STRANGE HAPPENINGS AT ALBION MILLS
In the early days, every community had its own favourite stories and strange experiences. The tales were told and retold in the public houses and lost none of their interest as the years went by. Here are a few of these stories:
Wrath of God?
Owen, a black slave, worked well along side his owner, John Secord, at the mill. It was late one Saturday afternoon and the two men, with a good head of water, worked well on into the night. When the midnight hour approached, the men worked on, realizing that they were now into the Sabbath Day, but since the locals were tucked away in bed, they could grind away unnoticed. As daylight broke over the gorge, there was a terrible crash in the mill and Owen raced down the stairs to the grainery to find that the bottom stone of the mill had broken off its shaft and smashed into the box below. Shocked out of his wits by the incident and feeling it was the wrath of God that had caused the thing to break, Owen is said to have vowed never again to break the Sabbath.
The Phantom Train:
At Hannon, (a village not far west and south of the Falls), in St. George's Anglican cemetery, a man named Thomas English was buried in 1876. He was a trackman, and while walking on the railway at night, was killed by a train. For half a century afterwards, 'tis said, on summer nights the lights of the ghost or phantom train that killed Tom English could be seen moving along the railway line. The residents were quite accustomed to these lights; it was simply the "ghost train".
Now for the cause of this phenomenon. Where this tragedy occurred, the railway crosses a depression in the terrain, a large swamp along the Twenty Mile Creek. This bog, filled with decaying vegetable matter and rotting timber, gave rise to a gas known as jack-o-lantern or will-o'-the wisp. In balls or globules, not unlike toy balloons, the gas became luminous in the warm summer night air, and blown by the prevailing south-west winds along the railway line, gave the appearance of a locomotive's head-light. The deception was remarkable.
Today, there is no swamp, no woods, no decaying vegetation, no ghost, and no phantom train!
The Vanishing Pigeons:
About 1860, residents of this region frequently saw vast flocks of Passenger or Wood pigeons, millions in numbers, flying from dawn until dusk, east to west, over that area between Mount Albion and the Red Hill, at a height of about 400 feet. At the corner of the mountain above Bartonville, many of them were struck down with sticks, and used for food. Forty years later, not one of these pigeons could be found in America, although a reward of one thousand dollars was offered for a single specimen. Their complete extinction is one of the mysteries of natural history on this continent.
References:
1. Hamilton Mountain News. November 27, 1991. p. 13.
2. Saltfleet, then and now: 1792 - 1973. p. 108. Special Collections, HPL.
3. The Head - of - the - Lake Historical Society, Hamilton, Ontario. Wentworth Bygones. no. 3. pp. 11, 16. Special Collections, HPL.
