The settlement at Lunenburg was beginning to root itself, but was still frequently short on supplies and susceptible to attacks by the local natives. Mahone Bay was similarly newborn, not yet having the infrastructure in place to support the shipbuilding industry that would vault it to fame.

 But along the banks of the LaHave River, there had been even less exploration. The threat of the unknown surrounding countryside deterred many settlers from venturing beyond the range of the British military garrisons.

 And, as it so often turns out, there were instances when the unknown was perhaps better left unexplored. The area known as Hufeisen Bucht proved to be one such example as, by the early 19th century, it had already served as the stage of twin tragedies.

 The first story begins with a German by the name of Nicholas Spohr, who was among the earliest of the "foreign Protestant" settlers of the 1750s to begin exploring the wild, untamed land along the inner reaches of the LaHave River region in the 1770s.

 What Spohr found astounded him.

 About 20 kilometres from the LaHave's mouth into the Atlantic Ocean, Spohr happened upon a concealed cove, which had been almost completely cut off from the rest of the river.

 Only a small entrance on the south-facing side allowed the passage of water into the safe harbour, while a heavily forested projection on the westward side essentially blocked any view into the cove from the river.

 The geophysical features of the cove gave it the appearance of a horseshoe - a fact which so inspired Spohr to dub the area Hufeisen Bucht, or, Horseshoe Cove.

 Immediately intrigued by the isolated and concealed nature of the cove, Spohr surely deduced that it would make an excellent place to establish a homestead, engage in some farming and fishing, and carve out a life for himself beyond the confines of Lunenburg.

 But, upon a thorough examination of the land within the cove, Spohr found that he was not the first to appreciate the cove's secret nature. On the eastern side of the cove, much to his amazement, Spohr discovered an old habitat, complete with living quarters, a warehouse and a blockhouse, to the rafters of which a giant signalling bell was attached.

 To make matters all the more appealing, a swath of land had already been cleared, apparently in preparation to be farmed, and a small orchard with what appeared to be the overgrown remnants of a garden were spied in a corner of the property.

 While the buildings, which had evidently been built by the French as an expansion of their settlement at LaHave more than a century earlier, had been abandoned to the ravages of time and nature, it was clear to Spohr that he had stumbled upon a property of immense value.

 He kept his discovery to himself and quietly went about the business of securing the title for the land from the governor of Nova Scotia by going through the proper channels in Halifax.

 Before long, Spohr owned the region wholesale, and wasted little time in bringing his family to Hufeisen Bucht. The family worked at the property, whipping the buildings back into shape in the span of a season.

 One evening, while Spohr was up late in the hours after sunset, he heard an alarming racket of whoops and shrieks coming from the river. He descended to the shoreline to see, on the opposite side of the cove amid the woods of the heavily forested promontory, lights and shadows darting in and out among the trees.

 At first, Spohr thought, some sort of unearthly agents were at work, creating havoc near his little cove. But, upon exploration in the light of morning, he discovered that the noise of the night before had, in fact, been the product of a Mi'kmaq funeral ceremony.

 Spohr was somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of a native encampment so close and, as the ceremonial activities celebrating the life of a departed tribal leader continued each night over the next week, Spohr decided to approach the natives and attempt to assert his authority over the area.

 The resulting confrontation was less than positive. With an obstructive language barrier, and both Spohr and the Mi'kmaq feeling that the other party had intruded in the region, the meeting ended abruptly with both sides menacingly brandishing weapons.

 Eventually, the native ceremony came to a conclusion and they took their leave of the cove.

 In the meantime, Spohr continued to march about his property as if he were king of a small section of the New World. He would regularly travel to Halifax with his sons to trade wood for supplies and, upon his return, he would marvel at the grandeur of the homestead which he had stumbled upon and made his own.

 Not realizing the cultural crime he had committed by intruding on the funeral ceremony, nor understanding the significance of the demise of a local tribal leader, Spohr went about his business as if all was normal with his mysterious neighbours.

 But, upon returning from another supply voyage to Halifax with his eldest sons, in the changing hues of the autumn season of 1777, Nicholas Spohr came to understand the folly of what he had done.

 Putting ashore, Spohr was upset that his wife and children had not come down to the shoreline to greet him upon his return. Storming up to the house to see what the problem was, Spohr entered the cabin to find his wife, his children and even his dog massacred on the floor before him.

 A handful of natives, apparently in retribution for the lack of respect for the funeral ceremony demonstrated by Spohr, had turned Hufeisen Bucht into a scene of blood-spattered tragedy.

 A party of rangers from Lunenburg were dispatched to find the culprits responsible, but as so often happened in those days, the group took out their wrath upon the first handful of Mi'kmaq they encountered, hanging four of them from the willows near Hufeisen Bucht, and sending two more to Halifax as prisoners.

 The bodies of the murdered Spohrs were interred on land overlooking the shores of the cove, and Nicholas Spohr, who had so tragically lost his family and his beloved wife, took his leave of his Hufeisen Bucht paradise.

 He would only return, years later, to the land that haunted his dreams after a severe bout of melancholy. Tradition has it that Nicholas, mentally exhausted and physically ill, collapsed on the grave of his wife, and it was there that he passed on to the next life.

 There, the uneasy legacy of Hufeisen Bucht might have rested. The people of Lunenburg knew the details of the Spohr story and were quite content to leave the property untouched, out of respect for the fate of the Spohrs.

 But, in 1783, a mysterious stranger going by the name John Smith arrived in Lunenburg, assumed control of the property and quickly removed himself to the LaHave region, where he, his wife and his two African porters, Cato and Venus, settled on the old Spohr homestead.

 The new settlers were greeted with suspicion by the rest of the county's European settlers. First, the fact that the family included a pair of Africans, and that they were treated with the utmost respect by Smith and his wife, raised many eyebrows.

 Typical European settlers did not have porters or servants of any kind, and the fact that the Smiths employed the assistance of two Africans led to rampant rumours about witchcraft and black magic among the superstitious inhabitants of Lunenburg County.

 Second, the Smiths also had no fear of the tragic legacy of Hufeisen Bucht. This, perhaps more than anything, alarmed the early settlers of the county.

 In the decade since the Spohr family massacre, Hufeisen Bucht had remained derelict. Only the bravest (or perhaps the stupidest) of Lunenburg's settlers would visit the site, for fear of invoking the wrath of the Spohr spirits.

 Some boatmen even went so far as to cross the river in order to avoid passing too close to the cove and the haunting tolling of the bell in the old blockhouse as it was tossed about by the wind.

 But not the Smiths. Their very presence flaunted a contempt for fears of both the supernatural spirits at the site and the native settlement near the cove.

 Not everyone, however, regarded the Smiths with unease. John quickly made friends among the nearby Mi'kmaq settlement and he also regularly hosted military men, guests from Halifax and a variety of travellers passing through the region.

 In order to make his homestead a fully functioning one, Smith had also hired a local boy as a farmhand to help in daily tasks.

 During one of the long winter months, the Smiths entertained a pedlar and an officer from Halifax who had arrived together. After having a late evening dinner, John, the officer and the pedlar sat smoking before the fire, unendingly discussing the matters of the world, matters which had little to do with them, as men are so often inclined to do. The Smiths' indentured servant, a young boy brought from Halifax in 1790, lay in front of the fire, on the verge of dozing off.

 After recounting a series of gruesome tales, including the sordid history of the very cove they were in, the pedlar retired for the evening, as did the officer and Smith, leaving the boy, who had drifted to sleep, where he was on the floor.

 Sometime in the early morning hours, before the dawn, the boy awoke with a start. The noise of boots clamouring had roused him and, lifting only an eyelid, he spied two tall, shadowy figures in the corner of the room.

 From the glow of the embers and the muffled voices he was able to identify his master, John Smith, and another mysterious man who appeared to be neither the pedlar nor the officer. Much to the boy's horror, the duo appeared to be carrying a body, one which seemed to match the size of the poor pedlar who had dined with them just hours before.

 Listening carefully, the boy then heard the sound of a sled on the snow outside. Eventually, the calamity having calmed, the youth went back to sleep. In the morning, upon being roused by Smith, the boy snuck outside and followed the sled track down to the shore of the river where he found a freshly cut hole in the ice.

 The pedlar, the boy concluded, must have been dumped in the river by his master. For many years the boy sat on the knowledge. But, by 1796, the youth had become dreadfully unhappy with his situation at Hufeisen Bucht.

 A silver cup, it seemed, had gone missing and Smith believed the boy had taken the treasured chalice. In retribution, Smith began treating the boy with a degree of contempt, and it was chiefly for this reason that the youngster elected to make a break for Lunenburg, where he met with court officials and gave his disposition on the disappearance of the pedlar, accusing Mr. Smith of murder.

 Smith was called to Lunenburg and held there. Preparations were made, a jury formed, and a trial called to review the allegations against Smith.

 The servant boy gave his testimony, his story unchanging. Smith countered the boy by testifying that the pedlar had, in fact, departed by sled in the early morning hours, before breakfast, and before the boy had been woken.

 Mr. Smith's representative also called Cato, the African attendant, to testify on Smith's behalf. Cato had the complete attention and respect of all in the courtroom.

 According to Cato, on the morning the pedlar left, he had attempted to convince the traveller to have a hearty breakfast before departing, but the pedlar, anxious to be on his way, chose to leave without eating - all of this transpiring while the boy was still asleep on the floor before the fireplace.

 The judge, satisfied that the boy could have misconstrued facts in his sleepy state, and that there was no physical evidence indicating the pedlar had been murdered at all, pronounced his belief in the innocence of Smith.

 But, despite the judge's conclusions, it was the jury that held Smith's fate. They left the courtroom to render a verdict and, returning just a few minutes later, the foreman announced that - contrary to the judge's belief - they had found John Smith guilty of murder.

 Smith, astounded by the verdict, was taken to a holding cell. But he wouldn't remain there for long; by the dawn of the next morning, both Smith and his guard, Caspar Horn, had disappeared.

 Rumours flew about the fate of Horn and the location of Smith, but some of the questions were soon answered. Horn was found bound and gagged beneath hay in a cart outside a Lunenburg alehouse, and Smith, who had escaped through the jail's cellar via a loose floorboard in his cell, had retreated to the safety of Hufeisen Bucht.

 Smith, however, decided that staying in the cove could prove detrimental to his family, should the residents of Lunenburg gather up the intestinal fortitude to pursue him. So, making use of his native contacts, he settled along a stream three miles above the cove at the Mi'kmaq camp.

 There he waited, in peace, until one day Judge Sanford from Halifax, who had helped Smith mount his defence in Lunenburg, visited the cove. Hearing of Sanford's presence in the area, Smith sought him out, if for nothing else than the company.

 After an evening of dining on venison, Sanford requested that Smith guide him to the bank of the river, after which he would proceed to Petite Riviere. But en route to the LaHave's banks, Smith and Judge Sanford were alarmed by the barking of the former's dogs. Upon investigation, the duo discovered that the dogs had found the skeletal remnants of a man and a large bear.

 Closer inspection revealed the man to be the missing pedlar. Not only that, but among the pedlar's personal items the pair found several trinkets stolen from Smith's residence years before, including a fox fur and the silver cup that had caused so much consternation between Smith and the boy.

 Smith immediately blew on his bugle and, within a short period of time, his native allies had contacted the magistrate in Lunenburg to advise him of the discovery of the pedlar's remains.

 With John Smith's name having finally been cleared, he, his wife, Cato and Venus were once again free to resume their existence at Hufeisen Bucht. But the Spohr tragedy and the general distrust the Smith homestead was regarded with by locals failed to subside in the years that followed.

 By 1798, John decided he had quite had his fill of Nova Scotia and of Hufeisen Bucht's cursed, murderous, tragic history.

 Near 50 years of age, Mr. Smith uprooted his family one final time, leaving the shores of the LaHave River, and the haunting legacy of Horseshoe Cove, in favour of obscurity amid the bustling centres of England.

 Though left alone again for quite some time, over the years the temptation of the farmland surrounding Hufeisen Bucht became too strong to resist and, eventually, settlers from Lunenburg County's countryside returned to the area.

 Today, much of the cove - located in Dayspring, just minutes from Bridgewater - is part of a municipal park, known as the Miller Point Peace Park.

 With walking trails, picnic tables and a beautiful view across the width of the LaHave River accessible to everyone, the delightful sound of children's laughter is quite common. Their joyful voices surely help to ease the tormented soul of Nicholas Spohr and the other ghosts of Hufeisen Bucht.

 Sources: DesBrisay, M.B., "History of the County of Lunenburg"; Haliburton, Thomas Chandler, "The old Judge; or, Life in a Colony."

Written and researched by Patrick Hirtle.