The Stories That Haunt Us (7 page)

When people check in, the Redmonds never mention the possibility of what could be upstairs. But the sensitive ones always know. And when these gifted people check out, they mention to the Redmonds that their inn is haunted. The Redmonds smile and nod in agreement, “Yes that's what we've been told,” they say.

Did Pat Ferguson ever go back to the Gracie home?

“Yes, I did once,” she says. “While sitting in the parlour talking with my friend we heard something like a trunk being dragged across the floor of the bedroom directly above the parlour. My friend called up to her children to stop what they were doing. My friend's husband, who was in the kitchen at the time, wanted to know who his wife was hollering at.”

“‘The children,' she replied. ‘Who else? They're dragging something across the bedroom floor.'”

“‘Can't be the children,'” said her husband, ‘they're here with me. We're making peanut butter sandwiches.'”

Perhaps one of the ghosts
is
George Gracie. And why not? The poor unfortunate man died a horrible and untimely death. He was blind and it's believed that he fell overboard and drowned while on his way to the legislature in Halifax. At the time of his death, George Gracie was in his mid-fifties. He wasn't ready to go and perhaps that's why his spirit still remains on this side of a watery grave.

Wall-to-Wall Music

H
ere's a Maritime Mystery that Douglas and Huberte Bourque of Middle West Pubnico are plagued with. Their home, which was built in the 1820s and was owned at one time by Huberte's grandfather, is haunted by ghostly music emanating from its walls. The Bourques only hear the music when they're in bed. Hurberte says she and her family have tried but are unable to identify even the instruments, and the music is unlike anything they've heard before.

There are other disturbing things going on in the Bourque home. Huberte often feels a strong presence in her bedroom, as though someone else is there, and has heard footsteps going in and out of rooms, as well as doors opening and closing. Huberte says she's even heard someone calling her name. Another family member saw the shadow of a tall male form in the upstairs hall.

Are the Bourques going to pack up and leave? Not likely. Hurberte says they love the old place and neither spook music nor footsteps in the dark are disturbing enough to drive them out of the house—not yet, anyway.

The Haunted Convent

F
or five months in 1976, Russell McManus of Truro, Nova Scotia, attended a sales representative marketing course in Amherst, Nova Scotia. The course was held—and the students were billeted—at the former Sisters of Charity Convent on Church Street.

This story begins with Russell's arrival at the convent. It was late in the evening, and he was greeted at the door by a tall, thin man whose name was Ralph. A large wooden crucifix dangled from a leather thong around his neck.

“I do not belong to a religious order,” Ralph told Russell. “I'm the caretaker, and since you're a day early and the first to arrive, you can have the pick of any room, except mine.”

The convent was huge, with many rooms on its three floors. It housed a large kitchen, libraries, chapels and a number of washrooms. When the caretaker took Russell on a tour of the convent, they came to a large room that had at one time been used as an infirmary. When Russell chose that room to stay in, the caretaker became somewhat upset and said that that particular room was reserved for stranded transients. Russell wondered what had made the caretaker so upset.

Once Russell had chosen another room, Ralph gave him his bedding and invited him into the kitchen for a cup of tea before bed. Then the caretaker went downstairs. While Russell was unpacking, he heard the caretaker coming back upstairs, and the caretaker's bedroom door open and close. Russell went across to Ralph's room to inquire if the tea was ready. The bedroom door was open but Ralph was nowhere to be seen. Puzzled, Russell went to the infirmary, thinking the caretaker would perhaps be there, but that room was empty. It was very cold, too, and Ralph noticed an open window. He closed the window and the door and went down to the kitchen, where he found the caretaker preparing a late-night snack. Russell asked about the open window in the infirmary, but the caretaker told him he had not gone back upstairs.

“Well,” Russell said, “There must be someone else in the convent, because that window was definitely open.”

“No, it's just you and me. There's no one else in the building.”

Russell began to think that either Ralph was lying to him or there was something very strange about this convent. His skepticism must have been obvious, as something changed in Ralph's face.

“Sit down,” Ralph said, his voice heavy. “I may as well tell you the whole story.”

Russell sat, and Ralph continued: “There was a man in the last class here who took the room next to mine. He was likable, a foreign chap, but very early on he started complaining about hearing noises in his room, of the door opening and closing by itself, and of the room always being freezing cold.” The rest of the class teased their classmate about his vivid imagination and considered the whole thing hilarious.

“Now, this particular student awoke around 2 a.m. one night about a week into his course, and saw a priest by his bed reading the last rites of the Catholic Church. The student screamed and bolted from the room and refused to ever go back. He was so upset that another student had to go into the room to collect his belongings. The chap moved out of the convent, and only came in for his day classes, always leaving as soon as they were over. The other students thought someone must have played a joke on him by dressing up as a priest and reading the rites.”

As if that tale wasn't unsettling enough, Ralph went on to tell Russell about several other incidents that had led people to believe the convent was haunted. During the Christmas break, everyone returned home for the holidays except Ralph, who always stayed behind to look after the building. He was sitting in his room wondering if he should go to midnight mass or wait until morning, when suddenly he heard someone coming in the front door. As he listened, he heard heavy footsteps coming upstairs. The caretaker sat motionless, listening, then saw a shadow pass by his open door and go into the infirmary. The caretaker got up and went into the infirmary to see who was there, but there was no one in the room—and the window was wide open. He closed it, turned off the lights, and went back to his room, where he spent a sleepless night.

So the reason no one was allowed to stay in the infirmary was clear: Ralph believed it was haunted. Russell felt inclined to agree. Ralph explained that he often checked the infirmary's window: “More often than not, even though I keep it closed, I find it wide open.”

Another story about the convent was just as eerie: One night a student ran from his room and down the stairs. Those who heard him followed to see what was wrong. After a brief search the student was found in the darkened chapel praying. Not wishing to disturb his prayers, the other students went back to bed. The next morning he told his fellow students what drove him out of his room: he had woke suddenly in the night to see a small girl standing beside his bed looking down at him. The student became known as “the pacer” after he developed the habit of pacing endlessly in a circle and mumbling to himself.

Fortunately for Russell, his room at the convent was free of anything from another dimension. Across the hall, however, Russell's friend Sandy was having a rough go of it. Sandy was a friendly, easygoing young man. However, one night he hollered, “I don't know who you are or what you are but the lord is my shepherd and I am not afraid of you!” Sandy told his classmates that something pulled the clothes off his bed. Following the incident, Sandy bought a bible and every night he would sit and read from it to the other students.

The students complained of hearing someone walking up and down the hall outside their doors for hours at a time. Whenever they went to check, they could find no one. It was too much for many students, so they moved out.

Simon, an English lad, was quite good at performing magic, and he also knew how to operate a ouija board. One night he invited his fellow students to his room, where he spread out a black cloth with mysterious markings on it. He placed weird-looking objects on the cloth, including one that was pyramid-shaped with a hole in its base into which a black cord was inserted. He told the students to pass it around while he performed some mysterious chants. According to Russell, the object seemed to come alive and some force tried to pull it from his hands. Scared, Russell broke from the circle and left.

One student put his hand next to Simon's on the ouija board. Simon then asked who was present from the spirit world. The answer came from a thirteen-year-old girl. She told them how she died: She was given a red necklace that was made of poisonous Mexican beans. She got into the habit of putting the beans in her mouth and chewing on them. Soon she became very ill. The doctors were unable to determine the cause of her illness. She was brought to the convent in the hopes that the good sisters could help. Unable to breathe properly, the girl kept begging the sisters to open the infirmary window. In the end no one could help her and she died in the infirmary—room 13.

Simon told the spirit she was wrong—there was no room numbered 13 in the convent. Number 36 was the number of the infirmary. But the spirit insisted it was 13. Simon left the room and checked the door to the infirmary. Sure enough, he discovered a raised section on the door; when he scraped the paint off it, he discovered a small brass plaque with the number 13 inscribed on it.

Near the end of the course, Simon went back to room 13 and, using the ouija board, attempted to get information from the girl on the name of the ghost with the heavy footsteps. What they got from her instead were death threats. She became agitated and angry and told Russell McManus he was going to die very soon and for all of them to leave the room.

Russell didn't forget the ghost's threat and thinks it may have been responsible for a near accident that could have been fatal for him. Russell was driving to Halifax and had placed his portfolio on the seat next to him. Some thirty miles past Truro he noticed the portfolio was gone. He immediately pulled off to the side of the highway to check, but when he stopped the car, the portfolio was on the seat again. The delay took two to three minutes.

As Russell continued toward Halifax, he came upon a large logging truck that had crossed over to his side of the highway and jackknifed into the ditch. The gruesome accident had apparently only just happened because the police had yet to arrive. Russell McManus continued on to Halifax, with the feeling that if he hadn't stopped to check on his portfolio things may have turned out just as the convent ghost predicted.

The Hounds Are Barking

T
here was a time when those who lived on a certain farm in Cape Breton were happy and prosperous, so prosperous that the owner, James MacDonald, was the envy of the countryside.

But tragedy befell the MacDonald family. They were found by visiting neighbours, seated around a picnic table under an apple tree—dead. They were looking skyward with an expression of terror on their faces. There were no marks, no cuts, no bruises, and no evidence of any poison in their bodies. Their deaths remained a mystery. After the funeral, the farm was put up for sale.

Because of the gruesome and bizarre circumstances surrounding the family's death, the farm didn't sell right away. Locals wouldn't go near the place, let alone buy it. Rumours had spread through the countryside that a ghost had murdered the poor MacDonalds. In time, though, a newly arrived family was interested in buying the farm. When John Moore heard tell of a ghost, he dismissed the tale as nonsense: “Ghosts? Ridiculous.” he said. “We'll buy the place and in time we'll purchase cattle and horses and we too will become prosperous.”

And then the troubles started again. One morning Sarah, John's wife, looked out at the fields, and what she saw took her breath away. The land, fertile and lush just the day before, was rotting away. The orchard trees hung limp and fruit lay rotting on the ground. Sarah turned to her husband with tears in her eyes and asked what was happening. John could not explain it.

Later that evening, while John was in the barn getting the stalls ready for the cattle and horses he had purchased, screams brought him running to the house. When he burst through the kitchen door he found his wife and daughter cowering against the wall, and his two dogs lying completely still by the stove.

“What is it?” said the anxious father.

“There,” said Sarah. “They're everywhere.”

“What is everywhere?”

“Ghosts—can't you see them?”

“I don't see anyone but you and Lucinda!” The thought crossed his mind that his wife was having a nervous breakdown, but when his daughter told him that she too could see the ghosts, he quickly changed his mind.

“Describe for me what they look like and what they're doing.”

Lucinda told her father what she saw: “They're all dressed in black and they're wearing old-fashioned clothes. And Papa, I think they're here for someone's wake.”

“Why do you say that, Lucinda?”