Maritime Mysteries (16 page)

In the 1850s, along the Dugarvon River near Whooper Springs, there were several logging camps. The cook of one such camp, was a young Irish immigrant who came to the new world to make his fortune. While the lumberjacks were working in the woods, the boss and the cook were alone in camp. The only interest the boss had in the young Irishman was the thick money belt around his waist. One day, when the lumberjacks returned to camp in the evening, they noticed that the cook was missing and asked the boss where he was. Shrugging his shoulders, he said “I guess he quit.” Not so: a search of the camp found the body of the young cook. There is a theory that the boss had clubbed the cook to death, stolen his money and hidden the body in the barn.

New Brunswick's Michael Whalen, poet of the Renous, provides his own version of what happened in his famous ballad of the Dungarvon Whooper:

When the crew returned that night,

What a sad scene met their sight—

There lay the young cook silent, cold and dead,

Death was in his curly hair,

In his young face pale and fair,

While his knapsack formed a pillow for his head.

From the belt around his waist

All his money was misplaced,

Which made the men suspect some serious wrong.

Was it murder cold and dread

That befell the fair young dead

Where the dark and deep Dungarvon rolls along?

Unable to move out of camp because of a snowstorm, the men were unable to take the body to the nearest settlement for burial, so they carried it into the woods and buried the cook in a make-shift grave. No prayers were said over this young Irish lad's body. He lay there under a cold ground, unblessed.

That night, ungodly screams coming out of the forest drove the men from their beds into the night:

Pale and ghastly was each face,

“We shall leave this fearful place

For this camp unto the demons does belong.”

Hurriedly, the lumbermen fled the camp for good. The owners kept hiring new workers but when they heard the terrible screeching of whatever was in the woods, they too fled. The owners had no other choice but to call in a Roman Catholic priest who read the church's exorcism prayer and blessed the grave with the sign of the cross.

Till beside the grave did stand

God's good man with lifted hand

And prayed that this scene would not prolong—

That these fearful sounds should cease,

That this soul may rest in peace

Where the deep and dark Dungarvon sweeps along.

It is said the priest's prayer silenced the horrible shrill sounds forever.

And round the Whooper's spring

There is heard no evil thing

And round the Whooper's grave sweet silence dwells.

But not everyone agreed. Some say the Dungarvon Whooper still wails like a banshee.

Be that as it may, the story of the Dungarvon Whooper is still, after nearly 150 years, the story most told around a warm fireplace. It's so popular that even a train was named after it. Should the reader visit Chatham, New Brunswick, we may share a pint and talk about what really happened that day so long ago along the Dungarvon. Where? Where else but in a tavern in the old Chatham Railway Station. You can't miss it—it's called the Whooper.

Granny's Ghost

T
his hand-me-down came to me on a Saturday morning in the local supermarket. I call the man who told it to me the “banana man” because as he recounted this familiar story, he was picking over the best fruit. It's a ghostly tale of a spirit who almost beat the family back home from the cemetery.

When the driver of the automobile came over the hill, he saw an elderly woman standing just outside the graveyard. She raised a small, fragile hand indicating she wanted him to stop. Why he stopped he couldn't say. Ordinarily he would have kept on going. But something he couldn't explain or understand compelled him not to. The woman got in the back, and leaned her head against the seat. The driver couldn't help but notice how sickly she looked. Her skin had a distinct pallor to it. The dress she wore was black with a white collar and cuffs. “Where are you going,” the driver asked.

“I'm going home.” She gave the driver the address and fell silent again. Someone's grandmother, he thought. But what was she doing by herself in the cemetery? Oh well, it takes all kinds. When he turned to ask if he was going in the right direction, she was gone! The driver pulled over immediately and stopped the car. The only thing remaining in the back seat was a lingering lilac fragrance. The woman had simply vanished!

The bewildered man was about to turn the car around and continue his journey when he remembered the street address she had given him. He drove the car slowly down the street until he came to the house. He stood outside for a moment trying to decide what to do, before knocking. Would the people inside think him crazy? He knew he had to find out. His knock was answered by a young woman. The man could hear voices inside. He told her about the woman he had picked up outside the cemetery and that she had wanted to be dropped off at this address, but had suddenly disappeared, vanished from a moving car. He described the elderly woman and what she was wearing. The young woman began to weep. “The person you're describing is—was—my mother. We just buried her—only just returned from the cemetery.”

The Ghost of Ashburn

L
ocated on the outskirts of westend Halifax, Nova Scotia, is the famous Ashburn Golf and Country Club. For more than seventy-five years, Ashburn has been the home for thousands of golfers.

There is something else on the course besides would-be Tiger Woodses that sets Ashburn apart from any other golf course in the country: it has a resident ghost. She's been seen on several occasions over the years watching from the tree-line. We're told she's old, very old, and tall and thin. This female spirit has been haunting the course and the area since the 1850s. According to local folklore, the woman became difficult in her old age, and got lost in the woods on several occasions. The last time she disappeared, she was found hanging from a tree. There is another theory, though, on how she died and why she's haunting Ashburn. Seems there was this old man who lived in a shack in the same woods. He was found dead quite by accident in his bed by hunters. Official records show he died of natural causes. When authorities investigated further, however, they uncovered a shallow grave and found the remains of an old woman. No one really knows what the relationship between the old man and woman was. Some believe they were brother and sister. Authorities at the time assumed, because her body was found near his shack, that he had murdered her.

The new members of Ashburn are not aware of the ghost; those who are try to keep an eye on the ball and not the woods. We've been told there are some golfers who, if they slice a drive into the woods, refuse to go anywhere near the tree-line in fear of coming face-to-face with the ghost of Ashburn.

We understand there have been moments in the clubhouse following a pleasant round of golf, when the conversation turns to why those easy putts were missed. Some put forth the theory that it's as if an invisible hand were involved. Older members look at each other and smile.

Too Many Coffins

I
t was midnight when the brothers of the local Masonic order left the lodge. Little did they know what was ahead of them. There is but one explanation for what happened—they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were simply spectators of the restless dead. The frightful tale happened over a hundred years ago, just outside Sheet Harbour, Nova Scotia.

The lodge members lived on the other side of the harbour and to get to their boats, they had to cross a desolate stretch of road. There was a full moon to guide their way and the breeze coming off the water was a welcome relief from the suffocating smoke-filled rooms of the lodge. As they stepped onto the road, a sudden noise startled and confused the group. They stood there huddled together, listening. It was difficult to believe but the terrible sounds were coming from somewhere beneath them. The sounds were like no others they'd ever heard. It was a horrible mixture of wailing, weeping, and agonizing screams. And then the road beneath them began to shake violently and lift under their feet. Before their very eyes, the road was suddenly filled with decaying coffins that gave off a sickening odour. These containers of death moved in a zig-zag fashion, forcing the men to side-step in fear of bumping into them. From that indescribable nightmare, they watched as mystical shapes oozed through the walls of the coffins. These phantoms crept close to the ground, circling the men's legs and, like a finely spun web, wrapped themselves around the bodies of the paralyzed intruders. The brothers were now beyond fear. They were in an hypnotic state following the shapeless mass of nothingness that fluttered before their eyes. They would later recall that these phantoms took on a human quality, but then the shapeless faces would fall away into a vapor-like mass.

Suddenly, it was over—ended as abruptly as it had begun. It was as if the coffins and the ghosts were swallowed up by the earth.

The brothers fled to their boats. As they rowed in silence to the other side of the river, the sounds of tormented souls could be heard coming from that other world.

Those who were caught up in that ghostly nightmare are gone. So is the Masonic lodge. The only reminder of that night of terror is the road. Today, locals refer to it as the old ghost road.

A Frog's Frog

I
f you have a sense of history when you first arrive in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and, the building that will immediately attract your attention is the officers quarters that was built in 1839.

Today, the building houses a special museum that's operated by the York-Sudbury Historical Society. There is a Maritime Mystery of sorts here. Hermetically sealed in a glass case squats the world's biggest frog. This is no run-of-the pond frog mind you. This lily-pad dweller weighed in at forty-two pounds. Is it a froggy fraud you ask?

In pursuit of the truth one need only journey to the nearest fishing hole. You must learn not to rush these rod and reel weavers of truth and tall tales; patience is indeed a virtue. Between baiting fish hooks and long pauses you'll hear the story of how the world's biggest frog came to be.

“We must go back in time,” the old man with the fishing pole says. Not back to Jurassic time mind you, only to a hundred plus years and to Killarney Lake, which is located a few miles outside of Fredericton.

The main character in this tale is a Fredericton hotel operator and outdoors man by the name of Fred Coleman. One evening while fishing on Killarney Lake, Coleman noticed a tiny frog sitting on a lily pad, watching him. Coleman was so taken by the little fellow that they became fast friends, and Mr. Coleman began feeding his new friend a rich and varied diet of insects and, according to some, a lot of human food and drink—whiskey to be exact. It didn't take long before our little amphibian friend puffed up to forty-two pounds!

But nothing lasts forever; Coleman's friend made his final jump, rolled over, and died. Coleman was devastated, so he had the big fellow stuffed and put on display in his hotel lobby.”

While most New Brunswickers accept the Coleman Frog as the real thing, there are skeptics who say he's a fake, that he was made by a nineteenth-century chemist who put him in his drugstore window to advertise his homemade cough medicine—frog in the throat remedy, I suppose.

Who would dare poke a finger in Mr. Frog's tummy to see if he was just so much hot air? I kept my hands in my pockets. Whether he's all stuffed up or just paper-maché, will probably remain a Maritime Mystery.

The Phantom Train

T
here have been many stories of sightings of phantom ships sailing off into the sunset, and of phantom coaches drawn by black horses disappearing into the night, but it's rare to hear of a phantom train. Prince Edward Island has one.

This incident supposedly happened over a hundred years ago in Wellington.

The community hall in Wellington was only, as the old timers say, a “spit and holler” from the railway station. Well, many years ago, a wedding reception was being held there, and around midnight, above the music and dancing, everyone was stopped in their dancing shoes by the mournful whistle of a passing train. “Strange,” an elder said. “Very strange indeed,” said another. Strange because there was no scheduled train running that late at night. “We should go outside and see,” said another elder. When the wedding party went outside they were dumbfounded by what they saw. Pulling into the station was a mainline locomotive. What made it all the more unbelievable to these country folk were the ghost-like people they saw boarding the train.

Some even swear they heard the familiar “All aboard,” as the train pulled out of Wellington station.

Others reported only hearing the ghost train, not actually seeing it. They heard the train's whistle, then the familiar sound of steam and steel rolling over the rails.

Could it have been a soul train coming to collect the recent dead?

The Clock

T
his fascinating Irish gem is from one of Dorothy Dearborn's tales from the other side. It's the story of Irish spirits stealing aboard ships for a ghostly voyage to the new world, not instead staying under the old sod where they belong.