Wicked Woods Read Online Free PDF Page A

a little girl who was also killed in the fire, but I’m not so sure about that. I imagine you’d have to ask the ghost the next time you see it.
    However, we aren’t here to talk about theatre ghosts.
    The city of Moncton was named after Robert Monckton, the British military commander who captured nearby Fort Beauséjour in 1755 and went on to oversee the infamous and ruthless depor–tation of the Acadians. The missing letter k was dropped in 1786 due to a typing error directly attributed to an overworked clerk. Don’t you love bureaucracy in action?
    If you ask around town for ghost stories, folks will tell you the story of Rebecca Lutes, the Moncton witch. Others will tell you that Rebecca Lutes was just a farm girl who died of tuberculosis back in 1876. That’s not the way I heard it, however. Let me tell you the tale as it came to me.
    Pull up a rock and give a listen, would you?
    It was an evil time in Moncton, New Brunswick. A plague of consumption was sweeping the area, claiming lives wherever it touched. Crops were bad and unexplained fires razed more than a few barns and farmhouses. Farm animals were stolen and slaughtered. Strange lights were seen dancing in the dark night sky, and rumours of demonic rituals were whispered about town. All of this pointed to the work of a witch and certain members of the town set out to find a handy scapegoat.
    No one is quite sure just how the trail of evidence led to young Rebecca Lutes, but a mob of concerned citizens dragged her out of her home one night, forced her into the woods, and hung her from a tall, old poplar tree. Afterwards, convinced that they had done what was right, they buried her face down at the foot of the tree, so that if by some devilish power her body should return to life, she could claw down to that hot cellar that old Satan keeps burning for folks who like to dabble in magic.
    â€œThat’ll fix her,” they swore.
    Apparently that simple burial wasn’t enough for some deter–mined witch hunters, who thought further and stronger measures of protection were called for when dealing with such arcane power.
    â€œShe’s too powerful a sorceress,” they claimed. “She’ll find her way back to us, even if she has to dig herself clear to China.”
    So the witch hunters decided that the best way to protect them–selves from Rebecca Lutes was to pour a large slab of concrete directly over her grave. That way, they figured, she’d be sealed up tight and would bother them no longer.
    So how did Rebecca Lutes die? Official records list one Rebecca Lutes as indeed living in a farmhouse on this very road and dying on the date in question, January 2, 1876; however, her cause of death is listed as consumption.
    A mysterious concrete slab can be found along the Gorge Road, just before you arrive at a local rock quarry and an aban–doned cement and culvert company, but another explanation has been given for this. The Lutes’s farm was apparently sold after Rebecca’s death, and the new owner was unhappy to discover that provincial statutes declared that the gravesite became the responsibility of whoever purchased the land beside it. So, the story goes, the farmer poured the slab over the grave and fenced off the site to prevent possible vandalism, and damage to his farm equipment if he inadvertently ploughed over the slab. In later years, he moved on. The farm fell into disuse and the outbuild–ings and farmhouse were condemned and torn down.
    The legend of Rebecca Lutes sprung up in the minds of local teenagers who swear that the gravesite is haunted by the spirit of a jet black cat with red fiery eyes —presumably Rebecca’s famil–iar. Strange bloodstains have been found on the cement only to vanish shortly afterward. Eerie lights are seen and mournful sounds are heard up this road, and passersby will tell you that they feel a distinct and uneasy chill as they walk past the