"Four prisoners carried to Target Hill this morning, a place where they bury the dead. I'm fearful a number of us will visit that place this summer if not shortly released." ~Benjamin Franklin Palmer of Stonington, Conn., wrote this in his journal on June 4, 1814. He had been captured in December 1813 off Long Island, N.Y. and held in the Melville Island prison adjacent to Deadman’s Island, Halifax, NS.
Always on the lookout for the next mysterious place with a paranormal past, my investigative partner and I have read and heard various stories about Deadman’s Island; for one, strange lights have been seen bobbing over the hill on top of the graves there. No, not fireflies. No, not other people with flashlights, flares or cigarettes. Real, actual unexplained orbs of lights.
Luckily, we live just a stone’s throw away from Deadman’s Island. Since the weather is so much more pleasant for doing outside things, we decided to grab the trusty Nikon and head on over to this now-quaint little place.
Today, we stood on top of four hundred graves.
Background:
This very small island was originally used as a military training and practice site and was known as Target Island (or Target Hill). During the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812, at least 200 soldiers and sailors died in captivity on the nearby Melville Island prison (200 meters away and now the Armdale Yacht club). It held over 8,000 prisoners in its day.
The dead were wrapped in canvas and tossed into unmarked graves on the island.
Also buried there were escaped slaves and quarantined immigrants (typhus and smallpox were rampant for a while).
The total number of unmarked graves on Deadman’s Island was approximately 400.
Allegedly, there was one marked grave; that of Canadian mariner, John Dixon.
After 1847 no one else was buried there.
The British sold the island in 1907 to a business man who ran an amusement park on it. He called it Melville Park and ran a ferry from the mainland to the island. While digging and planting around the amusement park, three human skulls were unearthed. The park eventually closed in 1927 due to hardship caused by the 1st World War, the Halifax explosion, and the stock market crash in the 1920’s. Another man opened it as a pleasure park in 1930. Storms and land development unearthed more skeletons.
In the 1960’s, the island was annexed to the mainland and was no longer a true island.
It is important to note that more recently, the Northwest Arm Heritage Association, the Ohio Society of the War of 1812 and the Royal Canadian Legion collaboratively protected the island and the graves from being damaged and disturbed for development purposes. They researched British Admiralty logs and records to discover the extent of the mass burials on the island and saved it as a heritage park, established by Halifax municipality in 2005.
Location:
Deadman’s Island is in the south end of Halifax on the Northwest Arm. You can access the island on Pinehaven Drive off Purcell’s Cove Road. Parking is on this residential street in front of upscale houses and there is a well-developed path/entrance with signs leading the way in.
What Happened::
Walking along a nicely established path with wooden rails and over a small bridge, you enter a more wooded area. You are actually right in someone’s backyard/sideyard but that is the way it is designed. Lots of trees surround a wide path and the odd bluejay was squawking at us to keep out. But knowing there could be grisly ghosts to be seen and photographed, on we went.
A few minutes later we were at the water’s edge where obviously the island had been connected to the mainland. A short walk around this small shore and we found ourselves in the modern provincial park, complete with benches, plaques and signs which detail the historical significance of the island, which was right in front of us.
Today, it is tree covered, with clear paths winding their way up the small hill. Between the trees, the harbour is in full view. A bit unnerving to know that each step was on top of a potential gravesite, it still felt calm and serene, with no air of creepiness whatsoever(unfortunately).
We did come across a few weird, unexplained depressions in the ground, the likes of which I have never seen before. Still don’t know what would cause the earth to sink down in perfectly round circles. We also came across a weird teepee shaped stick structure and also have no idea why it was there. Seemed like a Blair Witch type of thing.
Incidentally, we were there in early evening as the sun was just beginning to drop towards the horizon and even though it was still daylight, we did not see any of the ghostly lights that have been reported to plague the hill.
(Melville Island, which is now the yacht club, formerly the prison)
Result and Conclusion:
We don’t know. Remember reading our other “investigation” posts, in which I clearly stated that most of our exploration of paranormal places would likely end this way? Well, it applies to this one, too.
Given the melancholy and grisly history of what went on on the island so many years ago to so many people, I don’t doubt for a second that people have witnessed paranormal manifestations of one kind or another. Unfortunately, we did not witness anything today, but alas, this is the chance you take when you set out on these excursions. Therefore, we offer no explanation of the aforementioned mystery lights seen around the island. We also did not see the marked grave of John Dixon, as noted above, if it is even still visible.
Perhaps we will go back, with voice recording equipment and try to capture the voices of the long-dead, who were indecently piled one on top of the other under that mound of land along the Halifax shore.
For further paranormal reading in which we mention this island AND others, check out our newsletter on Nova Scotia’s eeriest islands:
Also, the The Globe and Mail had a great piece regarding Melville Island here:
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