I have written about this before. Why is it that movies always show a “haunted” house to be an old house? As if it isn’t already hard enough to get respect for being old, less energy efficient, a money pit and so on without now having to battle the reputation of being haunted. On a previous email I did explain where this all started. I also have some spooky stories from some of my readers .

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In the spirit of Halloween I thought I’d share a story from one of the books I have been reading lately. The first one that captured my imagination (and raised some goose bumps) is from the book: “Strange Events” by Johanna Bertin as part of the Amazing Stories series of books. This one is not about a haunted house (let’s give our old houses a break!:)

It’s a story about the SS Faerie Queen. “On October 7, 1859 five bells rang out from the tower of St. James Church in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.” There was no reason for this to happen as it was a Friday night and there were no services that night. (I remember from growing up in a small town that the only time you heard bells, rung very slowly, outside of church times was when someone had died.) Two curious parishioners hurried to the tower to see what had happened. When they got there they heard the bell ring again but it seemed like no one was ringing the bell.

What the did see however, through a window, was three women dressed entirely in white.

By this time the minister and sexton arrived with the only key to the church. They figured it was some one’s idea of a prank so they entered the church and climbed the steps to the tower. They expected to catch the intruder as there was no way to leave the church except by these stairs. When they got there they found the bell rope securely attached and no one there.

By evening the story had spread through the town. This was made easy by the fact that the townspeople had all gathered to meet the SS Faerie Queen, a passenger ferry that was making her maiden run that night from Nova Scotia to Prince Edward Island. They waited in happy anticipation as some of the passengers were from the congregation of St. James. It was a beautiful day. The water was calm.

They waited.

And waited. Then they went home figuring that the ship had returned to Nova Scotia for some reason – or maybe it didn’t leave at all.

It wasn’t until the next day that they found out that the ferry had sunk. There was no trace of the passengers or the boat. An investigation revealed that the ferry’s owners had known their boat was unsafe and that they had been told not to take on any passengers. They ignored this advice.

Two days after the boat went down five survivors were found on the Nova Scotia coast. They revealed that the captain and crew had taken the life boats and abandoned the eight passengers to their fate. Only these five passengers had been able to scramble on to a piece of cabin decking before the ship went down.

The remaining three passengers – three women – from the St. James Parish had disappeared with the ship and were never seen again.