The Lunenburg Werewolf Read Free Page B

returned and found no coin on the counter, her feelings were hurt. She walked down into town and found Ian in a tavern. When she confronted him and demanded her money, he took offence.
    â€œI feel fine now,” he told her in no uncertain terms. “In fact, it was your stinking tea that gave me the belly ache in the first place.” Which was a bold lie, but Ian had been in that tavern for a little too long and the strong dark ale had run to his head. Being young and foolhardy, he gave the matter no further thought. After all, what did the feelings of one old woman really matter in the long run of things?

    Cursed by the Stone
    That same night, the old woman went out beneath the full moon to work a little spell of vengeance magic. She decided that it would serve her needs best if she cursed the ship, rather than the sailor. That way he would live and learn his lesson. Or so she hoped.
    She walked along the shore of the harbour, staring at the ship that Ian had sailed in on. “I curse you by the stone,” she said aloud. And then she took a stick of charcoal and marked the ship’s name upon the stone. She walked three times in a circle, holding the stone high above her head, letting the moonlight wash over it. Then she spat upon the stone three times. Each time she spat, she whispered a word that should never be spoken lightly, a word that had been spoken to her by a demon in the darkest of hours.
    When she was finished, the old woman flung the spat-on stone as high and as far as she could. The stone arced above the water, startling a night bird into panicked flight. For just a moment it looked as if the stone might accidentally strike the moon and knock it from its heavenly perch. Then the stone arced downward, hit the cool Atlantic waters of Pictou Harbour, splashed three times, and sank without a trace.
    And that night, while Ian and the rest of the ship’s crew were singing and making merry in the town tavern, the Favourite slid into the waters of Pictou Harbour and sank like a stone.
    The next morning, young Ian walked dutifully to the old woman’s shanty and laid a silver coin upon her counter. That very same day, every sailor and officer who served on board the Favourite did likewise.
    Folks in Pictou still talk about the ship that was sunk by witchcraft.

The Phantom Ship of the Northumberland Strait
    The Northumberland Strait is that wide waterway that separates the province of Prince Edward Island from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, stretching a length of 209 kilometres, with a width spanning from 13 to 48 kilometres. Jacques Cartier originally named the passage the Baie de Lunario because he had entered its northern end on July 1, 1534—the day of St. Lunarius. The famous British surveyor Samuel Holland renamed the strait the Red Sea because the water often shone a brilliant blazing red hue at sunrise. However, after a long and lengthy debate, during which it was pointed out that the watery passage in question was neither a bay nor a sea, the government-appointed Canadian Board on Geographical Names settled on naming the passage the Northumberland Strait, after the HMS Northumberland , the seventy-gun flagship captained by the famed explorer James Cook. However, what makes this stretch of water curious isn’t its name, but the fact that it is home to the best-known and most frequently witnessed ghost ship in all of Nova Scotia—the Phantom Ship of Northumberland Strait.
    The Phantom Ship of the Northumberland Strait has been spotted in the Nova Scotia towns of Pictou, Tatamagouche, Wallace, Pugwash, Mulgrave, Inverness, Cheticamp, and Caribou. There are also tales of ship sightings in the Prince Edward Island towns of Alabany, Canoe Cove, Wood Islands, West Point, Murray Harbour, Tignish, Summerside, and Charlottetown. As well, there are stories circulating about sightings in the New Brunswick locales of Richibucto, Buctouche, Shediac, Shippigan, Baie Verte, and Cape