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involved, and by the sister’s insistence, the names have been changed.
    It was a cold winter’s afternoon in the late 1930s when Ashley finished school for the day and headed for the safety and warmth of her home. The route she travelled never varied. Her only concern was passing the local graveyard. When the cemetery came in sight, her footsteps always quickened.
    On this particular day as Ashley reached the main gate of the cemetery, she was startled by a tall woman coming toward her from between the tombstones. Young Ashley was terror-stricken. She wanted to flee, but was unable to move. She could hear only the beating of her heart. There was snow on the ground, and as Ashley would later recall, the woman left no footprints in the snow, nor did she open the locked gate. She simply walked through it. The stranger took Ashley’s hand, and led her away from the cemetery.
    When Ashley opened the back door of her home and stepped in the kitchen, the smell of cooking filled her nostrils. Her mother greeted her with a smile, a cup of warm cocoa and hot tea biscuits.
    â€œSo,” her mother asked, “how was school today?”
    â€œOkay, I guess,” Ashley replied. Then staring off as if her mind was elsewhere, she told her mother that she met a woman by the graveyard on the way home from school. “She walked a ways with me before leaving. She wanted to know my name and what grade I was in and which school I was attending. She also said that when she was a girl, she went to the same school.” Ashley’s mother was anxious to know the name of this stranger. “She knew you,” Ashley said, “she went to school with you. She said her name is Grace Forshaw.
    â€œNo, Ashley,” her mother exclaimed, “the woman you met was not Grace Forshaw. Grace Forshaw died twenty-five years ago!”
    The Ghosts of Uniacke House
    W hy did Martha Uniacke return from the grave? And why did her daughter join her in eternal vigilance?
    Many people leave this world whimpering and afraid; afraid of death, the unknown, and the darkness. And most never return. The answers as to why this mother and daughter returned may lie in the mansion itself and in those who lived there.
    Mount Uniacke was built in 1813 as the country home of Richard John Uniacke, Attorney General of Nova Scotia. Uniacke named the estate after his ancestral home in Ireland, where his family were prominent and prosperous members of the landed gentry. Uniacke was born in 1753 at Castletown, Ireland.
    Following a bitter quarrel with his father, he set sail for the new world to seek his fortune.
    He arrived in Philadelphia in 1774, where he met Moses Delesdernier, a Swiss resident of Nova Scotia who was in Philadelphia seeking residents to settle in Nova Scotia. Delesdernier liked Uniacke and convinced him to come to Nova Scotia and work for him. Uniacke agreed, and the following year at age 21, he married the not yet 13-year-old Martha Delesdernier, daughter of his employer.
    On my first visit to Mount Uniacke, I was overcome by a feeling that time was suspended; that the people who once lived there, and died there are still there, in spirit. As I got closer to the mansion, I had an uneasy sense that I was being watched from behind musty smelling drapes. Once inside, I was certain of it. I was also aware of a sadness. The imposing portrait of Richard John Uniacke, the master of the house, hangs on the hall wall and those piercing eyes of his never leave you.
    Martha Delesdernier, who bore Uniacke twelve children, died at age forty. It wasn’t long after she passed away that strange things began happening. Field workers and house staff noticed Martha wasn’t where she was supposed to be—in her grave. What happened in that mansion to bring her back from the graveyard? And why did the spirit of Lady Mary Mitchell, Martha’s eldest daughter, also return from the dead? Both Uniacke women are sometimes seen arm in arm