and terrifying tales
BIGSTOCK/ GUTAPER
Sinners, spirits
East Coast ghost tours thrill, chill and educate
Cossit House Museum, Sydney
18th century clothing for this “Ghosts and Legends of Historic Sydney,” tour is warning us about what we might find inside. The stories of jealousy, greed, foul deeds and grisly deaths set here seem endless. Earlier in the tour, in the full light of day, we stood before a private home said to be haunted by troubled spirits. Long ago, the basement served as a jail. Its most infamous inmates were involved in the 1833 Flahaven murder case. Mrs. Flahaven and her eldest daughter became overly fond of two men taking shelter in the family barn. One thing led to another, and the two scoundrels violently murdered Mr. Flahaven. They made a mess of the burial, leaving a hand sticking up out of the ground. Eventually, a dog led searchers to the victim.
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ATLANTIC PROVINCES
CONFEDERATION CENTRE OF THE ARTS
T
here’s not a cloud in the sky today in Sydney, Nova Scotia. I’m with a small group standing in the sunshine before the Cossit House Museum, built in 1787, just one of many historically significant buildings in Sydney’s North-End Heritage Conservation District. Our guide, dressed in
The men were captured and locked up grow out of real, often ghastly crimes, epic in that basement jail while the people of betrayals and violent ends. Ghost tours are the town quickly built a gallows in what is popular in many of these historic places. now Victoria Park. Lumber was in such short Some tours are unofficial and only available supply, they borrowed from a house under when requested. Ask at any historic inn, construction. After the murderers were hotel or B&B, and you may be rewarded. dispatched, the lumber was returned and At the Algonquin Resort in St. Andrews, the house completed. Ever since, residents New Brunswick, the reward is a creepy tour have reported apparitions all over this through the belly of the building where neighbourhood, including at the former jail guests never go, to hear stories of phantoms and at the house built with tainted lumber. said to haunt the resort. It’s rumoured that This and other stories of Stephen King stayed here before he wrote troubled spirits are fresh in The Shining and the resort may have been my mind as our guide opens an inspiration. the door to the Cossit House But most guided tours are carefully Museum where she and other crafted experiences like The Haunted staff have felt the presence of the Lunenburg Tour, or Valley Ghost Walks in supernatural. Cossit House—one communities around the Annapolis Valley, of the oldest buildings on Cape led by Jerome the Gravekeeper. In the heart Breton Island—depicts life in of Newfoundland and Labrador’s capital, 18th century Sydney at the time the guide on the St. John’s Haunted Hike of its original owner Reverend recounts chilling tales of deadly duels and Ranna Cossit, his wife Thankful and 10 of their 13 children. As I step into the hall, the sun shines through the doorway, lighting up a flight of stairs and doorways to other rooms. The front door closes behind us and I’m blind. I remove my sunglasses and grope for the stair rail. Footsteps shuffle away from me, but I can’t Cameron B. MacDonald, move. A sudden, cold draft flows Charlottetown’s Gravedigger like an animal down the stairs, raising hairs on my neck and goosebumps on my arms. public hangings as his procession passes unmarked grave sites and silent cemeteries. A ghost around every corner Stories of slaughtered soldiers, deadly trysts Cities and towns across the Atlantic and suspicious fires are told on streets and Provinces are among the oldest in the down alleys often shrouded in fog. Charlottecountry. The depth of that history is fertile town’s Gravedigger, dressed in a black ground for tales of the supernatural that bowler hat, leads guests by lamplight to DARCY RHYNO
BY DARCY RHYNO
