Bluenose Ghosts (2 page)
Some years ago we had in Dartmouth where I live an Anglican clergyman, Venerable Archdeacon Wilcox. He was a boyish, lovable man, greatly esteemed by people of all faiths and ages. To our grief he developed cancer, and the time came when death was imminent. One morning I awoke very early and then went to sleep again. I dreamed that I was walking along a street and that I saw the archdeacon walking towards me, but on the opposite side. Normally he would have seen me, for he loved people and was always aware of them around him. He would have waved his hand and then raised his hat in a friendly greeting but, on this occasion, he seemed to be unaware of anything around him. Instead he was walking steadily ahead with his eyes on a goal at about the height of the house tops. I said to myself in my dream, “Archdeacon Wilcox is much too ill to be out walking,” and then still in my dream explained it to myself by saying, “That's not the archdeacon; that's his spirit,” and I was satisfied. He had died during that second period of sleep, probably at the time when I had seen him.
In the summer of 1954 I was at Indiana University. I have a sister for whom I am responsible since she is not well and cannot look after herself. I had only just arrived when word came that she was ill. Should I return at once, or was that necessary? She was constantly upon my mind until one day while walking across the campus I was for a fleeting moment in the house where she was living, and I had a picture of life proceeding normally. Someone walked quietly through a room and no one was disturbed in any way. I knew then that the trouble had righted itself, and subsequent letters showed this to be true. It seemed almost as though I had been transported to that house in far off Nova Scotia long enough to witness its interior and to calm my fears.
It was during my twenties that I became aware of a guiding spirit, a hunch if you like, and surely everyone experiences hunches. One day in Halifax I knew I should cross to the other side of the street. There was no apparent reason and the side I was on was less congested and more pleasant. Nevertheless the urge was strong and, for curiosity's sake more than anything else, I obeyed. The reason was given immediately when a friend got off the tram and upon seeing me looked greatly relieved and said, “I've been trying all day to get you on the telephone.” The message was important.
Ever since then I have listened when this advice has come. It is not a voice that I hear nor a vision that I see, but a knowing that a certain thing is advisable. If I heed it, the reason is soon apparent. If I decide to go my own stubborn way I soon see my mistake. This gift I believe may be encouraged and developed. Or it may be confused with wishful thinking, and that can be dangerous. But when it comes in the manner I so often experience, and usually when least expected, it is something to be treasured and respected.
If experiences of this kind are rare, I fancy it is because most people think a hunch is no more than a fortuitous thought that just happened to come along at the right time. Obedience does not mean that you think no longer for yourself, but rather that when advice comes from a higher source you apply your own intelligence to the help that is provided and work with this guid ing spirit as a team. What, for instance, but guidance could have told me to duck under the bedclothes at the moment of the 1917 Halifax explosion when part of the window casing with the nails facing down imbedded itself in my pillow where my head had been seconds before? My own common sense? No, I was too inexperienced. And why do I so often know how a thing is going to turn out and whether or not I should attempt this or that? Something outside is helping me all the time. Haven't you felt it too?
Another strange thing happened when I went to Toronto in March, 1956, to do the narration in a special broadcast of folk songs. A number of the songs on that programme had come to me from the singing of a fisherman, Mr. Ben Henneberry, who had died five years before and, in introducing the songs, I had talked of him and his island home. I have always toiled against a handicap of exceptional fatigue, and I always get worked up over any performance in public. Consequently when we were about half way through I began to feel a little shaky. Then to my great astonishment Ben Henneberry was with me. I neither saw nor heard him, but I received a message and knew it was from him. It said, “You're doing very well. Just keep it up.” How did I know it was Mr. Henneberry? That I cannot tell you for I do not know myself. I certainly was not expecting him to come to me in the middle of a broadcast, but come he did. He had never appeared before. I was all right immediately and the broadcast proceeded with no one else realizing what had taken place. It was an encouraging experience, and proves that if your mind is receptive those whom we have perhaps befriended in life or loved, can and do help us in moments of need.
This recital of my own phenomena may seem lengthy and personal, but I trust it has impressed you with the sincerity of my belief in them. The same sincerity lies behind every tale in this book. They have come from many sources and from all walks of life, for ghost stories are found among people of the highest as well as of the lowest intelligence and education. They all have one thing in common. The people who told the stories were convinced they had happened, just as I believe in my own personal experiences that I have outlined. They have not been added to for the purpose of lengthening them, for a true ghost story is nearly always short. Many are given exactly as they were told, and all are by word of mouth and not from printed texts.
I have heard it argued that a ghost story is of little value unless it can be substantiated, but how can you prove something that has taken place only once and may never occur again? For myself I consider well the integrity of the informant, if he is temperate in his habits, and how much his outlook upon life has been coloured by a superstitious environment.
Whether you read this book for entertainment or for serious research, I hope you will be rewarded for the time you spend. The material covers the whole Province and has been taken down over a period of twenty-eight years. The diversity and extent of our people's belief will, I think, surprise you. Here you will find ghosts in the form of big dogs and little dogs, lights, balls of fire, phantom ships, a man on horseback with his head under his arm, a boatload of pirates wearing old-fashioned clothes, soldiers and sailors in uniforms of a past era, women in white and women in black, an old sailor sitting on a cannon wearing a split-tail coat, a man covered with eel grass from the bottom of the ocean, a woman with a pair of stockings in her hand who stopped and put them on, a dead mother who came back to advise a sympathetic stepmother in a child's illness, a horse, a kitten, a pig, a barrel of brandy, and so on.
I do not suggest that all the stories are actually true. Some are the result of imagination, superstition, and fear, but there are many others whose authenticity cannot be questioned. I have purposely refrained from making comparisons with similar cases from other parts of the world because this book is devoted to the thinking of our own people. Any conclusions I reach have been based on what they have taught me, and not from outside reading.
I wish to thank Dr. F. J. Alcock for his unfailing interest and co-operation during the ten years that I worked for the National Museum of Canada when he was its chief curator; Miss Phyllis Blakeley, Miss Marion Moore, and Mr. G. D. H. Hatfield of the Canadian Authors' Association, Nova Scotia branch, for reading this manuscript and giving helpful advice; also the people of this Province who have generously shared their supernatural experiences with me, even though it meant that I often left their homes with a tingling in my scalp and a too rapid heartbeat.
âH. C.
Forerunners
are supernatural warnings of approaching events and, are usually connected with impending death. They come in many forms, and are startling, as though the important thing is to get the hearer's attention. The most common forerunners are a picture falling off the wall or a calendar dropping to the floor at the moment when a distant loved one has died. Or you may hear your name called as I did when the mother of a friend died, although she had not called me at all. The three death knocks mentioned in the Prologue are forerunners and, to my knowledge, nobody has ever been able to explain them. Many people who disclaim any belief in ghosts admit to having had a forerunner which, after all, is just as much a part of the supernatural as the seeing of a spirit.
Although forerunner is the usual name in Nova Scotia, these warnings are known occasionally as tokens or visions. Whatever the name, the stories run the same way. I remember how my breath stopped momentarily one day when Mr. Eddy Deal of Seabright finished the folk song he was recording for me and said, knowing my interest in such things. “Did you ever hear of a man walking with himself?” I said no, I hadn't.
“Well, there was a man here,” he continued, “who felt someâbody walking beside him and when he looked, he realized it was his own apparition. He was so frightened that he couldn't speak, for he knew the belief that this was a forerunner of death. A few months later he died.”
I remembered then having heard of a Capt. McConnell of Port Medway who was said to have had a similar experience, only in his case his own apparition walked ahead of him and would not answer to his call. Instead, it left him and turned in at the gate of the cemetery with the result that the captain went home and said to his wife, “I'm not going to be long for this world.” Soon after, he was stricken with pneumonia and died.
Returning to Seabright Mr. Deal recalled a man, named Henry Awalt, telling about being out on the back road when he met a tall man like himself. But, he said, he was so much taller than his own height of six feet that he could have walked between his legs. The apparition was carrying a lantern. Mr. Awalt recognized himself and in a few months he died, but not before telling his strange experience.
Here too a man named Pat is said to have learned his fate. Before his wife died he had promised that he would never marry again, but after a while he went courting. He was coming around the bend of the road at the top of the Seabright hill when he met himself. Knowing the belief, and looking upon it as punishment for breaking his word, he assumed this was his forerunner. He told the story before his death which happened three months later.
At Tancook Island in St. Margaret's Bay a man was going to the shore one day when he met himself. He told about it and said he was going to die. He did soon afterwards, with diphtheria as the cause.
It is comforting to know however that death is not always immediate, at least according to this story from Tangier on our eastern shore, that is, east of Halifax.
“Mother lived on Tangier Island before I was born, and her sister, my Aunt Maime, was with her, a young girl at that time. One night Aunt Maime was looking out the window. The moon was bright. There was a little outbuilding nearby with a window in it, and she said to my mother, âThere's a woman looking out that window. It's myself, and I have a baby in my arms.' Mother went to the window and looked, and she could see it too. It was too far away for it to be a reflection, and anyway Aunt Maime wasn't holding a baby at that time. But fifteen years later when she died she had a baby in her arms, and my mother recalled the incident.”
Usually with a ghost story or a forerunner you can find a reason for the happening, but there is one story that puzzled me for several years. I went back a number of times and made casual references to it, always hoping that a chance word might throw some light upon it. I was finally rewarded although the interpretation is still open to question. I will tell you the story and let you decide for yourself.
In the summer of 1947 I stayed at Victoria Beach where I was collecting folklore for the National Museum of Canada. I was told that I should see Mr. A. B. Thorne for an experience that no other member of his family would talk about. My companion was the author and poet, Martha Banning Thomas. The evening of our call was fine and pleasant, with a warm summer breeze drifting in our car windows. We drove the narrow, hilly road in the spirit of sweet companionship, little realizing that our return trip would be far from serene, or that our thoughts for many a night afterwards would be in a turmoil.
The Thorne house is at Karsdale, a white frame cottage with a garden that is always filled in summer with beautiful flowers. Mrs. Thorne is the gardener, and she knows the botanical name of everything she grows. The interior of the house shows the care of loving hands with its hooked and braided mats, antimacassars, cloths with crocheted edges, and embroidered cushion covers. She also has treasures of old china handed down in her family and cherished through the years. It is a dainty, pleasant house, and she and her husband are a gracious host and hostess, making their visitors feel at home immediately.
Mr. Thorne is a man of medium height with blue eyes, an aquiline nose, and a rather sensitive mouth. Now probably in his sixties, he can still dig garden or ditch in a way that would shame many a younger man. Yet with work to occupy him, and an excellent wife to care for all his needs, he appears to be a singularly nervous man. This is little wonder, considering the experience of his youth which we had come to hear.
We had a short period of conversation until the proper atmosphere was established, and then we asked Mr.Thorne if he would tell his story. After a little hesitation he began.
“I hope I'll never have to go through that racket again,” he said. “Well I'll tell you. I had just come home from the States and I had a friend whose name was Joe Holmes. We were always together when I was home, but Joe wasn't very strong. We were young men then, about twenty, and one evening we were together and I had a letter to mail. We hadn't been drinking. I don't want you to think we had because we hadn't, and we didn't imagine what we saw. About ten o'clock we took the letter to the post office. It was in the Riordens' house, the way people often have them in the country. I lived at Thorne's Cove this side of it, and Joe lived two houses away on the other side.
