Haunted Harbours Read online

  As Patrick dropped through the trap door, the first leaf of autumn, coaxed by the late August wind, fell from the oak tree above the gallows. Some swore it was a sign that the good luck had run out of Halifax Harbour, but before the sun had fallen the beer mugs were raised in the waterfront taverns and folks forgot about the fate of the young late Patrick Tulligan. Yet across the harbour, Belle of the Isle watched from the shores of McNabs Island, her tears falling down and mixing with the salty Atlantic waves.

  After the hanging, the hangman decided that it would be a fine idea to build a cage of iron about the boy’s body and let him swing and hang there as a warning to sailors passing into Halifax Harbour.

  Patrick hung in his cage with no one but the ravens to keep him company. His bones grew black and fungus stained them blacker still. After a time, even the flies found nothing to feast upon.

  The years passed. The Halifax townsfolk forgot Patrick’s name. It became a dare for young boys to run up the dark rock and touch the cage. It was whispered that if you got too close to the iron bars, a pair of black withered hands would reach out and grab you and drag you into the cage.

  And all this time Belle of the Isle walked the beach of McNabs Island, gazing across at the withered remains of her long-lost lover. She never married, and her long auburn hair ran white as the foam-tossed waves. The passing sailors swore you could hear the sound of the wind running through her hair, the call of her lonely keening haunting the ocean air.

  As Patrick’s remains slowly rotted, Halifax continued to grow. Houses were built around Black Rock Beach, and those who lived within eyeshot began to complain about the gallows sticking out like a canker in the mouth of the harbour. It seems that old Patrick was bad for real estate values.

  The city council decided it would be better to move the gallows to McNabs Island. Being good frugal Scots they dismantled the Black Rock Beach gallows piece by piece and rowed them by dory across the harbour to McNabs Island where they were reassembled. Nearly two hundred years later, in 1966, Thomas Raddall wrote a tale of Peter McNab and his family that centred around these very gallows. He called it “Hangman’s Beach,” but that is a tale for another time.

  The three R’s, reduce, reuse, and recycle, were known even then, and the authorities decided to take Patrick with them to a new home on Hangman’s Beach. But the bones that had hung for thirty long years were brittle with age. By the time the cage reached the dory, Patrick had fallen to pieces. His bones, broken and scattered too fine and too far to bother picking up, were left upon the beach for the crabs to pick over.

  Even now, the fishermen say that on long lonely August nights you can hear Belle walking the McNabs Island beach line, calling out soft and low to her long-lost lover – “Patrick, oh, Patrick.”

  And on certain August nights, a figure of a young man has been seen stooping and bending on Black Rock Beach, picking up pieces of something from the ground.

  So if you’re out there, on Black Rock Beach when the moon is hanging over the waters like a fat rotted pumpkin, and some strange fellow walks up to you and asks “Can you give me a hand?,” I believe I’d run if I were you.

  2

  THE RESTLESS

  SPIRITS OF

  DEVIL’S ISLAND

  DEVIL’S ISLAND

  I first set foot on Devil’s Island a long time ago. At the time, the only residents were a caretaker, his wife, and a large friendly German Shepherd by the name of Thor. The caretaker was an artist, and his wife an author, so both of them enjoyed the seclusion that their choice of neighbourhood provided. I was spell-bound by the tangible mysteries that lurked on this small forgotten island with its oh-so-intriguing name. The island sits just beyond the mouth of Halifax Harbour about two kilometres south-east of McNabs Island. Several years after my visit, Devil’s Island was sold to a private buyer. There isn’t a single living soul upon it these days. The automated lighthouse is the only sign that life ever existed there.

  But there are many souls —and many stories — that linger there still.

  Devil’s Island is not named as such on many old maps. In 1758 it is mentioned as being within the boundaries of the newly formed Halifax Township. The town’s limits were decreed to extend from the western head of Bedford Basin and across the northerly head of St. Margaret’s Bay, including Cornwallis Island, Webb’s Island, and Rous Island. Rous, now known as Devil’s Island, was named after its first owner, Captain John Rous. Prior to that it was sometimes called Wood Island, for the stand of trees upon it.

  There are as many ghost tales of Devil’s Island as there are names for this tiny little speck of rock. Sadly, like many a Nova Scotian name, the true etymology of Devil’s Island has been lost in the misty regions between myth and barely-recorded history. An early article in the July 6, 1901 edition of the Dartmouth Patriot tells us that the name “Devil’s Island” came from the previous owner, a Monsieur Duvall. For a time folks apparently referred to the island as Duvall’s Island, but as the depredations of the Maritimer’s notoriously relaxed tongue and innate sense of cheekiness took over, the island came to be known as Devil’s Island.

  The island is a barren patch, with nary a branch nor twig upon it. But there was once a small forest and a town consisting of eighteen dwellings and a school of sorts that passed through the nurturing guidance of four separate schoolmasters. It is said that an untimely forest fire ravaged the island during World War I, when most of the young men had left; they never returned. The wee island settled into the fog of mystery and the depredation of eventual neglect.

  Folks often tell of how back in the early 1900s Dave Henneberry and Ned Edwards saw what looked to be a large white barrel floating in the surf. “It’s the devil’s treasure,” swore Henneberry. “Every seven years it surfaces for a wee bit of sunshine, strictly to tease the angels, and then it sinks straight to the bottom.”

  “Should we take a shot at it?” asked Ned, raising his rifle. “Maybe if we put a hole in it we’ll slow it down some.”

  “And risk riling the devil himself? I should say not.”

  But then Dave, demonstrating a strange Island-born perversity, bent and picked up a beach stone and winged it fair and square directly at the large white barrel. The stone made a strange thunking sound, and the white barrel slid back into the ocean as if it had never been there.

  Why did he do it? For luck? For spite? Nobody knows, but the very next morning Henneberry was found in his rowboat, drifting far too close to the position where he and Ned had first spotted the pale white casket. Henneberry was drowned with his head and shoulders hanging over the side of the boat, as if he’d simply fallen asleep while staring at something deep beneath the water. Was he a victim of foul play, or did he die because he tampered with the devil’s treasure box? Only time and the tide truly know and neither is in the habit of telling many tales, however Henneberry’s wife swore that on the night Henneberry died, she heard the clomping of his big rubber boots and later found his wet tracks on the floorboards of the hallway.

  In later years another generation of Henneberrys moved in to the old family house. No sooner had they moved in, but their baby died in its crib. Such an untimely death was fairly common in that day and age, but some folks claimed that the Henneberrys were cursed because they lived on Devil’s Island. Their house was later rumoured to be haunted by the sounds of a baby crying, loud and eerie in the middle of the night. Worn to weariness by grief and terror, the family eventually tore down the house. Wood, being in short supply, quickly found a use; the lumber of the old Henneberry house was scavenged and recycled by kin and neighbours alike.

  But those who used the wood soon learned to rue their Scotian frugality. Every house that laid a plank of Henneberry wood in its framing was reported to be haunted either by the sound of Henneberry’s sloshing rubber boots or the weeping wail of a dying infant. Those who burned the wood swore they heard the sound of a baby screaming in the heart of the flames.

  To this day it is said that the des
cendants of the Henneberry family refuse to set foot on the shores of Devil’s Island. Passing fishermen have sometimes seen a baby’s cradle floating in the water but as soon as they move their boats close enough to see it clearly, the cradle seems to slide into the water and quickly vanish.

  3

  THE TALE OF THE

  YOUNG TEAZER

  MAHONE BAY

  Nova Scotia is a peninsula and there are very few locations within its borders where you can stand more than fifty miles from the ocean, so what book of Nova Scotian ghost stories would be complete without a tale of a phantom ship?

  There are quite a few ghost ship stories to be found in Nova Scotia, so many that one wonders why all of these fabled ghost ships haven’t been written up by the Coast Guard as a maritime traffic hazard.

  There is the well-reported phantom ship that sails up and down the Northumberland Strait, the empty drifting Mary Celeste, and Captain Kidd’s famous treasure ship. Yet the Mahone Bay tale of the Young Teazer has long been a favourite of mine.

  Back in the early 1800s privateering was a profitable but dangerous profession. Privateering was a barely legal form of piracy. A captain would apply for a letter of commission from his monarch and/or ruler, and then would set out to capture every enemy vessel he could.

  Every captured vessel and sometimes its crew, if they could be easily taken, were brought in to the naval commission of the pirate’s home country for a suitable reward. These captured ships would be converted and put to use in the fleet, sometimes as privateers themselves. Ships were swapped back and forth like bubble gum baseball trading cards.

  Such was the case of the Young Teazer. Originally the property of a Spanish slaver, she was captured and sold at Halifax in 1811. She was refitted and then served as a packet vessel, sailing between Liverpool and London, under the very practical name of the Liverpool Packet.

  When the War of 1812 broke out, the Liverpool Packet was refitted yet again and received a privateer’s commission from the British government. As a privateer, this small, fast fifty-four by eighteen-and-a-half foot vessel was very successful. She single-handedly captured more than a dozen enemy vessels with the help of five cannon and a crew of forty-five. Eventually, though, she was captured by the American vessel, Thomas. She was sold at auction again and renamed the Young Teazer.

  Are you keeping score? So far the Young Teazer has been a Spanish ship, a British commercial vessel, a British privateer, and now an American privateer.

  Her new master, young lieutenant Frederick Johnson, took command of her in 1813, directly following his capture and release by the British forces, and therein lies the heart of the tale. You see, Lieutenant Johnson was captured by the British with his previous vessel and had signed a parole note promising that he would return to his home town and never take up arms against the British forces again. Yet no sooner had he returned to Maine than he signed on as the master of the Young Teazer.

  Some might think poorly of young master Johnson for breaking his signed word, but the fact was that he had signed the parole promise under duress. Besides, he was a career military man and knew no other trade. At this time in history, if you wanted to be a member of the American fleet, you had best be resigned to fighting the British and the Canadians.

  So off he sailed, but he might as well have stayed at home. His bad luck hadn’t changed a whit. No sooner had he set sail than a pair of British warships caught him and the Young Teazer just outside of Mahone Bay Harbour, on June 26, 1813.

  In an effort to escape his pursuers, Lieutenant Johnson turned the Young Teazer into Mahone Bay Harbour, hoping to take shelter behind Great Tancook Island. This should have been an easy trick, given the many islands that clustered and cluttered up the waters of the harbour.

  The Young Teazer fired a blast from her cannon and turned into the wind. The British bracketed him with their own cannon fire. Johnson was outnumbered and outmaneuvered, cut off at every turn.

  Not wanting to hang for breaking his parole promise, Lieutenant Johnson set fire to the Young Teazer in a desperate attempt to escape. He hoped that he and his men might row out of the reach of the blaze in their lifeboats and escape in the smoke and ensuing confusion. Alas, he had forgotten to take into consideration the ample cargo of gunpowder the Young Teazer had been carrying with future sea battles in mind. As the flames reached the powder kegs, the entire ship went up in an explosion that rocked the shores and rattled the window panes of the nearby town of Mahone Bay.

  There were few, if any, survivors aboard the doomed Young Teazer. The records regarding this matter vary wildly. It is a fact that the body of Lieutenant Frederick Johnson was lost to the careless tossing of the waves.

  The fire-gutted hull of the Young Teazer, scorched clear down to the waterline, was towed into Chester Bay on the following day and sold off as salvage. What was left of the hull was used as the foundation of what is now the Rope Loft Restaurant in downtown Chester. The keelson, a timber fastened above and parallel to the keel of the ship for additional strength, was used to construct a large wooden cross that is now a part of St. Stephen’s Church in Chester.

  To this day, residents and passing ships claim to have seen the ghost of the Young Teazer sailing through the mist and the moonlight of Mahone Bay Harbour, just rounding the hook of Great Tancook Island. The hot tongues of a ghostly raging fire are seen licking at the ragged sails, and the spirits of the restless dead sailors still hang and burn in the rigging. Pragmatic party-poopers point out that this is nothing more than the light of the moon filtered through the nimbus clouds and night fog. Other wiser folk have declared that the vision is nothing more than the silhouetted mast of a tall spruce tree seen through evening fog as the sun sets, but I’ve never been one to listen too closely to practical thinkers. Ask any old-time sailor and he’ll tell you one truth: every ship has her own soul, a spirit as specific and individual as fingerprints.

  I think the Young Teazer had been transformed so many times that she simply looked at her sinking as one more refit. Now she prowls the mists and the darkness of the Mahone Bay water, faith-fully keeping her final station.

  Nearly two hundred years later, Mahone Bay holds an annual Wooden Boat Festival, whose highlight is the reenactment of the burning of the Young Teazer. Two local vessels play the part of the British ships and a third takes the role of the Young Teazer. Shotgun cannons and a road flare help simulate the gun duel and the subsequent fire. This reenactment is followed by the symbolic burning of a scale model Young Teazer and afterwards, if weather permits, you can count on a rousing display of fireworks.

  Visit Mahone Bay someday if you have the chance. You might be surprised to see the Young Teazer, sailing through the misty waters. Or perhaps you’ll happen upon the wandering ghost of Lieutenant Frederick Johnson, still seeking to evade British justice, haunting the dockyards and the shoreline of the harbour.

  Don’t be scared; I’m only teasing.

  4

  OLD NICK

  IS RINGING

  HIS BELL

  LUNENBURG

  Someone told me a bit of this tale at a Christmas party, but by the time I’d gotten home, the memory was lost in a soft fog of festivities, food, and too much winter ale. I spent some research time at the Archives, and a whole month scouring the used bookstores for old texts. This search brought me two more sides of this story – each imperfect, each incomplete. I have taken it upon myself to weld the two sides together and I’ve come up with something that sounds a little like this.

  In the mid-1700s Nova Scotia was billed as a promised land of milk and moose meat. Ruthless government agents travelled through Northern Europe enticing unwary settlers to pack up and venture across the Atlantic to settle there.

  “Land for every man,” they swore. “Soil that parts like sea water before the plow. Fresh game and fish for the asking. Room for everyone and a chance for a brand new beginning.” Such were the promises made for money; the land agents received a bounty from the British gov
ernment for every colonist they managed to seduce. However, as this mixed bag of European settlers arrived in Halifax, they were told a completely different story. Halifax had been built for the British, they were told. There was no room for Dutch, German, or Swiss settlers.

  So it was that in the early summer of 1753, a group of fifteen hundred German, Swiss, and Dutch settlers sailed out of Halifax and into Malagash Bay. They settled on the shores of what would later be known as Lunenburg, determined to make a fresh start for themselves. They swore to build a new life on this cold and unfriendly shoreline.

  They were harassed by the coming winter, the harsh conditions of the untilled land, and the depredations of local Mi’kmaq riled up by the French, who had their own notions of who should or should not be allowed to take root in this brand new world.

  Everybody wanted a piece of this landscape, yet by the early 1760s France had surrendered the entire country to the British and the settlers had made peace treaties with the local natives and got down to the serious business of building a home.

  The settlers took root mostly on the coastline, which provided a ready-made escape route. The ocean was their friend and if there was ever any sign of trouble they could simply sail away.

  But Nicholas Spohr was of tougher stock. He hunted upriver, looking for a patch of land far from the crowded towns to call his own. In Germany he’d been a landless peasant, and had harboured dreams of owning his own estate.

  He found his dreams made manifest far up the LaHave River on the shores of a large horseshoe-shaped cove. Here, in the wooded darkness of the Nova Scotia forest, Nicholas found an entire abandoned settlement. There were docks leading out into the river and a large clearing, containing a great blockhouse with cannons still mounted in their swivels. There was a large warehouse that looked to have once served as a church on Sundays, with a large black belfry and a great iron bell mounted therein. He could see the bell from the shore, swaying softly in the evening wind.