"If you take a walk in Lunenburg on an October evening, you might see a gathering of eerie witch lights bobbing towards you on Lincoln Street. Look twice and you’ll realize that this is a group of tourists carrying old-fashioned lanterns, enjoying the Haunted Lunenburg walking tour. While in the summer Lunenburg enjoys a reputation as a cheerful tourism hub, when the leaves begin to fall, Lunenburg becomes a little spooky.
Helen Creighton, famed Nova Scotian folklorist, chronicled many spooky stories in our province. According to Cindy Campbell-Stone, vice chair of the Helen Creighton Folklore Society, Creighton wrote about several accounts of ghost sightings and haunted locations in Lunenburg County.
“All the old houses and the connection to the sea makes for lots of superstitions, forerunners, stories of ghostly encounters,” Campbell-Stone explains.
Liz Powers, owner of Lunenburg Walking Tours, is tapped into Lunenburg’s spooky potential.
The Haunted Lunenburg walking tour runs from May to October each year and is very popular.
Some of the haunted locations include the Boscawen Inn (the most haunted building in town, according to Powers) and the cemetery beside the Lunenburg Academy.
Powers says that while on the tour, guests have claimed to see ghosts.
“Others have sent photographs to us after their tours, showing unusual shadows that exist in one image but not in another,” she adds. “We’ve also had people tell us they’ve observed orbs while on one of our tours.
While walking in Lunenburg this October, take some time to appreciate how delightfully eerie the town can be in the Halloween season. Afterall, it’s not only the Boscawen Inn that’s reported to be haunted. Powers claims that “there is not a building in Lunenburg without some kind of supernatural story attached to it.”
Issie Patterson, Editor-At-Large
October 12, 2023
Thank you for joining us Issie!
- Lunenburg Walking Tours