My own town of Dartmouth is not immune to ghostly visitations, but again I must be careful not to give the location away. Mrs. Hirtle said, “I lived in a house in Dartmouth when I was fifteen or sixteen. It was built on a hillside and had a basement kitchen and dining-room, both above ground. One day we were in the dining-room, father, mother, a visitor, and I, and I heard what sounded like a breathing just beside me. It frightened me so that I ran to my father and he thought I was crazy, but my mother stood holding the teapot in her hand and said, âDid you see that?' She and the young man who was visiting had both seen it. This was a man without a head standing right behind me. We learned later that a pedlar was supposed to have been murdered in that house.” I was fortunate in knowing a man in the town who had lived there until his marriage, the same man who saw his father, as described under Helpful Ghosts. He had never heard of a headless man being seen, but he said there was one room where it was impossible to sleep. Sounds were heard and he has slept there himself when not only the bedclothes were taken off, but the bedspring itself would be lifted up off the bed. The family closed it off and it was never used again for any purpose while he was there.
There was a barn behind this house. He said he would often be out there rubbing the horse down when he would hear a noise like a hand pushing along the wall. It would make its way slowly until it came to the barn door, and then the horse would jump. He said you would not only hear it, but feel it as it approached, and often when he was in the house he would hear the horse jump as if frightened, and nothing there. The noise was always on the outside of the barn.
There is another house in the same vicinity where a sailor got into trouble one night and had his eyes gouged out. He left in the utmost agony and fell over a bank and was killed. For years, according to our Dartmouth historian Dr. John Martin, his agonizing cries could be heard and from that time on, there were strange and unaccountable noises in the house.
On the other side of Halifax Harbour at Birch Cove they used to say many years ago that you must not pass by a certain place at night or you would see a black dog crossing the road. There used to be a big rambling house there with a room that was uninhabitable and had to be sealed off. In the Duke of Kent's time, said a Halifax lady, a woman was supposed to have been imprisoned there.
The Hartlan's ghost house at South-East Passage has been mentioned in the Prologue and referred to several times since then. This house, made of wood washed ashore from wrecks, finally got the better of its inhabitants and sent them off to build small dwellings around it. Mr. Richard Hartlan lived there once and he said, “When I was young at home every night after I'd go to bed my room door would open and I used to get up and close it not once a night, but three or four times. That went on four or five years. We couldn't see nothin' but there would be knockings and where it started from, it ended. It went all the way around that house. When Ferdinand was there he used to hear three knocks that would come every night between seven and eight. First they come to his porch door and the next night to his bedroom windy and the third night to the back door. He said, âThe next night they'll be in the house,' so we were all there and it was like three or four heavy boards falling down and nothin' fell at all, only the noise. Another night we were settin' there and something fell from the loft on to the table and behind it and we couldn't find a thing. Another time Ferdinand was on his knees saying his prayers and something got him by the toe and hauled him round and something struck the bedroom door three times and it swung open and struck the bedpost.
“I used to hear footsteps outside my room at night and I'd think my brothers were up, but there wouldn't be anyone there, and night after night I used to have the bedclothes pulled right off me and in time I couldn't sleep in a bed; I had to sleep on the floor. Sometimes before the door would open you'd hear creak, creak, but you'd never see nothin'. One night my father and mother were in town and they were to be home at eight. We heard them comin' and the horse pullin' the wagon over the road and we lit the lantern and went out to help them in and there was no sign of them. They didn't come for an hour. Another time I heard me wife talkin' and I opened the door and she wasn't there.
“The only time I ever saw anything was one Sunday afternoon. After I ate my dinner I went and had a lay down and I fell into a doze of sleep as I thought. After I got to sleep there was somethin' pressing me and I couldn't wake or couldn't turn over for about half an hour and, when I woke, I seen this person go from me to the windy and she was a woman with a black and white spotted dress on and I was in a lather of sweat with the water pouring off me as big as marbles. Whatever it was, a witch or not, God knows.” Well, they concluded this was a witch and they stopped her from coming back by putting nine letters from the German Bible reversed on a board and nailing it over the door. The ghost, however, was thought to be a former owner who was said to be a wicked man. He had a spinning wheel and would sit at it from morning till night. When the threads broke, as they did with great frequency, he would curse and swear. He also drank a lot and must have done other things to give him such a bad reputation.
I had never heard of knock-a-balls until I visited the Smith family at Blanche, and I have never heard of them since. They are knockings which have no natural explanation. “If we took the Bible and opened it we wouldn't hear a sound but, if we closed it we would hear knockings. The reason we heard these sounds was on account of a girl named Cordelia. One time a fellow had been cast away from a ship on the shore near here and he stayed around these parts for a while. He took a shine to Cordelia and went around with her but, when he wanted to marry her, she wouldn't have him. He got mad then and said he would send something to annoy her. It was then we began to hear the knock-a-balls. “When they first started, the rest of us were afraid, but the girl wasn't. She would ask questions and it would knock out the answers. We supposed he did it through a medium. One night a friend of hers slept with her and she got frightened because it knocked beside the bed. Other things happened too like my gun being thrown rattle thrash bang across the room and all the wood falling out of the woodpile. Mainly though it followed Cordelia. It would follow her down the stairs and even to the barn. People came from all around to hear it and they stayed in the room with her, so she couldn't have done it herself.
“My father wasn't frightened of anything, and he asked it a question once. He said, âAre you from the devil?' It said, âYes.' (Three knocks meant yes.) Then he said, âAre you from the Lord?' and it didn't answer anything. Only the Bible opened would make the sound stop.” Like other such cases it was of short but noisy duration.
That no doubt was a poltergeist, with a young girl emotionally upset the centre of activities which no human being could accomplish alone. This Province has had three more poltergeist cases and they have aroused international interest. They took place at Amherst, Caledonia, and Eastern Passage, and have been written up in detail in R. S. Lambert's book, Exploring the Supernatural. I am not sure that the Caledonia case was that of a poltergeist; it has been suggested that it might have been something much more frightening. I remember passing the house one dark night with people who lived nearby and being thankful when we finally got away from that unhealthy atmosphere.
There are other houses in the Province that are supposed to be haunted now. In one, a man comes out of the side of the wall and consumes food. Perhaps in my next field season I may learn more about this strange case.
If you think back
to the chapter on Hindsight, you will recall a story in which a young woman spent a night in a house in Halifax and had the terrifying experience of looking back upon an incident of the past.You will remember, too, that she had never mentioned this to the friends living there at the time, mainly because she wished to forget it. At my request, however, she finally wrote them. They were horrified, but not greatly surprised, for they could believe anything about this hateful place. They had disliked it for its location which was particularly objectionable in wartime. Among other distressing events, they once witnessed a murder outside a dance hall nearby that had seen so many skirmishes it was nicknamed “The Bucket of Blood.”Their memories were of actual events; they had seen nothing supernatural.
You will also recall when I visited the haunted house that I was told of manifestations which had twice begun in April. I mentioned this to the McMasters at Port Hastings when telling about the house, and Mr. McMaster murmured, “Yes of course, it would be April.” Later, in thinking about our conversation, I wondered if there could be any significance in his remark and, upon inquiry, learned that the older people believe ghosts to be more active in that month. I had never encountered this before, so I do not know whether the belief is widespread, or is confined to Cape Breton.
After this book was finished I appeared on the television show
Graphic
and, in the course of the interview, told one of our stories. It was no sooner concluded than my telephone rang and a voice, shaken with emotion, told me that he had experienced the very thing that I had related. His name was Donovan.
“I was steam engineer at the Light and Power in Halifax,” he said. “One morning at four o'clock I was sitting on a bench in the boiler room and my helper was taking out the ashes. Something seemed to tell me I should turn my head, so I did, and I noticed my father standing by my left shoulder. Not the whole of him as it was in your story; just the head and shoulders. He had an angry look on his face. I turned away because I couldn't understand why he should be angry. Then I looked back and this time he started towards the boiler. I thought then he must have come to warn me, so I got up and examined the boiler, but I couldn't see anything wrong with it, but I had just sat down again when the most awful explosion came and I was covered with soot and ashes. I can't say that he saved my life as the father did in your story, but he must have come to warn me about that boiler.”
I have now come to the end of my story which covers every phase of supernatural belief I have been able to discover. It is quite possible that I have missed incidents that would come under other headings but, if so, they would be isolated cases. As I said at the beginning, some stories in the book are the result of imagination and superstition. Others, like our first Helpful Ghost, and the appearance of Alex to his friend Dan at sea, leave no doubt with me. I could mention many more, but that is unnecessary.
I have attempted to show you how extensive our belief is and how often it is wrapped up with the sea that surrounds us. You have seen how we think upon these subjects, and how we express our thoughts. You will have discovered too that the supernatural in Nova Scotia is not a subject talked about for the sole purpose of entertainment but that, for many of us, it is a part of our way of life.