Wicked Woods

by Steve Vernon

  “He backs into camp these days,” his loggers noted, “and he carries an axe wherever he goes. It’s like he thinks somebody is following him around, getting set to sneak up on him.”

  The funny thing was William never seemed to get around to selling that mare. Maybe he was just too lazy or maybe he had grown used to the horse, but neither of those explanations seems anywhere close to likely.

  Then there were the sounds heard coming from up on the hill.

  Some nights, folks would hear chopping, like William was try–ing to hack a big old tree down. Then there were other nights when they heard hoofbeats galloping across the property.

  “It’s that white mare,” some said. “McGeorge rides it around and around the fence of his hill, like he was trying to outrun something a whole lot faster than speed ever dreamed.”

  “He’s trying to outrun the devil,” others said.

  Then came the night when they heard screaming coming down from the hill. Nothing human could have made such a sound, and it was awhile before the stalwarts of the town worked up enough nerve to march up the hill to see what the bother was.

  “We got there and it was something you wouldn’t believe,” said the town constable. “Big William McGeorge was huddled in his barn crying like a little baby over a bloodied up axe. He’d cut that fine white mare into more pieces than I want to think about. Rendered her down to stew meat size. Where’s the sense in that I ask you?”

  Three nights later there was one more scream, cut off short and sharp.

  The constable grudgingly led a few more townsfolk up that old hill of McGeorge’s.

  They found William McGeorge right where they’d left him, hunkered down in his barn and clinging onto the axe, his finger–nails dug deep into the grain of the wood. He was stone cold dead and no one could tell just how he’d died.

  “I guess he finally got counted,” was all that the constable would say.

  Shortly after that, folks began referring to that hill as Ghost Hill —it’s been called that ever since and I guess it always will.

  Sometimes folks hear that chopping sound, like an axe work–ing into something hard and soft and wet, all at the same time. Sometimes folks hear a mare galloping around and around in the night.

  They blame it on the wind. They blame it on nerves. They blame it on everything but the truth. The truth is nobody ever goes up that hill, except maybe a child or two on a dare from their friends and even they don’t stay up there all that long.

  And who could blame them?

  18

  THE

  UNIVERSITY GHOST

  FREDERICTON

  Fredericton is one of the prettiest cities in New Brunswick. The streets are bus–tling, business is booming, and there’s always something interesting going on.

  There were people living where Fredericton now stands long before it officially became a city. The Mi’kmaq and Maliseet used the area for farm–ing centuries before the first white man rowed into the Bay of Fundy. However, that all changed in the winter of 1692, when Joseph de Villebon, the governor of French Acadia, raised a fort on the southwest tip of the intersection of the St. John and Nashwaak rivers.

  He began constructing the fort on March 18, 1692. It was the eve of Saint Joseph’s Day, when the patron saint of carpenters is honoured. The fort’s design was simple—it was a square-shaped palisade made of six hundred pieces of timber with a diamond-shaped tower at each corner. The towers allowed the defending forces to fire upon attack–ers from three sides, no matter which direction they came from.

  The fort was named Fort Saint-Joseph, or Fort Villebon, or Fort Nashwaak, depending on whom you spoke to. Joseph de Villebon was a fine soldier and a good governor to all reports, given to a bit of joie de vivre excess. During one celebration he had fifty kilograms of gunpowder burned to add a little bang to the bonfire, and spent the evening toasting the good health of both his mistress and his wife from a keg of fine wine, although he never toasted one when the other was within earshot.

  Following Villebon’s death, the fort was abandoned to the ren–ovations of fate and time. Since then erosion and flooding have swallowed the fort’s original site, which now lies beneath the bed of the St. John River.

  The Fredericton area was first permanently settled and named Pointe-Sainte-Anne, or Ste. Anne’s Point, in 1732 by Acadians fleeing Nova Scotia following the expulsion. They settled on the south side of the St. John River, a couple of kilometres upriver from the site of Fort Nashwaak. The British captured Ste. Anne’s Point in 1755 and burned the settlement to the ground. Over the years the site was warred over unsuccessfully by the Acadians, the Aboriginal populace and the British.

  In 1784 New Brunswick became a separate colony from Nova Scotia and it was decided that Ste. Anne’s Point was the logical choice for a provincial capital. Its central location was easily accessible to the people of New Brunswick. Besides, it was far enough from the border to keep it safe from an American inva–sion. One had to consider these possibilities back then. The town was renamed Frederick’s Town, in honour of Prince Frederick Augustus, Duke of York, the second son of King George iii. They shortened the name to Fredericton and the rest is history. A his–tory that is undoubtedly full of ghosts. At least one of these ghosts can be found in the halls of St. Thomas University.

  The older folks of this area can tell you of a large grey resi–dence building on Waterloo Row that was haunted by a piano-playing ghost. She didn’t play that badly, so the story goes, but her sense of timing left much to be desired. She was fond of banging the old residence piano at two in the morning, regardless of mid-terms or exams or the dangers of a Sunday morning following a Saturday night shindig.

  Martin Morris, who at the time was serving as the don of the residence, reported seeing this spirit. Martin had been sleeping and was awoken by the sounds of piano music coming from the lower hall. He stomped angrily downstairs, assuming he was going to find a couple of frat boys, three sheets to the wind, showing off on the keyboards for their own amusement.

  “Whoever is making all this noise is definitely going on report,”

  Martin said as he turned the corner and stepped into the room. Only there wasn’t a frat boy in sight. Instead, he saw a woman in a long, flowing grey nightgown that looked as if it might have been made out of clouds and smoke.

  She didn’t seem to notice his arrival. Martin stood there, petri–fied with terror. Sweat began to soak his armpits and a swarm of goosebumps crawled up and down his back. He felt the strands of his hair rise up, one by one.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  The woman didn’t say a word. She just kept on playing a sad and lonely tune that the young man couldn’t recognize. He felt as if he should know the name of the melody, yet for the life of him he couldn’t place it.

  “This is a men’s residence,” Martin said. “You’re not supposed to be in here at this time of night.”

  It was a long reach and Martin knew it. He was grabbing for whatever made sense because he didn’t want to consider the possibility that she might be more than an ordinary woman. Sometimes that’s a little easier than actually admitting you might be in the presence of the impossible.

  The woman kept playing on.

  “Do you know any other tunes?” Martin asked. “Something a little livelier, say maybe a jig?”

  He felt as if he would laugh or scream, and he wasn’t sure which reaction he’d give in to.

  Just then another resident, Ansel Kutter, a young Moncton lad who had aspirations of the priesthood, stepped into the room. He saw the don, and he saw the spectral woman playing the piano, and he didn’t hesitate for an instant.

  “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” he shouted, making the sign of the cross in mid-air. “I command you to tell me who you are, and to state your purpose.”

  And just as easy as a summer breeze, the spectre turned around and smiled at the two trembling men. “My name is Loretta Duncan,” she said, and
with that she vanished like a candle blowing out.

  The next evening Martin and Ansel felt ready for anything. They stood in the darkness of the room, watching the piano closely.

  “Will she turn up?” Martin wondered.

  “Shhh,” Ansel warned. He seemed the stronger of the two, but the fact was that Ansel was as frightened as Martin.

  Only the woman didn’t show.

  “Perhaps she isn’t coming,” Martin said.

  And with that, the piano began to glow softly, like the flicker of a dying campfire.

  Ansel opened his mouth, but closed it without saying anything, too frightened to speak.

  And then all at once the piano began to play by itself, like one of those old player pianos. The music was so hauntingly sad that both men felt tears come to their eyes. Ansel and Martin drew closer, trying to get a better look. They could see a shape now, vaguely human, more of a light than anything else, sitting upon the piano bench and playing.

  Martin felt a strange compulsion, like a whistle that only a dog could hear, but had to obey. Martin stepped forward, feeling completely out of control. He sat at the piano and began to play.

  Ansel stared at his friend sitting there playing with the soft glow of the woman’s shape flickering around him.

  “It was as if she were wearing him like a borrowed suit of clothes,” Ansel said afterwards.

  Within moments, tears were streaming from Martin’s eyes. He was terrified, but for the life of him he couldn’t stop playing.

  Ansel began to say the Lord’s Prayer over and over, hoping to ward off the evil spirit but nothing seemed to help. Furniture moved of its own accord. A desk slid across the floor. A closet door opened and slammed shut repeatedly although Ansel could see no one in sight.

  Martin continued to play, coaxing notes from the old keyboard, the tears raining down his face. After a time he stopped playing.

  He sat there at the keyboard, sobbing mutely.

  “What’s wrong?” Ansel asked. “What happened?”

  Martin turned towards Ansel. His eyes were stark and hollow with sorrow and a little terror.

  “He never writes,” Martin said. “She waits and she waits, but he never writes.”

  And that’s all he would say. Days later he could barely remem–ber the experience, or perhaps he merely didn’t want to. The piano was moved into the basement and eventually to a second-hand store. The spirit continued to haunt the residence, some–times pushing furniture about and sometimes slamming doors.

  Neighbourhood dogs would bark uncontrollably as they passed the building.

  Folks believed that the spirit haunted this residence for a rea–son, but the reasons given often varied. Some believed the spirit was a mother waiting for word of her missing son. Others swore it was a heartbroken lover just waiting for a letter from the one who had broken her heart. It is said that the sound of a piano can still be heard on certain nights and that the spirit who walks these lonely college halls will never be at rest.

  19

  THE HOWLING

  GHOST OF

  HOWLAND RIDGE

  HOWLAND RIDGE

  Back in the day folks told an awful lot of ghost stories, mostly to keep their minds off the reality and terror of the world they lived in. There were just so many things to be frightened of. Tuberculosis was a big one. Back then, if somebody developed a case of tuberculosis it was time to dim the lamps, hang a black wreath on the door, and call for a preacher. They just didn’t have the medicines or the doctors or the hospitals that we have today.

  Back then, a case of tuberculosis meant you tucked your toes into bed and sucked on a bottle of laudanum, a painkilling concoction made from a mixture of opium and alcohol, likely to numb your senses as well as your aches. You waited for time to pass, and tried to while it away as well as you could.

  In the little town of Howland Ridge, about thirty kilometres east of Woodstock, there lived a family by the name of Whitlock. Their oldest boy, Sam, caught himself a chill logging by the Keswick Stream, and it led to pneumonia and the onset of tuberculosis.

  “Poor lad,” folks said. “He’s nothing but a lunger.”

  Now a lunger was what people called tuberculosis sufferers, and it was kind of a short way of saying that someone was not long for this world.

  Poor Sam took to his bed and only ventured out to the front porch of his family home. He’d sit huddled on his grey willow rocking chair, wrapped in a grey railroad blanket, looking down the hill at the town he’d grown up in, wondering to himself if he’d see one more year. He did his best to keep his spirits up, grinning when he could and chuckling whenever he had the wind. Yes sir and yes ma’am, folks always did say Sam Whitlock had himself one heck of a sense of humour.

  Now folks didn’t come around to the Whitlock home that year, on account of they were afraid that the tuberculosis might be catching. Naturally, Sam wasn’t allowed to go out amongst the public for fear that he might accidentally cough or breathe or spit blood on someone else. So when a group of local loggers spot–ted what looked to be young Sam Whitlock out strolling through the middle of a logjam in the heart of the Keswick Stream, they were so surprised you could have hung a handful of hats on their bugged out eyes.

  “He was standing there, right in the thick of things,” one old logger said. “Big and bold as Johnny-you-please. We’d been beating on this logjam with peavies and long poles, trying to free it up to run only we weren’t having much luck, you under–stand. The felled trees were jammed up tight. We’d about given up on the whole notion when somebody noticed young Sam Whitlock standing out there on a felled pine in the middle of the stream.”

  Those who’d seen him described him as being unusually tall and stick-like and strangely insubstantial.

  “He looked a little like his bones and meat were poured together with smoke and seafoam,” another witness said. “Like he was there and not there, like a dream you’re remembering over a glass of strong rum.”

  However Sam Whitlock never left his home that day. In fact, he was lying on his deathbed, gasping painfully through his last few breaths.

  At the end of it, he grinned and tried his best for one more joke. “Well boys, I guess I’ll go out with a howl,” and then he drew in his breath to make one last whoop, only they say he choked up and couldn’t let the breath back out. His face turned blue like a winter moon, and his cheeks billowed out like wind strained sails, and then all at once the strength ran out of Sam Whitlock and he up and died.

  That was right about when the logjam that was blocking up the Keswick Stream let go. The felled timbers that were clogged in the water tumbled free and ran down towards the mill. The watching lumbermen whooped for joy. Folks said they could hear the echo clear into the town.

  People in the Howland Ridge area will also tell a tale of how hunters have seen the ghost of Sam Whitlock howling like a New Brunswick panther through the woods, not as loud as the Dungarvon Whooper, but loud enough to send a herd of goose–bumps galloping up a grown man’s backbone. Woodsmen have seen a grey figure moving through the woods, and when they try to approach, he disappears.

  “All grey and hazy,” they’ll tell you. “Like he was made out of smoke and seafoam.”

  They tell this story in Howland Ridge sometime after the rum has been poured — and they always tell it soft, in a whisper, just in case the ghost of Sam Whitlock happens to be listening nearby.

  20

  THE DARK

  CHUCKLE

  LOWER WOODSTOCK

  Some folks claim that laughter is one of the finest tonics known to man, but in the town of Lower Woodstock, New Brunswick, a chuckle might very well be an omen of impending doom.

  The town of Woodstock lies at the mouth of the Meduxnekeag River where it flows into the St. John River. Medux-nekeag is taken from the Maliseet word for “rough and rocky at its mouth,” and any–one who has ever tried to say Meduxne-keag River five times fast, will certainly agree with that translation. Just try
and see how rough and rocky it is in your mouth.

  The town was originally settled by Loyalists following the American War of Independence. It is the oldest incorpo–20 rated town in New Brunswick, achieving this status way back in 1856. The town was officially divided into three separate sections —the Upper Corner, the Creek Village, and Lower Woodstock.

  For many years, the Maliseet who lived on the old Lower Woodstock reservation lived in fear of the sound of laughter. Not just any laughter, mind you. It was a certain eerie chuckle heard on nights when the moon was clear and bright. The Maliseet swore they could hear the chuckle, low and raspy like a creaking coffin hinge, and anyone who heard it knew that before the night was out a member of the tribe would die.

  And die they would, whether of sickness, or drowning on the Meduxnekeag River, or in some hunting accident. The chuckle might bring on a fishing accident, or a murder, or just the slow and creaking slip of old age. Nothing and nobody was safe. Any time a Maliseet heard that croaking, creaking chuckle, they would shiver and prepare to mourn.

  It was “a very weird sound, almost guttural, like a duck being choked,” reported Dr. Peter Paul of Lower Woodstock. “After a death, someone would always remark that they had heard the chuckle three or four days before.”

  This carried on throughout the late nineteenth century and into the early twentieth. Only a startling, gruesome discovery brought an end to the eerie New Brunswick forerunner.

  In 1930, a local demolition crew tearing down an old abandoned house came across a small collection of animal bones on the prop–erty. As they continued to root and dig they found a human skull, and realized that the bones were in fact human in origin.