by Steve Vernon
Big Ears and Big Feet
Over the last century there have been many reported sightings of a gigantic humanoid with long shaggy fur in the forests around Capstick. The Mi’kmaq even have a word for this beast—they call it “Se’skwetew,” which literally translates to “one who screams loudly.”
The Capstick Bigfoot has been described as an eight-foot-tall ape-like beast with long dangling arms that reach to his kneecaps, a tangle of snarled dirty hair, large brown soulful eyes, and a pair of long ears that stick out from his head like open car doors. Local storytellers say that the beast has been spotted off and on in these parts ever since the coal mines began blasting and drilling in the area.
Did early miners unintentionally wake something from a deep prehistoric subterranean hibernation? Are those long car-door ears sensitive to the loud blasting? In any case, an awful lot of people have seen the Capstick Bigfoot over the years. Several have nearly run it over while driving their vehicles. Others have complained about losing their hunting spoils to it.
“I had a big buck winched up in a tree,” one old hunter claimed. “We had it way out on the end of a sturdy limb, tied and wrapped in an old bedsheet to keep the horseflies from off the meat. My buddy was going to bring his four-wheeler around to help haul the carcass home but the next morning when we got there the deer was gone. The winch was there, each knot untangled. There was no way a bear could have done something like that. There was also no way anybody else would have stumbled across that deer carcass, hung that high. No, sir, it was something else that took that meat.”
Rabbit snares have been emptied and camp coolers cleaned out. Some of these occurrences should likely be blamed on bears and raccoons. Some of them should be blamed on vandals and thieves. But the fact is it takes an awful lot to feed a full-grown Bigfoot.
Even so, hunters who have encountered the Capstick Bigfoot have not felt the need to shoot it. One look at those soulful brown eyes is usually enough to discourage them from taking the shot. By all reports, the beast’s gaze looks far too human for anyone to have the heart to shoot him.
Other local folk will tell you how the Capstick Bigfoot has helped them out in times of trouble. One man reported having a stuck truck pushed out of a muddy spot by a gigantic furry creature. Another camper swears that the Se’skwetew stacked up a large load of firewood for him as a favour.
So far there have no reports of the Capstick Bigfoot actually attacking anyone. It will come up behind a hunter or stand beside a roadway, but mostly it just seems to be watching.
According to recent sources, the beast has not been spotted in the Capstick area since the early 1990s, but the fact is the territory around these little coastal towns is still thick and primordially overgrown, and there could very easily be an entire family of these creatures still prowling the woods for forgotten coolers and “guddling” the rivers for trout. At least, that’s what Clancy would have you believe…
Clancy Sees the Capstick Bigfoot
Clancy was hungry and only a trout would do.
Back then, if a Highlander like Clancy wanted a trout, he didn’t go looking for any hook or fishing pole. You see, the Highlanders had themselves a trick for catching trout, more surefire and certain than any bait or lure you care to mention. And Clancy, even though he was born and raised in Capstick, was Highland to the bone. So Clancy knew just how to “guddle” a trout, as the Highlanders called it.
To successfully guddle a trout, or any other fish you care to mention, you first have to learn how to think like a trout, which is a pretty easy trick to accomplish because most fish don’t think, they just need. Just like any other living thing, a fish has certain undeniable needs that go a little beyond merely wanting. A fish needs food to eat. A fish needs shade to keep cool. A fish needs something to hide under to stay safe.
Clancy knew that all he had to do was find those three things and he’d be able to guddle himself a fish. So first he found himself a leafy birch tree leaning over a cool running brook. The leaves of the tree gave shade and the bugs that crawled and fell off of the leaves offered a good supply of fish food. Next Clancy knelt down on the rock ledge beneath the tree. The rock was a perfect thing for the fish to take shelter under to hide from predators.
Then Clancy leaned down and let his arm slip into the cold stream water. He kept still, thinking cool, calm tree-thoughts. Before too long, Clancy, in his mind, was nothing but a big old willow tree leaning down over a cool running stream.
He let his fingers hang and dangle. Then, when he felt something moving, he hooked his fingers slowly up underneath the rock. This was always a dangerous part of the procedure—you never knew when there might be a big old snapping turtle down there under the rock instead of the trout you were looking for.
Clancy let his fingers move and waver in the water like a fistful of weeds. He felt something skitter across his palm. It might have been a frog or a big old water bug. It might have been a root. It might have been a long skinny string of water weeds. It might even have been a streak of rock. But Clancy knew full well that what he was feeling wasn’t anything else but the tail of a fish.
He hoped it was a trout. It might have been a pickerel or a stickleback perch. He wouldn’t know for sure until he had it up on dry land.
He reached up his fingers, just a little, and he stroked the belly of the fish. It wriggled, enjoying the petting sensation. Clancy continued to let his fingers glide and stroke along the fish’s belly, moving upwards until he could feel the fringed hinge of the fish’s gill.
He was so close he could taste the trout. With one quick flick he had the fish’s gills snagged around his fingers. He raised the fish up out of the water, keeping his fingers hooked in as deeply as possible. The fish flapped and twisted, trying to break free, but Clancy brought its head down against the rock with a bang, knocking it stupid.
Clancy looked down at the fish and grinned so wide his teeth hurt. He had caught himself a fine fat trout and that would be dinner.
He was still grinning when he noticed how dark it had suddenly got. It felt as if he were lying in the middle of a total eclipse of the sun. He looked up and saw something standing over him, blotting out the sunlight with its shadow.
It was huge. Clancy had seen British Columbia totem poles that were shorter than this was. It was hairy, too. It looked as if it lived off a diet of sheep, hair balls, shaggy buffalo, and Highland cattle, so long and furry was its pelt. And it stank worse than a barrel of sun-fouled, maggoty fish.
I am going to die now, Clancy thought. I am going to get stepped on and eaten and whatever is left of me is most likely going to spill down into this cool running brook to feed the fish.
Only the Bigfoot did not step on Clancy. It knelt down beside him, poked its arm down into the water, and quicker than you could say the word “catch,” that big old Bigfoot had guddled himself up a trout nearly twice as long as Clancy’s.
And now it was the Bigfoot’s turn to grin.
He knelt there, grinning and gazing at Clancy with the biggest, most beautiful-looking pair of brown eyes Clancy had ever seen.
Clancy couldn’t help himself. He laughed out loud, even though another part of him was still certain that the trout would only serve as an appetizer to a Bigfoot-sized pot of stewed Clancy.
The Capstick Bigfoot stood up and blinked, slow like a big old barn cat winking in the sun. Then it turned around and walked into the woodlands, disappearing like eight feet of furry smoke.
The Capstick Bigfoot has not been seen in this area for some time, but there are still a lot of old-timers who believe that it is out there in the thick of the Cape Breton forest. And it’s most likely thinking about trout.
Mahone Bay (the body of water, not the town) reaches from New Harbour on the Aspotogan Peninsula in the west to the easternmost point of East Point Island. They say that there is an island in Mahone Bay for every day of the ye
ar. These islands come in every shape and size: there’s Sheep Island, Rousse Island, Squid Island, Gifford Island, Goat Island, Spectacle Island, Big Tancook Island, Little Tancook Island, Klungemache Island, Crow Island, and many more. Some of the islands are so small that they have never been given names. Some of the islands even disappear with the ebb and the flow of the tide, like ghosts.
But if you are looking to find yourself some stories in these islands, then by far the most legendary of them all has got to be the legend of the mysterious Oak Island Money Pit.
The Beginning
The story begins in the 1600s, when legend tells us that a very old sailor lay on his deathbed and spoke of how he was part of a group of sailors that had helped the dreaded pirate Captain William Kidd bury a horde of treasure on a small island in the gut of Mahone Bay. Oak Island.
“We were told to dig until we reached the gates of hell and then to dig a little deeper,” the old sailor explained. “It took us most of the summer. Once we had finished, we sailed away. They took us to another island where they massacred us. Of them all, only I survived.”
The story sank away into the depths of legend until 1795, when Daniel McGinnis and his two young friends Anthony Vaughan and Jack Smith paddled out to Oak Island and discovered a strange hollowed depression at the foot of a large oak tree. Younger new-growth oaks sprouted up around the large oak. When the three boys looked a little closer, they were amazed to spot a strangely shaped scar on the belly of the largest overhanging oak limb.
“It looks as if something has been dragged across the bark,” Anthony said.
“It reminds me of the grooves the well-rope makes on our old well’s windlass,” Jack observed. “Yes, sir, something has been roped around this oak limb for certain.”
“A horse?” Anthony asked.
“It’d have to be an awfully big horse to cut a groove like that in the bark,” Daniel pointed out. “I think something was lowered down right beneath this oak branch—like somebody was digging a well.”
“A well or a treasure pit,” said Anthony.
“All I see is dirt,” Jack said, scratching his head.
“Do you think it’s a gold mine?” Anthony asked Daniel. “Buried here underneath this oak tree?”
“Maybe gold,” Daniel said. “Maybe a treasure.”
“It looks more like a dirt mine to me,” Jack pointed out.
So the three of them fetched shovels and a pickaxe and began to dig a hole that would eventually become known as the Oak Island Money Pit. Just less then a metre down into the pit, the diggers unearthed a layer of flagstone, laid out as carefully as if someone had been laying out a courtyard.
“I’ve never seen stone like this on the island before,” Jack said.
“Keep on digging,” Daniel ordered.
Three metres down into the Money Pit, the young men came across some oaken planks, old and stained, but laid out just as neatly as a dance floor.
“It has got to be a sign of buried treasure,” Daniel said.
The three of them pulled the boards up and were surprised to discover there was nothing underneath but more dirt.
“Keep digging,” Anthony said.
None of them needed to be told twice. Treasure fever had taken hold of them hard and fast.
Three metres further found more oak boards. They ripped these up just as quickly.
“There’s no treasure here,” Anthony said. “No treasure chest either. As far as I can see there is nothing here but more dirt.”
“I knew it,” Jack said. “We’ve dug ourselves a dirt mine.”
“Keep on digging,” Anthony said.
So they kept on digging.
At nine metres they stopped.
“If we dig much farther, we aren’t coming back unless we hit China,” Daniel said.
So they marked the spot as best they could and covered up their work with a layer of fallen branches.
Six years later, the boys came back to the island. They had been busy over those years—paying for the title to the island, forming a small company, and raising the necessary capital to fund further excavation. This time they were ready.
Six Years Later
In 1804, the boys finally resumed their digging. Every three metres brought them to another layer of oaken planks, followed by a layer of hardened putty and a layer of matted coconut fibre. Just before they reached thirty metres they found a large flat stone, nearly a metre across, with strange hieroglyphic-like engraving upon it. At the thirty-metre mark they found their tenth layer of planks.
“Another seven or eight metres,” Jack joked. “And we’ll have enough planks to build us a barn to keep all this dirt in.”
“This has to be the last layer,” Anthony said. “The planks can’t go any deeper than this.”
Daniel wasn’t so certain.
But the boys never found out just how deep the oak planks were laid to, because the next morning when they awoke and lowered themselves down into the pit, they discovered that the pit had been flooded overnight with ten metres of pure salt water.
“I guess that puts us out of the dirt business,” Jack said. “We have gone and dug ourselves the world’s deepest swimming hole.”
Only nobody laughed.
“You get any funnier,” Daniel said. “And I may just grab up a pocketful of rocks, jump in, and drown myself.”
All the boys could think of doing was to try and dig another hole. They sunk a second shaft directly beside the Money Pit. Just before the thirty-metre level they found what looked to be an impenetrable wooden box, buried in another few metres of mud.
“It has to be the treasure,” Jack swore.
“Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t,” Daniel replied.
They never found out for sure. By the next morning the second tunnel had flooded up as well.
“We’re beat,” Daniel said.
And beat they were.
The three boys had spent all their collective savings without anything more to show for it but a heap of ancient, weathered oaken boards and half a dozen handfuls of hardened shovel callous.
“Look at the bright side,” Anthony said. “Perhaps we can go into business, and advertise ourselves as three well-experienced well-diggers.”
Oddly enough, no one laughed.
Jack Smith Refuses to Quit
Over the years Jack Smith continued to buy up pieces of the island, and in 1805 he made another attempt to unearth the Money Pit. Only this time he wasn’t digging for himself. Now he was working as a hired hand and consultant for the Onslow Company—a treasure-hunting expedition that had been professionally funded by several Nova Scotia shareholders willing to risk their investment for a chance at recovering a buried treasure.
Jack started by sinking a third shaft about four metres away from the Oak Island Money Pit. When Jack’s new crew had reached a depth of thirty-three metres, they dug directly towards the Money Pit, planning to reach the wooden box where they believed the treasure was hidden. But they’d only dug about three more metres downwards before the third tunnel was likewise flooded out.
The years wore on and Jack Smith remained desperately confident that he would find his treasure. In 1849, he formed a third expedition that reopened the original Money Pit and dug even deeper with the aid of a powerful auger drill, such as was used in the mining of Cape Breton coal. The third expedition constructed a platform at the nine-metre mark of the Money Pit and drilled five separate holes, each to a depth of thirty-four metres.
At thirty metres the drill came up against what seemed to be an impenetrable wooden box. The barrier was almost two metres thick and constructed of solid spruce wood. They bored through a layer of clay, another layer of oak planks, and more coconut fibre before eventually coming up with their first real evidence of treasure: three small links from what looked to have been a gold cha
in or possibly an officer’s gold epaulette, followed by fifty-six centimetres of solid metal.
“I knew it,” Jack said. “I knew we’d find gold here.”
They also discovered a strangely inscribed stone unlike any sort of stone that could be found in the area. In later years, the stone was examined by a Dalhousie University language professor, James Liechti. Professor Liechti used a variation of a very old and very simple substitution code and translated the inscription to read—“FORTY FEET BELOW TWO MILLION POUNDS ARE BURIED.”
Then it was discovered that there was a tunnel leading up to the dig site from a hitherto undiscovered man-made beach. It was this tunnel that was responsible for the flooding of all three shafts. Blocking the tunnel with clay and wooden stakes did not help at all, however. The shafts remained flooded with salt water. The water rose and receded with the tide, but it did not recede far enough to make any attempt at diving in and discovering the treasure worthwhile.
There were many further attempts to retrieve the treasure. Fruitless expedition followed fruitless expedition. Fortunes were poured away in a futile attempt to get to the bottom of the mystery of the Money Pit. When one bright treasure hunter thought to fill the Money Pit with red dye, a second flood tunnel was discovered. But plugging the second tunnel did not help either. It was believed that there was a third undiscovered flood tunnel, built as a booby trap by what had to be one of the most fiendish trap-builders of all time to foil would-be fortune hunters, but no one ever found it.
Further Searches
It would take a lot more room than what’s available here to detail each of the numerous expeditions to get to the bottom of the mystery of the Oak Island Money Pit. However, I will do my best to give you a general idea of the scope of the efforts that have been made since those three boys first began digging.
In 1858, the Colchester Company dug up to fifteen pits at the site, using a total of thirty horses to power a set of naval bilge pumps, to no avail. In 1861, that same company brought in a steam engine to aid the pumping. However, the island did not care for the use of such newfangled devices, and a short time after the steam engine was put into action a boiler explosion scalded one of the labourers to death and injured several others. The expedition ground to a halt as men began to talk of the very real possibility that the Oak Island Money Pit might be under some supernatural curse.
