Clutching Hands of Wolf Point Multi-cache
Clutching Hands of Wolf Point
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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Wolf Point, NB (Fundy National Park)
The first part of this multi is inside Fundy Park. Depending on
what time of the year you decide to do this cache, you may or may
not encounter park fees to enter.
For list of park fees:
click here
For Park info:click
here
This cache will take you less than an hour if you have a car. To
find the final cache, you will need to enter the park and go to
Wolf Point. Once you find the parking area, proceed to the posted
coordinates and read the public signs... Use the key below to add
the waypoints together:
N 45° A(**).B(***) W 064° C(**).D(***)
On these signs it talks about a Logging Mill. The Mill was
constructed and began logging in ????. It was Decommisioned in
????.
A=Take the year logging began and add all the digits together.
then add 19
B=Take the year logging began minus 1535.
C=Take the year logging finished and add all the digits together,
then add 44.
D=Take the year logging finished minus 1700.
Checksum: N=30 W=27
Cache is a small lock'n'lock container with traders, logbook,
pencil and sharpener.
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The Story:
The Bay of Fundy rolls in toward the land to form Chignecto Bay
and this great body of water is split by the long extending arm of
Westmorland County in New Brunswick: a split that forms the Shepody
Bay on one side and Cumberland Basin on the other. Into this bay
and basin pour the strong tides of Fundy, surging in to make the
highest tides in the world.
The jutting of Westmorland County breaks up the raging sweep of
the Fundy waters, so that Cumberland Basin feels little of the
great pressure of water. But into the wider mouth of Shepody Bay
race these surging tides, and as they are forced into the narrowing
channel of river, they form the famous tidal bore of the
Peticodiac.
On the Shores of Shepody Bay there is a little place known as Wolf
Point, where the superstitious claim that clutching hands reach up
from the earth to drag the unfortunate down to doom. Others say
there are quicksands under the earth, something caused by the tides
of Fundy that clutch and suck objects into the earth.
The discovery of these strange sink holes came in the long ago
days when the 13 colonies of the Britain were in revolt, and the
republic of the United States of America was born.
Men and women of wealth and culture, who became known as the
United Empire Loyalists, were forced to leave their homes in the
states that had revolted and came to Nova Scotia, which then
included what is now known as New Brunswick.
While many Loyalists settled along the Saint John River, others
took their families, servants, and household effect to more distant
places in search of better lands.
Many of the Loyalists carried their entire wealth in saddle-bags
on their horses, or in Money belts about their bodies, which fact
was known to many, and often led to murder and robbery in the wild,
new country. From those early times comes the story of sudden
death, and a ghost that haunts the lonely spot where the deed was
done.
It is claimed that gold is still hidden there, for no one has ever
dared remain where the clutching hands reached up from the earth to
drag the unfortunate down where the gold and the dead are said to
lie together.
Back in those early days a wealthy loyalist, searching for finer
lands, landed at Wolf Point on Shepody Bay. He was travelling
alone, except for his black servant who had been with him in the
colonies.
Like many another staunch supporter of British ideals during the
revolution, he had been forced to flee his home at the close of the
war, and all the gold he could gather was in the money belt about
his waist.
At noon on the first day in the new country, later to become the
Province of new Brunswick by loyalist insistence, the master and
servant stopped for lunch along the bank of a tumbling stream. The
white horse upon which the loyalist rode was tethered nearby while
the servant prepared the meal.
The loyalist settled himself in the shade of a splendid apple tree
that stood in a natural clearing and awaited his meal. As the
servant approached with the food, his foot sank into the soft
earth, tripping him up and spilling the meal upon the master.
Rising in anger at the apparent carelessness, the Loyalist struck
his servant again and again with his riding crop. Resenting the
blows, the servant seized a nearby tree branch and battered his
master to the ground. Terror then took possession of the servant,
and in frantic haste he dug a shallow grave beside the great apple
tree and pushed the loyalist in. He thought of the gold in the
money belt , and as he knelt to secure it, the reviving loyalist
reached up and sought to pull him down. With the wild screams the
black fought off the clutching had and frantically piled earth upon
the injured man. Then mounting the master’s white horse, he fled
from the spot.
Long years went by. No one discovered the crime. But the memory of
it remained with the servant during his lifetime. On his deathbed
he told the story to others, describing the place, the apple tree
and the stream, so that the desire for the gold remained with his
listeners. Shortly thereafter one man stole quietly away to see and
secure the gold for himself. He found the stream and nearby apple
tree. On the ground he found the rusting tin plates that had been
dropped in the years gone by. He searched out the faint outlines of
a mound of earth and began to dig.
He uncovered the skeleton of a man, and as he reached down to
search for the money belt, two boney hands reached up as if to
seize him. With screams of terror the man fled from the spot,
leaving the uncovered grave, the gold, and the clutching hands for
other and braver men who followed after.
Some time later the man told others of his attempt to secure the
gold, and what he had seen and felt. Three who heard the story kept
their laughter to themselves. They, Too, had heard the story of the
supposed ghost and the clutching hands. They were pleased that such
stories had been told and believed. They knew, they said, that it
wasn’t the dead protecting the place, but the fear of the dead that
was alive in the minds of the living. To them the ghostly spectre
was a figment of the imagination and as for the hands that clutched
from the earth, they laughed that to scorn. “Quicksands,” they
said, “quicksands, and the imagination.”
Contrary to the beliefs of other seekers after buried treasure,
the three men set out on the gold-seeking expedition on a night
that was bright, with a full moon in a cloudless sky.
They found the place they sought, marked by a great apple tree in
a natural clearing. The bright light from the moon laid the long
shadow of the tree across the cleared space. The night was as still
as it was clear, and as the men approached, the shadow of the tree
fell across them like something sinister in the moonlight. But the
three were bold men, and there was gold to be had by their
boldness. So they went forward, following the moon-cast shadow
right up to the foot of the tree.
They were not superstitious, these three. Yet, there in the
moonlit clearing, with great trees pressing in on every side, and
before them a partially opened grave, they did feel a sense of
mysterious creep over them. And out of beliefs that had been in
their families the long years past, they decided, for luck, to
march in single file three times around the great apple tree and
the half-open grave. This done, the superstitions of the past were
pushed away, and they set work upon the mound werein, they
believed, still lay the gold and the murdered loyalist.
They did not speak, having no need for words, and the forest
sounds that came to thme were unheeded as they spaded their way to
the hidden gold. As they worked, one man turned to look where the
shadow of the apple tree lay like a dark patch across the moonlit
clearing. There had no sound to attract his attention, but
something drew his gaze and attention, and he stood in startled
amazement.
There in a luminous glow, seated astride a white horse, was a
figure from out of the past. His startled gasp brought the other
two up from their digging, and they, too, saw the spectre horseman
in the clearing. As they watched, the horse and rider began to
move, riding in a circle about the great tree. The shadow cast by
the moonlight on the tree followed the rider.
The glow hovered about him, and the horse made no sound as it
passed. Three times the ghostly horseman rode soundlessly about the
apple tree.
One man stepped backward and unknown to the others, fell into the
hole they had dug. His piercing scream, fraught with terror,
whirled them about to face the open grave. They saw their companion
down in the hole; farther down then they had dug, his face twisted
in terror.
Forgotten was the lone horseman who rode in a ball of light, for
the terror-heightened screams of their companion sent them to his
aid. With strong hands they grasped him, pulling with all their
strength of their rugged bodies, and they dragged him up from the
earth. As they laid him upon the moonlit grass they saw that one of
his boots was missing. They saw, too, that the flesh of his ankle
was red and swollen. In the moonlight, they saw that the marks
looked like the imprint of fingers.
Leaving their tools, the men raced away from the scene of their
terror, but at the edge of the clearing one man looked back.
There in the moving shadow of the apple tree, a lone rider on a
white horse moved in a circle of light.
Days later the man who had stumbled into the hole told his friends
that something that felt like clutching hands had caught him by the
ankle and had seemed to drag him down.
The old apple tree still stands on a farm near Shepody Bay in New
Brunswick. The moving years, and the advance of agriculture, and
the passing away of superstition have made dim the story of the man
who was murdered and left with his gold. Those who made the attempt
to recover that gold have also passed with the fleeting years. The
tales they told of their adventure are now dimly remembered with
disbelief. But the old apple tree is still there, and at the base
of that tree are holes where small objects are pulled down into the
earth. Only when someone endeavours to fathom the mystery of these
strange sinking holes, or suggests that quicksand is the solution
to the mysterious pulling power, are the stories remembered. And
out of these dim remembering are the tales told of the man who was
beaten to death, of the gold that lies with his bones, of the
attempts to recover that gold, of the ghostly rider on his white
horse, and most fearsome of all, the clutching hands that strive to
pull searchers down into the pit where lies the restless
dead.
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Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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