A Troll in Somerville, Massachusetts?

One great thing about writing this blog is that I get to read lots of musty old books to find strange information. Usually those books are from the 19th century - a golden age of weird New England folklore - but sometimes those old books might only be from the 1980s.

For example, while I was on vacation recently I found a copy of Arthur Myers's book The Ghostly Register, which was published in 1986. That was only thirty years ago, but that's a long time to some people, and The Ghostly Register definitely has some strange information in it.

For example, it contains an account of a house in Somerville, Massachusetts that was haunted by a troll. I have never seen this mentioned anywhere else and thought it was worth sharing. Here are the details.

A young woman named Karen bought a Victorian-era house outside of Somerville's Davis Square in 1983. She liked living there, but there were a few things that seemed a little odd. The basement often flooded, which was annoying, but Karen suspected that something else was going on.

She often felt uncomfortable near the back wall of her house, particularly on the second and third floors. She kept her spare clothing up on the third floor but got such weird vibes that she did not go up there at night. She had tried sleeping in the back bedroom on the second floor, but did so only briefly because she felt uncomfortable there as well. She felt that there was something in the room with her at night:

"I had," she says, "a feeling of a presence at night, of its being almost like an an animal, as though it had claws or wanted to bite me."

A few years after buying the house Karen took a roommate. The roommate slept in the third floor bedroom and experienced many strange occurrences. She set up her bed about six inches away from the back wall, but every morning when she awoke she found that it had been moved flush against the wall. Her clothes and shoes would appear in strange places around the house, and lights would turn themselves on and off.

A still from the movie Troll (1986)

The two women finally realized their house might be haunted and approached a Cambridge psychic for help. But when the psychic came to investigate they were surprised to learn that the problems were being caused not by a ghost, but by a troll. The psychic said:

"Sometimes ... what we think of as ghosts - human beings who have died - are instead what might be called noxious rays, earth energies that are blocked. I felt this troll was stuck there. We did a ritual releasing of him. What came to me was to send him to another plane, where his energies could be transformed into a more positive and fruitful existence."

The troll was apparently connected with an underground spring that ran under the house and that caused the basement flooding. When the house was built on top of the spring the troll became trapped and would send its energy up along the back wall of the house. Karen had always felt its presence in the house, but the troll increased its activity once the roommate moved in and started to sleep near that wall.

The night after the ritual Karen heard a small voice speaking. It was the troll, begging her to let him stay. She also saw an image of her mind of a very small furry creature with claws. She didn't relent and told the troll he needed to leave.

It did. The strange occurrences in the house stopped, as did the basement flooding.

I find this story fascinating. For one thing, Myers gives the names of everyone involved and the address of the troll-haunted house. I have probably walked by the house several times. Here are a few more random thoughts:

1. Somerville is very, very densely settled. It has very little green space, so it's surprising that a nature spirit would show up there. I guess nature is everywhere, though, isn't it?

2. Myers's book was released in 1986. He doesn't say when the troll exorcism happened. In 1986 the horror film Troll was also released, which is about a troll taking over an apartment building. It stars Noah Hathaway as a character called Harry Potter, Jr. and Julia Louis-Dreyfus in her pre-Seinfeld days.

3. I find it very interesting that the psychic's diagnosis was a troll-haunting and not a ghost. You don't often read about troll's haunting houses in New England. I guess she was right, though, since her ritual worked. But maybe paranormal phenomena are shaped by our expectation. If you think the weird activity in your house is caused by a ghost, you'll see a ghost. If you think it's caused by a troll, you'll see a troll. If you think it's aliens, you'll see aliens.

4. This doesn't necessarily mean that paranormal phenomena exist just in our heads, though. Some writers (like Jacques Vallee or Patrick Harpur) suggest that there are actually entities out there that take different forms based on our cultural expectations. Maybe they're spirits, maybe they're daimones, or maybe they're extra-dimensional tricksters who just want to have a laugh at our expense. They could also be something lurking deep inside our subconscious, but I don't think that rules out any of the other possibilities. I'm sure there's a troll or two hiding somewhere deep inside my mind!

More on the Haunted Mill, with a Cross-Dressing Canadian

Surprisingly, I just found another story about Somerville's haunted mill. But before I get to the legend, here's a very short relevant North American history lesson.

Way back in the early 1600s, the part of Canada now called Nova Scotia was colonized by the French, who named it Acadia. (The name is probably derived from Arcadia, with an "r", which was an idyllic wilderness region in ancient Greece.) These colonists, or Acadians, were the dominant social group in eastern Canada until the early 1700's, when Britain wrested control of the area from France.

Say goodbye to Acadia and hello to Somerville! Image from here.

At first the British tolerated the Acadians, but gradually becames suspicious of these French-speaking Catholics and in 1755 they deported thousands of Acadians. The exiles ended up all over the New World, including Louisiana (where they became the Cajuns) and Massachusetts.

What does this have to do with Somerville? Well, according to Edward Samuel and Henry Kimball's Somerville Past and Present (1897), in the mid-1700s a young Acadian woman was given to a Somerville farmer as a servant. He was a cruel master, so she decided to escape.

Hoping to avoid detection, she disguised herself as a man and ran from the farm. On her way out of town she sought refuge with a friendly mill owner, who said she could stay overnight in the mill's upstairs room.

Unfortunately for her, her cruel master discovered her escape and tracked her to the mill. He tricked the miller into unlocking the mill, and crept quietly through the darkness towards the ladder leading upstairs. But unfortunately (for him), he slipped in the darkness and fell off the ladder. He grabbed a rope to break his fall, the mill went into motion, and he was crushed by the millstone. His ghost now haunts the building.

There are some interesting parallels between this story and the version from last week. In both, a young woman is hiding upstairs, and is chased by an evil man who gets crushed and returns as a ghost. This version from Somerville Past and Present doesn't include any romance, but instead has cross-dressing and roots the story in a specific historic moment. It also doesn't mention the ghost swearing and appearing as a ball of blue sparks.

The two versions were written down within a year of each other, so I'm a little puzzled by the discrepancies. I guess the people of Somerville all agreed that the mill was haunted, they just didn't know why. The ghost is a given, but the reason is a mystery.

I found the reference about Somerville Past and Present in Richard Dorson's 1946 book Jonathan Draws the Longbow. And, in the interest of full disclosure, one of my ancestors was an Acadian deported to my Massachusetts in the 1700s!

Somerville's Haunted Mill

Tony and I went to a party in Somerville, MA last Friday. Why not stop by a haunted mill on the way?

The mill, which is better known as the powder house in Powder House Square near Tufts, was built in the early 1700's by one John Mallet. Mallet gave the mill to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1747, which used it to store gun powder. In 1774, British governor Thomas Gage confiscated the powder stored there so it wouldn't be used by the American rebels. Even later, the American army used the building to store their gun powder while they were laying siege to Boston.

It's a historic site, but where does the ghost fit in?



According to Charles Skinner in Myths and Legends of Our Own Land, before the Revolution the old mill was the spot where a poor young farmer used to secretly meet his beloved, who was the daughter of a wealthy man. He didn't want his daughter seeing a someone with no money, and became very suspicious of the amount of time she spent at the stone mill.

One moonless night, the wealthy man followed his daughter to the mill. Seeing that her secret was about to be discovered, the girl climbed the stairs up into the loft to hide until either her father left or her lover arrived. As she walked quietly through the pitch black room, she grabbed a rope to steady herself.



Big mistake! The rope set the mill's machinery in motion, and from the first floor she heard a grinding sound and a horrifying scream. Rushing down, she saw that her father's arm had been caught in a millstone and pulverized.

Her lover arrived, and they carried her father home where he received the best in 18th century medical care. Unfortunately his injuries were fatal, but before he died he gave his blessing to his daughter and the poor farmer. They got married several months later.

However...

Even though he gave his blessing while alive, his spirit didn't rest peacefully after death. According to the locals, his spirit haunted the mill on windy nights, cursing and swearing, and appearing as a ball of blue sparks. His ghost was, quite literally, cussing up a blue streak.



Tony and I didn't see any ghosts, but maybe we need to go back on a windy night.