Wicked Woods
WICKED
WOODS
Ghost Stories
from Old New Brunswick
Steve Vernon
Copyright © Steve Vernon 2008
E-book © 2010
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Vernon, Steve
Wicked woods : ghost stories from old New Brunswick / Steve Vernon.
ISBN 978-1-55109-666-7
E-book ISBN 978-1-55109-810-4
1. Ghosts—New Brunswick. 2. Legends—New Brunswick. I. Title.
BF1472.C3V476 2008 398.2097151’05 C2007-907556-8
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.
I’d like to dedicate this to my mom, who was Yarmouth’s storytelling lady long before I figured out which way to swing a vowel; and to my dad, who didn’t have nearly enough time to tell me all his stories; and, as always, I’d like to dedicate this book to my wife, Belinda, who puts up with everything I dream up.
Stories grow like forests —
the best of them
run their roots bone-deep.
CONTENTS
Introduction
1 The Dungarvon Whooper (Dungarvon River)
2 Footsteps Leading Nowhere (Richibucto)
3 The McNamee Swinging Bridge (Priceville)
4 The Moncton Witch (Moncton)
5 Clutch and Claw (Wolf Point)
6 A Treasure Dowser’s Boomerang (Apohaqui)
7 The Codfish Man (Saint John)
8 The Keyhole Mine of Red Head Harbour (Saint John)
9 A Rope for Madame La Tour (Saint John)
10 The Barking Dog (Kingston)
11 There Will Be Blood (Catons Island)
12 Ghost Hollow (Carters Cove)
13 Ghost Rock (Lorneville)
14 The Pickle Barrel Wife (Campobello Island)
15 The Lake Utopia Sea Monster (Lake Utopia)
16 The Bloody Stump of Bonny River (Bonny River)
17 Ghost Hill (Lynnfield)
18 The University Ghost (Fredericton)
19 The Howling Ghost of Howland Ridge (Howland Ridge)
20 The Dark Chuckle (Lower Woodstock)
21 The Shiktehawk Vikings (Bristol)
22 Echoes in a Covered Bridge (Johnville)
23 Malabeam of the Maliseet (Grand Falls)
24 The Cannibal She-Queen of New Brunswick (Dalhousie)
25 The Phantom Ship of Chaleur Bay (Bathurst)
Last Words
INTRODUCTION
Listen closely.
There isn’t a single one of us, man or woman or child, who doesn’t have our own kind of ghost story. Some of you will tell me that you’ve never seen a ghost. Some of you will say that you don’t even believe in them.
But we’ve all got them — ghosts and dreams and memories that we carry with us wherever we go. I’m talking about unfinished business, and that’s what most ghost stories are all about. Break it down into bare bones and you’ll see what I’m saying is surely true. The trea–sure that was never found, the burning ship that’s forever trying to safely find its way to shore, the fellow looking for his missing head — they’re nothing but examples of unfinished business. And unfinished business leads straight to regret.
Not too long ago I was camping in the New Brunswick woods regretting that I hadn’t brought along some marshmallows. The campfire had burned itself down into a lovely bed of glow that just cried out for a marshmallow or two, and there I was with nothing but a tin of beans.
I leaned back against a rock and listened to the campfire talk–ing. Campfires can tell you stories if you learn to listen hard enough, but there’s more to a campfire than just the sound of the thing. There’s the glow and flicker of the flames musing over the coals and painting elusive pictures on the faces of those who cluster about it. There’s the warmth and the way the firepit seems to pull everything together on a lonely dark night.
Yes sir, there’s a gravity and a wisdom in that trembling focus of light, heat, and sound that comforts a wandering man. The fire will laugh at you and listen to your songs and stories, and wink at you from a sleepy bed of coals. It reminds you that despite the encroaching darkness, there’s a reason to smile. It assures you that in spite of the screech owl and the rusty crickets and the hungry, lonely howl of the coyote, there’s nothing in these woods to fear.
Except maybe ghosts.
Only I wasn’t thinking about ghosts just then. The campfire was burning there in the heart of a dark New Brunswick forest clustered with cedar and poplar, birch and maple, and the faster-growing spruce and fir. I was hunkered down amongst clumps of wild roses, pitcher plants, cranberry, bakeapple, blueberry, and raspberry bushes, and curled green fiddleheads. Yes sir and yes ma’am, a man could live fat and easy in those woods if he knew what to look for. It makes me hungry just talking about such abundance.
I was really wishing I’d brought those darn marshmallows.
I startled as the snap of a fat resinous pine knot cracked loudly in the laughter of the campfire flames.
“You startle easy,” a voice from the darkness said.
I looked around and was surprised to see the shape of an old man standing there in the shadows of a lonely Jack pine.
“Mind if I come on in?” he asked.
“A campfire has a lot of sides,” I said. “Pick one and sit yourself down.”
He stepped closer and I could see him. He was dressed in fringed buckskin like an old-time trapper, and he was wearing some of the nicest moccasins I’d ever seen. You don’t see that much any more. Folks wear sneakers and hunting boots and gum rubbers when they go walking in the woods. They hardly ever wear something as humble and comfortable as a pair of worked-in moccasins.
He walked on into my camp, smooth and quiet, like he was born to the forest. I could tell this man had lived in the woods for a very long time.
“Are you hunting?” he asked. “It isn’t the season, you know.”
“Hunting for stories,” I said. “I’m a storyteller.”
“A storyteller?” the man asked. “You mean a liar, don’t you?”
I smiled, not taking his comment personally. With the work I do, you learn to grow a sense of humour early on or you don’t make it through at all.
“I’ve been known to stretch the truth a bit, now and then,” I answered, “but I try and stick as closely to the historical facts as I can.”
“Truth’s made to stretch,” the man replied with a shrug. “Sometimes, so is history. So what are you going to do with these stories you’re hunting, once you catch them?”
“I write them down in books,” I said. “I’m working on one right now.”
“You write them down? I thought you said you told them?”
“I tell them too, but my voice isn’t loud enough for ev
eryone to hear and these stories are awfully important.”
“Important?” he said with a snort. “Who says so? They’re noth–ing but stories, aren’t they? Just a pack of lies wrapped up in a happy ever after? Who says they’re good for anything at all?”
He asked the question like he didn’t believe in stories, but I had the feeling he was just testing me.
“They’re history and geography and folklore,” I answered, just the same way I’d answer a sixth grade student who asked me the same question in a school. “They’re a piece of the country where truth and imagination come together. They’re stories folks have been telling for a long time. It’s important that folks keep on telling them. In this day and age of computer games and colour television folks need to slow down and hear the magic of the spoken word.”
“History?” he laughed, but not in a mean kind of way. “You know what history is, don’t you?”
I knew he had his own answer to tell me, but I figured he wanted to hear mine first.
“It’s a recording of past events,” I said. “Things that happened long ago, some told and some written down.”
He laughed all the harder. There was something in his laugh— a little summer thunder and a shivery kettledrum rumble that made me want to laugh right along with him.
“I’ll tell you what history is,” he said. “History is a campfire. It’s a many-sided creature, but we usually only get to see the side that belongs to whoever won the war and talked the loudest about it. History is just what it says —his story. That’s why sto–rytelling is such a dangerous practice to indulge in. Folks fight entire wars just for the right to tell their own stories in their own kind of way.”
“That’s true enough,” I said. “But storytelling is knowledge as well. Better to have one side of a story than no story at all.”
He shrugged. “You have a point.”
I thanked him for that acknowledgement.
“I know a few stories,” he said.
“Well, why don’t you tell me one?” I asked.
“I don’t tell my stories to just anyone,” he said with a sly grin and a wink. “I need to know that you’re all you say you are.”
I nodded. It was going to be a test. I’d played this sort of game before.
“So who do you tell your stories to?” he asked.
“I tell them to anyone who’ll listen,” I said.
“Well, I’m listening now. Why don’t you tell me a few?”
“I believe I’ll do just that,” I said.
And with that I leaned back and let out an unearthly whoop–ing yell that startled the old man out of about six years’ worth of growth.
“What was that for?” he asked.
“That’s to start things up. Or maybe just to see how easily you startle. For now, just give a listen and you’ll see,” I said, and this time it was my turn to slide him a wink and a grin and leave him wondering.
“We need marshmallows,” he said. “Campfire talks louder with a bag of marshmallows.”
“Shh,” I said. “Listen closely.”
And that’s when I began to tell my first story, while the camp–fire kept talking slow and low.
1
THE
DUNGARVON
WHOOPER
DUNGARVON RIVER
Folks have been spinning this yarn for as long as the waters of the Dungarvon River have been flowing deep and cold and wide. This is a tale that’s best told over the guttering coals of a campfire, when the night sounds are creeping closer to you and the moon is haunting high overhead.
I shouldn’t have to remind you not to forget your marshmallows.
Between the winding tracks of the Bartholomew and the Renous rivers snakes the Dungarvon, as it flows down into the salmon-heavy stretches of the Miramichi River. According to famed Canadian botanist, historian, and car–tographer William Francis Ganong, a local boy, Michael Murphy, who hailed from Dungarvan, Ireland, named the Dungarvon River. Murphy swore that when he danced in Dungarvon, New Brunswick, Ireland shook. No one has yet explained how an a became an o between Ireland and New Brunswick. Still, no matter how you spell it, there’s an awful lot of beauty hanging breathless in Dungarvon’s neck of the woods.
In the mid-1800s, the life of a lumberjack was as hard as any life could be. Lumberjacks headed out into the woods in early fall and didn’t set back until spring came rising up from the southland.
You may very well ask why lumberjacks didn’t work in the sum–mer. The fact was the trees were easier to fell when the under–brush thinned out as it does in the winter. Frozen wood was easier to cut, and fresh-cut timber skidded nicely over frozen ground. So that’s why the winter woods rang with the hard chopping song of steel against pine.
Some versions of this tale call the camp boss Ryan and some say that was the cook’s name. Perhaps both men were named Ryan, but for our purposes, we will hang it upon the cook and be done with it. One can’t fuss over too many knots and tangles when one is trying to unravel any particular yarn.
Ryan was a young lad, tall and strong and dark of hair, with eyes as clear and blue as a flowing summer stream. He was a bet–ter cook than a lumberjack, so he served his time in the camp kitchen. He was well liked and respected for his fine booming roar of a voice. You see, leather lungs and a strong bellow were prerequisites for a lumberjack in those days.
“I don’t have a lick of use for a man who whispers ‘timber,’” the camp boss said. “If a tree is falling my way, I want to hear about it quickly and not two minutes too late.”
The camp boss was a hard man, as most bosses are. He could squeeze a shilling until the king blushed red and turned blue for lack of breath. He measured his days in coin and profit, and suf–fered an idler not. He prized a penny more than he valued any lumberjack and that’s where the trouble first began.
“I want to hear those axes ringing,” he would say. “The Dungarvon Woods should never fall quiet. I hear money clinking in the sound of every falling tree.”
He valued the camp cook, though, for it is a man’s belly that will carry him into the woods and back again. A lumberjack’s legs and the swing of his axe were nothing more than extensions of his growling hunger. He’d work harder and go farther on the promise of a good meal.
You must bear in mind that a lumberjack was expected to awaken at four in the morning for a breakfast of pork and beans, or pancakes, or both. The whole mess was washed down with piping swallows of tea tainted with the taste of the iron sulphate used to purify the water. They would hike miles into the woods looking for the timberland, toting cold lunches, and then hike back at about eight or nine in the evening for dinner —a meal of pork and beans, or pancakes, or both.
The camp cook was expected to be up before any of them, in time to have everything ready when the lumberjacks awoke. He would rise while the crows were still snoring in their trees and cook up both breakfast and dinner. Next he’d awaken the men by banging a broken peavey, a logging tool that looked a little like a spear with a hook on it for moving fallen timber, against a rusty iron wheel rim and singing out in his big booming voice, “Daylight in the swamp! Rise and shine, rise and shine.”
Ryan was a good lad who never wasted his time or money in the far-off town of Renous. He kept his wages tucked safely inside a fine buckskin moneybelt that he buckled tightly about his belly beneath a layer or two of flannel and a pair of red cotton long johns.
The money was meant to be hidden, but secrets are hard to keep in the closeness of camp. Some of the more cynical lumber–jacks referred to Ryan as a “cheap-hearted spend-you-not,” but the majority of the fellows knew him better than that. The truth of the matter was that Ryan was saving enough of a grubstake to marry a young girl in Miramichi. Whatever the reason, the weeks flew by and young Ryan’s moneybelt grew fatter and fatter.
Then, one fateful winter morning, the camp boss sent the men out to work.
“Aren’t you coming, boss?” the camp’s number two man asked.
“I have work to be done right around here,” the camp boss answered, and because he was the boss, no one dared to com–plain. They took their share of cold grub and some freshly baked bread and headed off into the New Brunswick woods.
“Head for the far stand of trees,” the camp boss ordered. “I want some tall timbering done today.”
It was a good day for working the woods. The crew felled many a tree and limbed them clean, preparing them for skidding down to the river. It was a day like any other day —only when they returned to camp, Ryan lay dead upon the floor of the kitchen with his skull broken open.
“He took sick,” the camp boss said. “He pitched himself a fit and fell down and died. Wasn’t anything I could do, it hap–pened so fast.”
“Where’d the blood come from?” somebody asked.
“He hit the stove when he fell,” the camp boss answered.
“He didn’t look sick at breakfast,” one man said.
“Maybe it was something he ate,” the camp boss said with a shrug and a sneaky little grin. “He sure looks sick now. Sick to death.”
It was a bad joke and the camp boss was a bad man. The fact of the matter was the camp boss had murdered Ryan. Pretty nearly everyone in that camp knew it, on account of the fact that Ryan’s moneybelt had mysteriously vanished. But because the camp boss was the camp boss, and there wasn’t any proof Ryan had been murdered, no one said a thing.
If the truth were told, the camp boss had caught Ryan by sur–prise, coming up behind him with an axe handle and busting his skull wide open.
“We need to bury him,” the camp boss said. The old bugger was all too eager to be rid of the evidence.
“Bury him where?” the number two man asked. “The ground is frozen harder than a banker’s heart. There’ll be no digging until the spring thaw.”
“Bury him in a snowdrift,” the camp boss commanded. “The snow will keep his body from rotting until the ground thaws. We’ll turn him a fresh grave in the spring and bury him good and proper. Just mark the snowdrift well and clear so we can find him come April.”