Bluenose Ghosts (10 page)

Mr. Horace Johnston, farmer and fisherman at Port Wade, used to say, “Some times I tell the truth and sometimes I don't.” This is supposed to be one of his true stories (I think). The setting is beside the Annapolis Basin.

“When I was a young man, a Scotchman came here and claimed his father had sailed with Kidd. He had a chart and he supposed Kidd had hid his treasure at Hudson's Point. Four of us went with him to dig but, for all I know, the treasure is there yet. I saw the chart and went once to find it, but I'll never go again.

“These treasures are supposed to be dug at night, so we went at ten o'clock. We could tell exactly where it was by the chart. In those days when the treasure would have been buried a man was killed and buried with it to stand guard. The Scotchman had hunted up some pretty brave fellows to help him and he was a-digging on even shares. I was young then and I didn't fear the devil or anyone else. If he came along and I couldn't cope with him, I figgered I could run. We had a man named Corneil, Ike Fleet, the Scotchman, and me. That made four.

“Well sir, we hadn't been digging long before we had an extra man with us. We had five, and he was there all night. While we was a-digging in the hole with pick and shovel and throwing stones, we didn't notice the fifth man but, when one of the party crawled up out of the hole and looked back, there were still four below. He dassn't speak, but beckoned up us, all but this extry man. Then we went away and talked it over.

“Who's the fifth man?” he says. We went back and there he was all alone in the hole now and still digging. All at once there was the devilishest noise I ever heard. The ground trembled and the rocks shook. I began to get tender-footed and the rest were shaking some, but we had one brave man among us.That was Ike Fleet. When it got too tough for us and we mentioned leaving, Ike said,

“‘No, I'm not going to leave. We've come to dig a treasure. We heard a little noise, but that's thunder. Maybe it was this extry man digging deeper and rolling a big stone that made a noise like thunder. Anyhow I'm going back,' and, mind you, he did. It took a brave man to do that, and a foolish one. We were twenty feet from shore and the tide was a hundred feet out as it often gets in the Annapolis Basin. First thing we knew Ike was in the waters of the Basin to his neck, and none of us knew how he got there. He wasn't hurt, but we didn't have any trouble getting him home after that.

“What did the extry man look like? He looked like any of the rest of us working at night. He was a medium height and he was digging with pick and shovel just like we were doing. Whether he really put Ike in the Annapolis Basin or not I don't know but, if he didn't, how did he get there all of a sudden over 120 feet away? I'd like to know the answer to that, but I'm not going back to find out.”

A story from Stillwater says, “Some men were digging at Port Hilford Beach in Guysborough County and they came to a box. One of the men spoke and the box went out of sight, but they dug again till they found it. Night came on, so they left it, planning to take it away with them in the morning but, when they went back, there were half a dozen men standing around it with no heads, so they couldn't touch it.” In Mahone Bay when they dig for treasure in a certain place it thunders, no matter how fine the day.

A note with the next story says it was told with a twinkle in the teller's eye, so you may take it or leave it as you please. “At the old foundation at Port Royal there is supposed to be a treasure. One time we took our picks and shovels and a little to drink. About ten the moon came up. By the corner of the barn where they used to see things, we were digging and joking and by and by when we were down about three feet we came to a flat rock. It was as big as the top of a table and we figured that was the top of the box that held the treasure. We shoveled it off and one fellow up-ended it and said, ‘There's something else down here!' It was one of those old iron cook pots. He was just going to tear the cover off when he looked up. He said, ‘Look there,' and, as far as we could see was a big rock hanging above us by a rope as big as the Peggy's Cove rock that could have fallen down on the three of us, and a big hound of a man with black scraggly whiskers on him and he had a handkerchief knotted in four corners and a big loose shirt and a belt and a candle. He was holding the candle against the rock that held the rope up and the rope was burning. His feet were bare and the moon was bright. The three of us all saw the rock with the rope holding it, and we skedaddled. We went back three Sundays afterwards and we couldn't see where we had broken ground. It looked just the same as all the ground around it.” So said my informant from Tantallon.Was this an actual experience or a story that has been handed down? In one respect it reminds me of a story from Blue Rocks in which a woman asked a companion to help her dig. She said there was no need to be afraid because she would hang a stone overhead like a mill stone that would fall down and kill the ghost that was guarding the treasure. How you could kill something that was already dead, she did not explain.

An interesting story, but one with an unsatisfactory ending, comes from Parker's Cove, on the Bay of Fundy shore. This is a remote spot, accessible now by car over a mountain road, but reached at the time of our story only by horse and carriage or by boat. Any stranger appearing unannounced would be well looked over and questioned, for they would be few and far between. A woman turning up alone would be almost unheard of.

“When my father lived at Parker's Cove he dreamt three nights in succession of money buried at Big Pond. He even dreamt how to go and get it. He was to drain the pond and dig. The dream used to ask him, ‘Why don't you go?'Years later an old lady came in one day and said she was on her way to the poorhouse. She asked for something to eat, and then said to my mother, ‘Would you like me to tell your fortune?' She was a complete stranger. She said, ‘You're going to have one more child.' Then she said, ‘Your husband dreamt three nights running where to find money and how to get it, and if he gets it he can make a chain to go twice around Nova Scotia.'

“After that they tried to dig but it was quite a job. They had to do it at night time unbeknownst to other people and that was hard, because the place was close to the road. It was odd that this woman appeared at all, and we could never find out who she was or where she came from. She said to my mother, ‘If he doesn't get it, nobody else will.' Well he didn't try very hard, and I guess it's there yet.”

Dreams of buried treasure are not confined to remote villages. “Over a hundred years ago a sea captain from Chester Basin sailed to Boston and went with a girl there. She dreamed three nights running there was a barn at Chester Bay with a big granite rock and a piece split off one side, and that it was on an island. The girl had never been here. The captain was going on a trip and hadn't time to look for it, but he told my grandfather and his brother about it. It wasn't hard to find and one night four of them went out. They worked quietly and, after a while, they heard a noise like a bird whistling three times and then a sound like a rock thrown three times against the barn.

“By the time they got to the flat rock they were supposed to find, they had to stop, but they cleared the ground above it for when they could come back. It was a little while before they returned. This time they put a crowbar down and they couldn't believe their eyes when there was nothing there. The rock had gone and there was nothing but an empty hole. But about that time a man named Cleveland at Blandford got rich and he seemed to have everything he wanted. They never asked him, but they thought he must have rowed out to the island, found the hole, and discovered the treasure just below where they'd finished off. That island answered the girl's description exactly.”

Mr. Washington Harnish of Hubbards told of people from New York who hired a schooner many years ago as the result of a dream and took away a treasure from Shut In Island in St. Margaret's Bay.

Many years ago too, Mr. Albert Foley had met a man at Head Jeddore who told him about a treasure at Salmon River and said, “There will be enough there to make you and all this place rich, but you must follow instructions.” Mr. Foley thought about it and decided not to take the risk. But one evening when he and his wife were having tea late in the fall a rap came to the door. They were surprised to see a stranger there. They asked him to come in and sit down. He said, “There's treasure buried on that island out there. You should go out and get it.” At that point Mr. and Mrs. Foley both had a creepy feeling which they had not felt before he began to speak. This increased as he continued, although he was dressed in ordinary clothes and there was nothing about his appearance to frighten them. He said, “You have to go after twelve at night on the second Tuesday and there must be two people. One will land and he will find three steps and a lead pencil. There will be a woman in white come with no head. She will try to get in the boat but the other man must push the boat away and not let her in. She would try three times, and the third time it would be all right to take her in and then she would lead them to the treasure.” After he had given his instructions, the stranger went away, but he left such an unearthly feeling behind him that the Foleys decided to leave the treasure where it lay. Yet at the same time they would see a light that came up the harbour to a spot just west of the Salmon River Bridge. It went from the west side to the east and back, and just a little up from the water and moving quickly. Different people saw it, and all thought it indicated buried treasure.

Years passed and the story became well known, for the Foleys had told their experience. Eventually their son and a friend went out, deciding the place was Mackerel Island. They found the pencil and steps as indicated, but no headless woman came to guide them so they gave it up. Would that prove that no treasure had ever existed, or had her vigil expired?

In another story from this district a woman in white not only tries to stop the treasure-seekers but she swims after them and tries to take the oars.This is an unusual feat for a ghost, for it is an old belief that they cannot cross water.

At Victoria Beach a pall cloth such as those used for a funeral, has often been seen crossing a road. It comes up from beneath a rock, supposedly to convey the information that treasure is there. Another old belief is that you can secure a treasure for yourself by throwing your coat over it. A man tried this when he saw a chest crossing the road at the top of the Seabright hill, possibly the same chest mentioned earlier in this chapter. Immediately he was surrounded by a bodyguard of soldiers. He was so terrified that he shut his eyes and ran right through them, and never stopped running until he got home. The next morning he went back to the place. His coat was lying there but, alas, there was no sign of the chest.

You will recall the ghost earlier in this chapter who begged to be taken off Clam Island. One night two men were digging there and one of them said, “I believe we've got the chest.” Immediately a whole army of soldiers appeared above them, dressed in the uniforms of pirates. (I was not aware that soldiers dressed as pirates, but let us not spoil a good story for the sake of a small detail.)

At East Petpeswick too a number of ghosts have been seen. “My grandfather and grandmother were roving up the Narrows one handsome moonlight night and they saw a man-o'-war jolly boat. There wasn't a sound. The crew were men-o'-war sailors. The boat kept on up the harbour and then turned in to the shore. They lost sight of them then.” It was supposed they were on their way to their buried hoard.

These stories could go on indefinitely, so let us end our chapter with a final one on this subject from Mr. Enos Hartlan. “Father was coming from Cow Bay one beautiful night and he picked up a collar in the sand at low tide. He was looking at it and he heard a sound, ‘Put it down.' There was nobody in sight. He heard it a second time, and still he just stood there looking. But the third time the voice hollered and the whole earth shook, and that time he put it down in a hurry.”

Chapter FOUR

FORESIGHT AND HINDSIGHT

FORESIGHT

The Forerunner
, as you have read, usually deals with sounds. Foresight, on the other hand, is visual. On the island of Cape Breton it is known as double vision or double sight and people who have the gift are said to be double-sighted. It occurs here mostly among those of Scottish descent although there are isolated instances among other groups. On my field work for the National Museum of Canada in 1956 I visited many descendants of settlers who came originally from the highlands and islands of Scotland, and was amazed to find this strange faculty possessed by so many people. Perhaps the word gift as applied here is inappropriate, for a gift is a pleasurable attribute. This is not, for the vision is usually that of a funeral. Stories, of which there are a surprisingly large number, go like this. I quote from the words of Mr. Hughie Wilson of Glace Bay.

“There was a woman in Mira who could see a funeral ahead of time, even sometimes before the person had been taken sick, and she would know whose funeral it was. When it happened she would be walking along the road and would be pushed to one side by the crowd following the hearse. The experience would exhaust her because not only could she feel the passing procession, but also she could tell who were the people in it.”

Another woman at Round Island had this same faculty and could describe the clothes the people would be wearing. Mr. Angus A. MacDonald of Loch Lomond, Mr. Peter McKeigan, Mr. Donald McPherson, Mr. Peter Morrison, and Mr. John MacDonald of Marion Bridge have all reported being pushed off to the side of the road by a passing funeral and some like Capt. Simon Lewis of Edwardsville, could distinguish the people in the carriages and tell where the horses would be placed for colour, John's horse being grey and Peter's brown. Similar stories have come from Big Bras d'Or, St. Ann's, Boularderie, and Glace Bay; in fact from all over the island. In most of these cases everybody might feel what was passing, but only one could see it. That one would tell the others to step to one side as he did himself and, at the same time, he would bow his head and raise his hat in respect.