When We Worked Hard
by Darrell Duke

Many people believe in tokens, or signs of death to come. Countless stories have been told of strange events: noises, ghostly sightings, animals acting weirdly, birds falling from the sky, and things going missing. When odd experiences take place, a story’s version changes slightly each time it is repeated. If it has a hint of bad in it, a story is guaranteed to appear ten times worse by the time it reaches the end of a community. Regardless of the snowballing effect they produce, tokens always seem to suggest bad luck will occur, mostly death. Belief in tokens, and experiences to support those beliefs, varies from area to area in Newfoundland.

            In the absence of modern distractions, ghost stories provided a wonderful winter pastime. Tickle Cove has made several contributions to the world of the supernatural, involving tokens.

Along the old road to Keels, there is a hole in a cliff once referred to as “Hole in the Wall.” Measuring approximately ten feet long, four and a half feet wide, and five feet deep, the cave provided great shelter from nature’s elements. Old folks warned not to go in there during a thunderstorm, for “the noise is unbearable.”

The following story was told to Captain John Russell by his grandfather Sam, born at Tickle Cove in 1848. The story has been handed down for generations.

The Ghost of Philpott’s Hole

There once lived a fellow in Tickle Cove named Billy Philpott. He was a likeable young man, but he neither feared nor cared for anything on earth. He made lots of fun his own way. He made sad people laugh, and was well-liked by all who knew him.

At the age of twenty-three, he shipped out with six others on the schooner Mary C to fish the Labrador. That summer was a very successful one, and they loaded the schooner with fish in no time. Before they were ready to head home, the skipper ordered two men to go ashore and gather enough driftwood to last the trip home. Billy and his buddy were picked to go while the rest of the crew made the schooner ready.

The two men landed on an island a short ways from Bear Cove, where they were anchored all summer. After loading the boat with driftwood, they decided to take a walk around the little island. In doing so, they came to a small graveyard. Eskimo, no doubt, given their knowledge of the area. Soon they found a human skull. Billy says to his buddy, “What a piggin for me boat!” A “piggin” was the common name for a bailer for a small boat.

“You leave that untouched where it is,” his buddy said.

“No,” said Billy, “I’m taking it home for me boat.” His buddy chided him forcefully, but to no avail. Billy was hell-bent on taking it home. Never a word was said about the skull to the other shipmates.

The following fall and winter, Billy used the skull as a piggin in his little boat. When sugar, butter, tea, and flour became scarce around Tickle Cove that winter, Billy decided he would take a walk to King’s Cove via Keels Road to get the much-needed necessities. So, off he went, alone.

Figuring he would make the trip in a day, Billy left an hour early. He expected to arrive home not much after dark. On his return, a little while after dark, he arrived at the Hole in the Wall and Rocky Pond Brook. As the brook flowed through the road, a bridge had been built to join the road. When he stepped on the bridge, a dark-faced woman appeared and blew her breath in his face. She then disappeared and never bothered him again . . . at least not for that trip.

He said she stopped him right in his tracks, that he nearly fell down with the fright, but pulled himself together and made it home. Feeling very disturbed, he began to think of what he had done the previous summer. Although he told his frightful experience to everyone, no one believed him.

When spring came again, everything seemed okay. Billy decided he would stay home during the coming summer and fish out of Tickle Cove with hook and line for the herring and caplin sculls, and trawls for the squid cull. Now, this fishery called for lines and trawls, so he decided he would have to go to King’s Cove to get them. His fishing buddy said he would go with him, as it would be quite a bundle for one man to bring back. But Billy said, “No, I can handle it. . . . Get the boat ready for painting.” And off he went to King’s Cove, forgetting all about his ordeal the past winter.

The early spring morning showed a good day and no one expected a snow storm would end the day so tragically. About 3:00 p.m., the snow started to fall, and by four o’clock it worsened as Billy was ready to head home. The shopkeeper tried to persuade him to stay all night. For sure, the storm would be over in the morning. But no, Billy had home on his mind. And home he was going.

When morning came, there was no sign of him at Tickle Cove. After contacting King’s Cove and realizing Billy had left at four o’clock the day before, the search began. They went as far as the bridge where Billy had claimed to see the woman, and sure enough there were foot tracks in the snow. At the bridge they backtracked for about a hundred yards and went out into the woods. Not far into the trees, bundles of lines and twine were hanging from a branch. Not much farther on lay Billy’s body, partly covered with snow. That was the end of Billy Philpott.

No marks were ever found on his body, indicating he had been molested by man or beast. Some say the Eskimo woman, to whom the skull belonged, was taking out her revenge on Billy that night. More say he may have frightened himself to death when he came to the bridge and thought of his experience the previous winter.

As a result of the tale, Hole in the Wall has been known as Philpott’s Hole ever since.