The Lunenburg Werewolf Read Free Page A

who’d massacred every member of the crew. Afterwards, they’d flung the crewmen’s bodies into the water to wash ashore at Murder Island. However, their bloodlust had remained unquenched.
    An argument amongst the criminals had somehow escalated into a full-blown battle, and the convicts had killed one another off until only “Susannah” and nine other ex-prisoners remained alive. Then “Susannah” had finished the rest of her comrades off with a pot of salt pork stew—carefully seasoned with rat poison—after which she’d heaved the final nine bodies over the side and into the Atlantic Ocean’s cold, merciless grasp.
    A perfect crime, or so she’d thought.

    Susannah’s Fate
    Following her imprisonment, the woman known only as “Susannah Buckler” made friends with one of her guards and eventually escaped from Annapolis Royal. She fled — some believe with the help of the guard and others believe with the help of a fisherman—across the border to Boston, where all trace of her disappeared. Perhaps she died.
    Of the booty that was taken from the Baltimore , no trace was ever found. To this day, local fishermen claim to see the spirits of the massacred men walking the shores of Murder Island by moonlight and hear strange moans and groans about the shoreline. Some believe that the restless spirits are guarding a hidden buried treasure, while others believe that these spectres hunger for a revenge for their unjust slaying.

Sunk by Witchcraft
    In the year 1803, a ship known as the Favourite sank mysteriously in the heart of Pictou Harbour. Strangely enough, as the story goes, the sad catastrophe began with nothing more than a bad case of indigestion.
    The Favourite sailed from the port town of Ullapool, Loch Broom, Scotland, under the command of a Captain Ballantyne. The ship carried a total of five hundred immigrants, all of them eager to find themselves a home in Nova Scotia. The Favourite made the journey in a record five weeks and three days, which was considered by all as a fine omen of good luck to come—which just shows you how much trust you should put in an omen.

    A Fatal Stomach Ache
    Ian was a sailor—just the same as his father and his father’s father before him. “The men in my family have always worked the sea,” Ian would tell anyone who would listen. “We do things one way and one way only—our way—which is fine enough for me.” So when Ian signed on as a crewman of the Favourite ,he was following in the soggy footsteps of his family line and he figured that he could do no wrong.
    The Favourite arrived in Pictou Harbour with 500 passengers—plus one more. There had been no deaths during the passage, so the birth of a baby had brought the passenger list to 501.
    The ship’s passengers and crew celebrated their landing in fine Highland style. Ian ate a wee bit too much kidney pie, and no matter how much home-brewed dark ale he tried to wash that kidney pie down with, the fire in his aching belly refused to die.
    The townsfolk told him to go and see the old woman who lived in a shack just outside of town. “She knows things,” they told Ian. “She will fix you up in no time at all.”
    The old woman brewed Ian a potent potion of teaberry, burdock, and sweet honey. Then she placed a cold compress over his head and told him to lie still in the cool shade of her cabin until his stomach ache had passed.
    â€œLeave a coin on the kitchen counter when you leave,” she told him. “Whatever you feel it is worth is worth enough for me.” And then she left to milk the cow.
    After a short time, Ian’s indigestion passed, and he removed the cold compress and began to think about all of the fun he was missing in town. He dropped the compress on the counter and forgot to give the old woman her payment. Instead he went down to the town, where he danced the night away.
    When the old woman