Investigating the Antigonish Fire Spook Haunting

The MacDonald family had abandoned their farmhouse on January 12th 1922. It didn't take long for the story to get out.

By January 16th, it was being discussed 100 miles away in Halifax, where reporter Harold B. Whidden (pictured) thought it newsworthy enough to visit Caledonia Mills.

He interviewed Leo McGillivray, who had been there on the night of the most disturbances, and with whom the MacDonalds were now living.

Public reaction to Whidden's editorial was so favorable, that he quickly organized a return trip. This time he resolved to actually stay in the haunted Antigonish farmhouse.

In order to legitimize the investigation further, the journalist called upon his newspaper's main contact in the provincial police force.  Detective P.O. Carroll was persuaded to come along too. Used to examining a crime scene, the officer's point of view was judged to be critical.

In the meantime, the Nova Scotia poltergeist was being reported in newspapers as far away as Utah. It was treated lightly there, with the Ogden Standard Examiner going as far as to suggest that the only spirits in the MacDonald farmhouse were poured in 'little brown jugs'.

Before the ghost of Antigonish story ran its course, it was appearing in print in newspapers across the world.  But the scoop was still in Halifax, where Whidden and Carroll were preparing for their vigil at the property.

There's little doubt that Harold Whidden arrived primarily for the story. The popularity of his earlier article had ensured his return. No shame was attached to that. It was his job.

But he emerged from the MacDonald Homestead as a believer. So shaken, that he was willing to finance, from his own pocket, a $100 reward for anyone who could successfully explain what he had experienced there.

Alongside him, Detective Carroll (pictured) probably had more to lose, in terms of his reputation, by opting for a supernatural explanation.

But he also declared his belief that a ghost was in the homestead.

The pair arrived in Caledonia Mills in early February. Making contact with the McGillivrays again, they were introduced to the MacDonald family.  It was agreed that seventy-year-old Alex MacDonald would accompany them to his home. He stayed with them for as long as they kept the vigil.

Initially the idea was to be there for three days and nights. It actually turned into two.

The MacDonald Homestead was icy cold. Fire damage had gutted much of the furnishings and rendered the range unusable. Whidden, MacDonald and Carroll instead piled on layers of clothing and survived the frozen winter conditions that way.

It wasn't until the second night that anything strange occurred.  Whidden told how he was sitting in a chair, with Carroll occupying a second chair to his left.  Farmer MacDonald merely lay on the floor. The laws of Gaelic hospitality saw him refusing anything else.

Above their heads came 'strange sounds', which neither Carroll nor Whidden could place. The noises were quickly joined by footsteps, as if someone was pacing in the bedchamber.

The two men waited, listening in the full knowledge that nobody was up there. The homestead was deserted but for the trio in the living room. A glance at MacDonald showed that he'd fallen asleep.

All was quiet, when Whidden felt the blow. It seemed like something had punched him hard in the left forearm. Startled, he stared at Carroll, who had not budged an inch.  The detective appeared perplexed at phenomena of his own. Something had apparently just pulled at his own left arm.

The sensations felt by both men were strong enough to have cut through (in Whidden's case) 'two shirts, an inside coat, a heavy sweater, a fur-lined overcoat and a new horse-rug'.

Whidden woke Alex MacDonald and asked the farmer if he'd hit him. MacDonald was naturally confused. He'd been asleep.

Whidden knew this. He would have seen the farmer the second that he stirred, as the old man wasn't far away. The reporter stated that he had to ask for the sake of exhausting all reasonable possibilities. But they all knew it wasn't that. Low level panic was galvanizing his tongue into asking ridiculous questions.

For the next 'fifteen to twenty minutes', Whidden became convinced that a 'strange presence' was in the house. He sat tense and expectant, waiting for it to show itself or for the violence to escalate.

It was there! It was watching them! It was with them!  But after the aforementioned time had passed, it was like a switch had been flicked on Whidden's sensibilities. He no longer felt that the entity was there. Finally he could relax.

Neither MacDonald nor Carroll experienced that tingling anticipation at all.  Weeks later, a paranormal investigator would test Whidden's psychic ability, and find it stronger than most.

There is no doubt that Dr Walter Franklin Prince PhD intimidated and irritated the Nova Scotians in equal measure.

As a leading member of the American Institute of Scientific Research and the Executive Officer of the Boston Society for Psychic Research, Prince had been approached to investigate the happenings at the MacDonald Homestead. He arrived during the last week in February 1922 and stayed until mid-March.

But he hadn't even stepped foot in Canada before he was already alienating his escort. Whidden had already traveled out to meet him. He noted that the academic seemed more pre-occupied by how he was going to keep warm, than the details of the case itself.

In fact, Prince had already made up his mind what the results of his investigation would be. Mary Ellen MacDonald was only fifteen. Adolescents attracted poltergeists. All Prince had to do was prove it.

Once installed at the farmhouse in Caledonia Mills, Prince immediately demanded privacy. He spent the entire of the first day arranging the bed chamber, so that it may afford him comfortable accommodation.

No-one was allowed into the property. Not even the MacDonalds. He took it as understood that he would work without interruption, and that no-one would come close without an invitation.

This high-handed attitude impressed nobody, least of all Whidden, who wanted more stories.

But first, there were other scientists who wanted their say in the press. The story was so big, that they all got it too.

Today it's a rare scientist who would countenance for a second the possibility of paranormal activity.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the distinction between the natural and the supernatural was not so clear cut. Even Tesla experimented with contacting the Other Side.The haunting at Antigonish was debated in some of the highest academic circles.

However, even in this climate, there were scientists who were scathing about the whole field of paranormal investigation. One of them was Edward O'Brien. He had a rational explanation for it all, and a simple solution to making the fires stop: move the MacDonald farmhouse.

Speaking from St. Francis Xavier University, O'Brien noted that the whole Caledonia Mills valley was swamped with radio energy. The waves were emitting from large masts positioned at Wellsleet, Massachusetts, and Glace Bay, New York.

When atmospheric conditions were just right, then rogue radio waves could spark fires anywhere.

The widely publicized theory draw Marconi immediately into the fray. He assured the public that radio energy could not cause infernos. There was no way that his radio stations were to blame.

Nobody seemed too convinced. After all, Marconi would say that, wouldn't he?  He was trying to get his masts established everywhere!

Still there were those who challenged O'Brien on the finer points.  What about the reporter and police officer, who'd been slapped?  O'Brien responded that they had been sitting in conditions of minus 25 degrees. The mind plays tricks at such low temperatures.

Whidden had probably slapped himself, as an instinctual reaction to freezing half to death. He just hadn't recognized the command as originating in his own brain, for all the same reasons.

And the cattle being freed from their chains? O'Brien accused the MacDonald's teenage foster daughter. She must have done it for a laugh.

Nobody asked how she'd acquired such strength and speed. After all, it took just five seconds from the farmer leaving the barn to his entire herd stampeding free. Nor did they ask why the cows were so afraid of the girl who milked them every morning.

For that sector of society who grasped for rational explanations, no matter how far they strained credibility, the answers were clear. It was radio waves, hypothermia and Mary Ellen MacDonald. The end.

On March 16th 1922, Dr Prince made public his much anticipated report on the MacDonald Homestead haunting.

In all, he had spent nearly three weeks in the Antigonish area. Five days and six nights of which were within the farmhouse itself. He'd examined the terrain and all evidence with a fine-tooth comb. His methodology sometimes scientific and sometimes esoteric.

On several occasions, individuals or groups had been sent for to help him with his experiments.  Three times, that had included the MacDonalds themselves, whose presence was hoped to trigger the phenomena.

Whidden was allowed to attend too. In early March, he was lying down in the front room, when that tingling sensation returned. As far as he was concerned, he'd immediately fallen into a stupor and couldn't remember a thing that followed.

But Prince, Dan McGillivray and all three MacDonalds witnessed him walk as a man possessed towards the table. Demanding a pencil, he began furiously scribbling upon provided bits of paper for two hours. He was possessed by the poltergeist. His writing confessed to causing all phenomena.

Prince seemed to agree. Which made it all the more startling when his report disdained it all.

The fires, Prince claimed, had all been set by a human being. Wads of cotton had been set alight and stuffed into position, or thrown into high places. He'd also found a bottle of odorless flammable liquid, secreted upon a beam. The burn damage showed an average height, which could be reached by someone placing the cotton.

It was five foot exactly. The height of Mary Ellen MacDonald.

He did temper it slightly by admitting that the girl could have been possessed, or else done it while sleep walking and therefore utterly unaware of her actions.

Prince offered a nod towards his distant colleague Edward O'Brien.  But stated that the Marconi masts could not be at fault, unless radio waves were sentient enough to know when the house was occupied.

As for Whidden and Carroll, they had been extremely cold and half-asleep. They either slapped themselves, or each other, or else hallucinated it all.

Prince never addressed the issue of the incidents involving the cattle and horses. Though others expressing their opinion on his report opined that those could all have been pranks.

With all the publicity surrounding the case, word reached Dr. Thaddeus L. Bolton of Temple University, Philadelphia.

He recalled an earlier investigation, this time in Missoula, Missouri, involving a girl named Mary Ellen MacDonald. She had been nine years old at the time and her father was called Alexander. The case concerned strange rapping, which had attracted speculation about the supernatural.

After Dr Bolton had led a seance in the house, the whole building mysteriously burned down.

The press had definitely turned against Mary Ellen MacDonald by this time. Dr Prince's conclusions were generally accepted without question. This was a sensational new claim, which was written about in terms which made it clear that Antigonish's Mary Ellen had been a serial arsonist since birth.

Nobody seemed particularly interested in the fact that the Nova Scotia MacDonalds had never lived in Missouri, nor indeed the USA. Mary Ellen in Missouri would have been eighteen years old, not fifteen; and her father should have been forty-five not seventy.

It wasn't a match, but most readers never learned that.

Reporters heading into the area - particularly around Antigonish - were liable to hear Prince's conclusions dismissed as 'absurd'. Not least because Mary Ellen hadn't always been in the house when the fires were sparked.

There was a campaign initiated to bring Sir Arthur Conan Doyle from Britain. It was thought that the author of Sherlock Holmes, known for his interest in Spiritualism and the paranormal, would surely find some answers.

However, the writer declined their invitation.

Slightly more helpful was an interview with Mary Ellen MacDonald. The family had refused to talk with any journalists (leading Whidden previously to get his information from the McGillivrays), but they broke their silence now.

In a widely syndicated text, Mary Ellen defended herself passionately. She accused Dr Prince of 'fibbing', going on, “I never set any fires. I never untied the cattle in the barns. I never plaited the tails of the horses. I would have been afraid to. First they said I had a sweetheart who did it, now they say I did it. It’s all lies, I tell you. I don’t care who Dr. Prince is. He ought to be ashamed of himself.”

For a moment, it seemed like public opinion around the globe might inch back towards the fifteen year old.

But Dr Prince labelled the interview as just another fake, stating that the Mary Ellen that he'd met wouldn't have been able to say all that. She could barely string a sentence together. 

The man from New York seemed far more credible than the teenager from Nova Scotia. Scathing international journalists continued to side with him, repeating the 'evidence' of the Missouri Mary Ellen for good measure.

Only in Antigonish did the people really defend their own, and there because the supernatural tale just kept on growing.

It was recalled locally that the phenomena actually began before Mary Ellen had even come to live with her relatives.

Years previously, Alex's mother had been cared for in the MacDonald Homestead. She had complained frequently about seeing an uncanny black dog around the farm.

She had even awoken in the middle of the night to find it staring at her from the foot of the bed.

All her Scottish ancestry identified the monstrous hound. It was the Cù Sìth, a harbinger of death, akin to the Welsh Cwn Annwn.

Old Mrs MacDonald was remembered as a bit of a tyrant. She'd lingered a long time in her last illness and driven her daughter-in-law Janet to distraction. Frustrated by the endless criticism, Janet had once screamed at the old woman, "I hope that you're dead by morning and the Devil comes to take you!"

At that very instant, the Cù Sìth had entered the house, witnessed by both women, and walked around it before leaving. The senior Mrs MacDonald was indeed dead by morning. Had Janet inadvertently cursed her home and family? Or was her mother-in-law's ghost fire-starting in revenge?

It was a widely held notion around Caledonia Mills and one which prompted the MacDonald family to seek spiritual aid.

It's quite telling that the Bishop of Antigonish sent a couple of priests to the farmhouse. They stayed for several days, cleansing the property, but never made the results of their activities public.

A local reporter from the Casket newspaper, and another investigator, followed them in. But their vigil encountered nothing untoward.  Only now did the MacDonald family feel safe returning to their home.

Unfortunately their presence immediately disturbed the slumbering fire spook again.

The family had been back just months, when the phenomena began again. For much of the summer, all had seemed well, but October brought more fires.

They began as suddenly and incomprehensibly as before.

Word quickly spread through Caledonia Mills, and the wider Antigonish district, that the Fire Spook was back. But if the MacDonalds thought that sympathy and press interest were to follow, they were quickly disappointed.

It wasn't the local sheriff, but officers much higher up in the chain, who turned up at the Caledonia Mills farm. Nor were they here for a simple investigation. They had come for Mary Ellen.  Alex and Janet desperately fought to keep their foster daughter. Janet MacDonald had to be forcibly pulled away from holding her.

There was to be no trial. Mary Ellen MacDonald was sectioned without a by-your-leave.

She was escorted to the Nova Scotia Home for the Insane, in Dartmouth, where the sixteen year old began her long stint in solitary confinement. It was thought too dangerous to expose her to the other inmates. She might set fire to things, in order to show off.

If the other patients were to be kept in the dark, then the general public were not. Within days, the asylum's Superintendent Lawler was giving statements to the New York press. She was, he told them, a 'common or garden variety of the moron family and not a particularly interesting moron at that.'  An arsonist with the mind of a four year old child.

The news was read with some shock back in Antigonish, where she had been known as a good and rather normal girl.

Nevertheless the fires stopped. For those inclined to believe Dr Prince's version of events, this was condemnation enough.

Mary Ellen MacDonald is pictured above. She spent the rest of her life in the asylum.