By August 1877, Moses Power’s house in Torbay, NL had become something of a local battleground.
If the Morning Chronicle is to be believed, forty men had assembled to protect it, standing watch against an assailant who had no intention of respecting their numbers… or the ordinary boundaries between the living and the dead.
Morning Chronicle, August 11, 1877
Power’s windows were being smashed, his clapboard torn away, and his stockpile of saltcod was disappearing. And all the while, people were insisting that the culprit was a ghost.
Witnesses, including Power himself, claimed to have seen the apparition, whom they described as a young woman dressed in white muslin.
According to the Chronicle, disturbances began at seven o’clock each evening and continued until midnight, with much of the destruction taking place in broad daylight.
The newspaper offered no further information, but its writer seemed considerably less interested in supernatural explanations than in seeing somebody brought to justice.
It was time, the writer declared, for Inspector Carty (Head of the Constabulary) to demonstrate his detective skills by visiting Torbay and catching the ghost.
Whether Inspector Carty accepted the challenge, I don’t know.
Whatever was really happening in Torbay, Moses Power had apparently discovered that forty men are no match for a sufficiently determined soul hell-bent on a home reno.
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Fearful Doings of a Ghost, Morning Chronicle, August 11, 1877
