The Lunenburg Werewolf (16 page)

Mary Ellen died in the early summer of 1988, several years after Austin passed away. She was eighty years old. Her funeral was a quiet ceremony attended by a few friends and acquaintances.

There were no further reports of phantom fires after the MacDonalds left Caledonia Mills, but people still keep a path beaten to the spot where the farmhouse once stood.

I looked deeply into the story of the Screeching Bridge while I was researching this book, and as so often happens when dealing with folklore and recollection, I came across three different versions of this story. It seems that most storytellers could not determine just where in Parrsboro the Screeching Bridge lay.

So I spoke to a Parrsboro historian and storyteller named Conrad Byers, who gave me the exact location of the bridge. I'll tip my hat to Conrad for filling me in on the facts behind this folklore.

As the Mill Wheel Turns

In 1800, Josiah Davison and his family built a tidal dam gristmill across the Parrsboro River. When they were building the mill, they also incorporated a bridge alongside the dam to encourage traffic and trade. There had always been a crossing at this particular point in the river, due to a natural outcrop of base rock, but up until this point travellers had been obliged to wade across the river and the attached tidal marsh either on foot or on horseback.

Josiah became very popular after building his bridge, which certainly didn't hurt business. Some people thought the bridge was such a great idea that they began building their own mills in the area. The spot quickly became known as Mill Village, and the stretch of water became known as the Mill Creek. Understandably enough, Josiah's bridge was known as the Mill Creek Bridge.

And it was here on the Mill Creek Bridge, on a Halloween night in the mid-nineteenth century, that terror struck.

Halloween Heartbreak

October 31 is what the old people call “the night of the long moon,” since it's one of the longest nights of the year. Some Christians will tell you that on the last night in October, which they call All Hallow's Night, the walls between the worlds wear thin. According to these sources, this is the one night of the year that Satan himself is given his freedom and allowed to walk the night free and unhampered, spreading mischief and harm wherever he cares to.

Each year on the evening of October 31, the old Druids would sing to the oak trees and the Celts would go from door to door gathering offerings of food and kindling. They did this in order to raise up sacred bonfires to light the way to the far country for the spirits of those who had died throughout the year. At the end of the evening they would carry the embers from the bonfire in a hollowed-out gourd, turnip, or pumpkin to relight each family's hearth fire and bring good luck for all in the coming new year. Huge steaming dishes of cabbage and potato and turnip and all manner of root crops harvested late in the fall would be boiled up and a great feast would be given so people from far and wide could warm their insides against the cold to come. It was a time of getting ready and grinning against winter.

However, on this particular All Hallow's Eve (or Halloween as we call it nowadays), Marie MacDonald walked in sorrow. She had not felt like celebrating since young Rory had decided that he no longer loved her.

Marie had done everything she could think of to rekindle Rory's love for her. She had eaten salt fish in hopes that Rory would come to her in a dream and bring her a cool glass of water. Only Rory hadn't come. She had peeled an apple and threw the peeling over her shoulder in hopes that it would spell out Rory's name. Only whatever the peeling spelled out must have been written in some other language, because Marie certainly couldn't read it.

So now, while other people were out gathering the rotten cabbages from the fields and gardens and chucking them at doorways for the fun of it, Marie walked the night alone in silence. Marie felt she had more in common with the rotten cabbages than she did with anything remotely resembling fun.

“You ought to take your hand mirror out to the river and walk backwards along the shore,” her best friend, Meg, told her. “You will certainly see your true love in its reflection.” Marie wasn't certain if the mirror plan was going to work any better than the apple peeling or the salt fish had, but by this point she was willing to try anything.

“It'll be Rory,” Marie told Meg. “That's the only boy for me. No one else will show up in that mirror.”

“I don't know if Tammy Whitaker would agree with you,” Meg said. “I saw her walking arm in arm with Rory over the Mill Creek Bridge.”

Marie didn't listen.

Caught in Glass

As far as Marie could tell, the wind was blowing from the coldest corner of the world right directly down the Mill Creek. She knew it was too cold to be out that night, but she was determined to try that mirror trick.

“I'll catch his heart in the glass of the mirror,” she told herself. “There is no other boy for me.”

Only she had been walking back and forth alongside the water for so long that she had worn a trough in the dirt clear up to her ankles.

“The only thing I'm getting from this river-walking is muddy feet,” Marie said. “I must be doing something wrong.”

The old mill wheel turned in the current in front of her. Marie stopped and watched it turn for a while. Then she turned her gaze to the bridge.

“I bet he'd be walking up there,” Marie decided. “There's nothing more romantic than walking across a lonely bridge.”

So she walked on over to the end of the bridge. She crossed it once. She didn't see anything but the wind in the front of her face and it blew so cold that tears came to her eyes.

“I need to walk backwards,” Marie said. “That's how Meg told me to and it makes sense when you think of it. What else is love but blind faith, walking backwards on a bridge on the coldest night of the year?”

Marie held the hand mirror up directly in front of her face and walked backwards against the wind. She had to admit that she felt a lot more comfortable this way even though it made her scared and nervous walking backwards like she was, which only goes to show you that there are a great many ways that love will lead a person to do an awful lot of stupid things.

“Never mind,” she told herself. “If this will get me Rory than I will gladly walk backwards to the ends of the earth.”

Which was right about when she saw something in the mirror.
It's Rory!
she thought to herself. Only it wasn't Rory.

It was the Devil himself, out for a midnight stroll on the one night of the year that the powers above allowed him free reign on this earth. And here was a chance to make mischief with nothing more than a grin.

“Boo,” that old Devil said.

The Devil grinned so hard that the mirror cracked in two. His eyes blazed in the mirror's reflection like a candle in the heart of a jack-o'-lantern.

Marie screamed, jumped up, and ran straight off the bridge. She screamed all the way down to the frigid water and as the tide caught hold of her and dragged her down to the open sea. And that old Devil laughed and laughed the whole time.

The Story Today

For many days the townsfolk searched up and down the water for Marie, but to no avail. There was no trace of her. They decided amongst themselves that Marie had very likely taken her own life, preferring to jump into the embrace of death rather than to continue on with a broken heart.

Rory thought that was pretty funny and he laughed about it often—until Tammy grew disgusted with his cold heart and slapped him in the face.

Every Halloween night for many years after the cursed evening of Marie's disappearance, her screams could be heard piercing the air around the Mill Creek Bridge. And so, for a long time after her death, this area was known as “Screecher's Hollow.”

But over the years the tide of time worked its gentle erasing magic. The mills closed down. Mill Village became nothing more than a sleepy dead-end road with a half a dozen houses scattered down it.

“Nothing down there but frogs croaking,” the locals would say.

And there were a lot of frogs, which is why the sleepy little village became known as Frog Hollow, and the bridge that spanned the river became known as the Frog Hollow Bridge.

In the late nineteenth century, Frog Hollow experienced a boom in population. Some people felt that the name “Frog Hollow” was too rustic for what they hoped was going to become a populated area, and so, on October 18, 1890—just one year after the town of Parrsboro was first incorporated—the village's name was changed to Lower Victoria Street.