Strange happenings at Wilmot home

By Heather Killen

Spectator

NovaNewsNow.com

Maybe the smell of apples and cinnamon is always tantalizing, as Crystal’s ghosts often visit her when she’s baking.

Crystal Tupper’s kitchen is filled with the teasing smell of Christmas, a yummy concoction of cinnamon and something spicy she cooks on the stove to make her house smell good.

We’d been talking when Ike, her German shepherd, suddenly lunged at the stairs, wild-eyed with his hackles raised, and planted himself at the bottom ferociously barking at a fixed point halfway up. “That’s what I mean,” she said. “I'll be here, cooking away in the kitchen and he does that. Maybe they like the smell when I bake.”

While she’s never figured exactly what sets Ike off, over time she’s decided that it's probably just one of 'them,' the ghosts of the past. At night, Ike jumps from his sleep and gives stranger barks to an unseen something in the closet.

She and Michael Bernard bought the old house, sight unseen, in 1996 after their realtor told them there was a wine cellar in the basement. At first, they didn't realize the significance of its original owner, they just knew there was something special about the place. "We've been told the house has burned down twice," she said. "I've heard it was struck by lightening."

The property’s first owner was Brigadier General Timothy Ruggles, a famous and controversial loyalist. He was awarded a large parcel of land in Nova Scotia for his distinguished service to the Crown.

Forced to flee New England on pain of death in 1778, he began clearing land for his Wilmot estate a few years later.

The home he built here is believed to be similar in design his old one. His former two-storey Georgian style home in Hardwick had featured rich orchards, a deer park, a selective herd of dairy cows, as well as a large variety of hunter and saddle horses.

The Ruggles’ home in Wilmot burned many years ago, and at least two new ones have since occupied the site. The latest house, built about 100 years ago, rests over a section of Ruggles’ original foundation.

Crystal’s basement has a mysterious stone archway that locals say may have been a tunnel to Wilmot, and others maintain was used as a galley, or perhaps a stable.

An archeologist from Halifax has been gathering soil samples from various spots on the former estate, hoping to verify shipping records and historical accounts in order to build a more concrete picture of life at Ruggles' Wilmot estate.

While a great deal has been written about Ruggles, personally and professionally, many details of his life in Wilmot are lost in obscurity.

His bold presence in life inspired as many enemies as admirers, and conflicting viewpoints continue to emerge and have an unsettling effect today.

Maybe it's fueled by the stories she's heard, or perhaps the Brigadier General just refuses to stand down from his campaigns; but like many who live with the creaks and groans of old houses, she sometimes has the unsettling feeling she is not alone in her house.

She wonders if Ruggles doesn't stop in from time to time, to check on his estate.

Sometimes, when the couple is watching television in the evening, Michael says sees a flash in the corner of his eye that looks like a woman's passing silhouette reflected in the window across from the stairs. "She seems to like hanging out on the stairs, and in the hall between the closet and the upstairs window," she added.

The identity of this mysterious woman is unknown, but Crystal believes the restless spirit could be the Ruggles' favorite daughter Bathsheba, the last woman to be hanged in Massachusetts.

While the Brig. General was being branded a traitor, his daughter Bathsheba was making her own sensational headlines for a role she allegedly played in her husband's murder.

In March 1778, the battered body of Joshua Spooner was discovered stuffed down his own well.

His wife, 32-year-old Bathsheba, was quickly accused of plotting with her 17-year-old lover and two other soldiers to murder Spooner in cold blood.

At the time of the murder, the mother of three was said to be pregnant with her lover's child. The laws made it nearly impossible for her to divorce Spooner, even though he was widely described as an abusive drunk.

High spirited and proud like her father, she would have resisted the idea of enduring the standard punishment inflicted on unfaithful wives.

Not raised to be deferential, she would never submit to the humiliation of being stripped to the waist and whipped in front of her neighbours.

While the two soldiers charged with Spooner's murder both confessed to committing the murder- and accounts of Bathsheba's complicity in the act are questionable- she was found guilty in what was described as "the most extraordinary crime ever perpetrated in New England."

Adding to the gender bias stacked against her was her father's complicated reputation. The war hero, once revered for his distinguished careers and various exploits, was now a much-despised traitor in the eyes of Bathsheba's patriotic, revolution-era New England judges.

Despite her pleas for a stay of execution on behalf of her unborn child, she was hanged with her co-conspirators in front of a crowd of about 5,000 spectators.

Eventually, the horror of executing a five-month pregnant woman caught up with her judges, and the laws were changed to prevent the possibility of it ever happening again.

Crystal said while Bathsheba was awaiting her execution, she frantically sent many letters to her father that went unanswered.

The letters were never found and Crystal wonders if Bathsheba's restless spirit is still searching for a way to tell her story.

Crystal hopes the letters have somehow survived the onslaught of time and are hidden somewhere on the property.

She added that she hopes in time to learn more about the house and its mysterious occupants.

But for now, the fate of Bathsheba’s letters remains unknown and the unseen presence continues to rouse Ike from his comfy spot on the floor whenever it smells like Christmas.