Mystic, Que., has some witchcraft in its history and locals are celebrating the spooky stories

A community of frustrated farmers suspects something sinister is stopping their cows from giving milk. One of them returns to his barn and finds a hare staring at him. He fires at the animal, clipping its ear, but it escapes. Later, when elderly Peggy Green is on her deathbed, the locals notice something strange about her ear: a gunshot-like injury.

Grant Myers, president of the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network (QAHN), tells the story that has been passed down from generation to generation in the Eastern Townships region of Quebec. 

"They surmised that she was a shape-shifter and that she was using magic to stop the cows from producing," said Myers. 

After Green died, the cows continued to have trouble producing milk. 

"The local farmers returned to the grave of the elderly woman and built a wall around it. And when they walled-in the grave, then the cows began to produce milk," Myers said, who also points out there is not much proof Green ever existed — in any shape or form.

It is said to have happened along New Mexico Road, between what is today Cookshire-Eaton and Mont-Mégantic, Que. 

The story, he says, is a retelling of similar supernatural stories told in northern Europe, hearkening back to a precarity of certain foods — specifically milk — and the challenges posed to livelihoods, possibly even starvation, when those staples became scarce.

But it is not the only witch story in the Eastern Townships to survive from centuries past, with local history buffs looking to preserve their local lore and trace the roots of the stories settlers came to share about the women suspected of witchcraft.

Elsewhere in the townships, the aptly named hamlet of Mystic — just off the road between Farnham and Bedford, Que., — has its own old witch tales to share. 

"Mystic, Quebec is actually known as Saint-Ignace-de-Stanbridge now but for the locals we still call it Mystic, and we don't really know why it was called Mystic except that it has these magical mystical stories attached to it," said Heather Darch, project manager at QAHN.

The municipality used to be called Clapperton, says Darch, a former curator of the Missisquoi Museum. 

WATCH | Tracking down the legends of Mystic, Que.:

The Clapper brothers, a dutch-speaking trio loyal to the British crown, immigrated north after the American War of Independence and established themselves as the first European presence in the area. 

"They not only brought all of their wives and children and what they could carry on their backs, but also their superstitions," she said.