Haunting at Perkins House

“The ghosts will be what I’ll call... sort of like a hologram,” says Queens County Museum Director, Linda Rafuse. “They will be hologram-type apparitions. You will be able to interact with the ghosts by pushing buttons, which will ask a question of the ghost and he or she will respond to you.”

This will make Perkins House Museum just the second museum in the province to house ghosts.

“I think it will be a fun and unique thing for Liverpool to have,” comments Rafuse. “We’re the first site to kind of come alive not through living history but through dead history.”

The Sinclair Inn in Annapolis Royal has two or three ghosts in their basement.

The project is in the early stages and costs $50,000.

Rafuse says, “The Nova Scotia Museum has secured funding for the Perkins House ghost project, so therefore they were able to contract this production team to develop this project and right now it’s at the stage of the scripts being handed out,” she continues.

“Filming of the ghosts will take place Sept. 13 and then the technology that will be needed to show those apparitions is going to be installed - probably in the spring.”

Simeon Perkins’ Ghost will be in the downstairs bedroom just rising from his bed.

Walking into the kitchen visitors will find Elizabeth Perkins there and Mary Fowler, one of the black servants will be in the pantry.

“Five of their eight children will be sitting on the back stairway in the kitchen,” says Rafuse. “Then if you go upstairs, as you’re going up the steps you’ll hear marbles rolling across the floor and when you get up to the upstairs bedroom, if you open the closet door those five children on the stairway in the kitchen will be in the closet playing marbles.”

Six Queens County residents will play the roles of the ghosts.

Simeon Perkins will be played by Darrell Burke, manager at Sutherland Steam mill in Cumberland County.

Well known Liverpool teacher, Annette Burke will play Mrs. Perkins and five students from Dr. John C. Wickwire Academy will play the five children, says Rafuse.

An Annapolis Valley woman will play Mary Fowler, she adds.

There could be one other character making an appearance in Perkins House, but it won’t be a ghost, says Rafuse. It will either be a talking portrait or a talking rat, for the younger audience.

The official opening or “haunting” will begin next summer on June 1.