Maritime author highlights iconic ghost stories from Atlantic Canada

Lataevia Beezer chats with author and artist Bee Stanton about her new book ”Atlantic Ghosts: Tales from the Haunted Coast.”

Atlantic Canada has its fair share of haunted tales, and one local artist and author brought more of those spooky stories to light.

The book “Atlantic Ghosts: Tales from the Haunted Coast” highlights ghost stories from across the region alongside illustrations by the book’s author, Bee Stanton.

“Basically, they’re just I believe 24 illustrations accompanied by just quick blurbs of the haunted tale or account that goes with the illustrations. So they’re just black and white pen and ink illustrations of the iconic imagery that might go with that or something aesthetically pleasing that would go along with the ghost story,” said Stanton.

Stanton got the inspiration for the book while taking part in an annual drawing challenge called “Inktober.”

“You do basically pen and ink drawings every day for the entire month and I love taking part in it, but I also love local folk lore, and it occurred to me one year that the prompt would be really cool if it was local folk lore, haunted telling’s, stuff like that,” she said.

There’s no shortage of supernatural and folk tales in Atlantic Canada, with iconic stories like the lady in blue that haunts Peggy’s Cove, the hag with two faces of Bell Island, N.L., and even the ghost named Captain George who has a reserved seat at the King’s Playhouse in Georgetown, P.E.I.

Stanton says the stories from the Maritimes have a particular charm to them.

“I do love that the Maritime ghost stories have more of an eerie vibe rather than a scare the pants off you terrifying vibe, even just the aspect of fog, who doesn’t love fog on a spooky night, it automatically just gives you the feeling of ghost stories. So I love anything nautical in Maritimes as well, so just combining all of those things with my art just brought on this love, this passion,” she said.