Ed the Friendly Ghost

Age: 19
Performance Date: 10/23/2025

EH: “My mom and my dog, like, left the house, and they went to the park, which is not at all close to my house. And then there was, like, tacking on my window, and I heard my mom’s voice yelling at the dog. And it was like the same yelling that she had done the night before so the dog would come inside. 
And I was like, that’s weird because they’re not here right now. And so I asked my mom later. She’s like, oh, that was probably just Ed. I was like, who the **** is Ed? 
And she was like, he’s our house ghost. Don’t worry, he’s not like malevolent or anything. I was like, I hope you would have told me that sooner if he was, but also, we have a house ghost? 
And she was like, yeah, he’s like, he’s older, he died of old age in the house. It’s fine. He’s nice. 
He just likes to tap on the windows and mimic people. And I was like, okay, that’s crazy. But, like, apparently I had him around your whole childhood? 
During my childhood, I thought I had an over of active imagination, ’cause I would, like, I had a bunch of, like, figures and stuffed animals, and so I would, like, make these complex plots, and, like, I thought I was just, like, making voices, but, like, I realized now it wasn’t me making voices, it was Ed.”

Interviewer:  “But, like, other people hear him?”

EH: “Yeah, like, my parents heard him. He liked my room the most. 
I think that might have been where he died now that I think about it. Oh my god. Because my parents lived, their bedroom was originally in my current bedroom, and they would hear him in there the most. 
And then they moved bedrooms and they were like, let’s stick our daughter with that. Naturally. And so I heard him all through my childhood because I had, you know, like those weird horror movies where like the kid has like a playmate and then like they show a picture of it, like a drawing or something and then it’s like this horrific creature. 
That was me, but I never drew Ed and I didn’t think Ed was like a real person. I thought it was just violently hallucinating. But Ed is like a real person. 
He’s a real guy. I found him on ancestry.com. My parents looked him up. 
My dad had that **** bookmarked. Yeah, that’s crazy. I’m gonna ask them for his last name so I can, like, show you guys.”

Interviewer: “So all of a sudden finding this out, how did it impact you? 
Like, what do you take out of your experience?” 

EH: “Well, 1st of all, I lived with a ghost, so, like, there’s that. He was, yeah, he was a friendly guy. 
Friendly old guy. Like it wasn’t weird. He was just like, he played with me, you know? 
Apparently. Now that I think back, I was like, I wasn’t making all the voices, okay? Oh my God. 
But yeah, so I’m like…”

Interviewer: “And is he still there?”

EH: “I haven’t heard from him in a while. 
Mostly because I’ve been here, but when I’ve been back in my house, there hasn’t been much. I think there’s been tapping, but he hasn’t done a lot of voices recently. Let me text my mom.”

Context: This story was told to the informant by her freshman dorm roommate in late October, while the two were in their dorm with another student, and they were discussing classes together. When the topic of ghosts came up (as a topic of a GE Seminar), EH immediately mentioned her complete belief in ghosts because she had had a recurring experience with one. Piquing the interest of her peers, she immediately jumped into this story. 


Analysis: This tale illustrates a ghostly take on the classic ‘imaginary friend’ situation often portrayed in popular culture. Prior to this conversation, EH had not mentioned this aspect of her childhood, assuming it was not out of the ordinary to have had such a normalized relationship with the uncanny. The informant has true belief that throughout her childhood she continually interacted with this household ghost, and that ‘Ed’ continues to occupy (EH avoids the term haunt) her house to this day. Her encounters with the spirit are unique in the sense that Ed never fully presented himself to her, but just existed as a voice or tapping noise. The tapping noise associated with the company of the household spirit is a common motif across ghost stories, being seen, often ominously, as a ghost’s way to make their presence known. However, the subject makes it clear that in no way is the ghost unwanted or invoking fear. Rather, the ghost is treated as a member of the household, acting as a playmate and lighthearted imitator.

The Haunted Routes of Rehoboth

Age: 71

 MC: “I live in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, which, of course, is in New England.

And there are a lot of old ghost stories that center around the region we live in.

And many years ago, well, probably about 20 or 30 years ago, um, an author from the town that I live in, Rehoboth, um, decided to investigate some of the stories he had heard about.

And one of the stories was the redheaded hitchhiker of Route 44.

And as the story goes, this is first traced back, I think, to the late 60s.

Someone was driving down Route 44 from Seekonk into Rehoboth.

And all of a sudden, a face appeared on the right outside the passenger window, and it was obviously really scary.

It was nighttime.

And the thing was, the car wasn’t stopped, it was going.

And the face was, like, pressed up against the window, and he stayed there for a while and just disappeared.

Now, many years later, there were several other sightings of this red headed hitchhiker, who always had on a red plaid shirt.

And in one of the stories, he was on Route 44 again, traveling the same stretch through Rehoboth.

And he was in the middle of the road, and he just appeared as this woman was driving through, and she didn’t have enough time to break, but she tried to break, and she knew she was gonna hit him, and when she looked through her rear view mirror, she had gone right through him.

Like, he wasn’t, like, dead on the side of the road or anything.

So she was freaked out about that.

And then there was another couple, too, where something very, very similar happened, all on this one stretch of road, and nobody could, they reported this, and nobody could really attribute it to anything.

But many years go by, and I think there were a total of, like, five or six cases where people had seen this red headed hitchhiker with big, bushy, red hair, and the same type of red plaid shirt.

Sometimes, they noticed he was in jeans, and there was a couple from Swansea going down that same road, and they saw him as well.

And this was between many years.

In fact, I think the last official sighting was in the 1980s.

So within, like, a 15 year period, um, it was reported, like, five or six times that somebody had seen him, and he always had this evil laugh. That they could hear.

And for some of them, the laugh would get, like, really, like, loud, and for others, it would kind of, like, drift off into the woods.

And for one of the incidents, he actually, someone stopped to pick him up, because they thought, obviously, he was real, and he got into the car, but didn’t say anything, just kind of nodded when he was spoken to, or made a face when he was spoken to.

And when it was time for him to get out of the car, he didn’t open the door.

He just went through the door.

And, of course, that was scary.

That’s the end of the hitchhiker story, as I know it.”

Interviewer: “Okay, so, have you ever heard of anybody you know actually, like, seeing or experiencing the hitchhiker?”

MC: “Um, If I remember right, back, um, no, I don’t know anyone who was actually seeing that particular apparition, but there was something. You know who JC. is, right?”

Interviewer: “Yeah.”

MC: “I vaguely remember, and you’d have to check with JP on this to know if I’m remembering it.

It was someone, one of her friends, and I think it was JC, who was driving home late at night, and it wasn’t on Route 44.

But it was on the corner of 118 in Fairview Avenue.

Do you know which one that is?”

Interviewer: “Yeah, I think so.”

MC: “Yeah, but so it’s, like, two kind of major roads, well major for Rehoboth anyway.

And it was pretty, pretty late, and there was someone just standing there near a stone wall.

And I vaguely remember JC telling us about it.

That’s the only thing, but it was…”

Interviewer: “Was it a redheaded figure or anything like that?”

MC: “Um, I can’t remember the details on that.

And I don’t know if she had heard that story and was kind of imagining things, but she definitely thought it was some kind of an apparition.

Not just a person.

But they were standing near the stone wall, on the corner of 118 in Fairview Avenue.

So there’s a stop sign there.

So, JC, if it was JC, had stopped there, and looked over, and it was, like, the middle of the night.

Like, it was late, late, late, and she just, it freaked her out, too.

That’s the only thing I know.

So I don’t know about the roads in Rehoboth, they’re a little bit haunted, you know?”

Interviewer: “Do you believe that apparitions continue to haunt these roads, or it is more simply a story for you?”

MC: “To me, it’s more like a story.

It’s more like a story, but, you know, you never know.

Yeah.

You never know.

I mean, I think it happened enough, there were enough years in between sightings, that’s no coincidence.

I’ve yet to see him myself. But, you never know.”

Context: This story was told to the informant by her grandmother several times throughout their life. It is a local legend rooted in the history of Rehoboth, Massachusetts, where they are both from. This widespread tale is known throughout surrounding areas and has been the inspiration behind a short film, a podcast and many articles about ghosts of the region.


Analysis: In this rural legend, sightings of a distinctly red-headed, plaid-adorned ghost are reported along a stretch of a local main road. Throughout the story many common motifs are present, such as the unnerving laugh, spectral face in the window, and passing through material objects. With reports spanning from the 1960s to 1980s, this tale continues to be well-circulated throughout the region, drawing the attention of inhabitants and inspiring various media interpretations. The subject reporting the story seems skeptical as to the actual presence of the ghost, yet is unwilling to entirely dismiss the notion. Recognizing the eeriness of the town’s streets at nights, the subject admits to a slight ‘haunting’ feeling present as one drives through a small town without streetlights. In the spectrum between belief and disbelief, the subject recognizes the legend as more of a story than reality for them, yet acknowledges how the history of reportings seems beyond just coincidence.

The Girl with the Red Thread

Age: 18

Context:

One evening, while walking on campus with my friend, we began sharing spooky stories. She suddenly recalled something that had haunted her for years — a strange experience she had as a child, which had blurred the lines between dream, memory, and legend. This is the story she told me.

The Story:

When she was around 7 or 8 years old, she lived in a home with a study room that had a bed but was rarely used. One night, after waking from a nightmare, she found herself in that very study — a place she never usually slept in. She remembered lying beside her mom, both of them facing the wall, and gently shaking her awake out of fear.

She asked her mom to tell her a story because she couldn’t sleep. Strangely, her mom — who was known to strictly avoid ghost stories or anything scary — agreed. What happened next would stay with her for life.

Still facing the wall, her mom began to tell a ghost story. In the story, a nurse was working the night shift at a hospital. One evening, while heading out from the first floor, she took the elevator — but somehow, the elevator inexplicably descended to the 4th basement level instead, a floor used as a morgue.

This floor had no button, no lights, and no one should have been able to access it. But the elevator stopped there, the doors opened, and the nurse saw a little girl standing silently in the dark. The girl got into the elevator with her.

As the nurse glanced over, she noticed a red thread tied around the girl’s wrist. In Chinese superstition, red thread on the wrist is sometimes associated with the dead. The nurse was so frightened she reportedly died on the spot.

What terrified my friend wasn’t just the story itself — it was the realization much later in life that this was a widely circulated urban legend. Many people she later met had heard it before. And yet, she had never heard it before that night, and neither had her mother — who later insisted, repeatedly and sincerely, that she had no memory of telling the story, or even of waking up that night.

My friend later searched the story online and found that it had indeed been turned into a movie, or at least referenced in popular media. This deepened the mystery: how could a widely known ghost story have been told to her by someone who had never heard it — someone who vehemently denied ever telling it?

To this day, my friend remains disturbed by this experience. She remembers it vividly. Her mother, however, insists it never happened.

The Informant’s Thoughts:

She finds this story creepy, not because of the ghost itself, but because of the contradiction between her clear memory and her mother’s absolute denial. She believes the most chilling part of the experience isn’t the plot, but the uncertainty of how she ever came to hear it.

Years later, when telling others the story of the girl with the red thread, people would say, “Oh, I’ve heard that one!” But she hadn’t. Not before that night. Not ever.

My Thoughts:

What makes this story so compelling is not just the content of the ghost story, but how it plays with memory, belief, and reality. The idea that a story could be “implanted” through a moment that no one else remembers adds an eerie, almost psychological horror element to the tale.

It made me question how many of our memories are truly our own — and how stories that seem personal might actually belong to something much larger, floating around in the cultural subconscious, waiting to find a host.

The repetition — her telling the story to others, retelling it to her mother, and hearing denials each time — builds a quiet but powerful kind of fear. Over time, the story’s scariness comes not from the ghost, but from the accumulated sense of being haunted by a memory no one else shares.

As a piece of folklore, it’s fascinating because it shows how legends can find their way into our lives, not just through media or hearsay, but through deeply personal and unexplainable experiences.

The Shadow Behind the Curtain

Age: 18

Context:

This story was told to me by a Chinese international student at USC, whom I’ll refer to as SG. We were sitting together in one of the quiet study lounges at Parkside after midnight, discussing the kinds of ghost stories we’d heard growing up in China. That’s when she told me something she had never written down or shared publicly—something that happened to her in her childhood that she still remembers with frightening clarity.

The Story:

When SG was 10 years old, she lived with her grandparents in Harbin, a city known for its long, dark winters. Her grandfather had a habit of rising very early, often before sunrise, to boil water and do light chores. Their apartment had large, thick curtains that covered the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room.

One early winter morning, just before 6 a.m., SG woke up suddenly. She had heard soft footsteps and assumed her grandfather was up again. Curious and still sleepy, she wandered out to the living room—only to find it completely dark, with no lights on. She paused at the doorway.

That’s when she saw it: a silhouette of a person standing perfectly still behind the curtain, as if staring out the window. The form was unmistakably human—tall, slightly hunched, and entirely motionless.

Thinking it was her grandfather, she called out to him.

No answer.

She approached slowly, heart pounding. The air felt wrong—too still, too cold, as if the temperature had dropped. When she finally touched the curtain and pulled it aside—

There was no one there.

No one in the room. No sound of footsteps. No open windows. Just the snow falling silently outside.

Terrified, she ran back to her room and hid under her blanket. She didn’t tell anyone for weeks.

Informant’s Thoughts (SG):

SG says what disturbed her most wasn’t the sight of the shadow, but the fact that she saw it so clearly, and yet her grandfather had still been asleep in his room the whole time. Years later, she still isn’t sure if it was a dream, a hallucination, or something else.

What unsettles her most is that she continues to experience the exact same dream every few years: waking up in a different place, walking into a dark living room, and seeing a shadow behind a curtain.

Each time, she says, she wakes up before pulling the curtain open.

My Thoughts:

To me, what makes SG’s story haunting isn’t just the visual horror of the silhouette—it’s the way it has embedded itself into her memory and dreams, repeating like a ritual.

I’m struck by how familiar this setting feels: cold northern apartment, heavy winter curtains, the eeriness of early morning silence. Even though nothing explicitly supernatural happens, the ambiguity makes it even scarier.

It also makes me think about how many ghost stories we hear as children in China are tied to domestic spaces—kitchens, hallways, staircases—not abandoned mansions or graveyards. They are ordinary spaces made terrifying by something just a little out of place.

This story lingered with me long after she told it—not because of a ghost, but because of the uncertainty that still follows her.

The Grey Lady

Age: 23

Ever since the founding of the city of Halifax back in the year 1749 there has always existed a form of the Halifax Citadel all the way up at the top of Citadel Hill. It was considered one of the most pivotal defence points of the entire city as not only was it the highest vantage point for the entirety of the city of Halifax but was meant to be used as a pivotal fort for the protection of the city from a land-based attack where you could put a bunch of other fortifications within the small islands that litter Halifax’s harbor closer down to the shoreline to deal with any potential ship combat it may see. While most of this combat was expected to happen by sea, the citadel also played a pivotal role in protecting from the landside to not only make its defence systems as flashy and impressive as possible but also make sure that enemies would see these fortifications and how impenetrable they were and not even try to attack any of them in the first place. In fact, going all the way back from its first iteration in 1749 and past its final or fourth iteration, which finished construction in the year 1856, it had served that purpose. Despite the fact that it never saw any combat along with all of Halifax’s other fortifications in this way it still does serve its purpose of being an impenetrable military fortress.

However, that’s not to say that over the course of Halifax’s lifetime the citadel hasn’t gone without its fair share of fatalities. There are ghost stories going all the way back from the founding of this city’s history all the way up to the fourth version of the citadel, even going up into the modern day and if I were to sit here and talk about every single story that’s ever occurred at the Citadel, I’d be here for more space than what my device would even allow me to record.

Instead, I’ll talk about the story that has, for lack of a better term, haunted (no pun intended) the Citadel for the longest period of time going all the way back from the year 1900 all the way up to this day. Ever since the early 1970s and going all the way up to modern day there have been a group of security guards called the commissionaires who roam around the fort at all hours of the day and make sure there are no miscreants trying to make their way in, no vandalization is happening or any theft, intruders, anything of that sort. The commissionaires tend to be the people who see the most paranormal things happen at the citadel.

There is a set of happenings that occurs mostly on the second floor of the Citadel’s Cavalier Building, a building that was meant as the main form of barracks for rank-and-file infantry at this time. Since the Fort was decommissioned at the end of the Second World War, it has been used as an army museum that would talk about Canadian history going all the way back from independence in 1867 up to even modern day efforts including the peacekeeping efforts that were done in Afghanistan in the early to mid 2000s. It’s at the army museum where these strange set of occurrences happen the most often. They start off with things like flickering lights in the entrance to the army museum; a rocking chair which they sit on during the regular day as they talk to visitors rocks back and forth with seemingly no momentum to keep it forward; maybe walk in to do your rounds late at night and there is a strong overwhelming scent of an old floral perfume that seems to have no source but as soon as you walk through the hallway that leads to the second room it seems to cut off entirely. However, the thing that seems to happen most up there seems to be an apparition of sorts: the figure of a lady in a long dress described in a variety of different colours, whether they be black, white, blue, green, brown; every colour under the sun. Sometimes she appears roaming the hallways and disappears as soon as you shine a light on her; sometimes she exists up in the third floor of the cavalier building above the army museum or you see a light flicker and her figure stands staring down at you from the main level to only have that light flicker and just as fast she seemingly disappears without a trace or maybe she slowly descends one of the staircases as soon as you exit and as soon as you try to follow her she doesn’t leave even a trace of her existence there. In fact, these sets of occurrences, most of which seem to be feminine in some sort of nature, these happened so often that the commissionaires who have been working at the Citadel have given this apparition a nickname; they nicknamed her the Grey Lady.

Now if that were all I had on the Grey Lady I wouldn’t be spending the time to talk about it now, but a few years ago (I want to say it was a little over 5 or so), there was a Parks Canada researcher who does a lot of digging through historic archives and finding historic information that we can tell at our site, who was browsing a public birth and death record archive going from the late 1800s all the way up to about the end of the First World War. When he comes upon a record that kind of catches his eye a bit, for a few different reasons. First off, this is the record of a man who (these were all Halifax birth and death records, so they were all guys that were here) unlike the rest of these records which all happen to be civilian this was one of a guy within the artillery, pretty close to the time period of the late 1860s early 1870s that’s represented at the Citadel. On top of that he’s also a quite high-ranking member within the British artillery so that’s another good sign. The thing that seems to catch him the most however, is not only did it state that he had died up at the Halifax Citadel, but it also turns out that the very room that this man had died in was directly underneath the offices of the guy that was digging through these records in the first place. Although this wasn’t really his main objective it ticked too many green boxes to leave unchecked and as a result this took him down a rabbit hole which not only exposed a story which was long forgotten by most members of the public, but had also given a lot of foresight to his story that was considered to be the most popular amongst the Citadel’s ghost tours. Foresight that would not only lead us to believe nowadays that this Grey Lady entity who has been seen at least for the past 50 years if not longer, is not only real but we also have a name and a face that we can put to her. We believe her name to be miss Cassie Allen, but to talk more about the Grey Lady, Miss Allen, we have to talk about the man whose death had sparked the investigation that led to these breakthroughs in the first place, his name being battery Sergeant Major George Edwards.

It was the night of November 13th 1900, where over at the sergeants’ mess, a building that was situated in the back right corner of the Citadel and was just a few dozen feet off to the right side of the main barracks where all these guys had stayed, there was a dinner happening, one that had steak and potatoes and seasonal vegetables and the whole nine yards; wine too, don’t forget about that. One of the regimental sergeant majors of the infantry regiment that was stationed there for the time proceeds to rise from his chair and toast his glass to get people’s attention and he exclaims that Sergeant Major Edwards, who is sitting not three chairs off to his right, was bound to be married the next morning and officially become a husband. Something that you know would arise at the very least a polite form of applause from the people around them if not full-blown congratulations of sorts. But instead of receiving any praise, the guys who are at the table around him they just kind of start pointing and relentlessly laughing at this poor guy; not the kind of reaction you’d expect from a wedding announcement. In fact, it even gets so bad that the guy who’s sitting to Edwards’ right at the table who is also kind of pointing and laughing at him, he’s in for quite the surprise. Edwards who just been quietly sitting there trying to enjoy his food quickly springs up out of his chair, winds up his fist and full force, sucker punches the guy beside him and picks him up by the collar with one hand and starts to absolutely wail on this poor guy for at least a good 10 seconds before they end up getting broken up. Through some miracle after this fight gets broken up, Edwards is not charged with any crime despite the fact that he’s beaten that poor guy black and blue. He didn’t even get any chance to fight back, and the dinner is cancelled and everyone goes back to their quarters. It’s about time to get some rest anyways. Then comes the morning of November 14th, 1900. For this time your wake up for a soldier was at 6:00 in the morning and as soon as they got up they had to tidy up their benches and their tables and their beds, get everything organized, polish all of their leathers, shine all of their brass accoutrements and be spic and span for a 6:30 inspection. It was about 6:15 when there are a bunch of guys on the first floor of the cavalier building who were shining and getting all their stuff ready when, all of a sudden, in one of the rooms above them, it seems like it comes from the top left room, they hear an ear-shattering thud which surprisingly doesn’t really set off a whole lot of people. It’s hard to say whether it’s because they’re used to being in an environment where they’re hearing gunshots and training all the time or, you know maybe, they just assumed it was some guy who was trying to put a table together and had it all collapse on the floor. It’s hard to say but they more or less ignore this loud thud coming from above them and they continue to get ready for their inspection.

At 9:30 in the morning we’re down at a building called Trinity Church which unfortunately no longer exists today but was only about a 12- maybe 15-minute walk away from the Citadel. There was a bride sitting outside the doors, impatiently checking her father’s pocket watch where members of her family had also gathered around, all impatiently stomping their feet as the wedding was supposed to start at 9:00 and the groom is already half an hour late to his own wedding. The bride-to-be, who is miss Cassie Allen, gets so impatient that she sends for her cab driver to head up to the top of Citadel Hill, drag her husband out by force if necessary, and bring him down so they can finally get this wedding started. Of course he does so without any hesitation; it’s already a bit embarrassing that the man who was supposed to ferry you and your husband off to a fantastically executed wedding now has to go out of his way to do this for you. No one is in a particularly good mood and it’s not going to get any better until Sergeant Major Edwards shows up to that altar and they can finally get started. The sentry who is stationed out front of the Halifax Citadel meant to watch for any trespassers making their way in describes seeing a beautiful chariot of white making its way up along the perimeter road of the Citadel with silver and white tinsel lining its outside and two white ribbons streaming along its back. The carriage is being hauled by two beautiful horses with brown manes and brown coats with little white spots sprinkled around here and there. It comes up the hill with blinding speed then comes to a screeching halt. And not with a second to spare, the cab driver hops out, sprints over to that sentry and he goes “Good sir, could you please watch over my horses? I must fetch a man who is dreadfully late to his own wedding.”

The sentry replies, “you’re not looking for Edwards, are you?”

“Why yes, I am! Does there seem to be a problem with that?”

“I’m sorry to say sir, but I don’t think you’re going to be needed here anymore.”

 “What? Why is that? Can’t you at least give me an explanation?”

 “Well sir, I’m sorry to say that Edwards will not be coming out as he was unfortunately found dead this morning.”

The sentry proceeds to explain to the cab driver that once inspections had started at 6:30 in the morning, in the overflow married quarters which was the top left room of the second floor of the cavalier building, which now is the entrance to the citadel’s army museum, the inspecting party had found the door barricaded from the inside by tables and chairs and benches and beds and after getting through with quite a lot of physical force, they found all the way at the backside of the room just beside the fireplace, Sergeant Major Edwards slumped over with his artillery service carbine still smoking at his side; the smell of gunpowder still fresh in the air, where he had put a bullet straight through his head and his taken his own life, just hours before his wedding was supposed to start.

It’s after learning this unfortunate news that the cab driver understands that he has a responsibility to head back down to Trinity Church and tell the unfortunate wedding party what has become of the supposed-to-be groom. He does it with full force, just as fast as he came up that hill, he goes all the way back down to Trinity Church, not even sparing a second.

To rub salt into this proverbial wound, as soon as the poor cab driver gets down there, what is everyone outside of Trinity Church do but start clapping. I mean, why wouldn’t they? You just saw the cab driver arriving back quickly; the natural assumption is that he’s just arrived with Edwards in tow after dragging him out for being late and they can finally get started with this wedding that they were supposed to do. However, when the cab driver steps out alone, the crowd draws silent. He walks up to miss Allen and she quietly exclaims “Good sir, where is my husband?” At that point the cab driver takes a deep breath and says “I don’t know how to tell you this Miss Allen, but your husband Edwards was found dead in quarters this morning. You are not going to be married and there is no longer going to be any ceremony.” Poor Miss Allen, upon hearing this starts to laugh thinking that this might just be some sort of sick joke being played on her and at any second Edwards is going to step out of that carriage and they can move on with all these shenanigans and finally get married. But nothing happens and it’s less than a few minutes after this realization that Miss Allen, in the deepest reaches of her soul, goes from quiet to sobbing to complete hysterics. In fact by the time it’s over, members of her family have to restrain her by the arms and legs as she’s kicking and screaming and wailing for her husband who is never going to show up at the altar. She’s loaded back into that carriage and driven all the way back to the Allen family estate. The last nail in this coffin comes from her walking through the main entrance and into the dining room where the family maid was working tirelessly all morning to provide a fantastic breakfast for two for the wedding party that unfortunately didn’t get partaken by anyone that day, along with two white roses that sat in a vase in the centre of that table that also eventually wilted away.

And so, the big question comes from something like this: why did Edwards do it? Why did he take his own life especially in the fashion that he did? It’s supposed to be an important landmark in his life so why would he do something like this? After his death there is of course an investigation done into the circumstances surrounding it where quite a few interesting tidbits are found. Naturally they find out about the big dinner fight that happened the previous night, but on top of that they also heard of a recounting from a funeral shop owner down on Lower Water Street who testified that Edwards had walked into his parlor about a week and a half before his death and opened up a coffin of his own volition, lied in it himself and proceeded to turn his head and ask if he looked good in this one. After getting out and then leaving the shop without another word which was quite strange but not something to really mention to the authorities.

However, they find out an even more interesting detail about Edwards during their investigation. You see, regiments move around for this time period, especially every three to five years, so they’re never in one place for too long. It just so happens that before Edwards’s regiment was stationed in Halifax, it spent about four years down in Bermuda and according to other members of his regiment who spent quite a bit of time with him, they stated that while Edwards was in Bermuda he had already married someone! He had a Bermudan wife who was not able to come along with the regiment due to space constraints when they were leaving and as a result, Edwards’s Bermudan wife had to stay over there as he traveled to Halifax. Less than a year after arriving in the city he received a letter that his Bermudan wife had “been admitted to a mental ward and passed away under mysterious circumstances”. With that the question comes: was it out of guilt maybe for his previous wife? Was it out of shame or fear of his secret being exposed to his new wife by other members of his regiment?

It’s hard to say at this point as we can’t get into Edwards’s head anymore. We’ll never find out exactly what he was thinking in that moment. The only other bits that we do have is that to this day, Edwards is buried over at Fort Massey cemetery, just at the top of the crest of the hill on Queen Street in Halifax, stating specifically his date of death as November 14th, 1900, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Poor Miss Allen proceeded to live a full life after this incident. She passes away several decades later from old age, but she never ends up marrying again.

The last question I’ll leave you with about the Grey Lady is: who do you think the Grey Lady really is? Is it the spirit of Miss Cassie Allen who listlessly wanders the halls of the building where her husband had taken his own life and is unable to move on even centuries later; still wanders despite never being able to see him again, or is the Grey Lady the spirit of Edwards’s Bermudan wife, perhaps filled with anger, betrayal, maybe even hatred at him for what happened with her being left in Bermuda. Who knows, maybe she had some sort of influence to drive Edwards to his own suicide almost like a form of postmortem revenge. What do you think?

Context: This story was told to me by B.E.W, a Military Interpreter at the Halifax Citadel Canadian National Historic Site. It is commonly recounted to visiting tourists during ghost tours at the site. It tells the story of a lady in grey who has been seen on multiple occasions since 1900 at the Citadel’s Cavalier House. She is believed to be either the abandoned first wife of Sergeant Major George Edwards, or the fiancée he left at the altar in 1842 as he died by suicide the evening before his second wedding.

Analysis from storyteller: B.E.W. says that he first learned of these stories around 5 years ago when he began working at the fortress and enjoys them the most because they are “not tall tales; there are multiple varied accounts of them happening and they even have some authentic documentation to back them up”. Also, he says that “these are the stories that the people on my tours are always most intrigued by”.

Analysis from myself: This is an interesting part of the history of the city I was born in and a place that I have visited many times. I assumed there were hauntings but not with such specific documentation of historical accuracy. It brings the past to life and makes me appreciate the history of my hometown. It makes me think about ghosts having unfinished business with the living.