Haunted Harbours

H
AUNTED
H
ARBOURS

H
AUNTED
H
ARBOURS

Ghost Stories
from old Nova Scotia

Steve Vernon

Copyright © Steve Vernon 2006
E-book © 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission from the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, permission from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario,
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Nimbus Publishing Limited
PO
Box 9166
Halifax,
NS
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8
(902) 455-4286

Printed and bound in Canada

Cover Design: Michael Little, Ideas Ink Design
Interior Design: John van der Woude

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Vernon, Steve
Haunted harbours : ghost stories from
old Nova Scotia / Steve Vernon.

ISBN 1-55109-592-0
E-book ISBN: 978-1-55109-808-1
1. Ghosts--Nova Scotia. 2. Folklore--Nova Scotia. I. Title.
BF1472.C3V47 2006       398.209716'05       C2006-904151-2

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and the Canada Council, and of the Province of Nova Scotia through the Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage for our publishing activities.

T
he past is a ghost,
the future is a dream,
and all that's precious
lies in between.

CONTENTS

Introduction

1 The Piecemeal Ghost of Black Rock Beach (Halifax)

2 The Restless Spirits of Devil's Island (Devil's Island)

3 The Tale of the
Young Teazer
(Mahone Bay)

4 Old Nick Is Ringing His Bell (Lunenburg)

5 The Ghost-Hunter's Whistling Ghost (Liverpool)

6 The Jordan Falls Forerunner (Jordan Falls)

7 As Pale As Ice and As Hard As Stone (Mud Island)

8 The Captain's House at Yarmouth (Yarmouth)

9 The Iron Box at French Cross (Morden)

10 The Piper's Pond Pibroch (Windsor)

11 The Moose Island Devil (Five Islands)

12 The Weeping Cave of Parrsboro (Parrsboro)

13 The Hidey Hinder of Dagger Woods (Antigonish)

14 The Black Dog of Antigonish Harbour (Antigonish Harbour)

15 The Cape North Selkie (Cape North)

16 The Song of the Pit Pony (Sydney)

17 Blood in the Water, Blood on the Sand (Sable Island)

18 The Phantom Oarsman of Sable Island (Sable Island)

19 The Salt Man of Isaac's Harbour (Isaac's Harbour)

20 Big Tony and the Moose (Mushaboom)

21 The Yonderstone of Wittenburg Cemetery (Wittenburg)

Last Words

INTRODUCTION

It was an early October morning and the wind was gossiping with the trees of University Avenue. I could hear Old Man Winter chuckling softly just around the corner of the year, rubbing his icy blue palms together, just tickled at the thought of the great cold and white practical joke he was getting ready to play.

Halifax was just waking up. All across the city people were getting out of bed and sliding slices of Ben's bread into the mouths of their toasters, frying eggs and pouring cereal and perking good black coffee. The Bedford Highway was already jam-packed with weary motorized pilgrims making their way in. The bridges were equally crowded. Everybody was heading towards work, and I was no exception. I walked into the Public Archives, marched up to the desk, and smiled charmingly at the young woman who sat behind it. There was a man at the bank of computers by the windows, using the Internet. His hair was tinted so many colours that it looked like he'd washed it in a box of crayons. He had so many facial piercings that I wondered if he'd recently fallen face-first into a fistful of fishing tackle.

“Do you have your card?” asked the woman at the desk.

I handed her my Archives identity card, trying very hard not to think of a hundred old war movies with the secret police in menacing trench coats hissing, “Papers, please.”

This wasn't the first time I'd been here. I'd been researching this collection for more than a year, gathering stories from hearsay and recollection, notes, diaries, and history books. I was used to the security the Archives demanded. They have every right to be careful; there is a lot of irreplaceable information stored inside these heavy stone walls. The Archives has been gathering it since 1929, when Premier Rhodes first laid the cornerstone of the original Studley Campus Archives, with a solid silver masonry trowel. Back then, the Archives were housed in a small stone structure close to the Dalhousie Arts and Administration Building. It was the gift of an anonymous donor who was later “outed” as William H. Chase, the Apple King of Nova Scotia, a good man right down to the core.

In 1980 the old Archives was moved to its current location at 6016 University Avenue, and the old building was turned over to the Mathematics Department of Dalhousie University, which still occupies it.

Which brings me right back to the beginning of my story, which is the proper place to start. I'm a storyteller, born in the woods of the North Canadian Shield. I learned the storytelling tradition from my grandfather. Since he was too old for tag or hide-and-seek, he'd tell me stories and get me to tell them back to him. Nowadays I make a bit of a living working through the Nova Scotia Writers' Federation's Writers in the Schools program. I visit schools across the Maritimes, talking to kids from the early grades right on up to high school, teaching them how to tell and write stories.

On this day, I was at the Archives, putting together a collection of Maritime ghost stories. I was a man on a mission, a man with a plan. I stashed my gear in one of the public lockers and took the elevator up to the third floor.

Soon I was buried deep in the pages of a journal from eighteenth-century Halifax.

“Looking for ghosts, are you?”

I looked up, startled by the sound of the voice.

“You're in the wrong place, you know.”

The owner of that voice was a short and stocky little man, dressed in a rumpled shirt and a pair of dark, battered work pants. He had the wide-legged solid stance of a sailing man who had only recently come to shore.

“I beg your pardon?” I said.

He smiled. It was a good smile, all crackly and warm like a campfire.

“I said you're in the wrong place if you're looking for ghosts. There's no ghosts here in the Archives. There's nothing here but a lot of facts and figures.”

I understood. You run into this sort of an encounter a lot in libraries and archives. Lonely people in search of a little bit of conversation. I quietly decided to humour him. A working artist could use all of the good karma he could gather.

“My name's Garnet,” the little man said, “and you've got the look of a man who's looking for ghosts.”

I had to smile at that and wondered how he'd guessed.

“Do I know you?” I asked.

“No sir,” Garnet said. “But I believe I know you.”

I decided that he might have seen my photograph in the news-papers. I'd done a lot of storytelling over the years and had spent a fair bit of my fifteen minutes' worth of fame in the human interest sections of a half dozen local papers.

“Well, as a matter of fact, that's just what I'm here for,” I said. “A lot of facts and figures. I'm putting together a collection of Nova Scotian folklore.”

“Aye,” Garnet said, with as broad a brogue as had ever stepped from the Scottish Highlands. “That's just what I thought. You're looking for ghosts.”

It was true enough. I was looking for ghost stories.

“Well you won't find them here,” Garnet repeated. “There's no room for ghosts in the Archives. There's no room for mystery in these carefully annotated files and facts and figures. No sir, the only place you'll find a ghost is in stories.”

I laughed at that.

“I know that,” I said. “I know perfectly well that ghosts aren't real.”

“I never said they weren't real; what I said was they're found in stories. That's where they like to live. Stories are what feeds them, like a chowder.”

He planted a fist against his hip, a preacher getting set to sermonize. I braced myself for a storm.

“Scientists have yet to tinker a rig so fine that it can calculate the caloric potential of a well-told tale. A handful of good stories can conjure up enough heat to cook up a fine belly-filling chowder. Just add a stone or two, for seasoning.”

I grinned at that. “You're preaching to the choir,” I said. “I've been telling stories for years. Nova Scotia's got haunted harbours aplenty.”