Bluenose Ghosts

by Helen Creighton

  Our next story has a nautical flavour. Mr. Horace Johnston of Port Wade crossed one long leg over the other, knocked the tobacco out of his pipe on the wharf where we were sitting, waited for a moment while a sea gull swooped gracefully before our admiring eyes, cleared his throat, and began.

  “There was an old man named Capt. Gosse who settled in Maine and he went captain of ships in his earlier days. He rented a house and lived there all alone when he was ashore. He was sociable, but he didn’t want any person in his house. He was known to be a great card player and at night people could look through his window and see him playing with the cards, but no other man was playing with him; only a hand of cards.

  “One night when they were watching through the window they heard him betting. He had bet all the money he had at that time in his house, so it seemed as though the object they couldn’t see would want to knock off. About that time the captain had just got a vessel by the name of The Lively Nan and had shipped three men as crew.

  “‘Well,’ he says, ‘I’ll bet my vessel, myself, and my crew.’

  “A short time after that he went aboard his ship, him and the three other men, and they went to sea. Then one day they took a very bad breeze and thick stormy weather. A man on the lookout reported a ship going to collide with them and called all hands on deck. No matter what they did, the other ship kept coming till it hit them and, when it did, their ship was dismasted. It made a real wreck of her. The men were pitched overboard and they had to grab on to anything afloat to save themselves and finally they got on to a spar. There should have been three of them with the captain but, when they counted up, there were five of them on that spar. They drifted about till the sea washed them ashore but, when they landed, there were only the three members of the crew left. Capt. Gosse and the other man had disappeared. Looking around they found the old greasy pack of cards strewed over the beach. Capt. Gosse and the vessel were gone, and the man he had played cards with had won his bet. That man was the devil.”

  At Sangaree on the Mira River there used to be a resort where there was said to be “a lot of drinking and bad living.” Here, according to people who live nearby, the devil was seen at the bar, mixing with the crowd, and was recognized by the cloven hoof. Word sped through the building and the rooms were abandoned with such speed that in no time not a living soul was left. It was sold soon afterwards and its existence as a resort was over.

  When I was in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, I was advised to see the Minister of Industry, Mr. Dougald McKinnon. We talked of folk songs and legends, but we were interrupted many times by the ringing of the telephone as he was consulted about various important matters of state. As I sat there I wondered what the people at the other end of the line would think if they knew that the moment the receiver went down he was off on a story like this:

  “There was an old man who had a dread of playing cards and he wouldn’t allow them in his house. In his younger days he had gone to sea and he used to tell about it. He said he was a pretty godless man with his crew at one time and that, among other things, he played cards with them on Sunday, and he the captain of the ship. One Sunday when they were so employed they fought over the game and it got so bad that he took the cards away from the men. They were his own cards anyway, so he put them in his sea chest and locked them up.

  “That night he was awakened from his sleep and was surprised to see a man sitting on his sea chest. He was dealing cards, and he dealt four hands. Then the stranger saw that the captain was awake and asked him to sit in and have a game with him. Before he could make up his mind he looked at the man’s feet and saw the cloven hoof. He screamed and the stranger disappeared, and that was why he would have nothing more to do with playing cards.”

  So much for the devil as a card player. Let us see now how the Micmac Indians felt about him in a very different type of story. This was related by Louis Pictou, husband of Evangeline, whom we have met before.

  “Once upon a time there was an Indian village with about seventy-five or a hundred families. This was a very long time ago, and the place was beside a lake back of Bear River. In English the name would mean the place where you get beads. They trapped and fished and traded with each other.

  “There was a young couple like Vance (his wife) and I, just the two of them. No children. They got everything ready and lined up the traps, and the woman was just as good at that work as the man. First along they didn’t have too good luck. The man would take his traps and be gone all day, and the woman just the same, only they didn’t go together. They’d be gone all day and sometimes they’d come back with mink and otter and wild cat, so they went on like that, but they weren’t making too big a progress at it.

  “At last this woman got thinking some evil thoughts, and they claim she got in with the devil and she sinned this man. The devil told her that if she’d believe in him she could get all the game she wanted. Then the trouble started. She’d come home nights with all the fur she could carry, beaver and otter, and the man didn’t get very much, and he was a good hunter. At last he wondered why she was getting so much more than him so he asked her. She said it was just her luck, but he kinda thought it was more than luck. It went on, but she wouldn’t tell him.

  “They got through with their hunting and went back and he got to telling the chief, and the chief said, ‘If that’s the way she’s been acting there’s something more than luck and it ain’t good.’ The old chief got kinda scared about it, so he sent for her to have a talk with him, but it didn’t do any good. When she and her husband went back again trapping next fall they no sooner got their traps out than the same thing happened again. At last, as the time came for them to go home again, the man said to her, ‘We only got a few more days and then we got to quit.’ He talked and talked to her and coaxed her to tell him what made her have so much luck. Still she wouldn’t tell him.

  “At last one day it was dark and kinda rough weather and he told her not to go hunting, but she went, and that’s the last anybody ever saw of her. She never returned. He went back to the village and told them, so they got up a party and they hunted for her over the hills and the lakes but with no success and from that day to this they couldn’t imagine what had happened to her. But all the people thought that the devil had helped her with her trapping and then he had taken her. That happened before the French came to Nova Scotia, and it was told me by my old grandmother.”

  My appointment with Mr. John George Ferguson of Bay Head near Tatamagouche had been made for an early hour of the morning, or so it seemed to me. This is not my best time, but perhaps it was just as well that I got my story in the bright light of day. It was pleasant sitting on the verandah of his farmhouse, but the story that he told would not have induced a peaceful sleep if it had come late in the evening. I look upon it as a valuable addition to our devil lore; I cannot say that I enjoyed it, but then I do not relish any stories about the devil.

  “The Ferguson family at the time of our story lived at Earltown. A man nicknamed Dumpy lived at Spiddle Hill nearby with his wife and child. He was big and fat as his name suggests and, although he had never murdered as far as anybody knew, he was thought of as a bad man chiefly on account of his thievery. About fifty-eight years ago Dumpy took the grippe, as influenza was called in those days, and he was very ill.

  “My father, Joe McKay, and Sandy Ferguson, gathered at his house for the night to help his wife look after him,’ and he was so sick that they sent for the doctor who was John S. McKay. When they arrived, Dumpy was sitting cross-legged, tailor fashion, in his bed, and he asked for a bowl of crackers and milk. He was eating them and had half finished the bowl when he began staring at the wall. He kept staring for a full minute as though he saw something there and couldn’t take his eyes off it but, if there was anything on the wall, none of the others saw it. Suddenly in a manner they could never understand, considering his weight and his cross-legged position, he rose up on his feet and gave a yell. His mouth was full of crackers and mil
k and they blew all over the room and, as he reached an upright position, he fell back dead.

  “Just as that happened something struck upstairs like a ton of bricks and Mrs. Ferguson screeched. The upstairs of the house wasn’t finished but they could go up, and there wasn’t a sign of anything having been moved. It was February and frosty, and a sudden gust of wind blew so hard that the henhouse door blew off and the hens were blown out with such force that they struck the bedroom window. They had to go out and pick up the hens and put them back in the henhouse.

  “Soon after all this happened the doctor came with a horse and sleigh. He drove the horse in on the barn floor for shelter and came in. They told him about Dumpy so he looked him over and pronounced him dead. Then they told him all the things that had happened. After that the doctor didn’t want to go out to the barn alone, so he said to my father, ‘Come out with me while I rub the horse down.’

  “They started out and had just gone a little way from the house when the doctor caught my father by the shoulder and turned him around and what they thought must be the devil was in the upstairs window, the figure was the full size of the window. He was a man with streaks of fire coming from his eyes and mouth. It was a dark night, but he himself provided enough light for them to see him clearly.

  “Well, the horse was not rubbed down that night, and nobody went home because none of them wanted to be alone. The noises kept up all night and sounded like barrels rolling. They stopped when anybody went upstairs, but they couldn’t stay up there because it was too cold. Dumpy’s wife was home all this time, but she may not have heard anything and, if she did, she didn’t seem to mind it. She was slightly under average mentality, to put it mildly. She and the child are both dead now.

  “They laid Dumpy out in his cold downstairs bedroom, and there he lay for three days, but his body never stiffened. Looking back, my father thought he had probably gone into a trance and hadn’t died at all. My father was a good story-teller, and so was the doctor, and sometimes they didn’t mind stretching their stories for the sake of a good yarn. But Mrs. Ferguson was not like that, and she told it exactly as they did except for the part about seeing the devil.They didn’t tell her that until a long time afterwards, but they always insisted this was a true story and that the devil was what they had seen. I know my father meant it when he said it like that.”

  We go again to Cape Breton for our next story which took place near Ingonish. Here the steep mountains slope down to one of the finest beaches in all the Province, and the sun smiles down upon village life which in its serenity would seem to be completely unsullied. Surely there is no room here for the devil or any evil thing. Yet even in this idyllic spot we have a story. It came by way of Mrs. Ruth Metcalfe who for some time had been writing to me about songs. Her home had been in the Louisburg and Gabarus area and it was there that she had heard this story. Later she moved to Ontario, but she had always cherished the songs and legends of her home. We met when she came back for a holiday, and I am indebted to her for a number of the excellent tales in this volume. Of this, she said,

  “It happened to two men of the Roman Catholic faith at Lingan Bay, just off Ingonish Beach. One of them was a middle-aged man who wanted to get married. He had gone to sea and planned to return in the fall of the year. One thing and another detained the ship and he did not get back until early winter.

  “In order to visit the lady of his choice he had to go across a bay that was fourteen miles in length, and he had expected to take this trip by boat. It being so late now, the bay was frozen over, and the only other way to get there was to take a horse. He had no horse of his own, but he knew a man who could lend him one if he could be persuaded. The difficulty was that they were rival fishermen, so the only way that he could get the horse would be by striking a bargain with him that would be a sufficiently worthy payment for the service. He therefore said, ‘If you will let me have your horse to go and get married, I’ll do a day for you in purgatory.’ His rival said, ‘All right, you can have the horse, but how will I know that you do the day in purgatory?’

  “So he said, ‘I’ll make a bargain with the devil and he’ll see that I keep it.’ The rival then loaned him the horse and the prospective bridegroom rode triumphantly away. But when morning came the owner of the horse was greatly taken aback to find the animal standing beside the barn door. There was no sign of his rider. He became alarmed then for his safety, and made inquiries. He had never arrived at the home of his intended bride. Evidently in crossing the bay on the ice, horse and man had gone through, but the horse, having no part in the bargain, had got out. The man had drowned and his body was washed ashore in the spring. The owner of the horse stood over the drowned man and shook his head. He was heard to remark, ‘That’s what happens when you make a bargain with the devil. He collects first.’ ”

  Still in Cape Breton we turn now to Marion Bridge for a story of a family named MacDonald. None connected with this unpleasant tale is still living. It was told by Mr. Alex Morrison of Marion Bridge who lived a mile and a half from the MacDonald home.

  “There were two boys in the family and they were tough, and there was also a girl who was deformed. The boys used to beat their father and their mother and every evening a dog used to circle the field, only it wasn’t a real dog. The MacDonald boys used to go down the road and fire shots to frighten people and it was thought that the dog was the devil. We didn’t know whether the boys were in league with him, or whether he was waiting around to get them. Perhaps they were possessed of evil spirits that we read about in the Bible. It was always just about dark when the dog would be seen.

  “In the house where they lived there was a fireplace and a backlog three feet long and heavy. People used to go to the house at night to see what would happen. After they got in, this backlog would be placed against the door but, no matter how securely they fixed it, the door would open just enough for a foot to be seen, like a hoof coming in the door. That was all that anybody ever saw when the door opened. As far as we knew the foot never came inside. This went on for a full year, and nobody could understand how any live animal could have moved that door. After that the boys were taken away and the dog was never seen again. That ended it.”

  Although the devil himself does not appear in our next story, it tells of an evil man and what happened to him as the result of a cruel deed. It comes from Clarke’s Harbour.

  “There was a man at The Hawk (a village on Cape Sable Island) who was very bad. He was at the shore in the store (fish house) and when he went outside a sea gull flew very low. He reached out and grabbed it. He had been slitting fish and had his sharp knife in his hand, so he took his knife and slashed both its feet off. He swore an oath and said, ‘God damn you, get out and get your living the same way I have to.’ He never saw the bird again but from that day his hands began to take on the appearance of claws. Years went by and at last he died. The day he was buried was overcast with drifting clouds, a weird sort of day. The man’s hands were crossed over his breast, and everybody could see very plainly that they were no longer hands, but claws.

  “As the coffin was resting on the ground and the minister was about to commit the body to the earth, he looked up and saw a black cat coming towards them fast. There are no houses nearby and therefore no cats wandering about the cemetery. There were about twelve people standing beside the grave. The minister went on, and the cat made its way between them and ran right over the casket. They brushed it hastily away, but afterwards none of them could tell where it went or if it just vanished.

  “When they were returning from the funeral the undertaker said to the minister, ‘Did you ever see anything happen like that?’ The minister said no, he never had and, to himself, hoped he never would again. The undertaker said, ‘I wonder if that was the cat that caught that poor bird?’ Everybody knew the story, for the man had told it himself. They inquired all around, but nobody was ever able to place that cat and that was the only time it was seen on the island. Perhaps, they tho
ught, it might be the seagull in the form of a cat, or it might even have been the devil.”

  Another bad man story used to be told at Tiverton in Digby County to frighten children.

  “There was a man whose name was Bramber, and this happened a very long time ago. He lived to be an old man but a very bad one, and everybody knew that he had an evil reputation. He went out of his house one night and disappeared. His shoes were on the steps when he went out and they were all that was ever found. People used to say that the devil had got him.”

  Occasionally we hear of two men having been seen in a boat when, upon closer inspection, there was only one. “Tom McDonald used to live at Moser’s River and he was supposed to have been very wicked although it was so long ago that nobody remembers just what it was that he did. He was a fisherman and fished alone. The other men could see two men in the boat when they were at a distance but the second one was never there when they got close to him. They always thought it was the devil.”

  According to a story from Middle Musquodoboit, Ike Foley was responsible for his own death although he did not anticipate it when he spoke. “He was an awful man to swear. There was a hussock, a rock in the stream that bothered them when they were river-driving. He got mad and said if the devil would come he would go out and help him, and together they would take the rock out of that stream. The boys laughed at him and said if the devil’s voice came he’d be too scared to go out, but that evening they heard it. Ike wouldn’t go, but they all got after him and dared him, not thinking it was really the devil that they heard. It came three times, but still Ike wouldn’t go. Next morning when they went out the rock was gone, and nobody knew who moved it. Shortly after that, Ike was walking on thin ice at that place and he fell through and got drowned. We always felt the devil got him and, after that, you could hear the devil’s chains rattling whenever you went by.”