The Wynyard apparition (Sydney, Cape Breton, 1785)

Autumn, 1785. Cape Breton was then a colony of its own, and Sydney was a new town on a headland. Six companies of the 33rd Regiment of Foot had come from Halifax under Lt-Col. Yorke. Their barracks, begun that year, would become the largest building in town. The officers included Captain John Coape Sherbrooke and Lieutenant George Wynyard, and Sherbrooke later served as Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia and Governor-in-Chief of British North America.

October 15, 1785. The two men were studying in Wynyard's sitting room. One door opened onto a passage. The other led to Wynyard's bedroom, which had no other way in or out and a closed window. Accounts place the time at about 4 p.m. or between 8 and 9 in the evening.

Sherbrooke saw it first. A tall youth, of about twenty, stood by the door to the passage. The accounts speak of "extreme emaciation." Sunken cheeks. A wasted frame. Some versions dress him in a hunting suit and cap, a whip in his hand. Others give him a light indoor costume.

The figure walked slowly across the room. It said nothing. As it passed, it turned its eyes on Wynyard "with a somewhat melancholy expression." Then it went into the bedroom.

Wynyard spoke in a low and almost inaudible voice: "Great God! my brother!" Sherbrooke later described his friend's face: "I have heard of a man's being as pale as death, but I never saw a living face assume the appearance of a corpse, except Wynyard's at that moment."

They followed at once, but the bedroom was empty. Ralph Gore came in to help search, while Sir Hildebrand Oakes, who had dined with them, searched the path outside. Sherbrooke told Gore: "a figure has certainly come into this room and passed into the bedroom, and Wynyard said it was his brother Jack." Their first thought was a prank by fellow officers, but no prankster was ever found. They noted the date and time and agreed to keep quiet, but Wynyard's worry for his brother soon broke that promise.

By one account, news from England arrived on 6 June 1786. The letter was addressed to Sherbrooke. Its first line read: "Dear John, break to your friend Wynyard the death of his favorite brother." The brother, John Otway Wynyard of the 3rd Regiment of Foot Guards, had died on the very day of the sighting, at about the very hour. Some accounts place his death at Kensington Palace.

In 1823, Gore answered written questions from Sir John Harvey, Adjutant-General of the Forces in Canada. Dr Herbert Mayo later spoke with two relatives who said they had heard the story from General Wynyard himself. Shortly before 1830, Sherbrooke told Gore's nephew that "he did see the figure, and it was exactly as he had described it." Years after the event, Sherbrooke met a man in Piccadilly who looked exactly like the phantom. He was another Wynyard brother, one who had never left England.

Sceptics suggested the officers had been drunk or ill. The sources say they had not been drinking. Critics also note the drift between versions: the hour, the clothing, even the brother's name. John Otway Wynyard was 30. The figure looked about twenty.

The case entered both the Dictionary of National Biography and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Owen's Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World and Wallace's On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism carried it. Two sober officers. A room with no exit. A death an ocean away.