MARTINTOWN’S GHOSTS

Martintown historian Rhodes Grant said it best when he wrote, in 19th century Glengarry a person would be considered ignorant “to doubt” the presence of witchcraft, the evil eye, goblins and death lights.” This superstitious bent was reinforced in a story recounted to “Standard-Freeholder,” writer George Wilson, by 87 year old Mary “Minnie” Frego (Bergeson), born in Martintown, in 1847.

Mrs. Frego told Wilson “…that many people driving by team (horse drawn buggy) between Cornwall and Martintown beheld a ghost or apparition of some kind. At a certain bridge an object in white boarded the back of the rig, rode a certain distance and then deserted the party. The ghost was seen many times by many people and it was said that a man had been murdered at this particular bridge.”

“Once, when a Toronto lady was a passenger in a sleigh, the ghost made its appearance and the visitor almost died of fright. She was assured by those who were with her, who had seen the strange sight several times , that the ‘ghost’ would not harm her, but it required considerable persuasion on the part of her friends before (she) would return to Cornwall by the same route.”

Wilson concluded that while “Mrs. Frego never actually encountered Mr. Ghost…she heard the tale repeatedly…from friends who viewed the apparition, that she could not do otherwise but believe every word of it as gospel truth.”

Photo: Martintown’s old covered bridge is the place the “ghost” likely boarded passing vehicles

As for legend of the ghost that haunts the Mill, you will have to wait another year.

HALLOWEEN NIGHT in CORNWALL and LANCASTER, 1898.

George Wilson wrote that by 1898 “The practice of removing gates and tearing down fences” was “on the wane.” Instead “…young men…paraded the streets in their sisters’ or somebody else’s sister’s attire and the girls appeared in male costume.”

In another practical joke, at 11 o’clock, one Halloween eve, a prankster set of a false fire alarm, but “Realizing it to be a joke, the firemen took a chance and did not turn out.”

The scariest trick was played on a driver for the Cornwall Electric Street Railway “…when his car could not be stopped in time to prevent it from running over the ‘body’ of a ‘man’ on Second St. some jokers ‘stuffed an old suit’ with straw and placed the dummy on the tracks. The motorman noticed something on the rails and shut off the power and applied the brakes. But it was to no avail and the poor fellow was run over. The motorman and conductor went back to ascertain who the victim was and their anger at finding a cruel hoax had been played on them was only exceeded by the pleasure of finding that they did not have a dead or badly injured man to account for.”

A reporter for “The Cornwall Standard” wrote that in Lancaster Halloween took the form of “transformation scenes,” the morning after the visits of the evil genii.”

Focussing on local businesses, the jokers relocated an advertising thermometer in a clothing store; moved the Doctor’s sign to the Post Office; announced that one of their “medicos had launched out into the oyster trade; tried to transform another store into a brewery or liquor warehouse and managed to see “A jeweller’s sign watch ‘(fly) off the handle’ and (perch) itself way up among the wires of a neighbouring telephone pole and many other strange and unforeseen things occurred that night, all testifying to fertile brains and active hands.”

(Note: The author is indebted to George Wilson’s Down The Lane Again), Vol. 1, for the information on Halloween in Cornwall and Lancaster.)