By Irene Way Selkirk, MB The scene is 1957, Norris Point, Newfoundland. We were a tiny outport, a pebbly beach that curved around the bluff on which were perched the colourful houses of less than a hundred outporters. The salt-and-pepper houses were chained with huge spikes driven deep into the ground so they would not fall prey to the Atlantic gales that battered the coast. The houses were given a fresh coat of paint every spring after the salt was scrubbed from the wooden boards. We knew little about the world outside the Tablelands of Norris Point until the Canadian kid came to join our Grade 1-8 schoolroom. His parents were from Fisheries and were to do studies on the cod. They came from some foreign province in Canada with way too many boxes to supply a family of three, and they brought a shiny red, leak-free, sleek boat. We were excited about this newcomer and so were understandably saddened when we discovered he could not speak proper English. He spoke slowly with a strange twang that we had difficulty understanding. At recess time we wanted to explain the rules of our baseball game to him. We shouted, "Stay where you're at till we comes where you're to." He just looked confused, dropped the bat and walked to the next base. We wondered what kind of baseball he played in Canada. And even without the language problem, he stood out among us. He wore pressed trousers and a suit jacket to our plaid shirts, wool pants and wool skirts. His straight blond hair was way too short. We wondered if we should bring his mother a bowl so she could give him a proper haircut. It was the fall of the year when the Canadian kid came and we spent our time after chores preparing for All Hallows Eve, or as we Catholics called it, All Souls Day. It was the day when the souls raised from the graves and took revenge on unsuspecting outporters and, in particular, they were noted to suck the life out of kids. In our outport, we were particularly worried about the ghost of Uncle Bernie. Several years ago, Uncle Bernie was lost at sea by fishing in a leaky dory on Labour Day. The good town dory was being used for a float in the Labour Day parade and since it was the only float, the townspeople were not willing to lend it to Bernie, even though it was a perfect day for fishing. There was very little wind, gentle swells and no fog to be seen for miles. So Uncle Bernie set out in his old leaky dory. Sadly, by noon, the gale force winds shortened the town parade to one town circle. We usually had three to five circles, depending on the level of gas in the snow plow that pulled the adorned dory. Poor Uncle Bernie was washed ashore, with an unforgiving scowl on his face, one week later and we knew there would be a price to pay. His ghost came around every year on All Souls Day, wailing in attics, squeaking in and out of doorways, right though the outporters and whispering around children, who could not run fast, just waiting for a chance to suck the life right out of them. To prepare for All Souls Day (our official day of mummering, which the Canadian kid called Halloween) we spent much time gathering bits of chains, pieces of fishing net and flour bags in hopes of getting our treats from door to door without being bothered by Uncle Bernie. He surely would not recognize us and might even be scared away by our creepy costumes. October 31 came on a Friday that year. We hurried home to the fishing sheds where we had stowed our costumes and met up at the edge of the forest trail. We wrapped ourselves in nets and chains and covered our heads with flour bags, with holes cut for our eyes to see through. We were just picking up our pillowcases when the Canadian kid skipped down from the big house on the hill. He had on a cowboy costume, the likes of which we had never seen before. Sure he had guns, but his face was bare and he seemed unconcerned with the gravity of the situation. We wondered, were all Canadians so dense? But no time to worry: treats were waiting and so was the ghost of Uncle Bernie. We started off through the wooded trail to the houses on the cliff. The Canadian kid was last in line. We whooped and hollered to keep up our courage in the crepuscular light. We were about to leave the rail behind and head across the road to the cliff when someone noticed the Canadian kid was missing. We resisted retracing our steps to look for him. We were sure Uncle Bernie was back there somewhere, and that cowboy costume was just begging for trouble. However, knowing it was the right thing to do, we crept back along the path of knurly twisted trees that had been beaten by storms and were leaning inward, grasping at our chains and netting so much so that we panicked in terror and decided to let the Canadian kid make it on his own when, there he was, lying beside a dead root on the ground, his eyes closed. We called to him, but he made no sound. We grabbed sticks and poked him, but no response. We decided Uncle Bernie had already got to him and sucked the life out of him, so there was nothing we could do. We would repot it at school ion Monday and get out of there now. It was almost too dark to see. The shadows from the full moon, the prickly branches and the wind moaning drove us in wild terror to the town circle, where we reassembled and with shaky voices began our evening "mummering." With the few house visits we managed to cover the bottom of the pillowcases, but our heart was not in the fun. Over the weekend we ate our loot and grieved the loss of the Canadian, but we were unwilling to talk about it to adults, for fear of further angering Uncle Bernie. Monday morning we arrived at school with heaving hearts and there in the front of the room was the Canadian kid. We stared in disbelief. At recess we huddled around him and tried to understand his weird accent as he told his story. "I tripped," he said, "on the tree stump and banged my head. I saw stars. A whisper woke me up and there was Uncle Bernie, that ghost who sank in the leaky boat. He wore a fisherman's hat. He waited while I got to my feet and slowly glided along, beckoning me to follow. He led me all the way home. My parents were worried about my fall an brought me to the hospital in that big town in the valley. While we were there, we went around town trick-or-treating, until my bag was overflowing. You guys could have come, but we could not find you," he said. Now his father told our parents how he found his son stumbling out of the woods on his own, but we all knew not everyone could see ghosts. The Canadian kid became our hero and the most popular kid in school. His story was passed down the grades long after his family moved back to Canada. We were all happy when it was determined the town dory to be used, just for fishing, and we would use the fisheries' sleek, red, shiny city boat for the Labour Day float. We hoped that would appease Uncle Bernie and help him rest in peace. **This is a "true" story that the author recalls from her childhood days growing up in Corner Brook, NL. The names and places have been changed to protect the true identities of the characters depicted.   Submitted By: NULL