Spirited Reading: Bluenose Ghosts
Having recently moved to Nova Scotia one of the things high on my agenda has been to find out about and look up local ghost stories; both where I live and the province in general.
I went to my local bookstore and picked up a book called Bluenose Ghosts by Helen Creighton (1899-1989). I was informed that Helen was considered by many as the master chronicler of Nova Scotia ghost stories. Although I’m not quite finished reading this book, I can well believe that the honour is not unwarranted.
In the prologue alone she sets the tone and her credentials with numerous examples of personal experiences and stories of how she came to recording the many ghost stories that she came across in her research of Nova Scotia folksongs.
Each chapter is chock full of an enormous amount of fascinating stories. These stories, all of which were recounted to Helen range from the merely superstitious or imaginative classic folklore type of story to ghost stories and incidents that have the spine tingling feeling of truth.
The chapters are arranged according to chapter which includes: - Forerunners, - Leave ‘Em Lay, - Ghosts Guard Buried Treasure (there’s some Oak Island stories in this chapter), - Foresight and Hindsight, -Devils and Angels, - Phantom Ships and Sea Mysteries, - Ghosts Helpful, Harmful, and Headless, - So Many Wandering Women, - There and Not There, - Ghosts as Animals and Lights, - Haunted Houses and Poltergeists.
Personally, I’ve been reading Bluenose Ghosts for both research and entertainment value. And I highly recommend this book if you’re at all interested in ghost stories, particularly from Maritimes region.
Bluenose Ghosts is available directly from Nimbus Publishing, probably most bookstores in Nova Scotia and even from Amazon. (Currently, most of the prices are pretty pricey at Amazon and the editions and conditions are unknown.)
