Bluenose Ghosts (6 page)

“One time a friend of mine, named Henry, and I were digging a grave and we dug up some old bones. I brought home a piece like a rib bone, and Henry took some pieces home too. In the morning it was pouring rain and I looked out this window and saw a woman going past the house. She was a tall woman in a long black coat. I turned to stir the fire to make the room more comfortable, intending to ask her to come in out of the weather but, when I went to the door to call her, she had disappeared.We can see a long distance from here, and I couldn't think where she had gone. I told Henry about it, and he said she had walked past his house, too. In fact three of us had seen her.

“We got talking about her and the more we thought about it, the more we didn't like it, so we decided the bones might have something to do with it and we'd better throw them away. We wondered if they might have belonged to a woman pedlar who went around here years ago and, while she was missing, nobody could give an account of her. There were Indians a few miles out the road and it was claimed they had killed her. We calculated that was the woman. After we put the bones back, she was never seen again.”

Another story of protest came a few years later from a fisherman at Spry Bay on our eastern shore.

“What I did see, brother Uriah and I. When my mother came to Mushaboom there was a place called Black de Cove and she dreamed there was money buried there. One foggy evening Uriah said to me, ‘We're going to hunt for this money,' so he took a hoe and I took a shovel and we dug. The tide was low and we wasn't to speak to one another. After we got so far down we got a bone a foot long like a man's bone from the wrist to the elbow. The minute we got to it Uriah said, ‘We're getting close to the money,' and I out the hole. You dassn't speak, you know, when you're digging for treasure. (The reason for this will be explained in the next chapter.) In five minutes the hole was full of water.

“Uriah should have thrown the bone back, but he didn't. He took it with him and, when we got home, he showed it to an old man we had in the house to teach school to the family. He was scared to death of it and told Uriah to take it back, but he didn't. That night it was dark and foggy and when he went out in the yard something chased him and it was as big as a puncheon. He claimed that after he went to bed he saw it come into the kitchen and he looked and saw it setting on a chair. He decided then that he wouldn't fool with it any longer and the next morning he took the bone and put it back in the hole.We never went digging again for the treasure, and the owner of the bone never troubled us any more.”

From East Ship Harbour which lies along this same shore, Mr. Bert Power had this to tell.

“I lived on the west side of the harbour one time in Wes O'Brien's house. I was working up at the head of Ship Harbour and the missus was home. I used to come home weekends. One foggy night in winter time when I came home she said, ‘Bert, I saw a ghost.' I said, ‘Go away, what did you see?' and she described it. She said it was a light like a candle and first it was on one side of the screen and then on the other. I talked her out of it, and then didn't I see it myself.

“The very next night I went to the spring for water and there was this very light on the gatepost, and it was about the size of a candle. I kept thinking about it and expecting something to happen like it was a forerunner, but nothing did. Not any more than a trunk belonging to Wes O'Brien's boy who had been drowned in the harbour. It was here in the house and had his watch and some of his clothes in it and we had shifted it. I put it back, and that was the last we saw of the light, but that wouldn't be it, would it? It makes you think, that's all. With things belonging to the dead, whether it's their bones or their belongings, you should leave 'em lay. They don't like what they've left behind being disturbed.”

We go inland from the Bay of Fundy now to Bear River, whose verdant hills and gently flowing waters make this one of the most idyllic villages in this Province. In these tranquil surroundings it seemed strange to talk to a Micmac Indian about fearsome things like ghosts and witches, but he said the Indians believed in them and that when old Jim Muise was their governor, he had a strange and frightening experience.

“A man at Weymouth wanted to buy a canoe and asked Muise to bring it to him. Jim got a boy to go with him, and told him he could have all the trout he could catch. He kept going and going as far as he could and, when it was coming dark, he saw an opening and turned his canoe in to the shore. After they had taken their gear out of the canoe, they turned it over for the night. They were both tired, the boy especially, and soon he was snoring.

“Jim had made a fire and he was dozing beside it when he heard somebody coming. You can't fool an Indian in the woods you know, and he could easily tell the difference between a human's steps and an animal's. This was a person all right, but it was different and didn't ever get anywhere. When it got too close and he still couldn't see anything he woke the boy for company and said, ‘Make some more fire.' They could both hear the thing all night making just enough noise to keep them awake but never coming in sight.

“In the morning when it got light enough to see, there were two feet sticking up out of the ground in front of them. They belonged to a fellow named Black who had been drowned and was buried with his feet sticking out. When they realized there was a dead man right beside them they packed up and got out of there in a hurry, because by this time Jim was sure it must have been this man's ghost that had given them the fright.

“I've thought quite a lot about that ghost. They say the dead don't come back unless they want something. It was a nice point of land to be buried on, but I guess he didn't like his feet sticking out that way. Mebbe Jim should have stayed long enough to tuck him in; cover them up with earth. I wonder if he ever did get that message across to anybody.”

As you have seen, the disposal of the body and one's effects may be disturbing to the dead. It is therefore a rash and un–imaginative person who will deliberately disobey their wishes, particularly if they have been expressed in words or on paper. We might go further and say even if they are only surmised. Not only must they be buried according to their desire, but they also expect to have any trinket they have specifically mentioned buried with them. The most hair-raising story in proof of this comes from Lunenburg.

“A woman was buried here with a diamond ring on her finger.Three young men at the funeral saw the ring and decided to go and dig the remains up and take the ring for themselves, and nobody would be any the wiser. It was a daring scheme but not too dangerous if there had been only the living to contend with.

“They went to the grave and it was a simple matter to remove the earth and open the coffin. They then proceeded to extract the ring but at that moment the dead woman sat up and spoke. One man died there and then. The second only lived for a short time, but the third survived the shock. By this time, however, the woman was so revived that she got up out of her grave and went home. When she knocked at the door and announced her presence her family could not believe she had actually returned. She remained there for some years with all the attributes of a living person except that she neither smiled nor spoke in all that time.” Stories similar to this have been reported from Germany, Scandinavia, Finland, Africa and other countries where the person wandered about until a second death followed by complete disintegration in the grave.

We go now to Seabright, a little further down the road from the home of Mr. Boutilier who introduced this chapter. Here we meet Mr. Oliver Hubley whom I visited many times for both songs and stories. I often think of his remark when he first heard his voice returned to him from the magic recording tape. His face got very red and he said with a mixture of delight and shyness, “You know, I'm just a little proud of myself. His singing voice was responsible for that. Here is one of his recorded stories, but only first names are given as some of the descendants are still living.

“Nearly ninety years ago there was a young man named Allie who was a very wicked fellow and he contracted a disease that was incurable at that time. His sister Lillian used to tend him. He had a ring that she would a liked to had, and he also had a pack of cards he used every night, along with four or five other young men. As he was getting pretty low and his sister knew he wouldn't last much longer, she asked him if he would give her the ring and also the pack of cards. She said, ‘I could wear the ring, and the cards would be nice to get my friends together with.' He says, ‘No, that ring stays with me and when I'm gone, I don't want that ring taken off my finger. And as far as the cards are concerned, I want you to open the stove and throw them in and burn them up. I don't want you to use those things.' She said that she wouldn't bother just then, but she had made up her mind that she was going to take that ring off his finger. The day came that he passed away and she took charge of the cards and also the ring.

“Ten days after Allie died Lillian was at my mother's house where she and my aunt often spent their evenings. They were all good friends together. So she said, ‘Barbery, what say if I bring down my cards next time and we have a little social game before we go to bed at night?' Mother says, ‘I never play cards, but it would be all right for an hour or so. Bring them down, Lil.” So she did. They had just played two or three games when first thing they heard a knock on the side of the house. It started in the corner and went round about a foot at a time, right around till it came to the door. Then it was just like it struck the latch and jingled it. Mother says, ‘That's somebody trying to playa trick. Don't bother noticing that.' So they kept on playing and the knocking got louder and it got up around the eaves of the house. It was so beautiful moonlight, and mother was never afraid of anything, so she said, ‘Look, I'm going to open the door.You and Lil run one way and I'll run the other.' There were the three of them, you see, so they bolted out the door and round the house and it was nobody. She says, ‘Are you sure you didn't see anybody run and hide?' ‘No, I didn't see anybody.' So mother says, ‘It's only somebody playing us a trick anyhow.' So they went in and started to play again. This time the noise come down round the door latch and it shook the door latch so that you'd swear the door was going to go to pieces. At last she said, ‘It's time for us to go to bed anyhow,' so they stopped playing.

“The next night they started to play again and until then everything was quiet, and you know how quiet it can be away out in the country on a still night. Then first thing the noise started in again but instead of going round the eaves of the building, it took the door and shook it hard. Mother said, ‘Whatever fool that is will tear the door right off the hinges,' and she went out and she opened the door and she said, ‘You coward, whoever you are get out of there,' because she couldn't see a sign of anyone outside. As soon as she closed the door the noise came back and this time it hit the door three or four times in succession. Mother says, ‘The devil, we'll close up and go to bed.' My father was away and they were all sleeping there together.

“The next morning she says to Lil, ‘Lil, where did you get that pack of cards?'

“‘Why,' she says, ‘they were Allie's,' and then she said, “He told me not to use them but to burn them but I wouldn't listen to him.'

“‘You open that stove and put them in,' my mother said, so she got the cards and they all watched while she put them in the fire.

“‘Now,' my mother said, ‘have you anything else belonging to him he didn't want you to have?'

“‘Yes,' she said, ‘his ring.'

“‘Well,' she says, ‘you'll have to make away with that ring.'

“‘No,' she says, ‘he wouldn't like that. The last words he said was that he wanted that ring to remain on his finger.'

“‘Then he's got to have it,' my mother says, and do you know what Lil had to do? She had to go to the graveyard at twelve o'clock at night and punch a hole in his grave until she struck the coffin and drop that ring down to him and that's all they ever heard of him. That ended it.”

A story on these same lines, but told in considerably less detail, comes from Glen Margaret, just a little further down this same shore.

“Uncle McDonald lived at French Village. When he died he was wearing his mother's wedding ring. He had said that he wished to be buried with it, and the people in the house knew this very well. Nevertheless they decided to keep the ring, and it was taken off his finger and he was buried without it.

“After his burial things began to happen in his house. For one thing his big rocking-chair rocked in the night and doors opened and shut and there was no peace for anyone. They realized then that there was only one thing to do, so they dug him up and put the ring back on his finger. After that nothing happened any more.”

Still on this shore, but nearer the main road, this story comes from Glen Haven.

“A man named John had a sister who wanted to be buried in the Methodist burying ground and they buried her in the Church of England cemetery instead. She used to come back and shake the whole house. It got so bad they had to dig her up and put her in the Methodist burying ground and then there was no more trouble.”

Sometimes the stories take a ludicrous twist like this one from the Negro settlement of Preston.

“People passing the cemetery years ago were troubled by the appearance of the ghost of a man who was buried there. They decided he wanted a drink, so they got some rum, bored a hole through the ground to the coffin, and poured the rum down the hole. After that they were not afraid to pass the cemetery and they were never troubled again.”

On a more serious note, there is a story from our neighbouring Province of New Brunswick about a nun who appeared to a man on a bridge at Morrison's Cove. Her home must have been in France, for she wished her body to be taken there. She told him that if he would obey her wishes he would make so much money, and he must take a pick and shovel and dig up her remains, and he would have to do that alone. He promised to do it, but failed to carry out the task. Whether it was from conscience, fear, or the touch of her fingers upon his head we will never know, but soon grey streaks appeared in his hair like five finger marks.