Haunted Harbours Read Free

slope of the hill looking down on the scene was Mad Meg. She waved her cow rope like a goodbye hankie at young Patrick. The last sound Patrick heard was Meg’s laughter rising up like the call of the seagulls over the ever-returning tide.
    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 gal-lows 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.

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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