The Lunenburg Werewolf (10 page)

Who You Gonna Call?

In March 1878, Esther was invited to stay at the Saint John, New Brunswick, home of Captain James Beck—a man with a keen interest in the paranormal. In addition to Captain Beck, several scientists, a handful of amateur occultists and investigators of unearthly phenomena, and a trio of local clergymen were invited along on a sort of nineteenth century “ghost-busting” operation.

The team studied Esther for some time. She would sit on a wooden chair secured to a thick rug, eliminating any possibility of her making the banging sound with the legs of the chair. The rapping and banging continued in spite of the precautionary carpet. A pot of water was placed beside the rug. The water immediately began to boil, in spite of the fact that there was no fire anywhere close to the pot.

By now Esther was comfortable conversing with the banging spirits. The spirits, if spirits they were, would answer onlooker's questions. If someone asked, “How old am I?” the spirits would bang out the proper number. She knew the names and personalities of each of the spirits that haunted her. Above all else, Esther maintained that any vandalism or misdoings were strictly the fault of the spirits.

“None of it is my doing,” she swore. “The spirits are doing it all.”

Shortly after she arrived at Captain Beck's home, Esther met Walter Hubbell, an American actor on tour through the Maritimes. Hubbell saw opportunity in Esther's sad plight, and convinced her to let him study her further in her own home.

Hubbell became quite close with Esther and her family. Uncle Daniel and Aunt Olive were quite taken with the dashing young actor and he won both the trust and the heart of young Esther Cox. However, the spirits who haunted Esther seemed less than fond of Hubbell. In fact, whenever Hubbell entered Esther's bedroom, furniture would begin to shift wildly and objects he was holding would be jerked from his hands. Once a large butcher knife flew at him, barely missing his throat.

In June 1879, Hubbell convinced Esther to accompany him on a theatrical tour. He won Uncle Daniel and Aunt Olive over with his talk of how much money they were going to make for Esther.

Hubbell booked Esther in at theatres all over the Maritimes so the public could come witness the paranormal phenomenon with their own eyes. However, their first performance, in Pictou, was a total bust. Esther's spirits suffered from stage fright—she sat there on her chair but nothing happened. In the end people began throwing objects at the stage. They booed loudly and shouted, “Fake! Fake!” A riot broke out and the theatre was nearly destroyed. Esther's all-too-short theatrical career came to a crashing halt then and there.

After that, Hubbell and Esther had a falling out. Hubbell went on to write and publish a short dissertation entitled “The Great Amherst Mystery”—a book that was quite successful and made him an awful lot of money. Surprisingly enough, Esther didn't see any of the resulting profits.

The Story Continues

After Hubbell's abrupt departure, Esther managed to find sanctuary in the home of a local farmer named Arthur Davis—a man who was certain that he could learn to put up with the banging, the moaning, and the occasional moving furniture. However, Davis could not put up with having his barn burn down, which is exactly what happened a short time after Esther moved in. Arthur Davis was not inclined to write the barn-burning off as the work of spirits. Instead, he charged Esther with arson.

Esther was tried and convicted and sentenced to four months in jail. However, the townsfolk felt sorry for Esther's situation and convinced local authorities to release her after she had served only a single month of jail time. No disturbances were reported while she was serving her jail sentence.

After her release from jail, Esther was taken in by yet another household, the Van Amburghs. There, she lived in mostly untroubled peace. She found her strength through continual prayer and read the Holy Bible every day. She was still plagued by the occasional spirit—pieces of furniture sometimes slid and moved and her bedding would periodically fly off her bed—but none of the events were as frequent or powerful as before. Things had begun to look up for the girl.

In time Esther fell in love and married one Mr. Adams of Springdale, Nova Scotia. She outlived Adams and was then married a second time, to a Mr. Shanahan of Brockton, Massachusetts.

For whatever reason, the mysterious events seemed to settle as she grew into her life. There were still occasional outbursts of activity, but nothing to the extent of her years in Amherst.

Esther Cox Shanahan died peacefully in 1912 at the age of 52. The house on Princess Street still stands to this very day.

The new Lunenburg Academy was first opened on November 7, 1895. It was built to replace the original academy, which had been located at the heart of the town but was destroyed by a chimney flue fire in 1893. The ground floor of the new academy building contained six large classrooms with separate cloakrooms for boys and girls. The second floor held six more classrooms, an equal number of cloakrooms, a laboratory, and a library. There was a large assembly hall on the third floor, capable of seating over four hundred individuals. The ceilings throughout the building were of white wood and were beautifully panelled. The floors and wainscotting were of white birch while the rest of the interior was finished in a mixture of ash and birch. Four towers adorned the building. In one of these towers hung a large bell, which weighed over six hundred pounds and which was cast at the Lunenburg Iron Company.

According to the
Educational Review
of February 1896, the new Lunenburg Academy “occupied one of the finest and most commanding sites in the Province, being visible for many miles around.” The hill that the academy stood upon was originally known as Gallows Hill because it was where hangings were performed throughout the early years of Lunenburg's history.

There are a great many ghost stories surrounding the Lunenberg Academy. Some people say that the ghost of a retired teacher keeps watch on the school from an eerie spectral rocking chair, and they claim that you can hear her rocking chair squeaking and creaking on certain nights of the year. There has also been talk of a ghost that lurks in the basement washroom, but as of yet these rumours remain unsubstantiated. Others swear that the ghost of Peter Mailman, a convicted wife-murderer and the last man to be hung on Gallows Hill, still walks this area. Some folks claim that they have seen his ghost in the old berry-picking ground, still carrying the axe that he used to slay his loving wife.

It is natural to hear such stories concerning such a very old building as the academy, but the school's location likely also plays a part in its paranormal popularity. Surrounding the academy on three sides is the Hillcrest Cemetery, the second-oldest cemetery in the area, with grave markers dating back as far as 1761.

A stone's throw from the academy stands the gravestone of Sophia L. McLachlan. It is here, in the shadow of the Lunenburg Academy, high atop Gallows Hill, that we find Lunenburg's most intriguing ghost story, a fascinating tale of false accusation and bitter mortal grief.

A Fatal Broken Heart

Sophia had certainly seen her share of hardship. Her father, Joseph, and her grandfather, Benjamin, made a modest living building dories and whalers. Sophia's father's income was eaten up by the demands of his large family, which also included his wife, Lavinia, and Sophia's five younger sisters: Elizabeth, Eldora, Ella May, Luthia, and Atholea. The entire family lived in a small rented cottage on Pelham Street, just a short distance from Joseph's family home.

On October 12, 1878, tragedy struck the family when six-year-old Ella May died of scarlet fever. Two days later, the fever took three-year-old Atholea as well. At thirteen years of age, Sophia was devastated by the family loss. As the oldest child, she had given freely of herself, spending many long hours taking care of her sisters. At this point she felt as much like a mother as a sister could.

Sophia helped out her family the only way she knew how, taking a position as an apprentice to a well-known local dressmaker by the name of Anne Trask. Mrs. Trask was a single woman raising two children, thirteen-year-old Charles and eleven-year-old Nellie.

Sophia was a hard-working girl and she proved herself to be both capable and industrious. Above all else, Sophia was trustworthy. Mrs. Trask came to count heavily on her to take care of the shop whenever she found the need to run errands around the town. It was after one such excursion, however, that Mrs. Trask came back to the shop to find ten dollars missing from the cash drawer.

Back in 1879, ten dollars was a significant sum of money for anyone to mislay, and Mrs. Trask was furious about it. She turned on Sophia and blamed her for the loss of the money. “You stole it,” she accused. “There's no use in denying it. You were the only one here who could have done it.”

Sophia swore she was innocent, but Mrs. Trask was deaf to her protestations. She fired Sophia and sent her home in tears.

Things did not improve at home. When Sophia told her parents about the incident, they were furious. Lavinia felt that the family had been humiliated by the shame of Sophia's larceny. Joseph was worried that the blot on his family's reputation might prove bad for his boat-building business.

To make matters worse, Mrs. Trask made good and certain that the entire town knew about the theft. Sophia's friends shunned her. Her neighbours gossiped about her.

So there Sophia was, a fourteen-and-a-half-year-old girl with absolutely no one to turn to. Every day, she would trudge sadly up Gallows Hill, cast herself down upon the graves of her two younger sisters, and weep into the muddy rain-soaked grass. She would weep the entire day away and sometimes she would stay all night, regardless of the weather. Meanwhile, Mrs. Trask declared that if Sophia did not return the ten dollars that had been stolen, then she would have no other alternative than to go to the sheriff.

But tragedy arrived before the sheriff did.

Sophia became weaker by the day. Soon she was too weak to make the long walk to the graveyard. Instead she stayed at home in her bedroom. She read her Bible and prayed continuously.

Lavinia soon forgot about the shame of the incident and began worrying about her daughter's health instead. After losing two daughters to the fever, she couldn't bear the thought of losing another.

Sophia told her mother that she should not worry. “I will soon be with my beloved little sisters,” she said. “And my innocence will be known by everyone.”

Her mother protested, feeling badly that she had treated her daughter so cruelly.

“Don't apologize,” Sophia said. “There is no need. I feel easy now and happy and completely at peace.”

Later that day, Sophia wrote a long letter to Mrs. Trask, telling the woman of her feelings and pleading her innocence. And shortly thereafter, on September 19, 1879, Sophia L. McLachlan died peacefully.

Sophia's death, coming so soon after the scandal of the theft, triggered an immediate public uproar. How had such a tragic event come to be? Was it murder? Was it suicide? The doctor, prompted by local authorities, called for an immediate inquest. A coroner's jury met that afternoon. After due consideration, the jury reached a unanimous decision: “Death occurred as a result of paralysis of the heart brought on by extreme agitation caused by peculiar circumstances.”

In short, Sophia McLachlan had died of a broken heart.

Sophia was buried in Hillcrest Cemetery three days later. Her grave was marked with a crude wooden cross constructed by her father. A week following her burial, thirteen-year-old Charles Trask confessed to stealing the ten dollars in question. He had hidden the money beneath his mattress, afraid to spend it and afraid to confess to stealing it.

Tearfully, Mrs. Trask read Sophia's last letter over the young girl's grave (this is that letter, word for word):

Dear Mrs. Trask,

It is now just half past nine o'clock and I am sitting down to write you a few lines, and doing it to remind you of what you have accused me, so innocent, for you blamed me for stealing your money but there is One above who knows that I did not take it.

Nothing would tempt me to do so.

Mrs. Trask, you will cause my death, and it is a fearful thing. It can't be concealed forever. It will come out some day and then what will your feelings be?

You know that if you have any fear of God that it is awful to be blamed if you are innocent. I was writing this letter when you was down. I was never brought in a scrap like this in my life. You will never have me to blame again. I am nearly gone; my hand trembles so that I can scarcely write. There will be many a long hour that you will think of this, if you have any heart at all. I would not take a false oath, but I did not take your money. You know it is a fearful thing to lie. What it is ever in this world, it is in the next.

Mrs. Trask, take the Bible and turn to the
XX
Chapter of Exodus and tell Charles to read the 16th verse of it for my sake. You also take Matthew Chapters
V
,
VI
and
VII
; read them; see if there are not verses that will answer this. For example, take the 1st verse of the
VII
, and the 10th, 11th and 12th verses of the V Chapters.

Mrs. Trask, you know that when I am gone they can say what they like; but of what they say I am innocent of, and I am not afraid to fear death. I know a secret but I ain't going to say anything about it, but I won't say that I will never tell you.

I can't write anymore.

From your friend,

Sophie L. McLachlan

PS: When you hear that song, “My grave, my grave, keep green,” think of me! Mrs. Trask, you have to make it out the best way you can. Think how this will disgrace my father, mother, and sisters and all belonging to me, but you brought it on. Good bye for ever! No one knows I wrote you this letter. You can tell my people about it when I am gone.

Shortly after the funeral, the citizens of Lunenburg collectively donated enough money to erect a proper tombstone on Sophia's grave. The tombstone's inscription reads as follows:

ERECTED BY SYMPATHISING FRIENDS

IN MEMORY OF

SOPHIA L.

DAUGHTER OF JOSEPH AND LAVINIA MCLACHLAN

WHO DIED SUDDENLY

SEPTEMBER 19TH, 1879

AGED 14 YRS 6 MONTHS

FALSELY ACCUSED

SHE DIES OF A BROKEN HEART

BEFORE HER DEATH SHE REFERRED HER ACCUSER

TO THE FOLLOWING TEXTS OF SCRIPTURE

Below this line were the scripture references that Sophia listed in her letter.

The tombstone stood where the citizens of Lunenburg had set it for over a century. As time went by, erosion almost completely wore away what was written there. Soon the inscription and the story attached to it was lost for all time.

But in 1986, the Bluenose General Radio Service Society of Lunenburg decided to repair Sophia's gravesite and do something to make it more noticeable. The town of Lunenburg, still nursing the ache in its collective conscience, promised to help the
GRS
Society out in any way possible. Shortly thereafter, the
GRS
commissioned a local ironworker to construct a decorative iron fence and railing to set Sophia's grave apart from all of the other tombstones in the cemetery—in spite of the Cemetery Commission's bylaw strictly forbidding the placement of such fences.