The Witch of Mashpee, and a Book Release Party

I'm having a party to celebrate the release of my book Legends and Lore of the North Shore. Here are the details:

When: Tuesday, September 9, from 6 - 8:00 pm

Where: Club Cafe, 209 Columbus Avenue, Boston

What: Appetizers, cash bar, and me signing books!

Who: You're invited! I hope you can attend!

Now that the obligatory marketing is over, on to the witchcraft.

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Last week the murderous Hannah Screecham was the star of this blog. This week her sister Sarah gets a turn in the spotlight.

While Hannah partnered with pirates to bury their treasure and kill anyone who might reveal its whereabouts, Sarah headed to Mashpee and built herself a cottage on the shores of a small pond. The pond is now called Witch Pond, so you can guess what type of work Sarah pursued.

The pond was in the middle of a very dense forest, so dense that even when the moon was full no light could shine through its trees. Most people avoided the place, fearful of the witch's magic, but when times where lean members of the Mashpee tribe would venture into Sarah's domain in search of game.

Sarah was very protective of the forest and the animals that lived in it. If she saw a hunter she cursed them will ill luck, preventing them from killing any game. She could appear and disappear at will in the woods, traveling unseen, though after she disappeared hunters often saw a beautiful young doe or huge black mare running through the trees. Both animals were impervious to arrows and bullets.

One day Sarah saw a particularly handsome Mashpee man hunting near her home. Even in her witch's heart there was room for love, and she fell in love hard. She pursued the man, begging him to be her lover, but he was terrified and refused her. Sarah was persistent, however, and eventually the man relented. They could meet, but he had one condition - she must come to his home outside the forest.

Blinded by love, Sarah agreed. She visited the man, and as the sun set she turned herself into the huge black mare. Playfully she scampered around the man's house, and playfully she let herself be tied to a tree. Once she was securely tied the Mashpee man's smile dropped away, and he pulled out a hammer and four horseshoes. The black mare didn't make a sound as he nailed in the first three, which were made of iron, but the horse neighed in terror and pain when he nailed in the final one, which was silver. When the man was done he ran to get his neighbors so they could see how he had hobbled the witch.

The black horse had vanished by the time they came back, so they went to Sarah's cottage. They found her inside, screaming in pain with a silver horseshoe nailed to her hand.

Once she recovered Sarah returned to her witchy ways, cursing hunters and transforming herself into animals. She gave up on love. The hunters once again avoided her forest, until many years later a particularly grim winter hit the Cape. No game could be found anywhere, and the Mashpee people were starving. In desperation one hunter finally set out for Witch Pond. He was armed with a rifle, and because he remembered the story about the horseshoe he carried with him one silver bullet.

The forest was strangely silent, even for a winter day, and the hunter didn't see any animals as he trekked through the deep snow. As he neared the pond a beautiful young doe leapt out of the woods. It stared at him fearlessly, as if if was taunting him. He fired his silver bullet, and struck the doe in the hear. It disappeared. The hunter made his way to Sarah's cottage, where he found an old woman dead with a silver bullet in her heart.

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I find this story sad. Poor Sarah! Lots of witch stories involve death by silver bullet, but the silver horseshoe incident is quite cruel. She was just lonely and looking for some male companionship. Even witches need some love. That part of the story reminded me of the recent movie Maleficent. It's unsettling how misogynist some of these stories are.

Sarah's story is included in William Simmons's Spirit of the New England Tribes, and if you approach it from the Mashpee perspective Sarah's not quite so sympathetic. Historically the Mashpee people had most of their land taken by English settlers, saw their numbers reduced by European diseases, and saw their way of life vanish. I see a woman looking for love and protecting animals in this story, but from a Mashpee perspective Sarah, a white woman preventing the tribe from pursuing their traditional hunt, is probably symbolic of white domination. We know the Mashpee weren't able to displace the whites, but at least in this story they can symbolically kill their oppressor.

The story also conveys metaphysical information about witches, and if you're a historian you can try to figure out whether Sarah really existed. There really is a Witch Pond in Mashpee - was there really a witch? So much to consider in one short (and sad) story.

Bigfoot .. and His Dog?

It was late at night in 1980. (Or maybe it was 1981 - memory is a tricky thing!) Two people working the late shift at a small manufacturing firm on Route 151 in Mashpee, Massachusetts noticed something odd across the street at a garden center.

It was around 2:00 am, and the garden center was closed for the night, but the two workers saw someone lurking around the center's entrance. As they watched they realized the person was quite tall, and covered with long dark hair. The person wasn't just a person - it was Bigfoot.

As if Bigfoot wasn't strange enough, the two workers saw that the hairy humanoid also had a large, black dog with him. That's right - Bigfoot had a dog.

Most modern Bigfoot accounts state that dogs are scared of Bigfoot. Dogs bark whenever one of the creatures is nearby, and some people even claim Bigfoot kills dogs. That doesn't seem to be the case here in New England. This part of the country is more liberal, and even our mysterious monsters are kind to animals.

This doesn't mean that dogs necessarily like Bigfoot. In 1979, a man named Peter Samuelson and his girlfriend Holly were hiking on Bald Mountain in New Hampshire with their dog Kat. When they were near Connor Pond they came upon a stone hut whose roof was thatched with tree branches. Curious, they stuck their heads inside the doorway. It was dark inside, but as their eyes adjusted they realized they weren't alone. A large, hairy humanoid creature was also standing inside with its back to the door.

Kat growled at the creature. It turned around and growled back. Peter, Holly and Kat hightailed it away from the hut and out of the woods. Much later Holly was at the Wolfeboro Library and found an interesting story. One winter in the 1890s a man living on the shores of Connor Pond saw that a dog had fallen through the pond's ice. The dog was too far from shore for him to reach, and he watched helplessly as it struggled to escape. Suddenly, a huge, hairy manlike creature ran out from the woods. It grabbed the dog with its long apelike arms, pulled it to shore, and then disappeared back into the snowy trees.

Peter Samuelson eventually went back to Bald Mountain looking for the hut and its occupant, but when he reached the hut's location he was surprised to find it was no longer there. There were no traces of it at all. The hut had been made of many heavy boulders, and Peter was puzzled as to how it had vanished so completely.

These are puzzling stories overall, but really interesting. A lot of people think that Bigfoot is some type of apelike animal, but to me these two stories hint at something else.

Let's look at the story from Mashpee. Would an apelike animal really be walking down a highway with a dog? It seems doubtful to me. That the dog was black seems significant. Black dogs have long been associated with the paranormal and the supernatural, and I'd suggest that is the case here. It's probably also significant that the sighting happened near Edwards Air Force Base (now called Camp Edwards). Paranormal phenomena of all kinds are often reported near military installations in the US. Rather than an apelike animal, I'd say those two men saw something supernatural.

The creature seen on Bald Mountain also doesn't sound like an ape, or even a physical animal, to me. The vanishing hut seems more like something from a ghost story or fairy encounter than the behavior of an animal. An animal might abandon a lair, but would it carry off each stone until there was no trace it had even existed? This also sounds more like a supernatural encounter as well.

Of course, saying Bigfoot is supernatural or paranormal doesn't really answer any questions. Where does he come from? What does he want? Is he a ghost, an alien, a visitor from another dimension? Is he a visitor manifesting from the collective unconscious?

I don't know the answer, but it's good to know Bigfoot likes dogs.

I got this information from T.M. Gray's New England Graveside Tales, Loren Coleman's Cryptomundo site, and the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization.

Squant, Ol' Squant, and Granny Squannit

Roger Williams wrote that the Narragansett Indians revered thirty-seven different gods. Most of the ancient gods have been forgotten since Williams lived in the 17th century, but a few of them are still acknowledged by the Indians of southern New England. One of them is Maushop, a giant who created Nantucket and other geographic features. I wrote about him a few years ago.

His wife, Squant, is also still acknowledged by the Wampanoag and the Mohegan. Squant's name is most likely derived from Squauanit, meaning "woman's god", one of the deities recorded by Roger Williams. Squant is also known as Ol' Squant and Granny Squannit.



According to legend, Squant and Maushop had a troubled marriage. Maushop had a temper that matched his huge height, and once threw all their children into the ocean, where they were transformed into whales. Squant was understandably upset about this, and mourned the loss of her children. Her tears enraged Maushop even more, and he threw her from their home on Martha's Vineyard to Rhode Island, where she was transformed into Sakonnet Rock. Sakonnet Rock originally was shaped like a woman, but over time it's limbs fell off until it became unrecognizable. When Squant mourns for her children, the wind sighs and the surf moans.

Another story claims that Squant was once very beautiful, but her eyes were cut into square shapes by an enemy (possibly Cheepi, aka Hobbomock) who found her asleep on the beach. Squant hid her deformity by growing her beautiful black hair over her face. Her hair is now so long that she is said to resemble a huge haystack.

These myths show Squant as a passive victim of other deities, but that's not really the case. She is still quite active in the world, and isn't just petrified down on the Rhode Island shore.

Here's an example. In 1928, a group of schoolchildren and their teacher were walking along the beach near Mashpee. As they strolled, they saw what they thought was a haycart being pulled by oxen. But then they realized there weren't any oxen - the giant pile of hay was moving by itself! It was Squant. They all fled in fear. Mashpee children were instructed to never make fun of Squant or she would "tear you all to pieces." During the annual Cranberry Festival in the 20th century, "a child was given a basket of food to carry into the dunes to set down at a lonely spot as a gift to old Granny Squannit, and cautioned to hurry away without ever looking back."

Although somewhat terrifying, Squant also has a positive side and helps shamans. In the nineteenth century, Wampanoag herbalist William Perry was well-known across southern New England for his healing abilities. He credited them to Granny Squannit. If he needed to find a particularly rare herb, he would leave an offering of food under a pine tree and she would tell him the plant's location.

Granny Squannit has a similar reputation among the Mohegan, who say she rules the Makiawasug, the little people who dwell in the forest and under the hills. In one Mohegan tale, a medicine woman descends to an underground chamber to heal Granny Squannit from an illness. In thanks, the goddess gives the woman a basket of items to use in her healing practice.

So, in closing I'd say be respectful when you're walking on the beach or in the woods, because you never know if Squant is watching you.

I found most of this information in William Simmons' Spirit of the New England Tribes.