The Fragrant Haircut of Fort Warren

During November and December I feel compelled to write about the holidays, so my posts are usually about food and festive traditions. I'm sad to see December end, but I do feel liberated to write about weird and creepy things again. Yay!

I acquired a few new folklore books over the holidays, including Jay Schmidt's Fort Warren: New England's Most Historic Civil War Site. Tony gave it to me for Christmas, and when I opened it I immediately found this bizarre tale.

During the Civil War, the First Corps of Cadets was stationed at Fort Warren on George's Island in Boston Harbor. They were relatively isolated out there, but one day a cadet got leave to go into Boston.

Fort Warren today - photo courtesy Tony!

One of the first things he did in the city was get a fresh haircut. The barber gave him the works, and finished off his hair with a fragrant, oily pomade.

When he returned to Fort Warren, the other cadets teased him about how nice his hair smelled. (I guess they were jealous). The cadet ignored them and fell fast asleep in his bunk.

His sleep was not restful, unfortunately. He was tormented by a terrible dream that mosquitoes were buzzing around his head. He tossed and turned, but he couldn't escape the nightmare.

I might have nightmares too if I slept here...

When the cadet finally woke up he was horrified to find that all of his hair was gone! The oily pomade's delightful fragrance had attracted the rats who lived in the fort's walls, and they devoured his delicious smelling hair while he slept. Their gnawing had filled his dream as the buzzing of mosquitoes.

And you know what? To make matters worse, his hair never grew back.

The most famous spooky tale about Fort Warren is the lady in black, but I think this one is pretty good too.

Happy 2012!

Apple Love, and Some Media Updates

Adam and Eve go apple-picking!

My last post was about the ominous side of apples. Today, I thought I'd share some happier lore. Sure, apples have a bad reputation in Western culture because of that incident in the Garden of Eden, but that story isn't just about sin, it's also about love. If Adam and Eve (or Steve) hadn't eaten the forbidden fruit, there'd be no love in the world!

Discovering the identity of your true love through magic was widespread in New England in the 1800's. I think some of it spread through the magazines of the time, but some may also have been brought over with the Puritans. Apples figured prominently.

To figure out if someone loves you, split open an apple and count the seeds. The number of seeds inside determines where the relationship is heading. There is a chant that goes like this:

One I love,
Two I love,
Three, I love, I say
Four, I love with all my heart,
And five I cast away;
Six he loves,
Seven she loves,
Eight they both love;
Nine he comes,
Ten he tarries,
Eleven, he courts,
Twelve he marries;
Thirteen wishes,
Fourteen kisses,
All the rest little witches.

There's another way to use apple seeds to predict love. Let's say you're romantically interested in multiple men. Take some apple seeds, and assign the name of a potential lover to each. Wet the seeds and stick them on your forehead. The one that falls off last is the person you're meant to be with.

Those are quoted in Botkin's Treasury of New England Folklore, but are originally found in William Wells Newells' Games and Songs of American Children and Alice Morse Earle's Old Time Gardens.

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New England folklore has been appearing in the media lately. Today's Boston Globe has an article about George's Island, including the ghost who is supposed to haunt Fort Warren, something I wrote about a while ago.

The October 2009 issue of Martha Stewart Living has a brief article about New England gravestone art. There are some nice photos of historic Massachusetts cemeteries in Haverhill, Salem and Ipswich. Martha Stewart can even make death look tasteful. I don't think the article is online, but you can see many grave stones from across New England at A Very Grave Matter.

The Ghost of Fort Warren

Tony went on a company outing to George's Island in Boston Harbor this week, and took these great photos of Fort Warren.

Fort Warren was built before the Civil War to defend Boston from naval attacks, and was also used to house Confederate prisoners. It's now a historic landmark.



It's an amazing place, with great views of the city and harbor, and lots of dark tunnels to explore. You definitely need a flash light to see all of it.

A woman in a black dress is supposed to haunt Fort Warren. She's the restless spirit of Mrs. Andrew Lanier, the wife of a Confederate soldier held prisoner there. Mrs. Lanier, disguised as a man, had sneaked into Fort Warren to free her husband. They were discovered by the guards as they fled, and Mrs. Warren accidentally killed her husband when her pistol misfired.



She was sentenced to hang on February 2, 1862. Her last request was that she be executed wearing a dress, rather than in the men's clothing she wore as a disguise. The guards dressed her in an old black gown, which her ghost is still said to wear.



Allegedly, a soldier stationed at Fort Warren during WWII became so deranged after encountering Mrs. Lanier's ghost that he spent 20 years in an institution. Spooky!



This story is well-known, but I found the details in Thomas D'Agostino's Haunted Massachusetts.