Mary Ellen Spook
Along the Eastern edge of Canada where it touches the Atlantic Ocean, lies the windblown province of Nova Scotia. A picturesque slice of the Maritimes rooted deep in coal mining history and its share of ghost stories.
Every culture across the globe has eerie stories of supernatural and paranormal folklore, but what makes this story different from the countless others? To this day, no one has been able to solve the mystery of one of the most fearful places in Nova Scotia.
These events were documented by newspapers across Canada and the United States, attracting renowned investigators and even the attention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Yet despite the immense exposure, the case remains unsolved to this day.
It started back in the early 1900’s when Alexander and Mary MacDonald visited New Glasgow to comfort a friend who lost her husband in a coal mining accident. Like most families, her husband was the sole breadwinner. Devastated, both emotionally and financially, the woman tearfully admitted she was no longer able to support her six children. Alexander and Mary, whose own children were already grown and on their own, agreed to take the youngest child, Mary Ellen, to live with them on their farm in Caledonia Mills.
It is not know if a poltergeist rebelled against young Mary Ellen’s presence, or if she was merely the vehicle it was waiting for, because the first sign of paranormal activity occurred after Mary Ellen’s arrival.
The grandmother woke up and a large, black dog was sitting at her bedside. The grandmother got a terrible fright and, being a religious person, cursed the dog in the name of the Lord. The dog bolted out of her room yet no one knew how the dog got in the house or where it came from. Since then, they often noticed young Mary Ellen playing with the strange black dog yet every time someone tried to approach the animal it was gone, as if it vanished into thin air.
Doors started to open and close and the MacDonald’s heard strange voices from hallways. These strange events did not happen just in the house. Someone, or something, moved the animals to different locations inside the barn and they often found ashes in the milk.
Alexander, with the help of several men, tied the animals up each night in elaborate knots yet the livestock were untied the next morning. Alexander placed a large lock on the barn door to keep the prankster out, but the following morning he found the barn unlocked and the animals grazing outside.
Other times they would find the horse tails and manes braided in the most intricate styles. Deeply rooted in Scottish and Irish history, many locals believed it was faeries causing the troubles but little did they know, the troubles at the MacDonald house were just starting.
It was 1922 when the fires began.
The first incident happened when everyone was in bed. Smelling smoke and thinking the chimney was on fire, Alexander rushed down to put out the fire only to discover the fire was not in the fireplace or their wood burning stove, a piece of wallpaper was on fire. Once he put out the fire another would burst into flames in a different room. The fires unnaturally jumped from room to room, always giving off a bluish haze.
Even the wet towels they used to try to put the fires out would burst into flames. Oddly enough, the fire would jump or go around a crucifix and religious pictures, leaving the sacred items untouched. The MacDonald’s knew something unnatural was taking place, yet they could not explain it.
Hearing of their plight, neighbors offered to help by guarding the house in hopes to catch the fire starter. They never did. The unexplained fires continued yet they could never catch anyone actually starting them.
One night in December, 38 fires started and the MacDonald family agreed to allow investigators to move in. Every person who stayed in the MacDonald house experienced fires, noises and other oddities they could not explain. They each claimed what was happening in that house, and in the barn, was not the work of human hands.
Because the paranormal events started after Mary Ellen moved in, the locals branded the child ‘Mary Ellen Spook’ and blamed her for attracting a poltergeist.
The Casket, the local Antigonish newspaper, sent a reporter and an investigator to what then became known as simply, the “Spook House”. They stayed for several days but could not figure out how the fires started. Soon after, the Diocese of Antigonish sent a priest and an investigator but nothing was publicly revealed about what they discovered.
Investigator H. B. Whidden visited the house and Dr. Whittier F. Prince, a member of the American Society of Psychic Research in New York City, conducted sprit writing sessions with Whidden.
In his report titled, “My Experiences at the MacDonald Homestead”, H.B. Whidden wrote: “After spending two days and two nights with Detective Carroll in the MacDonald house, I was more mystified than ever. On the second night of our stay we had a new experience. We heard strange noises—absolutely different from anything I had ever heard before from the floor over our heads. And shortly afterwards I distinctly felt a blow on the flat part of my left arm above my elbow.”
Dr. Prince performed ‘ghost writing’ sessions with various investigators. Whitten wrote in his report: “Suddenly I felt a prickly sensation in the end of some of the fingers of my right hand, which increased. The hand then became numb. Before I realized what was happening, the pencil began to move slowly, without any effort or intention on my part. This lasted less than a minute, probably, when it commenced to form circles. The motion became more rapid, and my hand simply worked like a toy top over the paper. The movement became so fast and the pressure so hard that three sheets of paper were torn.”
When Dr. Prince questioned who started the fires, the answer was one word: “Spirits!”
Whitten published his nine page report of the strange phenomena in the Halifax Herald in 1922.
As with all good ghost stories, overzealous reporters exaggerated the facts or concocted fictitious and fantastical stories. Dr. Prince later claimed the MacDonald girl was the same person whom he had investigated nine years earlier in Missoula, Montana. He claimed the girl was nine years old at that time. An examination of the 1910 U.S. Census revealed there was only one Alex MacDonald in Montana. He was born in Scotland and was only twenty years old at the time of the census. The Alexander MacDonald from Nova Scotia was an elderly man. The girl Dr. Prince claimed to have studied in Montana would have been eighteen years old in 1922 – Mary Ellen was only sixteen.
To explain the mystery of the fires, Dr. Prince said, “The burns are never found on the wall paper higher than the reach of a person five feet tall, which is the height of a girl in the family.” It’s worth noting however that in a 1922 photograph, Mary Ellen was a rather tall child measuring almost the height of her adopted father. In regards to H.B. Whitten’s report about being slapped, Dr. Prince’s stated: “Their experiences were probably of a supernormal character, which does not necessarily imply that the supernormal cause was spiritualistic. It may have been owing to psycho-physiological cause which is perfectly natural, though imperfectly normal.” In other words, he claims Whitten slapped himself.
As for Mary Ellen, Dr. Prince said, “But I am of the opinion that the girl was not mentally culpable. She is mentally exceedingly young for her years, and within the past year has had singular ‘dream states’ from which it was difficult to rouse her. It is very probable that she was the victim of altered states of consciousness, about which psychology has learned so much of late.”
Dr. Prince went on to say, “The acts were, however, almost certainly without culpability on her part, owing to her having been temporarily in abnormal states of consciousness. Possibly, but not probably, there was instigation of the acts by a discarnate intelligence through telepathy contact upon her mind.” Dr. Prince implied that Mary Ellen may have done it herself, may have done it while sleep walking or she might have actually been ‘possessed’, but he unwilling to say one way or another. It is worth noting again that Mary Ellen was a rather tall child and some of the events occurred when Mary Ellen was not in the house.
Ellen’s reply to Dr. Prince’s allegations that Mary Ellen set the fires and the events were nothing more than an elaborate hoax were published, yet Dr. Prince debunked the published report claiming the language used was beyond what Mary Ellen was capable of speaking due to her diminished mental state.
As the mystery surrounding the paranormal events and the people involved unfolded, the New York Times and dozens of newspapers across North America reported on the ‘Spook House’. Alexander and Mary left the farm and moved to Antigonish – the paranormal activity did not follow them. Mary Ellen moved to central Ontario and was later institutionalized.
Shortly after the family moved, the abandoned farm house burned to the ground. The site is now little more than a pile of rubble.
But the story does not end there…
At the time of this writing it has been almost 90 years since the “Spook House” burned down yet it is said that locals still do not go by the old farm at night. They warn thrill seekers eager to visit the ruins to never take anything from the site lest they be cursed.
Of course, there are always people who ignore local folklore, but did the alleged Spook House curse follow these daring thrill seekers? One such report concerns a few students from the nearby St. Francis Xavier University, better known as St. FX, who visited the ruins of the Mary Ellen Spook House. Frightened by the sound of a dog barking the students ran from the site but not before one of them picked up a rock from the foundation and took it with him.
Back at his dorm he absentmindedly placed the rock next to a picture of his sister. She was tragically killed in an accident that night. The student left to be with his family and, not giving the rock any thought, left it in his room. During the week of his absence various students heard doors being slammed. Other students reported a strange black dog running up and down the halls of the dormitory. It’s interesting to note that some of the students had never heard of Mary Ellen Spook or the recent visit to the site. The day before the boy returned his room burst into flames. Firefighters said it started in the microwave, a perfectly normal explanation, but it was unplugged at the time.
It is said that when he returned to ST. FX he brought the rock back to the Spook House ruins and the strange activity stopped.
Did a child of less than average mentality concoct an elaborate hoax that fooled a nation, or did Mary Ellen’s arrival at the farm unleash a poltergeist that still haunts the grounds?
No one knows for sure. To this day, the events of Spook House remain a mystery.
