“The people in the house didn't say anything to the men about the barn being haunted, but they said to themselves, âThey'll not get any rest tonight.' A pedlar had been killed in that barn and they knew something would probably happen, because things had happened before. The men in the barn had all gone to sleep when George Tattrie felt a horse's breath blowing on him. He woke the others up and they all saw the horse. George put his hand up and felt the horse and he thought they were all going to be trampled on. It didn't take them long to skedaddle out of there and, after that, the people who owned the barn told them it was a ghost.”
We have seen before that horses can be heard in a mysterious fashion when there are no horses there. For some reason which nobody knows, a sound of horse's hoofs has been heard for years coming up the driveway of a place at Upper Falmouth. They would be so distinct that the hired man would go out to greet the guests and attend to the horse for them, only to find no one there. It always happened at night and is heard every once in a while. A few years ago it was still happening, but now with an automobile taking the place of horses.
“Mr. Bond at East Chester is supposed to have seen a big horse come out and put his forefeet on the fence. One time at that same place three young people were stealing apples when they heard an awful noise and snorting like a horse would do. Then it appeared. It stood on its hind legs and snorted and ripped the boards off the fence and they all ran away, frightened to death. The next day they went back to see how much damage the horse had done and the boards weren't ripped at all. In another place here at the turn, people would hear a horse galloping along and it would be behind you and by you and then it would pass you and fade away. Real horses are supposed to see things that can't be seen by humans. There is an old saying that if a horse rears, you should get down and look between his ears, and you'll see what the horse saw.”
They used to hear a horse and wagon at Thorne's Cove. It would start at one of the beaches and go a mile towards Victoria Beach and then go off the side of the road and disappear. One man tried to race it, but he couldn't catch up with it. Different people reported having seen it.
Riverport had the most common type of story about a horse, but the scene was laid at Port Hawkesbury. “There was an old man who lived twelve miles east of the Strait of Canso and kept a respectable place. One night he was driving a horse team from Port Hawkesbury and he hadn't gone far when a lady came running along and put her hand on the arm rest of the carriage, and kept it there until they came to a church. He had no whip but an Indian withe, an alder branch, and he used it to hit her left arm where she was holding on. He urged the horse to go faster, but she went faster too. This kept up until they reached the church and then she disappeared. This happened when he was coming from Port Hawkesbury on the road to West Bay. She was on the driver's side which was then on the right. He almost broke his withe trying to hold her back.”
LIGHTS
When ghostly lights
are seen it is usually supposed that treasure is buried nearby and that the light is showing the way to it, as you read in a previous chapter. Not all lights have this meaning. The Keyes' place had a frightening name to people in Queen's County as recently as ten years ago, according to a man from North Port Mouton. “I was coming from Fairy Lake to West Caledonia one night after playing the fiddle, and it was about one o'clock. The man in the horse behind me said there was a light following right along to the old Keyes' place. I had a nice up-to-date horse and team and didn't see anything myself. Older people used to see something at that farm, and there was no one living there.
“Tom Perns was an old Cornish shoemaker and he used to see something half a mile this way from the farm. A lot of people were scared of the place, and the reason was that Keyes was killed in a pit while getting gravel for the road. It was low and swampy where he lived. The Indians and lots of others thought he used to come back, and they wouldn't travel there after dark. People driving near Fairy Lake would report lights that would appear under the wagon and follow right along and then disappear.”
Mr. John Dan Ferguson of Bay Head, Colchester County, had a strange tale to tell. “At the top of Spiddle Hill there is a place where a ball of fire used to be seen. It was a common occurrence and people used to talk about it, but they didn't think too much about it. It was called Ross's torch and it floated over the Ross farm for years. It was a round bright light and lighted the whole place but, when they left, it left.
“One time about sixty years ago a farmer named Murray was visiting his neighbour on the next farm and it was crusty weather. He saw the light and was watching it so closely that he went off his course and up there on the hill beside the light he saw someâthing, but he would never tell what it was. After he saw it he went home and collapsed and, although he lived for a while, he never got out of his bed again. The Rosses themselves didn't appear to think anything about the light, but in time they moved away. The light didn't follow them, but it was never seen after they left.”
At the time of the expulsion of the Acadians there was a settlement between Diligent River and West Bay called Gascoigne. The French were being sent away, and one old chap refused to go, so they cut off his head. Since then, said my informant from Moose River, he has been seen ever since going from place to place carrying his lantern.
Hall's Harbour has a very modern ghost. “In the fall of 1946 a car with lights on was seen to come down the road by the Schofield's and to disappear as quickly as you could have snapped your fingers. It was seen again at the same place by two girls who were going to a meeting. A person is supposed to have been killed and buried in a pasture at this particular place, and they wonder if this might be his ghost.”
Another ghost that deviated from the usual pattern appeared at Shag Harbour. It came at various times, but mostly before a storm and in the form of lights. These lights danced before the astonished onlooker and formed the figure eight.
Although many of our people are Irish, it is a rare thing to hear of a banshee. I was therefore surprised when one turned up at Annapolis Royal which I look upon as one of the least Irish sections of the Province. The banshee was described as a ball of fire that bobbed over the marshes. People often used to see it, and they called it by that name, but my realistic informant added his impression which was that this was probably phosphorus rising from the swampy ground.
Spirit Hill, appropriately named, goes through the Centreville woods of Cape Sable Island, and people going that way pass what they call Ghost Rock. “Lights are seen there. There may be more than that, but the old people who told about them didn't wait to look.”
“If you should go down to what they call South Side on this same island at two o'clock in the morning and at the proper season of the year, you might see a light on the beach. Those who have witnessed this light say that it is like a ball of fire that floats through the air and, they say, one man tried to shoot it and it burst his gun. Another man on the island had a light follow close beside his horse and team, but the faster he drove, the faster the light went beside him. He thought he was a man without fear until this happened but, when the light left without any harm befalling, he realized that his spine had stiffened and his teeth were chattering.
The house at Seabright where the apron was pleated on the clothesline in a mysterious way and there were sounds of lumber falling, has another tale to tell. A young man went to the door for wood. As he reached the woodpile he saw a big ball of light coming up the fence. “It came up behind the buildings and took to moaning like a person in pain, and it followed him to the platform (stoop). It kept the form of a ball of light until it reached the woodpile, and then the light disappeared but not the sound that went with it. That followed him as far as the door, but not into the house.”
At Scotsburn, which is a farming community in Pictou County, they said, “Angus McKay drove one of Murdock Anderson's boys home and on his way back he saw a light following him along the other side of the dam. It went on until it reached a gate on the mountain road, and then it went out. Then McKay saw what looked like a stump burning so he went back and got Murdock up and they went to the spot but there was no stump burning or anything, and they could never account for it.”
Dead stumps have often been taken for phantom lights. At Port LaTour boys used to take the phosphorus off the stumps and write names across the road to frighten people who would think their time had come. It was quite a trick they said, and they could only do it on certain nights. Phosphorus on a stump might be the answer to the stationary light seen by Mr. McKay, even though he could find no stump in that particular place, but it doesn't explain the light that followed him to the gate on the mountain road.
Here is an odd story from Glen Margaret. “There was a man by the name of McDonald from French Village who was visiting Moser's Island. Up by Wodin's River there was an old road and the story was that it was haunted. McDonald told them that he was going to take a short cut that way and he said, âIf the spirit is supposed to be seen, I want to see it tonight.' He said before he left the island that when he got to the graveyard he was going to say out loud that he hoped to see the spirit, and then he would see what happened.
“Well, when he got up to the old cemetery there were two bright lights come up out of the burying ground and they were so bright that he couldn't see. They blinded him and he couldn't get clear of them till morning. No matter how he tried, all he could see was those lights. He went back to Moser's Island then and was sick for a week, but he didn't mind because he claimed he had seen the spirit.” This story belies an old belief I have heard expressed many times that if you are looking for a ghost you will never see one. He was apparently satisfied that the light he had seen was the spirit he had heard about, and sought.
FAIRIES
When I was
having my car serviced in Sydney in 1956, I mentioned to the mechanic, Mr. Charles Turner, that I had heard a great many ghost stories in Cape Breton. He asked a few questions and then turned out to have a fund of stories himself. It was on the last of several visits to the garage that he told of having seen the little people. I had often inquired for fairies but, until then, it seemed that they had not crossed water from the old land. This was the exception.
“When we were children we lived in a house at Point Edward. There were six of us sleeping upstairs. The upper part of the house wasn't finished off and there were rafters above that could be seen from both of the bedrooms where we were sleeping. This morning we were lying in bed and we looked up and we could see a dozen little people like pixies or elves with brownish bodies jumping back and forth on the beams, carrying on and having a time of it. I can't remember their clothes, but they were about a foot high and wore high pointed caps and shoes. I called my sisters and they were watching the same thing. It happened only once, and it lasted for about ten minutes. Then they vanished and were never seen again. With all their jumping round they didn't make a sound.”
I visited one of Mr. Turner's sisters later. She could not remember the incident herself, but said her brother had all his life insisted it had happened.
HAUNTED HOUSES AND POLTERGEISTS
Have you ever thought
what it would be like to buy a house and then discover that it was haunted? Such a possibility would never enter your head nor mine. And if by any chance we hear of a house being haunted our eyes sparkle expectantly. We feel a delicious shiver running up our spine and we probably make some flippant and thoughtless remark and then forget all about it.
When I was collecting folklore in the summer of 1956 and also working upon this book, I mentioned what I was doing everywhere I went. In this way word got around and people were ready with their stories when I called. Others sent messages by friends and one of these concerned a house where hauntings were taking place at that very moment. I listened to all that was known about it but the stories did not always agree. Finally I realized that if I wanted to include the story in this book I must stop listening to rumours and visit the place myself.
It was a lovely day in August when we set out, and we had thirty miles to drive through a wooded back country road. My companion, at whose house I was staying, knew the people in the few scattered farms we passed, and I was glad of her companionship. By myself it would have been a lonely drive, and I would have bounced over the unpopulated sections at breakâneck speed. No one had described the house we were looking for but, as we entered the village and saw a large frame house set well back in its own grounds I said without any hesitation, “That's it.” I still have no idea why I was so sure.
The house stands back about one hundred feet from the road with an open field in front of it, a few apple trees beside it, and thick woods behind it composed mostly of coniferous trees. Although the house is large it would pass unnoticed were it not for a decorative piece attached to the centre front. This has three long windows with rounded tops both upstairs and down which, with its pitched roof, give an air of distinction to an otherwise plain frame dwelling. There are verandahs on either side at the front of the house, but the railings are broken and look as though the owner has lost heart in his place. Most of the small posts that would have given a finished touch in the old days have broken away and the result is depressing. The house is also in need of paint but could, without too great an expense, be made into quite a handsome dwelling. Why it has been allowed to get in its present state you will understand very soon.
When we began this trip we did not expect to find the owners at home, for we had been told they had left it. Possibly I would not have been so lighthearted if I had known I would have to view it both inside and out. A truck in the driveway gave evidence that it was occupied, and it was with quite a pleasant feeling of expectancy and adventure that we turned in at their driveway. We were in the midst of something now that was far removed from the usual daily round and our pulses raced quite happily.