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Mrs. Copeland. This is her tale of woe.
    Sable Island is located some 350 km southwest of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The salty Maritime Mystery that takes place there involves a shipwreck, a murder, and a bleeding ghost.
    There are at least two versions to this 18-century mystery that we know of; both are partly fact and partly fiction, although some fishermen will say the story is completely factual. One version, nearly as old as this story, was written by the author of Sam Slick , Thomas Chandler Haliburton, and the more recent one, Fatal and Fertile Crescent , was written by Lyall Campbell. Of course, there are countless oral versions, and folklore always also plays a significant roll in Maritime Mysteries.
    So let the journey begin, to a place of broken ships and restless spirits.
    A ship laden down with the personal belongings of the Duke of Kent set sail from England in 1799 for the garrison town of Halifax. Among the passengers were a Mr. Copeland—the garrison’s doctor—his wife, two children, and a maid.
    When the ship failed to arrive in Halifax, the Duke sent out a search party to look for it. The first obvious place to investigate was Sable Island. When the search party arrived on the island, they found the beach strewn with debris, including many of the Duke’s personal belongings. There were also the victims of the shipwrecked vessel. The officer in charge told his men to bed down for the night and they would bury the dead in the morning. In the meantime, he would check the other side of the island for any survivors.
    There were, at the time, small huts on the island built specifically for survivors of shipwrecks. Realizing it was getting late, the officer decided to stay in one of the huts and return to his men in the morning. He lit a fire then went outside again to continue searching for survivors. When he returned to the hut, there was a woman standing by the stove. Her long white dress was dripping wet and soiled by sand and seaweed. When he asked who she was and where she came from, she held out her left hand. Her ring finger was missing and oozing with blood. When he moved closer, she fled past him and out the door. He followed and watched her flee over the dunes until she disappeared. When he went back inside, she was again standing by the stove. It was then he recognized who and what she was. It was the ghost of Mrs. Copeland, wife of the garrison’s doctor! That was the last time he saw Mrs. Copeland—or rather, her ghost.
    On his return to Halifax, the young officer promised himself that he would avenge Mrs. Copeland’s murder by seeking out her murderer and returning her ring to her family in England. As soon as he arrived back in Halifax he went after the most notorious member of the wreckers gang—a local group known to prey on victims of shipwrecks. While talking with the daughter of the man he believed to be Mrs. Copeland’s murderer, the woman told him that her father found the ring on the beach on Sable Island. The child’s mother, however, said that a Frenchman, on Sable Island at the time, had given the ring to her husband. She added that if he wanted the ring back, he could buy it from the local watchmaker. In the end, he did purchase the ring and kept his promise to the dead Mrs. Copeland by returning the ring to her family in England. However, her murderer was never caught. According to those living on the seedy side of Halifax, he suffered a worst fate than the gallows. In his sleep the ghost of Mrs. Copeland would rise up to point an accusing and mutilated finger at him.
    Fishermen who sailed close to Sable Island at the time reported seeing a shadowy figure, with an outstretched hand, staring out to sea as if waiting for the return of something ... perhaps a finger and ring!
    Ashley’s Encounter
    T his incident occurred in a small community outside of Sheet Harbour, on Nova Scotia’s south shore. It came my way by the brother of the sister