Fire Spook

Graham, with a journalistic, fact-collecting approach, painstakingly tries to piece together what happened when mysterious fires and other mischief drove a respectable family from its home near Caledonia Mills, close by the Antigonish-Guysborough county line in 1922. It is a story that exists in countless versions and under names ranging from Mary Ellen Spook, to the Caledonia Mills Spook, the Bochdan of Caledonia Mills to simply, Spook Farm. It is also a story that has come down through the generations, told in Gaelic and in English, in country farmhouses, public meeting rooms and university residences for almost a century.Graham is at her best in introducing Alec MacDonald, his wife Janet Cameron and their adopted daughter Mary Ellen MacDonald whose father was killed by a falling box of coal in the Drummond Colliery in Westville. Alec and Janet had a connection to the family, and as was often done in those days, they took one of the four children into their care. The MacDonalds were plagued, to a degree that can no longer be substantiated; by nuisance occurrences such as cows loosened from their stanchions and household items disappearing but in 1922 they were subjected to mysterious, relentless fires that ultimately drove them from their home.Graham documents the MacDonalds’ lives after they left the farm and examines the various theories put forth to explain the forces that so disrupted them. Some of the theories, she acknowledges, are as equally unlikely as evil spirits at work but it is interesting to see how investigators formulated their theories by relying heavily on certain pieces of evidence or personal accounts while discounting others.