Bluenose Ghosts

by Helen Creighton

  Mrs. Sydney Boutilier of French Village had this experience. “One day I took the milk pail and went for strawberries. When I started home I had the pail in my hand and, at the gate of Will’s house, I saw a woman coming towards me. I recognized her right away as Mrs. Keddy who had lived there, but she was at that time in Halifax, and dying. She wore a long dress and a coat to her knees. Her hat hid her face, but I could see that she had a long chin. Her shoulders were rounded as she was going through the gate. I looked at her, but I didn’t realize she couldn’t be there until she went through the gate. I didn’t exactly see her disappear, but all of a sudden she wasn’t there. A couple of days later she died in Halifax where she had been all the time.”

  Mr. Earl Morash of East Chester said, “The night before Mrs. Charlie Bond died I was driving home from Mahone Bay. Near the church a woman appeared at the side of the road and suddenly she glided out in the road right in front of the car. I jammed on the brakes but there was no one there. She was the same size and built as Mrs. Bond, but she wouldn’t show her face, but kept it away from me. I heard next morning that she had died, but it was after I had seen her.”

  Another living woman was seen at Big Pond and was reported from Victoria Beach. She came up out of a corner of the pond wearing a cotton dress, and the man who saw her recognized her immediately. He was very startled, for he knew it was a forerunner of her death, which soon followed.

  No one could look more jovial one moment and so serious the next as Mr. Richard Hartlan, brother of Mr. Enos. Even his moustache caught the feeling of solemnity and bristled against his ruddy face as he prepared to talk of the unexplainable things in his life. He said, “Before me brother died they seen him in the evening. He walked past the house with his hands in his pockets, and him too sick in his bed to move out of it. They said, ‘It’s a forerunner; he’s going to die,’ and the next day he was dead.”

  Going now to Tiverton, we find there is a story of a haunted house at East Ferry where people, or a person, are heard walking upstairs. “A bus driver was staying there once and one morning he came downstairs and he saw walking past the door an Englishman who was a boarder but, at that time wasn’t there. The sounds are always heard in the morning.”

  Most of my Shelburne stories came from the Allen family, who had more than the usual gift for seeing things. They said there was always one member of the family who had second sight, and that their grandfather would sit at the table and talk to what would seem to be only a chair. But to him there was someone in that chair, unseen by the others. Their stories go like this:

  “We used to get milk at the south end of the town on winter nights. The girls in our family wore tobogganing suits such as nobody else wore. One time I was coming home with the milk when I saw my sister approaching from the opposite direction, so I waved to her and shouted, ‘I’ll race you to the house.’ But when I got to the house and put my hand on the knob, she wasn’t there. She hadn’t been there at all, yet I saw her until the moment when her foot was lifted towards the step. Then she disappeared. I wouldn’t tell about it for ten years because it was considered such bad luck to see a person who wasn’t there.”

  And again: “One day when we were youngsters I was steering the toboggan but after a while I suggested somebody else do it, and I passed it over to my cousin. She said, ‘No, I don’t want to take it.’ I was surprised because she never refused anything if there was fun in it, so I said to her later, ‘Jessie, why wouldn’t you take the toboggan down?’ She said, ‘Because there was a man standing there.’ So I said, ‘That’s why I wouldn’t go.’ There was no human there of course but, for our eyes only, there was a strange man. Nobody saw him but Jessie and me.”

  A strange thing happened to a man from Peggy’s Cove. “A friend of mine was a great hunter, especially on a Sunday. One Sunday he and two other men were off hunting and they got separated. Soon afterwards my friend saw one of the other men coming towards him, and suddenly he disappeared. Later, when they were together again, my friend asked him why he hadn’t come all the way. He said he hadn’t come at all; he’d been off in another direction. Well, they talked it over and it puzzled them, so they all went to the place where he’d been seen. It was winter and there wasn’t a track in the snow, yet my friend had seen him as plainly as could be. It scared the other man so much that he took it for a warning and, since then, he has never hunted on a Sunday.”

  Another warning, which unfortunately was not recognized as such, came to Earl Henneberry of Devil’s Island. Or was it a forerunner? To put it down as a warning would be less frightening. “Earl was eating his supper one day when he looked out and I saw his brother Ben coming up the road, but Ben didn’t come. Earl was frightened and said, ‘Mum, something’s going to happen to Ben. I’m going after him!’ Ben had rowed some friends to the South East Passage shore. Earl borrowed a boat and two of his sisters asked to go with him, but he said, ‘No, one of the family’s enough to go at one time.’” (By this you will see that he anticipated a calamity as the result of having seen his brother when he was not there.) “After Earl left, Ben came home and was surprised to hear what had happened because he hadn’t come before. They waited for Earl to come back but he didn’t come. The men went out then to look. You know how high the waves can get off that South-East Passage shore?”

  Indeed I did know, only too well, for two friends and I had been all but swamped there ourselves. Apparently Earl had not been so fortunate, for they found his overturned boat. The following day they dragged for him, and Edmund Henneberry and Ken Faulkner brought his body to the surface. I do not know how the brothers missed each other on such a short run. It was probably fog, but that is a minor point. Why had Ben appeared?

  At French River in Colchester County Mrs. Tony Tattrie said, “Tony’s mother was reel-footed (club footed). I seen her coming towards me and I went to meet her, and my sister and I both saw her plain. Then she disappeared. That was before she died and we knew she was somewhere else. After she died I saw her only once. She was coming across the field after sundown. One time three of us started down the road and we saw George Tattrie crossing the field and he kept on going, and all the time he was home in his bed. That was after twelve at night.”

  A fisherman at Paddy’s Head had an experience with a boat. “I came in one time after fishing and there was a boat hanging to her club (mooring). I steered straight up towards her and I could see her all the way, but when I got up to it there was nothing there at all. That boat didn’t come in till later.”

  And from Glen Haven, “Before my brother died a woman in white came to my doorway, and suddenly disappeared and, before my sister-in-law died a woman with a shawl over her head went down the hill ahead of me. I wasn’t exactly frightened in either case although I was pretty sure something was about to happen.”

  One bright moonlight night at Victoria Beach Buzz Ring said he had gone down the steep hillside to the wharves, and he walked along by one of the sheds. He was only a boy at the time, but it was not unusual for a lad to go fishing with the men. He saw a man in yellow oilskins walking ahead of him so he called out, but the man did not speak. He thought it was one of the Everett men and, since they are all friends in this small community, he wondered why he didn’t answer him. He kept his eye on him, however, and distinctly saw him go through an open door. This too seemed odd, but Buzz supposed he intended to jump out and scare him. He therefore lit a match which he fully expected to have blown out by the other man, and peeked cautiously around the door. Nothing happened, so he drew the door back carefully and there was nobody there; neither was there a place to hide nor any other way to get out. He was dumbfounded. Shortly after that, and at about the same time of night, an older fisherman saw a man walking at the same place. He called, “Clifford,” thinking it was a friend of that name, but he, too, received no answer. He was angry at being ignored and said, “Can’t you speak to a fellow?” at the same time catching him by the arm to stop him. But there was no arm to catch. Noth
ing was there.

  A man from Wallace having put his hand on the shoulder of a man who wouldn’t speak to him and finding nothing to grasp, said in describing his experience,

  “Do you known what it was? It was a nawthin’.”

  In his book, Exploring the Supernatural, R. S. Lambert tells about an event which took place in Sydney in 1785. After I had read it, Miss Eva Worgan of Sydney told a story so similar that I thought it must be a variant of the Lambert tale. It seems now to have been an entirely different incident, for Miss Worgan said it happened in 1873 or thereabouts. She had often heard it told by her father, Capt. Worgan, R.N., and her mother, both of whom knew many of the officers stationed there, and had heard it first hand. I later called her sisters in Halifax, and found that one of them knew the story well as it had been told in their home. None, however, could recall the name of the officer whose appearance caused such consternation.

  “The Military Barracks used to be at the old Victoria Park. One of the officers stationed there at the time of our story was called to England to see somebody who was very ill and, while there, he took sick himself and died. On the night that he died, his brother officers were sitting having dinner when this man walked down the stairs, passed the table, and went into an adjoining room. They looked at one another spellbound and finally one of them said, ‘That’s So and So. Did you notice the look on his face?’ Everybody in the officers’ mess saw him, and they all agreed it was this man.

  “In those days news was slow in arriving but they learned in time of his death which, upon further inquiry, had taken place at the exact time when he had been seen passing through the mess.”

  Another story, also from Cape Breton was given to me by Mrs. Ruth Metcalfe. “A young couple in their thirties lived at Reserve Mines. She was a tall and lovely lady of highland Scottish birth. He was a miner named John McNeil. In those days it was the custom for cows to be pastured on common land and one summer afternoon Mrs. McNeil started out to bring their cow home. She was dressed in a beautiful black silk dress with a white apron which was the usual costume for that class of highland woman. She had not gone far when she met a neighbour and they walked together, enjoying the early afternoon sun as old friends do who have met unexpectedly. Their conversation was interrupted by Mrs. McNeil who said with surprise, ‘There’s John. I’ll go for the cow later,’ and she left to go to her home and husband.

  “I’m going for my cow, so I’ll bring yours home too, Lizzie,’ her neighbour said, and she did.

  “When the neighbour came back with the two cows she stopped first at her own home, and was surprised to see her husband there, for he was not expected for some time.

  “‘Why are you home so early?’ she said.

  “‘John McNeil was killed in the mine this afternoon,’ he replied. When she recovered from the shock she asked the time of the accident, remembering how his wife had looked towards her house and how surprised she had been to see her husband there. She realized then of course that he had appeared at the moment of his death.”

  An Ellershouse man had to stop his car one day when a friend appeared on the road either before or at the time of his death at distant Springhill, and Mr. Jim Apt of Victoria Beach saw a man and learned later that he had been murdered in another place and at about the same time.

  Now let us run up to New Brunswick and see what a man from Newcastle has to say. “When I came here in 1916 there was a man had lived here I never saw in my life, Tommy Taylor. I was sitting down in John’s father’s kitchen, where he often used to visit, and I riz my eyes up and this man was looking in the window. I sez to John’s father, ‘Look at the man looking in the window.’ He looked up then and said, ‘That’s Tommy Taylor. When did he come home?’ He went out the door and he sez, ‘Come in Tommy.’ There wasn’t a soul around. He sez to me, ‘There’s something happened Tommy Taylor.’ I sez, ‘Where is Tommy?’ He sez, ‘He’s in the asylum.’ Well, Tommy had died all right and they brought his body home next day. I went to see him and I sez, ‘Yes, that’s the man I seen looking in the window!”

  Also from Newcastle: “My wife seen me coming in the main road. She seen me coming with a parcel on my back and a little stick. The house was on the top of a hill. She seen me coming to the door and she run to open it and there was nothing there. An hour after, she seen me coming again, and this time it was me. I wasn’t there at all the first time. We could never understand it.” Then he added an observation about ghosts in general.

  “A ghost don’t appeal to anybody if he don’t need anything, but if you can help him, you can see him.”

  I picked the next story up at the Pictou County Exhibition. At Taylor’s Stone House I had met Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Ferguson of Baie Comeau. When they saw me later at the Exhibition and also a Pictonian, Mr. Scott, they thought there might be an interesting exchange of stories. We were therefore introduced and stood in a little group talking. The following went down in my notebook: It was experienced by Mr. James Simon Fraser, a hardware merchant of New Glasgow, who had a summer place at Melmerby Beach. His wife was staying there at the time, and he joined her for weekends. A man named Kelly, whose first name Mr. Scott had forgotten, lived at King’s Head, a mile from the beach, and Mr. Fraser knew him well.

  In the late summer we often have what we call an August gale. Mr. Fraser was preparing for his weekly trip when the wind came up and the rain fell in torrents. He did not let this deter him, but hitched his horse to his light buggy and, beneath the waterproof top that covered it, got what shelter he could. It was dark as he drove along and his one lantern glimmered faintly. There were frequent lightning flashes and in this sudden light he saw Kelly walking up the road towards him, dressed in his fisherman’s clothes. Mr. Fraser stopped his horse and leaned out to speak to him but, although Mr. Kelly walked close to the carriage and looked Mr. Fraser in the eye, he said nothing, but continued on his way. This was so unexpected, and so unlike Kelly, that Mr. Fraser remarked upon the event to his wife soon after he got in. It was then eleven-thirty.

  The following morning the Frasers were late in rising, but they had no sooner made their appearance than they were told that Kelly had disappeared. No one had seen him since the previous day, Saturday, when he went out fishing.

  “I’ve seen him since then,” Mr. Fraser said. “I saw him last night walking up the road.” However that night, the one after Mr. Fraser had seen him, they found his body. By its condition they knew he had been drowned from his boat early Saturday afternoon. The Frasers were so taken aback by the strange occurrence that they said nothing more about it for many years. They finally told it to Mr. Scott’s mother, and he kindly passed it on to me.

  On the southwestern shore at Boutilier’s Point a woman said, “I was at a party when I was in my late teens and I had to walk most of the way from Oakland to Mahone Bay alone. A friend walked with me until I saw a girl ahead in a fresh white dress and I recognized her at once. I told my friend I would be all right now and I would keep close behind her, so he left me and I kept the girl in sight, but suddenly she disappeared. I wasn’t frightened because I was sure she was somebody I knew going home just as I was doing. I even stopped and looked under boards on the shore to make sure she wasn’t hiding. There was no sign of her anywhere and I was puzzled. When I checked up, I found she hadn’t been on that road at all. I told my father and he shook his head. He said my description reminded him of a young girl who had been drowned just across the road from the Church of England and had been seen several times at that place. So which girl it was, a living or a dead one, I don’t know, but I certainly saw someone.”

  Now from Victoria Beach: “One bright moonlight night when there was snow on the ground four of us were walking towards the Moose Hollow Bridge when I saw a woman in white coming towards me with a white sheet over her head. She was only about twelve feet away when I turned to speak to the men behind me and, when I looked ahead of me again, she was no longer there, and there were no tracks in the snow. If it had
just been me who’d seen her I might have thought I’d imagined it, but two of us saw her and two didn’t. She had been walking easy.”

  We go now from the bright light of the moon to the broad light of day. “It happened about forty-five years ago that a man was walking from Herring Cove to Pennant. It was about five o’clock on a Sunday in May. The day was fine and the atmosphere was clear. Half a mile from Portuguese Cove a woman stood in front of him and walked a quarter of a mile side by side with him. He spoke to her and got no answer and she disappeared as suddenly as she had come. He never knew who she was or why she had come there at that time.”

  On another fine Sunday a few years ago Mr. and Mrs. Bagnall and their son set out from Glace Bay for Gabarus. It was a beautiful day, free of fog, and so clear that every leaf on every tree stood out distinctly. As they drew near their destination they saw a familiar figure coming towards them, dressed in his customary clothes which included a green pea jacket, peaked cap, and rubber boots turned down. His wife said, “Who is that?” and her husband told her. There was no hesitation because Mr. Bagnall had grown up on a part of this man’s land. The driver’s arm was resting on the top of the turned-down window and they were so close that they could easily have touched him. When Mr. Bagnall told his wife who it was she said, “Yes, I thought so, but that man is dead.”