Page 2 - Stories From Inverness County

ISSUE : Issue 12

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1975/12/1

Robert Hubbard, the Corner, Inverness: It was a spooky place, going up MacDonald's Glen from our place* It was about two miles up to Big Malcolm's* And the old fellow went up to visit him* Well, anytime the old fellow would go up to Big Malcolm's it'd be about 2 o'clock in the morning before he'd corae back home* They'd get into poli? tics and whatnot* His first door neighbor on each side of him, this night they knew he went up* And going up the glen, you see, it was all full of sluices and little bridges, you know • some of them about that high • the brook criss-crossing* They got to the second one, the highest of them* They heard him coming* About 1 o'clock in the night* Dark too* They got in under the bridge* And just ??*ten he got on the bridge, they had a rock you know and they start thumping the bridge, to scare him. And he stopped right on the bridge* He crawled on the upper side of the bridge and he got down and he lit a match and here he got the other two* well, there was a part of a ghost business* He caught them right there* And they felt so damned rotten, they wouldn't talk to him for about two weeks* Ahd one of them said to him, "Well, now, what would you do, Sandy, if it was the devil?" Sandy says, "What in the hell would he be doing here?" You take that old fellow* If he had took off at a run when the other two was under the bridge with a rock, that was a big ghost. But he dis? covered the ghosts. But I am going to say this: There is such a thing as a forerunner. Yes. You can see a light all right, before a death or anything like that • or a racket. I know down home • I was only there about 3 years • and mostly every night at the window at the outside of the stove, there'd be a tapping there • just so much to say driving tacks. That was all right* We were thinking it was a couple of rats or something in the cellar, right below, gnawing or rattling something* Then our first door neighbor died in 1919, with the big flu* That'd be Danny William's grandfather. So all right, it's down at our place they made his coffin. At that time there were no imported ones* They were all made home* There were two guys making the coffin* And I was looking at the coffin, you know* Well, it got late then in the evening-*this was in March • it was getting cold* But they had the coffin finished only to put the doth on • black cloth. So all right, they took the coffin in. And I went and I laid in that coffin. N6 lie, now, and I never forgot it. I was about 10, I suppose* 10 or 11. You see, he was only a very small man too* I remember him all right* I jumped in the coffin • they were putting the clothes on • I said, "This is only big enough for rae." I got an awful kick out of it* I wasn't frightened* If I was I wouldn't go in it* But anyways, this tap-tap • you know, driving the tacks to put the black cloth on • from that night on we never heard that racket s'ain. Never. No* Axmie MacPhee, the Corner, Inverness: Where John Angus Beaton was going to build his mill • a light • and it kept me about half the night before I got home on account of it* It would go a little piece ahead of me and it would stop, and it would go and stop and at last it went • then it shot up a hill and back over • and it disaooeared just right where the mill was* That's the only forerunner I ever saw* (Did you ever see a light when someone was going to die?) NO, no* But we did hear noises, in the Qualified Dispensers Always in Attendance OWL DRUG STORE Q. I. MacDonald, Prop. Your Northside DOROTHY GRAY DISTRIBUTOR Convalescent and Sick Room Supplies Sales & Rental wrug Sundries and Cosmetics P.O.Box 125 794-3611 North Sydney ALWAYS AT YOUR SERVICE Cape Breton's Magazine/2 CHICKEN CHALET fried