “Soon after that I was at Aunt Lide’s house. She was going there to stay and I said, ‘Aunt Lide, I wouldn’t be you and stay in that house tonight,’ and her daughter said, ‘Aunt Jessie, what did you see?’ I told them and then Aunt Lide told what had happened to her one time when she was there. She said she was sitting by the window and the window pane took to shaking. Her hand was steady, so she tried holding it against the window but the pane still shook. She said the same thing had happened one night when Elsie and Jack were there alone, while, at the same time, the pump kept running and nothing they could do would stop it. The house had a name of people moving out almost as fast as they moved in and somebody asked the owner one time why that was.