Bluenose Ghosts

by Helen Creighton

  Miss Swim nodded her head in agreement, for she too knew the story well. It had often been told on the island.

  At Marion Bridge on Cape Breton Island, they told of a child’s death and of the tapping noise of the coffin maker being heard before the fatal brain fever had even begun. Another story came from a Mrs. McGillivray who had spent most of her life in this pleasant village.

  “Father was a builder and was working away from home, and mother was expecting him to finish his work and come back. She would not have been surprised if he came at any minute. One bright moonlight night she was sitting in her rocking chair with one ear cocked expectantly when she heard wagon wheels outside. Then everything was quiet until she heard him take the butt of the whip and give three strokes on the door, but he didn’t come in. She went to the door to open it for him, supposing he might be carrying a load and didn’t have a free hand, but there was no one there. She went out to the barn then, but the horse and wagon were not there, and apparently had not come into the yard at all. She was very alarmed then, thinking something must have happened to my father. Everybody knew what three knocks meant and nobody at the door when it was opened, so it was with a feeling of great relief that she heard his wagon wheels very soon afterwards, and saw him in the flesh as he appeared in his usual good health and spirits.

  “My mother puzzled over this and wondered what it meant, and later it was explained to her. At that time the body of a man was found up the Salmon River Road. The men who found it stopped at our house to change horses.They arrived at night, and at the very hour when she had heard them before, and they came to the kitchen door and knocked with the butt of the whip three times. Everything was repeated.”

  Forerunners come sometimes as a kindly form of preparation where the shock of sudden death might be too great. An Amherst couple, for instance, lived happily together, and both were in excellent health. There was no reason to suppose any change would come to alter their unruffled lives. The house they lived in was very old and had bolts to fasten the doors. One night Rachel and her husband went to their room and he bolted the door as he always did. They were no sooner settled than she asked him to shut the door. He said, “I did.” She said, “It’s open,” so he got up and closed it a second time. Once more they prepared themselves for sleep when again Rachel pointed out that the door was open. This time after closing it he got back in bed, but crawled in beside her and shivered and shook. She said, “What did you see?” but he refused to tell her. Finding him so greatly upset, and not being able to discover the reason, she appealed to her brother for help. “No,” her husband said, “I won’t tell you now, but if it ever comes to pass I’ll tell you then.” The next day Rachel took sick and a few days later she died and it was all very sudden and distressing. She was laid out in a white dress and, when her husband saw her like this, he said,

  “There, that’s what I saw. Yes, I saw her laid out in her grave clothes.”

  Sometimes it is puzzling to know why a man will not try to avoid his fate, and some stories leave us with many questions unanswered. A young man in Caledonia was going down the Brookfield mine one day, and he came to say good-bye to his mother and aunt. He said, “I’ll never see you again. I know I’m not coming out of the mine alive.” They told him not to be silly, but that day he was killed. Nobody knew what form his warning had taken.

  There are other forerunners however that have actually prevented disaster, particularly with men going to sea. At Jordan Falls the story is told of a vessel that was supposed to sail out of Shelburne with a crew of eighteen or twenty men. One Ephraim Doane was lying in his berth when he heard the mainmast fall. He got up to investigate and found the mainmast intact, so he took this as a warning, and the vessel sailed to Boston without him. It was December of 1888 and there was a great gale. The ship was lost off the New England coast with all hands, but the man who had heard the mainmast fall was spared.

  At Liverpool Captain Godfrey’s wife told me a strange story. “My husband was in his bunk ready to go to sea when first thing a bundle of papers came flying across the room and hit him. He thought his mate was having some fun, but he turned over and there was a blaze of fire the size of a man in the centre of the floor. A voice said, ‘Don’t go in this ship or you’ll be lost. If you don’t go you’ll live to be an old man and you’ll die at home,’ so the next day he packed up and left the ship, but of course nobody knew why. They got a new captain and the ship sailed and was never heard of again. After that he sailed on ships all over the world and it was just as the voice said. When he died he was an old man, and he died at home in his bed.”

  A warning told to me at Paddy’s Head, a fishing village on the south shore, has a less dramatic ending because there is no telling whether it was really a warning or not. “At Aspatogan there were two fellows trying to get squid for bait, and there was a boat there from Tancook Island. They are great fishermen at Tancook. They asked the Tancookers if they had been out in the big summer storm and they said no, they hadn’t. They said the reason they didn’t go was that their father had seen a man who had been drowned before that walking on the water, and the next day his brother had seen him too. They took this as a warning and stayed home.”

  Pubnico is an Acadian French settlement farther down the southwestern shore. One time a Pubniconian was on a ship in Shelburne and was planning to sail. A vision of his mother appeared and told him not to sail. It was so vivid that he jumped overboard and swam to shore. On that trip the ship was lost and all hands perished.

  It seems unfortunate that warnings may come and not be recognized as such. The argument against this might well be that if we were looking for them all the time we would always be imagining them. But the following story would have had a different ending if the significance of the startling events had been realized.

  Mrs. Ethel Morris of West Gore told me that an antimony mine used to be worked there. A Mr. and Mrs. Wallace had a boarding house at the top of Antimony Hill, and there were twelve or fifteen men living there. At two o’clock one morning there was a loud knock at the front door, an unusual circumstance in this quiet, peaceful inland village. A miner, Tom Weatherhead, said he would answer it so the Wallaces would not be disturbed but, when he got to the door, there was no one there. The knock had awakened the whole household. He went back to bed and a second knock came, and again he opened the door and found no one there. This time he walked all around the house and called, but nobody answered him. It happened a third time. His brother Jim took this one, but with the same result. The next night at two a.m. the mine caved in. Tom was killed and Jim was injured. Talking it over afterwards, nobody could account for the knocks unless they were a warning.

  It is quite apparent that some people are more sensitive to impressions than others, although people who have little belief in the supernatural confess to experiences that are nothing less. A friend of mine when in New York went to a drug store for medicine for her dying father, and suddenly felt his handclasp on her arm. At the same time her watch stopped. This proved to be the very moment of his death. Communications from loved ones who are dying or in great trouble may therefore come in the centre of a city’s traffic, or on a remote country road.

  “Rod and Hector were brothers who lived in Scotsburn, Pictou County. One day Rod was working on a bridge when a big timber slipped and the supports came down. When he realized how seriously he was injured he said to himself, ‘We’ll have to get Hector for this.’ At that identical moment Hector was driving to Pictou which meant that he was going in the opposite direction, and away from Scotsburn. Suddenly he felt a wall ahead of him, and he said to himself, ‘Rod needs me.’ The feeling was so strong that he turned back and on the way he picked up a friend. The friend could see his anxiety and said, ‘What’s the matter?’ Hector said, ‘I don’t know,’ and told him his feeling. Neither questioned what he was doing, nor were they greatly surprised to arrive at the house just as Rod was being carried in.”

  Another story where the
family tie was very strong came from the same county. “A man and his wife arose one morning and set out for the house of their daughter Mary without the slightest idea of why they were going. As they approached her house they met a friend who said, ‘I’m so glad you’ve come. Isn’t it too bad about Mary.’ ‘What happened?’ they asked. ‘Didn’t you know? She went to bed last night as well as we are and died in her sleep.’ ”

  You may wonder how people recognize a phenomenon. It is difficult to explain and I suppose it needs to be experienced to be fully comprehended. I expect that in most cases it comes as it does to me, not as a telling by a voice that is heard, nor as a sign by anything that is seen. I can only describe it as a knowing. It is conveyed by some strange means of communication or transference of thought, and is so strong that the recipient has no doubt of its veracity.

  People of Celtic descent, like those in our last two stories, seem to have an understanding of the occult that is denied to the rest of us and, because of this, we have a warm and tender story from Marion Bridge.

  Mrs. Allen Morrison was deeply attached to a neighbour’s baby, particularly as she had always felt it had been born blind. One evening between six and seven she was milking and had the milk pail in her lap. While the milk was flowing into the pail, encouraged by her gentle, competent fingers she saw a round red ball of fire coming in the barn door. She watched it and it came towards her and finally lodged in her lap. She freed her hand to push it to one side but at that moment it floated away. She waited, recognizing it as a forerunner, but for whom was it meant? She expected to see it go to her own old home where her elderly parents lived, but it changed its course and went to the Munroe house where the baby lived.

  She finished milking and went home. She put on a clean dress and then went to the Munroe’s house. They were accustomed to having her come in like this, particularly then because the baby had been ailing. She said nothing of the forerunner, but picked the child up and held it in her lap, ready to do anything that was required. The little one’s short life was closing in, and in an hour the child stopped breathing. Who can say that in her loving kindness Mrs. Morrison was not guided to that house to care for that baby in its last moments? The mother, not realizing the seriousness of the illness might well have let it die unattended in its crib. Surely some higher power must have directed the course of the red ball to the one person who would recognize its purpose and would have the courage and greatness of heart to do its bidding.

  If the young man in our next story had been of Scottish instead of German descent, he might have been better prepared for the following tragedy. He was coming from Petite Rivière to his home at Broad Cove one foggy night when he saw a woman alongside the road and, as he described it, she was a mass of fire. One night shortly after that, when his mother was going to bed, he heard her scream. He hastily flung open her door and found her a mass of flame. He tried to save her and was badly burned, but his help was too late. The lamp she was carrying must have overturned and set fire to her night clothes.

  An incident from an Irish source came to me on my first visit to Devil’s Island at the mouth of Halifax Harbour where I had gone looking for folk songs. The teller was old “Aunt Jane” Henneberry, and she repeated it on every possible occasion, sitting in her rocking-chair beside the kitchen window, looking out to sea.

  “What I’m going to tell you now happened as true as I’m a-settin’ here, and it happened just two weeks before the accident. (You will notice that this forerunner is of an accident, and not of death.) I looked up and there, standing in the doorway I seen the figure of a man. Not a man I’d ever seen before. No, no, he wasn’t anybody I’d ever seen, but there he was just as plain as could be, and I knew that as long as ever I’d live I’d never forget the look of him. And besides, I thought to myself as soon as I’d seen him, ‘There now, that man is a doctor.’ I told th’ island people about it, and I says, ‘There’s going to be an accident. It’s a forerunner, that’s what it is,’ and do you know, it wasn’t two weeks later that my Jim had his leg broken off in an ice jam.

  “What a day it was. The ice never was in like that before nor since, not since the world first began. It was mountains high and it was blue right through. He was brought home and the doctors were sent for right away. It was a bad case, so not only one doctor came, but there was three of them. One was Dr. Cunningham from Dartmouth, the second man I’d seen before, but the third— now this is the truth I’m tellin’ you. As soon as I seen the third I almost screamed. He was the very man I’d seen in this very room just two short weeks before.That is what we call a forerunner.”

  Another story from Devil’s Island, also from an Irish source, came from Mr. Ben Henneberry, one of the best folk singers I have ever found. He said he was coming home from fishing one day when he saw a log in the water ahead of his boat. As he drew nearer it seemed to sink deeper in the water and, as he came along beside it, the log seemed to change to a plaid shawl. He was going to gaff it when it went pffff and disappeared. His son Edmund was with him at the time, and both were very much frightened. I had known Mr. Henneberry many years before he shared this strange experience with me. Three days later his wife died in childbirth.

  The Acadian French at West Pubnico have their forerunners too, although experiences of this kind are far less common here. During the Second World War one of their young men was serving overseas and his mother at home was a semi-invalid. One night a soldier came to her bedroom and she saw him only from the waist up. She was sure she was not sleeping, but she kept the vision to herself and slept fitfully, awakening with a lump in her throat, for she realized its meaning. The family could see that she was worrying about something but they could not think what was on her mind. Less than a fortnight later the news of her boy’s death arrived by telegram. It was a great shock to the rest of the family, but she was prepared. It was then that she told the priest. The story has been related in the village in hushed tones ever since.

  Here, too, a priest heard three knocks at three a.m. shortly before being called to a deathbed. More unusual however, was this event.

  “One night my father was seeing a girl home. Her name was La Belle Frances. They saw a light in the marshes and she said to him, ‘That light is for me,’ meaning that it was her forerunner. He paid little attention at the time for she seemed perfectly well, but in three weeks that girl was dead.”

  A story came to me by way of Pubnico that has nothing to do with the French; it just happened to be known there. The people involved are probably of English extraction. They said that the girl in the story belonged to a very good-living family, and that they lived in Halifax. At the time, her brother Willie was serving overseas. She was awakened one night by the sound of the doorbell ringing, and she went downstairs to answer it. Her brother was standing in the doorway and he said, “My work is done. I’ve done what I have to do.”Then he was gone.

  Meanwhile her father had heard the sound of the door being opened and, when he saw his daughter he was angry. What was she thinking of to open the door to whatever stranger might be there at three a.m.? She surprised him by saying, “Willie was just here. I’ve been talking to him and he said his work was done.” Her father thought she must have been dreaming and had walked in her sleep, but the next morning a telegram arrived telling of the boy’s death. The story had been told to a Pubnico girl who was working in Halifax. My informants did not know the name of the girl in Halifax.

  A story from an English source goes like this. Many years ago when people used to travel by ox team many miles to Halifax, a couple and their child broke their journey and put up for the night at Three Mile Plains. The mother developed toothache during the night, and her husband got up and went to the team for a bottle of liniment. As he went through one room he saw a woman in white sitting nursing a baby and supposed it was his sister-in-law who lived there. Then he realized he could hear her breathing in her sleep in the next room, so he woke her and asked what it meant. She awoke the whole househo
ld then which consisted not only of themselves, but a number of men who were staying there for the night. Some of them saw this woman go into the blacksmith’s shop across the road. They followed her and discovered that the shop had only one entrance. They went through the door but the woman and child were not to be found then or at any other time. Within a week the baby in the house died. They concluded that this must have been the forerunner of that event.

  Mrs. Bishop who lives on the Broom Road at Westphal is a dear, motherly woman to whom many people turn for comfort and encouragement. One of these was a bachelor who suffered from a heart ailment and high blood pressure. About five years ago Mrs. Bishop had retired for the night and was reading in bed when suddenly everything in the house became very quiet as it does sometimes just before something happens. She kept expecting a rap on the door or a telephone call, and the tension lasted a good fifteen minutes. At that time the young man was presumably on his way to see her, but was stricken on the ferry, lost his balance, fell in the harbour, and was drowned.

  Occasionally a forerunner is heard at two places at the same time, although this is unusual. It happened at Clam Harbour when one of the Stoddard men died. A few of his friends were sitting in the Russell home when they heard a man open the porch door, start to come in, and stop. When Mr. Russell went to investigate there was no one there. The same thing happened at another house in the settlement at the same time. The victim had died in his car either from carbon monoxide poisoning or from a heart attack. Death was sudden.

  More extraordinary is a report from Cornwall in Lunenburg County of three forerunners in one evening. “There was an old soldier who had not completed arrangements about his cemetery lot before he died, although he had been working on it.The night he died a man was seen coming to a house carrying a lantern but when he failed to enter, an examination was made and there were no footmarks on the soft earth outside. The same night a car drove to a neighbour’s house and went away, and again there were no tracks. The third incident was a light which appeared to lumbermen in the woods at about the same time. Putting all these things together, these people concluded that the old soldier must have been very restless before his death, and had probably wanted to get in touch with his friends.”