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| McDonald Farm, Caledonia Mills : Picture Credit - Pictou Antigonish Regional Library |
While searching for more spooky happenings in old newspapers over at Newspapers.com , I discovered the tale of the McDonald family, who just over 100 years ago, had to deal with a series of strange events that occurred on their farm at Caledonia Mills, Nova Scotia, Canada. This caused quite a stir back in the day, with eventually even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes and avid Spiritualist, doing a bit of research on the case! As such, there's enough newsprint for this to be a three or four part spook-sighting, so we'll see how we go as we go along.....but without further ado, let's start investigating this strange case via the reports themselves.....
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From The Evening Mail, dated Thursday, January 19th 1922
Antigonish Farming Community Is Aroused By Mysterious Actions Beleieved To Be Work Of "Spooks"
Series of Fires Break Out in Farmer's Home Which Puzzled Investigators - Blazes Are Seen in Various Parts of the Home From No Apparent Cause - Family is Forced to Move to Another House - Outbreaks Usually Follow Big Storms.
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(Special to The Herald)
ANTIGONISH, Jan. 18.- Antigonish county has a mystery, which for genuine spookiness and unfathomableness rivals the most weird tales of Edgar Allan Poe.
Nestled in a lonely and isolated spot back from the Antigonish-Guysboro main road, between Caledonia Mills and Roman Valley, is a farm house. It is in Antigonish county, on the border of the neighboring county. Living in this house were Mr. and Mrs. Alexander MacDonald and an adopted child, a little girl. Their nearest neighbors were over a mile away. Six years ago strange things happened in Mr. MacDonald's barn. Several mornings he found several of his cattle loose which had been securely fastened the previous night. On other occasions the horse was discovered fastened in an altogether different manner than he had left it the night before.
This happened so often that Mr. MacDonald, being puzzled, sold the horse. He bought another one from Peter MacDonald, Antigonish, and was more mystified than ever when the same thing commenced to happen to this animal. As in the case of the other horse, the new one was tied securely at night and in the morning he was found fastened in a different place.
Mr. MacDonald was then convinced that the horse and cattle could not perform these acts themselves. The place was given a "spooky" reputation on this account.
There is a sequel to this story which is even more mysterious than these happenings. For some time, a series of fires broke out in Mr. MacDonald's house. They were of unknown origin and there was no accounting for them. One morning, it is said, Mr. MacDonald came down to the kitchen to light the fire. He was surprised to see some cinders on the stove. Looking overhead he discovered a burnt place in the ceiling. A few minutes later he saw a lounge in an adjoining room on fire. He extinguished this and then found a chair on fire which he had been sitting in only a few seconds before.
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These things naturally alarmed all the occupants of the house, and one night recently three men from Caledonia Mills, James MacGillivray, his brother Leo and Duncan MacDonald, hoping to discover the origin of the strange fires, went to the MacDonald house to spend the night. It happened that there were more outbreaks on this occasion than at any previous time. It is said that they fought 38 seperate fires in the house between five o'clock in the afternoon and eight o'clock the next morning.
The first fire broke out over the mantle near the stove. This was not thought so strange, but when the next one was seen in the sink the young men began to realize that there was indeed a deep mystery involved.
Fires broke out in various parts of the house throughout the night. The furniture either on this occasion or a previous one was moved from the parlor. One of the sofa cushions, it is said, was thrown upstairs, where it broke out into flames. Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald decided after this to leave their home. They took all their furniture and other belongings with them and moved into a house some distance from the house of mystery.
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The Mail's correspondent made inquires today and was told by a number of reliable people who are well acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald and that section of the country, that they had heard of these strange occurences from neighbors of the MacDonalds and that the story was absolutely authentic.
A lady of Croft, a settlement seven miles from the scene of the mystery, confirms the information which has been gathered in Antigonish, adding that most of the outbreaks of fire were unusually frequent and severe on the night of the big storm.
A strange thing about the fires is that besides breaking out suddenly and unexpectedly, directly under the eyes of witnesses, several of them were so small that they could be blown out and smothered by the naked hand.
Mr. MacDonald's house is 25 miles from the town of Antigonish.
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From The Evening Mail, dated Wednesday, January 25th, 1922
Eye-Witnesses Tell Of Mysterious Fires In Home of Antigonish Farmer
Leo MacGillivary and Duncan MacDonald, eye-witnesses to the mysterious fire which have occurred in the house of Alexander MacDonald, a respected farmer at Caledonia Mills, near Antigonish, have confirmed reports of the fires already published in The Herald. In their interviews with Harold B. Whidden, the Herald representative, who visited the fire solely as a newpaper correspondent, they add to the mystery which deepens as the facts are brought out.
It has been suggested in Antigonish that detectives or scientists be sent to the scene of the "spookish" incidents to conduct a thorough investigation, which has puzzled hundreds who have already visited the MacDonald house.
Here is what the eye-witnesses say about the mysterious fires:
Leo MacGillivray, who gave his age as 32, said that he was born at Caledonia Mills, and that he had always lived at home, with the exception of a few years when he was in Cobalt, engaged in electrical work.
Mr. And Mrs. Alexander had been their closest neighbors ever since he could remember. They were respectable people, who did not, so far as he knew, have an enemy in the world. They were good people and fine neighbors, who always minded their own business.
(*suddenly the paper goes into the actual statement from Leo here, without warning ~ Deadpan Flook)
Dan arrived at the MacDonald house about five minutes after Duncan and I. He waited for a little while, and when there was no sign of any fire, thinking that there was no need of his assistance, he went back home. We made a fire in the kitchen stove to keep ourselves warm. It was raining and blowing, and the house was damp and cold from this, and the water that had been used to put out the fires.
I saw in the house Mr. and Mrs. Alex MacDonald, Mary Ellen, their adopted daughter, and Duncan MacDonald. I am absolutely positive that, outside of my brother Dan, who had left shortly after he came, that there was no one else in the house while I was there. We all sat down in the kitchen, leaving the door open, so that we could see the dining room and parlor.
"We were there probably twenty minutes," he said, "when the whole house seemed to become illuminated, as suddenly and as brightly as if a short circuit occurred on a high tension electric wire - this is the only way I know how to describe it. The blaze was brighter, though. There was no noise of any kind. I saw in an instant that it came from the parlor, and made a dash for it. A green window blind was enveloped in flames. I tore it off the wall and saved two little strips. The flame was pale blue. the only thing I ever saw resembling it for color was a short circuit. Besides seeing this fire break out so suddenly in so unexpected a quarter - where there had been no sign of fire before, and where there was nothing from any of the previous fires that could have caused it - and thinking this very strange, I noticed that the flame was not very hot.
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It did not even singe any of the hair off the back of my hands or my eyebrows. We were all back in the kitchen again for five or ten minutes when a blaze broke out on the wet wall paper in the dining room. This was an ordinary-looking fire. No fire had broken out in that place before. The next outbreak was in the parlor - a cardboard picture, resembling a calendar, on the wall. It was blazing, and was hanging over the pipe hole of the main chimney. The fire could not have caught from the chimney, as there had been no fire in the stove that led to it for several days. This fire occurred on the side of the room directly opposite the blind. We were afraid that the house was going to burn down, and Duncan went to our place, and got dan to give the alarm over the telephone. It was so stormy and the walking so bad that, although a number of people started for the house, none of them got there until daylight.
"While Duncan was gone, I put out a fire in the paper on the wall in the dining room, and one upstairs in some rags, including pieces of old cotton. Dan just arrived when probably the strangest thing of all occurred. A sofa cushion, which we were all positive had been put upstairs some time before, was found burning on the slats of the bed in the parlor. We were all in the kitchen, and smelled cotton burning. Almost instantly the parlor became illumined and we found this cushion on fire.
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| Reward for best answers to What Caused the Fires offered by the Herald and Mail |
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Leo MacGillivray said that Mr. MacDonald put six fires out before he, his brother Dan, and Duncan MacDonald, arrived at about 10.30. Between that time and 5 o'clock in the morning, they extinguished 31 different fires. There was only one outbreak after daylight.
"I cannot recall them all, to mind, but I remember the principal ones. In the parlor there was a framed picture hanging on the wall (the Herald correspondent saw this picture and the charred scar on the wall). Behind the picture was a small cardboard box. Fire broke out here, and we found cotton burning in the box.
Another exceptionally peculiar outbreak occurred in the parlor as well. There was a cardboard box found burning on the floor. It had been used for holding a gift - a Christmas gift I think. We thought we had removed everything of the kind from the room. We found cotton burning in it, and no one seemed to know how either the box or the cotton got there.
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"In the dining room there was a dresser, or sideboard. There was a cotton pillow case hanging to this. It caught, and I saw it in flames." Continuing he said, "a small piece of white cotton - I could not say if it was new or not - caught fire on the bare table in the bed room. It was a bright flame. A cotton sheet under the bed in this room also caught. One piece of cotton that I saw burning in the dining room was red.
"I found pieces of cotton burning in the paper - that is, with the wall paper and newpapers behind the wall paper - that was not there when I was there only a few minutes before.
"One time Mr. MacDonald and Mary Ellen spent about half an hour scraping paper off the wall. they had no sooner gone into the kitchen than a fire started just where they had been working.
"I saw paper burning when it was wet. A piece of wet paper was picked off the floor , and put on a table where I saw it break into flames. There must have been three inches of water on the floor, when I saw a wet dishcloth, or rag burst into flames, and I put it out. Mary Ellen corroborated this.
"Two small baskets caught fire at different times, in different parts of the house. Cotton was found burning in each. The piece in one basket was very small. A cardboard raisin box caught on the bureau - there was cotton in it.
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Mr. MacGillivray said, and his brother Dan corroborated his statements, that there was a heavy odor of burning cotton with most of the fires, and the smoke was thick. After each fire, they did not smell oil or gasoline, and had never heard of any natural gas, phosperous or any thing of that kind about the place.
Mr MacDonald, his wife and adopted daughter, both said that there was no gasoline, or anything in the house, to their knowledge, which could have caused such fires. The MacGillivray boys said that in most cases, the flame was very bright, and did not seem like blazes from an ordinary fire. They started suddenly, with no noise. There was very little heat, but lots of smoke.
The interior of the house was a sorry looking spectacle when the Herald correspondent and Huntley MacNaughton saw it, Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. We went out the second time to take some pictures. There were many signs of fire, but not in one instance was there any charred mark or scorched place to be seen which would show where even one fire passed through the wall or ceiling of one room into another. The truth is, the walls and ceilings were intact.
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A few floor boards had been torn up upstairs, but they were merely singed or browned by fire. In fact, the only wood in the house that suffered to any extent - and even this did not amount to much - was the beam in the kitchen which caught the first night. Some of the boards that comprised the loft were also charred in places, but for a series of fires, the scars were chiefly to be found in cotton extinguished in almost every case by water. All who spent the memorable Wednesday night in the house, who were interviewed, said that some of the outbreaks were put out easily, by the naked hand. Duncan MacDonald was the only one of the principals not interviewed. He was not home.
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Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald and Mary Ellen left the house the next morning. They never expect to go back. Mrs MacDonald told the Herald correspondent that she was excited for a while that she did not mind the strange occurence very much. The reaction is setting in now, however, and she and Mr. MacDonald both carry the effects of their trying experience in their faces. Asked why they finally decided to leave the house they both said : Because we were afraid we would be burned to death in our beds some night." Mr. MacDonald said that since he left the house, one thing that he felt sorry about was that he had not allowed one of the fires to burn just to see if it would have completely destroyed the house. They are planning on building a house handier the main road.
The day that the house was ravaged, neighbors hauled their furniture and other household effects to MacGillivray's house, where the fugitives spent three days. They then moved into a vacant house a few feet from the main road owned by Colin McArthur. They were still living there.
There is something pathetic about this old lady of 69, in ill-health and frail-looking, and her honest, hard-working husband, and the joy of their hearts, their fifteen-year-old capable adopted daughter, feeling impelled to leave their home under such mysterious circumstances in the middle of winter. They have no idea of the origin of the fires, and are mystified. They all said that before the fires they were happy in their home.
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Owing to the heavy snow in the woods, Mr. MacDonald's horse and cattle are still in his barn. This man of seventy wades through the deep snow in the woods to feed and water this stock twice a day - and every time he re-visits his barn he sees the home in which he had spent some of his happiest years. But it might just as well not be his any longer. It has seen happy hearts made heavy.
Since reports of strange happenings in Mr. MacDonald's barn were freely circulated about the country, it is interesting to know just what Mr. MacDonald said occurred. The following story was first related by Leo MacGillivray, and later related to Mr MacDonald, who said it was true.
Leo said "About five weeks ago, Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald both told me about their cattle getting loose in the barn last spring. They said that they would fasten them in the old-fashioned wooden stanchions, which consisted of two upright poles, the one fastened securely to the floor and a beam above: the other arranged so that the upper end could be pushed backward in a hewn-out cavity. When the cow's head was put between these bars, the one that moved was drawn up. A wooden pin was then pushed through an auger hole behind the pin in the beam, or cross-piece, locking the animal in. Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald said that the cattle used to be left securely fastened in this manner, and that between eight and ten o'clock at night the pin would be withdrawn and they would get loose.
After a few days, Mr. MacDonald drove nails through the pins, but the same thing happened, and none of the nails were found again. He then drove in the pins, hammered nails through them, and even fastened the cattle with chains from around their horns fastened securely to the stanchions. And they still got loose. This lasted for two weeks, when it stopped as suddenly as it had started."
Mary Ellen, the adopted daughter, broke in when Mr. MacDonald was corroborating Leo MacGillivray's statements, and said: " I remember all about it. A good many times after milking we left the cows tied with the chans and other things, and five minutes afterwards found them loose. I helped sometimes to tie them again myself."
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Hmm, so what do we make of this so far? The fact that cotton was found at every single fire is a bit suspicious, isn't it...seems a bit human to be using cotton for fires! And fires starting where Mr. McDonald and Mary Ellen just were is a bit suspicious too....but we shouldn't be hasty to jump to conclusions. Such haste can have consequences that last a long time, as we'll see later in the story...and there are a few extra surprises and mysteries still lurking behind this strange story, so be sure to come back for the next part(s) later in the month!
As always though, there is plenty to keep you occupied until then as Cryptkeepers like Me and You and a Blog Named Boo continue the countdown to the big day! Clicking the badge below will take you to the Countdown To Halloween hub, where you can find a list of all of this year's participants....
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