folktales – Bekah Ferguson

The Loup-Garou (Werewolf) of Quebec

As Retold by Bekah Ferguson

(2 min read)

Along the banks of the Gatineau River in 19^th century Quebec, lived a solitary miller named Joachim Crête. A pragmatic and skeptical man, Crête had forsaken the church, having no patience for the superstitious beliefs of his fellow villagers.

One wintry day, a traveler rapped at his door. With a bearded grin, the stranger stepped inside and introduced himself as Hubert Sauvageau, in search of a job. Though Crête preferred his own company, he did need a hand, and so agreed to hire him. The two men spent their evenings playing checkers and drinking together by lamp light until Hubert would pull on his boots and go off into the dark. Crête never asked where he went, for he always returned by dawn.

Not long after Hubert’s arrival in the village, sheep and cattle began to mysteriously go missing; their mauled carcasses found in the woods. Rumors spread that a loup-garou—a werewolf—must be on the prowl. Though the villagers warned Crête against his new employee, he refused to listen, for only a fool would believe such a thing. When Christmas Eve arrived and the village church bells chimed for midnight mass, their echoes reached all the way to Crête’s cabin. But he had no intention of attending, as he and Hubert were deep into a game of checkers.

As the last bell fell silent, another silence echoed in his ears and he realized the heavy stone mill had stopped turning. The two men, clumsy with drink, stumbled outside to investigate. When the mill refused to budge, Crête accidentally dropped the lantern, which went out. He called to Hubert in the dark but no response came, so he found his way back into the cabin, leaving the door open a crack.

No sooner had he sat down at the table when a moan sounded behind him. He turned and gasped at what he saw: A massive black dog sat growling in the open doorway, fangs dripping and eyes red like coals. It rose on its haunches, tall as a man; ready to pounce. In his terror, Crête fell to his knees in prayer, crying, “Loup-garou! Forgive me, mon Dieu!” As the beast lunged for him, Crête grabbed a scythe from the wall and struck at its face, slicing its ear open. Then he blacked out from fright.

He awoke to cold water splashing his face and found a concerned Hubert bent over him. A trail of blood trickled down his employee’s neck, drawing Crête’s gaze to its origin.

Hubert’s ear hung partly severed from his scalp.

“You!” Crête gasped in renewed terror.

With that he fell back against his pillow, mouth agape, and never again came back to his senses.

Sources:

Macleans 1

Macleans 2

MSR Blog

Image by Viergacht from Pixabay

Mary Gallagher, the Headless Ghost of Griffintown

Read on Wattpad

As Retold by Bekah Ferguson

(3 min read)

The historic Irish community of Griffintown, Montreal, was once located near the Lachine Canal. It was a neighbourhood not unlike any other 19^th century industrial slum: filled with stables and taverns, flour mills and smelting works, warehouses, drifters, labourers and families. But on June 27, 1879, the town gained a gruesome notoriety that lives on to this very day, even as the buildings have long since dissipated. On that ill-fated day, a pair of sex workers—Mary Gallagher and Suzy Kennedy—brought a newly acquainted client—one Michael Flanagan—back to Suzy’s second-floor flat for some early morning drinking.

On all accounts it appeared to be nothing more than three drunken companions sharing a bottle of whiskey, until a few hours later when tenants below heard a sudden thud. Next came thwacking so forceful that the plastered ceiling above them cracked; dusty bits and chunks of plaster falling down on them. A female voice above said, “I’ve wanted revenge for a long time, and I finally got it,” as a crimson stain appeared, spreading across the ceiling as blood dripped from the cracks.

When the police arrived, a crowd of onlookers were already swarming the front of the apartment building; everyone eager to see what had happened. Inside Suzy’s flat, they found Mary’s body lying prostrate on the floor in a thin cotton gown—both her head and one severed hand in a wash bucket nearby. Suzy’s own clothes were covered in blood but she said it was simply because she’d slipped and fallen in the gore. Her claim was that while she and Flanagan dozed in the front room, an unknown man—some sea captain—had entered the flat and had an argument with Mary, calling her an “old grey-haired rot.” Suzy said he was the murderer and that she’d seen him washing blood from his hands before leaving.

No one believed her. The police found a hatchet belonging to Suzy in the apartment—covered in Mary’s blood and hair. Kennedy was charged and sentenced to hang, while Flanagan was released. Suzy’s death sentence was commuted, however, and she went to Kingston Penitentiary for sixteen years instead. In a remarkable coincidence, on December 5^th, the date in which Suzy had been set to hang, Flanagan lost his footing aboard a boat in the Peel Basin, fell through the ice, and drowned.

As legend would have it, the headless ghost of Mary Gallagher soon began appearing on William Street in Griffintown (near the building where she was murdered) seemingly in search of her head. Children were warned to avoid that particular street after dark. In time, the two-storey apartment building was demolished and the area re-zoned. Sightings of Mary grew less and less frequent, until she was only thought to appear once every seven years, on the anniversary of her death.

Sources:

Image by junko from Pixabay

The Canadian Lizard Man of Vancouver Island

Read on Wattpad

As Retold by Bekah Ferguson

(3 min read)

In the Vancouver Island, evergreen wilderness of the first regional conservation area in Canada, there is a shimmering, cobalt-blue body of water known as Thetis Lake. In the summer of 1972, the Victoria Daily Times reported on a spine-chilling encounter two local teens had with a monstrous humanoid creature. Robert Flewellyn and Gordon Pike, 16 and 17-year-olds, were alone at a beach on Thetis Lake on August 17^th, when an isolated section of water began to swell—drawing their eye.

As they watched, transfixed, a spiky head with barbed fins appeared, water streaming down a silvery-blue, scaly face. The creature moved toward the shoreline, leaving the deep, and more of its body emerged; revealing additional barbed fins on its scaly arms and legs. It reached its full height of five feet in the shallows, where it suddenly turned and looked at the boys.

The two young men stood dumbfounded until it gave chase. Spinning on their heels, they ran from the beach as the creature lunged for them—slashing the hand of one of the boys with sharp, webbed fingers. Luck was on their side and they managed to outrun it, peeling away in their car, and leaving the monstrosity staring after them in the dust.

Heading straight to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to report their bizarre story, they stated that the lizard-like monster had roughly resembled Gill-man from the classic film, Creature from the Black Lagoon. The police actually investigated, believing the boys to be sincere and clear-headed. But the case was eventually closed when a local man called in to say he’d lost a pet Tegu lizard a year prior and wondered if that might be the explanation.

The police were satisfied that this missing lizard was indeed what the boys had seen, despite two particular incompatibilities: one, that a Tegu lizard wouldn’t have survived a Canadian winter, and two, such a lizard is only half the height the teens described.

Sources:

La Corriveau of New France, Quebec

Read on Wattpad

As Retold by Bekah Ferguson

(4 min read)

In 1761 Saint-Vallier, New France, fifteen months after the mysterious death of her first husband, Marie-Josephte Corriveau married a second farmer. Two years later he was found dead in the barn with his head smashed in. At first, his death was deemed accidental—multiple kicks from a horse’s hooves—but rumors of murder quickly spread about the town. The local British military authorities soon charged Marie-Josephte’s father, Joseph Corriveau. His daughter was thought to be an accessory only and given 60 lashes; the letter M branded onto her hand with a hot iron.

Joseph, however, admitted that his daughter was the murderer, claiming she’d killed her abusive husband with two blows from the back of a hatchet while he slept. Thus, thereby found guilty by the tribunal, she was put to death in Quebec City by hanging. Her corpse was fastened into an iron cage-gibbet and dangled from a tree branch at the crossroads of Saint-Joseph Street and De l’Entente Boulevard in Lévis. There it rotted on public display for an entire month; feasted upon by flies and maggots, torn asunder by crows.

It wasn’t long before the hauntings began. Travelers soon learned not to take the river road leading past the cage at night, lest her vacant eyes should glow blood red and her shackled, leathery arms should stretch out towards them. Even after the gibbet was taken down, her body buried within the cage, the hauntings continued; her spirit rising from the grave each night to torment travelers.

One such night, a well-known citizen named Dubé was walking alongside the St. Lawrence River when the air turned chill. He stopped short just as a pair of bony fingers closed in around his throat from behind. Tendrils of greasy black hair tickled his cheeks and a ragged voice whispered, “Take me across the river.” Dubé swung around, glimpsing over his shoulder a set of red eyes and yellow teeth within a face of putrefied flesh. He fell to his knees—tearing at the slimy hands that refused to let go. “Leave me!” he screamed, then passed out from fright. The next morning his wife found him and shook him awake on the vacant road. His story spread and a curate was called in to exorcise the spirit.

A century later, the cage was dug up during an expansion project and put in the church cellar. It was stolen and sold to an American who put it in his museum in a glass display case with a placard that read simply: “From Quebec.” In time it was returned to Canada and placed permanently in the Museum of Civilization in Quebec City.

Sources:

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

The Lost World of the Nahanni Valley, NW Territories

(4 minute video version)

Read on Wattpad

As Retold by Bekah Ferguson

(4 min read)

The Nahanni River winds its way through a mist-shrouded gorge known as “the Valley of the Headless Men,” in the Canadian Northwest Territories. The national reserve is filled with canyons, caves, geysers, towering peaks, untouched forests, and a waterfall twice the height of Niagara Falls. With its wailing winds, the mysterious valley can only be accessed by foot or plane. What’s more, it is believed by Indigenous peoples to be haunted, whose oral history speaks of lurking spirit creatures.

Indeed, the “Headless Valley” namesake came about due to several unexplained deaths during the Gold Rush of the early 20^th century. In 1906, the McLeod brothers set off in search of gold, but their bodies were later found by a creek: both decapitated, heads never found. In 1917, the headless body of a Swiss prospector was found near a river. Then in 1945, the body of a miner from Ontario was found in his sleeping bag—again without a head. While some speculated the deaths to be the work of a serial-killing hermit, others disagreed; too much time had passed between each killing to be the work of one madman.

The Dene, Dogrib, and Inuit tribes of the area had a different explanation altogether. For centuries they had feared a violent race of ape-like humanoids they called the Nuk-Luk, as well as a large canid creature called Waheela. In 1964, John Baptist, a European, along with his trapper companions, reported a frightening encounter with these Nuk-luk, describing them as a hairy, bearded Neanderthal race, less than five feet tall; dressed in moose-skin and carrying clubs.

But the Waheela are more terrifying still. Believed to be evil spirits that protect the land against human intruders, they travel alone, taking only the heads of their victims. Looking like snow-white wolves with the broad face and clawed paws of a bear, they resemble the long extinct bear-dog known as Amphicyonidae. Thus it has been said that the Nahanni Valley may well be a “lost world,” a remote land stalked and guarded by surviving relics of a far earlier time. Those who dare venture into the unknown depths of this vast reserve do so at their own peril, for many who have gone did nary return.

Sources:

Image by DarkWorkX from Pixabay

The Grey Lady of the Cavalier, Nova Scotia

Read on Wattpad

As Retold by Bekah Ferguson

(2 min read)

In the heart of the star-shaped Halifax Citadel in Nova Scotia, is a three-story Cavalier building made of stone with multiple chimneys and a colonnaded verandah. On November 14th, 1900, a young woman named Cassie Allen waited at the altar in a nearby church for her beloved groom to arrive: a soldier from the Citadel. The sergeant was so long in arriving, however, that she eventually sat down in a chair; growing more and more anxious by the minute.

At the clip-clop sound of horses’ hooves she jumped up in expectation as a carriage pulled up to the open church entrance. The carriage was empty. The driver stepped down and took his hat into his hands, meeting Cassie’s eyes with a pained look of sympathy. He explained in sombre tones that her groom had been found dead that morning in the Citadel. Cassie’s lover had taken his own life when it came to light that he was already married—to a woman living in an asylum in Bermuda. Cassie’s hysterical wails of grief and dismay echoed throughout the church; she refused to believe what had happened.

Much later, when the church was in time torn down, the chair Cassie had waited in was donated to the Cavalier Building in the Citadel. Several decades after Cassie’s death in the 1950s, an employee often sat in that very chair in the Cavalier; greeting visitors as they entered the building. One day a woman dressed in a 19^th century, greyish-white dress stepped through the door and the scent of roses filled the hallway. The employee stood up to greet her, blinking; but when his eyes opened the hallway was empty. Throughout his employment, he glimpsed her several more times, dressed the same, but she always vanished right before he could speak.

Other employees saw her too. One night a security guard on the grounds below looked up to see a woman in grey staring vacantly out a third floor window. And another night, a guard stationed on the fort with a view overlooking the second floor balcony, watched slack-jawed as a woman in a long white dress moved along the veranda before turning at the corner and disappearing around the side of the building. It is believed that this Grey Lady of the Cavalier is indeed Cassie Allen, searching in endless grief for her long lost lover.

Sources:

Caretakers Paranormal Investigations

CTV News

Parcs Canada | Parks Canada

Halifax Magazine

Image by Adina Voicu from Pixabay, altered by Robbie Ferguson.

The UFO of Falcon Lake, Manitoba

Read of Wattpad

As Retold by Bekah Ferguson

(3 min read)

On the May long weekend of 1967, an amateur geologist named Stefan Michalak journeyed into the wilderness of Falcon Lake, Manitoba, in search of quartz and silver in an outcropping he’d scoped out the year before. Tools in hand, he was near a veiny section of Precambrian shield rock when a flock of geese spooked him with their harsh honking. Looking up, his heart jumped to his throat at the sight of two glowing hovering discs about 45 meters above. One landed on a flat section of granite and the other flew away. After calmly observing it from a distance for a while, believing it to be a secret military craft, Stefan decided to approach.

The scent of rotten eggs filled the warm air around him, and a whirring, hissing noise grew louder. In the side of the seamless, metal saucer was an opening. He thought he heard muffled voices but when he called out to offer his assistance, they fell silent. Stefan crept closer and tried to peer inside but the lights were so blinding, he had to pull down the welding goggles resting on his head.

Without warning, three panels slid shut across the opening. He reached out to touch the metallic casing and the tips of his gloves disintegrated–nearly burning his fingertips as well. The saucer began to move and exhaust from a grid-like vent blew into his chest, setting his clothes ablaze. As he was tearing his shirt from his body, the craft flew away. Stefan ran from the forest, disoriented and vomiting, but managed to make his way back home. His burns were treated in hospital and later formed a distinct grid pattern on his torso.

For many weeks afterward he was sick with an unknown illness, and little pieces of metal collected from the cracks in the rocks where the incident took place were tested by the authorities and found to be radioactive. To this very day, the circular landing site remains bereft of moss, even though it grows abundantly in the outcropping all around.

Sources:

CBC News

Atlas Obscura

Image by PhotoVision from Pixabay

The Fort Saskatchewan Wendigo of Alberta

Read on Wattpad

As Retold by Bekah Ferguson

(4 min read)

Swift Runner crouched down in the trampled snow next to the dead body of his hunting partner. After weeks of being stranded in ever-accumulating snow drifts with nothing to eat, Runner was starving. Now, having made up his mind, he pulled a knife from the sheath of his belt. When the feverish deed was done, he fell asleep with a bloated belly next to the stripped bones of his partner.

He awoke in the murk of dawn to a hissing sort of breathing–like a man whose lung has been punctured by an arrow. The sound came from a tall form standing in the gaps between trees, snow falling heavily all around. It moved out into the clearing, leaving bloody footsteps in its wake, and peered down at Runner with glowing eyes in an exposed skull draped with rotting, grey flesh. The smell of decay wafted from its desiccated body as Runner heard a voice enter his mind, saying, “You have become me.”

In the spring of 1879, years later, Swift Runner’s estranged Cree community began to question the whereabouts of his wife and five children, who had not been seen by anyone since the early winter. Unsatisfied with Runner’s explanation (he claimed they’d all starved to death that winter) and noting his rounded torso—they sent the police in to investigate.

After days of searching the woods, a pit of charred wood and ashes was discovered, with human skulls and weathered bones scattered about. A tiny Moccasin shoe had been stuffed inside one of the skulls; a beading needle protruding from the eye socket. The police gathered the remains together and determined them to be Runner’s missing family; accusing him of cannibalism. He denied nothing, saying, “I did it,” and became the first man to be legally hung in what was then the Canadian Northwest Territories.

Sources:

Wikipedia

Legends of America

Murderpedia

Image by Tomasz Manderla from Pixabay

The Red River Ox Cart Ghost of Manitoba

Read on Wattpad

As Retold by Bekah Ferguson

(3 min read)

“Ghost Scene at the Fort: Nightly Vigils of the Sentries Made Hideous by an Apparition” was the title of a newspaper article in the August 29, 1903, issue of the Morning Telegram. In the 19^th century, the Red River Trails in Winnipeg, Manitoba, were a trade route of ox cart roads that connected the Red River Colony and Fort Garry in British North America all the way to the Mississippi River in the United States. In those days the area was inhabited by Scottish settlers and the Métis—who at the time, were disparagingly referred to as “half-breeds” due to their French and Indigenous heritage.

The land was not shared mutually between the two groups, and thus, regarding the haunting at Fort Garry, the newspaper speculated that “the first owners of the Red River Valley [were] resenting the intrusion of the North-West Mounted Rifles upon the grounds sacred to their dead and making their displeasure severely felt.”

One ominous summer evening, in the wee hours of the night, a lone soldier standing guard outside the Lower Fort Garry saw something dark and looming approaching in the mist. Next came the rhythmic clip-clopping of hooves. An ox cart appeared from the gloom, driven by a Métis man and woman. Though puzzled by the out-dated look of the lot, the soldier shrugged it off and said nothing as the cart slowly lumbered by.

A few minutes later, however, another dark form appeared in the distant mist and what seemed to be the very same ox cart travelled by again. The third time it appeared the soldier began to tremble; palms damp and sweat on his brow. He ordered the cart to halt but no sooner had his authoritative words rung out when the entire apparition vanished like smoke in the wind. Seconds later it reappeared in the distance and disappeared again when he hysterically cried out for it to stop. By now he was in a full-blown panic and threw his rifle to the ground, running away. Back at the fort his fellow soldiers laughed off his story; but the next night, another soldier on duty had the same experience. One by one it happened to them all until there was no left who could mock.

Sources:

Canada Post

Cision

WinnipegREALTORS

Image by Ron Porter from Pixabay, adapted to be a nighttime scene by Robbie Ferguson.

The Tunnel Monster of Cabbagetown, Ontario

Read on Wattpad

As retold by Bekah Ferguson

(3 min read)

In the early 19^th century days of Toronto there were many rivers, streams and creeks branching across the land like veins and arteries. Endless trees towered above the developing city rather than skyscrapers. And down in the riverbeds of these yet rural wilds lived a race of water spirits known in Algonquian mythology as Memegwesi. These elusive humanoid creatures were elfish, small and hairy, with voices said to be like the high-pitched drone of a dragonfly. When city builders rerouted these waterways into solid underground tunnels that merged with the sewer system, it is thought that some Memegwesi were unknowingly buried with them.

By the early 20^th century, Torontonians had long forgotten the existence of these vast tunnels—that is, until one summer’s day in 1978 in an area of the city known as Cabbagetown. A man named Ernest stumbled upon a secret entrance to the tunnels while searching for a lost kitten. Certain he had heard distressed mewling down in the alley beside his Parliament Street apartment the night before, he decided to army-crawl into the culvert about ten feet, flashlight in hand.

The tunnel gradually widened, its black depths like an abyss. Something skittered ahead and he steadied the flashlight beam, hoping to see his kitten. But it was no cat caught in the beam. A pair of slanted red eyes bulged at him above the gaping, large-toothed mouth of a hairy, grey, bipedeled creature about three feet long. “Go away, go away!” it screeched, then ran off into a side tunnel. Terrified, Ernest shimmied backward out of the tunnel and waited a full year before admitting to the Toronto Sun newspaper what he’d seen. However, when they went in search of the tunnel’s entrance, they found it collapsed in upon itself, and no one has ever admitted to such a sighting again.

Sources:

The 13th Floor

Fandom

Little People (Mythology)

Memegwesi

Image via the archives of the Toronto Sun newspaper.