Bluenose Ghosts (24 page)
An East Chester woman said, “My uncle was a contractor, and when I was fifteen he and I were going home to Mahone Bay from Western Shore. When we were in the woods I heard a horse and it seemed to be so close that I could almost feel its breath. I looked around and what I saw was a horse all right, but there was a man sitting on it with no head. My uncle didn't see it, and I was too scared to speak until we got home and then all he said was, âThat's nothing. Lots of people have seen that horse and rider.' Since then I have asked many people but nobody seems to know who the rider is supposed to be.”
Captain Hatfield of Port Greville told of seeing a headless dog. He and one of his shipmates were on their way home from a sea trip. They were six or seven miles from Port Greville at a place known as the Ghost Hollow and they had been warned not to pass it after dark. They had an old team-horse and a lash and, when they were about two-thirds of the way up Mill Hill, a big white dog appeared at his side.
“The horse just stopped as if it had come to anchor but I wasn't frightened. I sang out âLook at that dog,' and I jumped off the team and took the lash and struck the dog, and the lash went right through the dog as if it wasn't there at all and it didn't touch anything till it came to the rocks behind. Then the dog went under the wagon and disappeared. The man who was with me was scared to death. I was a lad of fifteen or sixteen then and I often went over that same place afterwards, but I never saw it again.”
Our other stories of headless ghosts are mostly in the chapters on buried treasure and haunted houses. In some of these the ghost speaks, and in one case his breath is felt as he stands behind the person. You may wonder how that is possible, just as I have done. My conclusion is that the heads are there all right, but not visible to the human eye. My reason is this.
You will have noticed in all these stories that a ghost appears as it will be most easily recognized by the person it wants to impress, or in the manner in which it met a sudden death. Decapitation would be such a death. Or it may be identified by a characteristic gesture as Alex was when he moved the belaying pin up and down on his shoulder in the way his friend Dan always thought of him, as though just showing his face and form were not enough. Some people come back with deformities like the lame mother and the carpenter you have read about, not because their bodies have not been restored, but to leave no doubt of their identification. Thus a person who has lost his head wishes to bring out this important point and therefore the head becomes invisible. I have no authority for this belief, but to me it seems reasonable. If a ghost has the power or ability to reveal himself in garments of his own choosing and accessories, like the father whose son remarked that he appeared complete with watch chain without which he could not imagine him, then why could he not conceal his head if it suited his purpose?
Each item of folklore
that I collect is typed on an index card and filed away for future use. When I agreed to write this book I took out my file on ghosts and separated the stories under headings, and these headings became the chapters you have been reading. I had no idea until then that women are so restless after death and I was astonished at the thickness of the pile under this listing. Why are they so loath to settle down when life is over, and why do they wander about so much more than men? And almost always alone, poor things.
Of course many reported female ghosts are no more than mist rising wraith-like from road or marsh. This meets the cooler air and assumes a woman's form and her long flowing garments. It might float briefly above ground and then vanish as suddenly as it came. A timid person would take one look and run, not waiting to see the mist dissipate, nor to look for a physical cause. Old Enos Hartlan with all his belief in ghosts said, “They're nothin' but a puff of air.” This may be true in many cases but there are others that cannot be dismissed so easily. Take the Grey Lady for example.
The scene for the Grey Lady was Stony Beach in Annapolis County just below the Habitation. She got her name from the colour of her clothing which never seemed to vary. Many years ago a vessel came to the Annapolis Basin and a boat was launched and went ashore. In the boat, according to Mrs. Burpee Bishop of Greenwich, there were two people, a man and a woman. When it returned, the woman was no longer there. A fisherman from Victoria Beach explained it this way.
“Up to Stony Beach there is a woman with no head. They claim there was once a deep-water fisherman who ran ships to foreign ports. He was married and had a family and one time he was going away on a long voyage when he got in with a nice young woman very handsome and he carried her on the ship for a long while. It was an Annapolis ship. At that time nice ships were built here.
“When he come back he had this woman and he didn't know what to do with her.They claim that he took her ashore and killed her, and she is the woman they see there. They claim that this woman wants to tell somebody about it, but nobody has ever had pluck enough to ask her. They say if you ask her in the name of the Lord that she will tell you. The reason she had no head is they claim he beheaded her, because she would appear sometimes with a head and sometimes without, but she was always dressed in grey.”
If the Grey Lady really wanted to unburden her soul she should have realized that Rev. Mr. Gretorex would have been only too pleased to hear her story. He had always been interested in apparitions but, when he took his wife and a friend driving shortly after their arrival at Granville Ferry, he had no expectation of meeting one. Yet when they got to Stony Beach they saw a lady in grey gliding along beside them wearing a short skirt, a shawl, and a bonnet. Her feet did not seem to touch the ground, and she kept her place shortly ahead of them. They attempted to pass, as Mrs. Gretorex wished to see the face under the bonnet but, as they drew up beside her she disappeared. It was noted at the time that the third person in the carriage did not see her.
When they returned to Granville Ferry they told their experience and then learned the sad story of the captain's paramour. Mr. Gretorex felt sorry for her and wished to give her Christian burial. He looked in vain on subsequent trips but he never saw her again. It is an old belief that you will never see a ghost if you are looking for one. Be that as it may, the horse must have seen her because it sometimes shied and had to be led off the road when it got near this place. Yet even with this help it was never definite enough for him to say “this is the exact spot” and hope to unearth her bones. This happened about sixty years ago and he always regretted that he had not spoken to her on their only encounter and that he was never given a second opportunity.
Dr. Robinson of Annapolis Royal used to hear the story of the Grey Lady and, if my memory serves me faithfully, it was from his family that I learned of his meeting with her. It happened one night when he was driving home from a call. He came to an elbow in the road where there was a small bridge that crossed a brook, and there were alder thickets that grew close to the side of the road. As he drew near the bridge his horse stopped. The doctor urged it on but it snorted and jumped and stamped. He got out of his old-fashioned gig with its big spider wheels and went to the horse's head.There he saw the Grey Lady standing in front of the horse and trying to stop him. As he approached, she disappeared from sight. The horse was so agitated that he took it by the bridle and led it along. When they got to the bridge he discovered that it had been washed out by a spring freshet and, if he had not been stopped in this extraordinary way, he would probably have had a bad accident. He recalled then that other people had told of seeing her on this bridge, and that her appearance was usually a warning of one kind or another. This was a foggy night when he would not have been able to see the gap until too late.
Whether it was the same Grey Lady he saw upon another occasion or not, he was never able to determine. If so, she must occasionally have rambled. He was driving between the towns of Digby and Weymouth with the school principal of that time, Mr. Logan. They were both surprised to see a woman in a long grey cloak and bonnet upon the road who did not walk, but trotted. Several times they jogged the horse and passed her but in each case she quickly caught up again and took her place ahead of them as she had done to Mr. and Mrs. Gretorex. They noticed then that she wore hoops, and that her cloak was spread over them. She finally disappeared in the bushes that grew along the roadside. In this case they knew of no reason for her appearance, and it is possible she was an entirely different phantom.
A Mr. Mills of Upper Granville told quite a different story, and there was nothing pleasurable or helpful about the way he saw her. He said that he was on the marsh one morning when she appeared before him, but she was such a filmy wraith that he could see the fence right through her. She did not look to him like a person who had come to do a kindly service and he was so frightened that he took to his heels and fled. Another man who reacted this way was Mr. Roy Condon, according to my friends at Port Wade.
He was working on a wood boat and, in order to get back to it in time from the place he lived, he had to walk to the shore at two a.m. He noticed a lady coming towards him and he moved over close to her and said, “Good evening.” She didn't speak.That surprised him and he wondered what woman would be travelling the road at that hour, so he turned to look at her again, but there was no one there. He recalled all the things he had heard about the Grey Lady then and when he did, he ran so fast he tumbled down into the bottom of the boat without even waiting to take the ladder.
Tales about the Grey Lady spread so widely that everybody in the district knew about her and she was often the subject of conversation throughout the whole countryside. But alas her story had a tragic end. You will have gathered long before this that Nova Scotians love to play tricks on one another and will do so at the slightest provocation. Those who feared the unknown were particularly vulnerable. In those days before the motor car brought new people and new thoughts to outlying communities, and before radio and television invaded their homes, the staple form of entertainment was all too often the telling of ghost yarns. Children heard them almost from infancy and therefore grew up with an exaggerated fear of the dark. Well, the day came when the young people of Granville were to have an old-fashioned hay-ride and picnic and one young man thought it would be fun to impersonate the Grey Lady. He waited until the picnic party was returning home after dark. Then he jumped over a stone wall dressed in a sheet. Unfortunately one member of the party had a revolver, probably for target shooting at the picnic. Without waiting to investigate, he drew his revolver and fired, killing the impersonator. This seems like a strange way to lay a ghost but, from all I have been able to learn, the Grey Lady has not been seen since.
Clergymen are particularly given to seeing spirits which is not after all very surprising when you give the matter thought. Did not Jesus himself appear as a spirit? And others. We have had Rev. Mr. Gretorex in this chapter and we turn now to Venerable Archdeacon Wilcox who has been mentioned before. Although he was the rector of my church in Dartmouth I did not hear this story from him or even know about it until after his death. It came to me from Windsor, the town where he had spent his boyhood.
“Reverend Noel Wilcox was out shooting at Evangeline Beach one fall when he saw the figure of a woman walking well ahead of him. He had a companion with him, and the two had separated, the better to get their birds. Mr. Wilcox was afraid the woman would get hit by the other man's shots as he was unlikely to see her, so he hastened forward to warn her. At that time she was walking away from him. Imagine his astonishment when she disappeared. He couldn't believe it. He was, however, a man accustomed to the woods and an outdoor life, and it occurred to him to look for her tracks in the sand. There were no tracks to be seen. He hailed his companion then and told him what had happened and he was further surprised at the response his remark called forth. He said,
“âCome on, we're getting out of here. There's going to be a gale of wind anyhow.' Then Mr. Wilcox recalled stories of a lady who walked before a storm. He couldn't credit the legend, but he had seen what he had seen.”
Incidentally it is interesting, because of an old folk belief, to notice here that the apparition was walking away from the rector when he saw her. Whether a ghost is coming towards you or walking away is thought to determine the length of life for the person who sees the vision. If there is any meaning in this, it signified a short life in this case, for the archdeacon's career was cut off while he was still in his forties.
Another Anglican clergyman told me about a house he once lived in. I cannot mention his name because that would identify the house and it is not the purpose of this book to give a sinister name to any property. I shall only say that it is in one of the older residential districts of Halifax. He said that he and his wife occupied the lower flat and that in the upper flat the occupants found it very difficult to keep a maid. All who came there to work were frightened, and all told of seeing a woman in white behind the portière. They disliked being in the house not only for what they saw, but for what they felt, because it always seemed that there was someone standing behind their backs. He felt sure this was not mere imagination because so many different maids had told about it, and they all had the same story. It would be quite natural for them to confide their fears to the downstairs couple and, since these maids would not have known one another or anything about the house before working there, it would be more than coincidence for them all to see and feel the same thing. Whether the owners themselves have seen or felt anything I do not know and I do not feel like asking them upon a slender acquaintance. We can conclude however that there is nothing really frightening about the house because the same people have lived in it for many years.
