Bluenose Ghosts Read Online Free Page A

largely from Cape Cod. Here in the old days, as in many other places, they used to have boards to lay people out on when they died. “A woman’s mother-in-law had been sick, and one day as she was sitting in her kitchen she heard the sound of boards at her window. She got up and looked all around but she couldn’t find anything to account for the disturbance. When the older woman died, her daughter-in-law heard the boards being put in the window, as sometimes happened when the main entrance was too small for them. She recalled her forerunner then and said, ‘There’s my boards.’ ”
    Clarke’s Harbour reported another event that was heard before it happened. In Miss Evelyn Swim’s home a sick boy was sleeping in the front room downstairs. “He was not thought sick enough to die,” she said. “Mother was stitching, and Aunt Julie had just come from her room when they heard a little knock. Mother said, ‘You go see who that is.’ Aunt Julie went, but she came back and said, ‘Levie, there’s nobody there.’ Then came another knock. She looked out and still there was nobody there. She went back to the child’s room then and everything seemed in order. The knock came then for the third time. They couldn’t understand it unless it was somebody playing a prank, but there was no sign of anybody anywhere. In a few days the baby passed away, and shortly afterwards the coffin maker came to get measurements. He put the child’s body in the coffin and he used a hammer to drive little brads into the coffin. This happened three times and was so exactly like the sounds they had heard that they realized it had been a forerunner.”
    Another story came from the same house. It was told by a woman who had grown up here, then had married and lived in the United States and now was returning as a widow to settle in her childhood island home. This island, Cape Sable, is exposed to all the vagaries of weather from the Atlantic Ocean. The coniferous trees are small, and the island has a wind-swept look. Weather is a factor that can never be forgotten because fishing is the main industry, and most island men spend the greater part of their lives upon the sea. Now that a causeway has been built to connect it to the mainland it seems slightly less remote, but until very recently it could be reached only by boats which struggled against strong currents and pulling tides.
    This is the widow’s story told as she, Miss Evelyn Swim, Miss Beth McNintch and I sat together one evening.
    â€œFather used to go to sea in the winters. When he left this time there were two little boys in our house. They were perfectly healthy and beautiful children. Mother didn’t like staying in the house alone, so a cousin used to come and stay all night with her, and they slept together in the corner room. One night at twelve o’clock something woke them up and at first neither of them spoke. Finally my cousin said,
    â€œâ€˜Aunt Isabel, do you hear anything?’ She said yes, she did. It was a frosty night, and what they heard was a rumbling coming down the road, rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble. It rumbled by the house like a wagon going over a frosty road. They were frozen in bed because it seemed to be coming straight towards our house, and that’s what it did. It came rumbling around the house and stopped by the front door. They clung together in terror. Then they heard a knock like somebody pounding on something that was frozen. Then it sounded like something being thrown away. By and by it started again and turned around and rumbled back over the road until the sound was lost in the distance. They couldn’t figure it out because they knew the sound of every wagon and who owned it, and who would that be driving up the road and turning off and stopping at their very door?
    â€œThey were up then, and they were afraid to go back to bed. Ma said, ‘I’m going to