Black Agnes: Montpelier's Death-Cursed Statue

As I mentioned before, Tony and I recently traveled up to Montpelier, Vermont to see our old friend Brian. He showed us around Vermont's charming capital, and also showed us some of its spooky sights, including the infamous Black Agnes statue. 

When we reached Montpelier, Brian immediately took us on a tour of Green Mount Cemetery. He is a Montpelier native, and had a lot of gossip and stories about the different folks buried in Green Mount. For example, he showed us a funerary statue of a young girl called "Little Margaret." Little Margaret's family commissioned a local sculptor to carve the statue after she died (apparently of spinal meningitis), but refused to pay because one of the statue's shoes only had five buttons instead of six. The sculptor was about to apologize when he looked again at the photo of Little Margaret the family had given him to work from. One of her shoes was missing a button in the photo. The sculptor stormed back to Little Margaret's family, showed them the photo, and angrily collected his payment.  

Brian also told us that the road leading to Green Mount Cemetery has been the site of many deadly auto accidents. "When I was young, this road was routinely covered in human viscera," he said, morbidly joking. At least I hope he was joking. 

The Black Agnes statue

Towards the end of the tour, we reached the grave of John Erastus Hubbard (1847 - 1899), a wealthy Vermont businessman. Hubbard's grave features a spectacular bronze sculpture of a robed figure titled Thanatos. This statue is more popularly known as Black Agnes. 

According to legend, terrible luck comes to anyone who sits on Black Agnes's lap. Accounts differ as to what form the bad luck will take. Some say three unlucky things will occur to the person who sits on her lap, others say it will be an uncountable amount of bad luck. That doesn't sound good. Still another legend claims that anyone who sits on Black Agnes's lap will die within seven days, which is perhaps the worst luck of all. 

Many years ago, three teenage boys went to Green Mount Cemetery during a full moon. They dared each other to sit on the statue's lap. Not wanting to look cowardly, each boy took a turn sitting on Black Agnes. They all laughed. It was just a dumb statue, after all. Nothing to be afraid of. But within a week, one fell and broke his arm, one was in a serious car accident, and the third boy drowned while canoeing on the Winooski River. Some people said these misfortunes were just coincidences, but others said it was the curse of Black Agnes. 

Well, at least that's one legend. All the legends vary slightly, with some saying, for example, that you only suffer Black Agnes's wrath if you sit on her when the moon is full. Personally, I say why take the risk? Just don't sit on the statue, regardless of the moon phase. I don't recommend sitting or climbing on any cemetery statue. It is disrespectful to the dead, even if there isn't a death curse. 

Brian told us that the Black Agnes legend didn't exist when he was a kid, and that it must be relatively recent. That could very well be the case - new legends arise and old ones disappear all the time. There are in fact other allegedly cursed statues named Black Agnes around the United States. There is one in Washington, DC, which was originally a grave marker in Baltimore for a dead Civil War general in the Union Army named Felix Angus. It was apparently moved from Baltimore because too many fraternity and sorority pledges kept sitting on it as part of their rush process, daring each other to risk the death curse. It seems likely the Black Agnes legend traveled from the DC area to Montpelier, but I'm not sure how. 

Some folks, apparently in an attempt to debunk the Montpelier version of the legend, have pointed out that the statue is clearly of a male, so therefore the legend cannot be true. This argument doesn't hold up for me. It's 2023, and we all know that gender is a social construct. A statue of a male can easily be named Black Agnes. 

John Erastus Hubbard (1847 - 1899)

John Erastus Hubbard, upon whose grave Black Agnes sits, generated some controversy while he was alive. Hubbard came from a prominent Vermont family, and his wealthy aunt left a significant amount of money in her will to the city of Montpelier to build a library. Hubbard was unhappy about this, and managed to get his aunt's will overturned and inherit the money himself. Montpelier officials took him to court, and he eventually agreed to pay for the library. Upon his death, he left the majority of his fortune to Montpelier as well. However, this late generosity did not necessarily win him many fans among the city's citizens, some of whom noted that a terrible thunderstorm raged through Montpelier the night Hubbard died, which they took as an omen indicating the state of his soul. 

Old New England Cemetery Lore: Watch Your Step

This past Saturday was warm and sunny, and although I'm always happy to stay home with a pile of obscure books I decided to go for a walk. I went to one of my favorite places, Brookline's Old Burying Ground. 

It's a really charming cemetery, well-cared for with just the right amount of decay. Although it's only a few miles from downtown Boston it feels like a rural environment. A few notable folks are buried there, including Zabdiel Boylston, a local physician who inoculated people against smallpox in 1721. It was the first inoculation campaign in North America, and Boylston got the idea from Onesimus, a slave in the household of Cotton Mather, the (in)famous minister associated with the Salem witch trials.

Cotton Mather's stepmother, Anna Mather, is also buried in Old Burying Ground. Her husband Increase Mather (also associated with the Salem trials) is buried at Copp's Hill in Boston, but she outlived him by several years and was buried in Brookline in 1737. Her grave is marked by a beautiful and well-preserved stone. 

As I wandered through Old Burying Ground I thought about some old New England cemetery folklore I've been reading recently. Some of it is probably familiar. For example, if you feel a cold chill for no reason it's probably because someone has walked over the site of your future grave. I think that one is well-known. 

A related piece of lore says that you should never step on anyone's grave when you're in a cemetery. That makes sense to me. If the living get a chill from someone just walking over their future grave, think how annoyed the dead must be when you step on their actual grave. Unfortunately, sometimes this advice is hard to follow, particularly in old cemeteries. The graves are placed really closely together at Brookline's Old Burying Ground, and it is hard not to step on one. There are also lots of unmarked graves, so you're probably unintentionally walking on someone. I think the intent behind this piece of lore is what's really important: treat the dead with respect. 

Many years ago when I was a kid I went for a bike ride with my friend Bobby in a neighborhood cemetery. We were riding pretty fast and goofing around, and I started to worry that we weren't being respectful. I said, perhaps half-jokingly, that we shouldn't be too loud or we'd disturb the dead. 

Bobby laughed and said, "I'm not afraid of any dead people!"

As soon as he said that he skidded, fell off his bike, and scraped his knee up really badly. His pants were torn and there was a lot of blood. We both left the cemetery immediately and went home. We kind of laughed but were also a bit spooked. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but I've never forgotten it. 

Speaking of forgetting, according to another piece of old lore you shouldn't spend too much time reading gravestone inscriptions. This is bad news for me, since I really like to read old inscriptions. I'm not sure what constitutes too much time and hopefully I am under the limit. I can understand the sentiment, though, because when I read too many gravestones I do feel a little lightheaded from all the dates and names. It's like when I spend too much time on Instagram!

One final piece of advice: you shouldn't walk through a cemetery on your way to see friends. You run the risk of carrying death to their house if you do. Happily, I just went back home after visiting Old Burying Ground. It was a pleasant way to spend a sunny afternoon. 

I got this cemetery lore from Clifton Johnson's What They Say in New England (1896) and Fanny Bergen's Current Superstitions (1896).

Death's Head, Cherubs and Urns: Gravestone Art in Bradford Burial Ground

This past Saturday was cool and pleasant, and you could sense that fall is on the way. So why not get into the autumnal mood and visit a historic old cemetery? We decided to visit Bradford Burial Ground in Bradford, Massachusetts.

In 1665 settler John Heseltine gave land to the town of Bradford to be used for a church and a cemetery. The church is long gone, but the cemetery still remains and is now on the National Register of Historic Places. The oldest gravestone is from 1689, but it is believed that there are older burials in the cemetery along with multiple unmarked graves. The Burial Ground is sometimes called the Ancient Burial Ground, which is kind of a nice name.

Walking through the cemetery we noticed the three major motifs you see on old gravestones in Massachusetts: death's heads, cherubs, and willows and urns. Death's heads are the earliest motif of the three, appearing first in the 1600s. Cherubs appeared by the mid-1700s, while the willow-and-urn motif became popular later in that century. Some historians have argued that the evolution of New England funerary motifs arose from changes in New Englanders' religious views, with the death's head representing the grim Puritan world-view, the cherub a more humanistic approach to religion, and the willow-and-urn a more intellectual one. Others have claimed this is not true and that the motifs just changed with the fashions of the time. Specific motifs lasted longer in some towns than others due to the influence of local stone carvers, and there is quite often chronological overlap between the motifs in the same cemetery. 

DEATH'S HEADS

The Bradford Burial Ground has a nice assortment of stones engraved with death's heads. There's something morbid but also charming about these stones. Maybe because this motif is frequently used to illustrate books and on Halloween decor I've just gotten used to it. It also is one of those quintessentially New England things, like clam chowder made with cream or old white wooden churches. 

This stone is beautiful and very well-preserved. 

The flowers carved on the side borders contrast with the winged skull. 

This death's head is more abstract than the others and its wings are replaced with flowers.  The stone also has what looks like a typo: "Hear lyes buried...", but spelling was less circumscribed in the early 18th century. 

What looks like another abstract death's head, but without the typo. Is this  even supposed to be a skull or is it a face?

CHERUBS

In my mind cherubs are those cute little angels that appear on Valentine's Day cards and in Renaissance paintings. The cherubs in Bradford Burial Ground are definitely not cute. They're actually quite grim. Latin inscriptions (memento mori) appear on the cherub stones, but not on the earlier death's head stones. 

Similar to the cherubs are these carvings, which are sometimes called "portraits." They aren't supposed to actually look like the person buried under them, but are symbolic representations of a human. Like the cherubs they are somewhat grim and have the Latin "memento mori" under them. 

WILLOW AND URN

These stones are less morbid and grim than the earlier stones. They are more melancholy. The willow and urn were symbols of mourning from the ancient Mediterranean and appeared in New England as part of the Classical revival in art and architecture. 

A more ornate carving adorns this stone. 

Although they are more gracious, some of the willow-and-urn stones are inscribed with dire warnings to the living. For example, one stone has this carved on it;

Think blooming youth when this you see
Tho young yet you may die like me
Like you a rosy youth was I
Yet in my youth was called to die

Another stone tells us this:

Think, friends, when you these lines have read
How soon we're numbered with the dead
Our years are few and quickly fly
O friends remember you must die

Consider yourself warned. Carpe diem! 

AND THE REST...

Not every gravestone fits into one of those three categories (and maybe those portraits are really a fourth category). For example, some are just decorated with a floral motif: 

Others feature just a name but with no decoration at all, not even a death date. Were these the graves of paupers or people whose families couldn't afford more elaborate gravestones?

And this headstone features a finger pointing heavenward, letting us know where the grave's occupant has gone. This is a motif I've seen in a few other cemeteries in this area, but it's not as common as some of the others. 

I hope you had a great summer and are excited for the coming of autumn!

Colonel Buck and The WItch's Curse

I've read a lot of New England folklore in my time, and here's one thing I've learned: if a gravestone looks weird it will probably have a strange story attached to it. Is there a cage around the grave? The occupant must be a vampire. Is there a giant slab covering the entire grave? It must be there to keep the occupant down.

One of the area's most famous strange graves can be found in Bucksport, Maine. It is the grave of Colonel Jonathan Buck, who founded Bucksport in 1763. Buck was born in Woburn, Massachusetts in 1719 but grew up in Haverhill, Massachusetts (which coincidentally is my hometown). Buck attempted but failed to start a shipbuilding business in Haverhill and eventually headed north to Maine where he founded a settlement. Buck fought against the British in the Revolutionary War, and as he grew older the settlement was named after him. He died in 1795. In 1852 his descendants honored him with a larger, more impressive funerary monument.

Colonel Buck's monument, with boot stain. Edited from Wikimedia.

So here's the weird thing about Buck's large, impressive gravestone: it is marred by a strange stain in the shape of a boot. By the 1880s a rumor began to circulate that Buck had been cursed back when he was alive, and a story to that point appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper. The story was reprinted a few months later in The Haverhill Gazette on March 22, 1899:

Buck was a severe and Puritannical judge who once ordered the execution of a woman accused of witchcraft. The woman went to her death cursing Buck, who stood unmoved. At the moment of her death she allegedly shouted this prophecy: 

"Jonathan Buck, listen to these words, the last my tongue will utter. Is is the spirit of the one and only true living God which bids me speak them to you. You will die soon. Over your grave they will erect a stone, that all may know where your bones are crumbling into dust. But listen, upon that stone the imprint of my foot will appear, and for all time, long after you and your accursed race has vanished from this earth, will the people from far and near know that you murdered a woman." (Haverhill Gazette article quoted in Leslye Bannatyne's Halloween: An American Holiday, An American History.)

This is the most popular version of the tale, but several variations have appeared since then. In some, the witch says she will dance on Jonathan Buck's grave when he is dead (Lisa Rogak, Stones and Bones of New England, 2004). In others, the woman is not even a witch at all. For example, Joseph Citro cites one version in Cursed In New England (2004) that claims Buck impregnated a young Indian woman. To hide his infidelity he burned the young woman (and her unborn child) alive. As her corpse burned one her legs rolled out from the fire in accusation. The woman's mother, a shaman, cursed Buck for killing her daughter. 

An even more lurid version can be found in Oscar Morrill Heath's Composts of Tradition: A Book of Short Stories Dealing with Traditional Sex and Domestic Situations (1913). In this version, Colonel Buck has secretly had an illegitimate son with a young woman who is the town pariah. When he once again impregnates her against her will he accuses her of witchcraft. The citizens of Bucksport tie her to her house and light it on fire, but as the flaming body falls apart her son grabs one of her burning legs and strikes Buck with it. Yikes! Later, Colonel Buck paints an image of her leg on his own tomb using his blood before he dies.

Heath's version is pure fiction, but all of the other versions are probably fictional as well. There is no record of Jonathan Buck ever convicting a woman of witchcraft, either in Maine or Haverhill. New England's last witchcraft executions occurred in the 1692 Salem trials, many years before Buck was even born. There's also no evidence that he executed an illicit lover either.

But like the stain itself, the story of the vengeful witch endures to this day. It helps to explain the mysterious stain, which is perhaps caused by a vein of iron in the stone reacting with the atmosphere. It also attests to the power that the archetypal image of the witch holds over the local imagination. New Englanders know there were witches in this region, and we know they were executed by Puritans. Can you really fault someone for wanting to ascribe a strange phenomenon to a witch? New England is a weird and wonderful place, and stories like these try to explain why. 

Brookline's Old Burying Ground: Slaves, Smallpox, and Witch Trials

The other day I visited the Old Burying Ground in Brookline, Massachusetts. Brookline is a very well-maintained, genteel town right next to Boston, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Old Burying Ground is a little scruffy. When I was inside its gates I felt like I was transported to the past even though I was really only a few blocks from an MBTA stop. Goodbye home-brewing store and arthouse movie theater, hello crumbling gravestones and ancient oak trees!

Brookline was originally settled in the early 1600s as a hamlet of Boston called Muddy River (after the body of water that runs through it). By 1705 it became a separate town and took its current name (after two brooks that separated it from Boston). So in other words, Brookline is old, and although it is now a tasteful liberal suburb it does have some strange and unsavory things lurking in its past. The good old days weren't always that good...

For example, a sign inside the Old Burying Ground notes that eleven slaves are buried somewhere in the cemetery. Slavery was abolished in Massachusetts in 1782. I didn't see any indicators denoting where the slaves were buried. It's possible their graves are mixed in with the other graves, or perhaps were not even marked. That same sign that mentions the slaves also notes that many burials had been disturbed over the years as the cemetery became more and more crowded, so perhaps the actual locations of the slave burials have long since been lost. 

Edward Devotion's grave

I did find the grave of Edward Devotion, whose name has recently been connected with slavery in the local media. Devotion was an important person in the founding of Brookline and donated money and land upon his death for a town school. When the school was finally built (more than a century after his death) it was named the Edward Devotion School. The public school stands near Coolidge Corner and was attended by John F. Kennedy when he was a child.

This sound like an inspiring story of philanthropy, but people recently learned that Edward Devotion was a slave owner. An inventory of Devotion's estate upon his death included "one Negrow." So perhaps he isn't the best person to name a school after? On May 28, the Brookline town meeting voted to remove Devotion's name from the school. The school will be called the Coolidge Corner School until a new name is voted on. 

Anna Mather's grave

Near Devotion's gravestone I found the grave of Anna Mather, who died in 1734 at the age of 74. The name Mather may sound familiar if you've read anything about the Salem witch trials. Anna Mather was the second wife of Increase Mather, one of Boston's most prominent Boston Puritan ministers (and also a  president of Harvard University). When the Salem witch trials broke out the governor of Massachusetts turned to Increase for his opinion. He urged the magistrates to proceed with caution, but did not denounce the use of "spectral evidence" until much later in the trials. Spectral evidence were the dreams, visions and possible hallucinations that the magistrates used as evidence to convict defendants of witchcraft, even though no one could verify any of them. I think you can see why this might be problematic.

Increase Mather eventually did denounce spectral evidence, writing "It were better that Ten Suspected Witches should escape, than that one Innocent Person should be Condemned." He never denounced the trials themselves though, possibly because many of his friends and peers served as magistrates during them. After the trials ended his reputation was permanently damaged. He married Anna Mather in 1715, many years after the trials concluded.

Increase Mather's son Cotton Mather was also a prominent minister who was involved with the Salem witch trials. His 1689 account of several possessed Boston children, Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions, is believed to have set a precedent for the Salem trials that began three years later. Cotton was a strong supporter of the trials, and even wrote to Chief Justice William Stoughton to congratulate him on executing eleven people for witchcraft. Cotton is also infamous for urging the magistrates to execute Reverend George Burroughs for witchcraft even after Burroughs successfully said the Lord's Prayer, which it was believed a witch could not recite. Cotton's reputation suffered even more than his father's after the trials ended. 

However, he did a few good things, and one of them was to promote inoculation. Smallpox was greatly feared in early Boston and two epidemics swept through the city's crowded and unsanitary streets in 1690 and 1702. In 1721 another epidemic broke out. Inoculation was known in parts of the Old World, and Mather had learned about it from his slave Onesimus. Mather urged Boston physician Zabdiel Boylston to try inoculating Bostonians against smallpox. Boylston agreed, and of the 287 people he inoculated only six died. More than 800 people who were not inoculated died in that epidemic. 

The grave of Joshua Woodward

The grave of Mary Russell

Unfortunately inoculation did not become a widespread practice until many years later, and I found graves of two smallpox victims in Brookline's Old Burying Ground. One is for Joshua Woodward, who died from smallpox in 1776 at the age of 46. That is quite young, but not as young as poor Mary Russell, "the virtuous and amiable daughter of Capt. John and Mrs. Miriam Russell" who died from the disease in 1792 at the age of 14 "to the inexpressible grief of her friends."

I like reading about the past, and really love visiting old graveyards. But I am quite happy to live in the present. Our country does face some significant problems these days, but happily we don't have slavery, witch trials, or smallpox epidemics. Let's keep those things buried in the past.

Tales from Granary Burying Ground: James Otis and the Lightning Bolt

I love the term "burying ground," don't you? There's something very raw and primitive about it, but at the same time it's kind of charming because no one really uses the term anymore. Modern people inter their dead in cemeteries, not in burying grounds or even graveyards. I can understand why. Cemetery is a more gracious sounding word that masks what happens to the deceased, while burying ground is quite blunt. Yup, this is where we bury them.

The Granary Burying Ground on Tremont Street is one of Boston's oldest cemeteries. It was originally founded in 1660, and got its current name in 1737 from a granary that stood next to it. In the 1830s some Bostonians tried to rename it to Franklin Cemetery, after Benjamin Franklin's family who are buried inside the graveyard. The name didn't catch on, though, and we still know it by it's older, blunter, primitive name.

Many famous people have their final resting places within the Granary Burying Ground: patriots, Puritans, mariners, politicians and poets. Some of them, like lawyer James Otis, have strange stories surrounding their lives and deaths.

James Otis's grave on a stormy evening.

James Otis (b. 1725, d. 1783) is probably best known for coining the phrase "Taxation without representation is tyranny." It's a phrase many children learn in school while studying the American Revolution. Otis uttered those words during a five-hour (!) speech he made arguing against the "writs of assistance," which were laws that allowed British troops to search any colonist's home without needing a search warrant or even probable cause. Naturally the writs were extremely unpopular in Massachusetts. Otis lost his case agains the writs of assistance but parts of his epic speech were reprinted as a pamphlet and helped rouse ant-British feeling in the colonies.

Surprisingly, Otis had originally been pro-British. He came from a prominent Loyalist family, but he joined the revolutionary cause when his father was denied a promised appointment as Chief Justice of Massachusetts. Perhaps his abrupt transition from Loyalist to Revolutionary helps explain why the British troops despised him so much. In 1769 he got into an argument with several British officers in a coffeehouse. The fight turned physical, and one of the officers struck Otis on the head with a cudgel.

Here comes the strange part of the story. After the attack Otis's mental capacities declined precipitously and he was unable to work further as a lawyer. Some sources say his mental decline began before the fight, while others claim the blow to his head caused it. Whatever the cause, Otis left the Boston area to live at a friend's home in Andover. His sister came to visit often, and whenever she did Otis told her that he wished God would take him from this world with a lightning bolt. I guess he wanted death his to be fast, painless, and just a little dramatic.

James Otis

He got his wish on May 23, 1783. While standing outside the Andover house with some family members, Otis was struck by a bolt of lightning. He died instantly. No one else was injured, and Otis’s body was not burned or damaged in any visible way. Witnesses say the corpse had an expression of calm repose.

Did God hear his wish? Was it just luck? It's hard to say. In Ancient Greece it was considered a holy act to die by lightning, and Otis's contemporaries in Massachusetts seemed to feel the same way. Many years later, in the 19th century, workers who opened his grave discovered the roots of a mighty elm tree growing from his skull. This too was taken as a good omen, as his brain "had been transformed into branch and leaf and blossom, thus breathing itself forth again into the free air and the Universal Flow.”

The elm tree is long gone but you can still visit Otis's grave, which is prominently located in the front of the burying ground near Tremont Street.

The Ghost of Midnight Mary

I was recently in New Haven, Connecticut for a work conference. I was excited not only to attend the conference, but also for the chance to visit the infamous grave of Midnight Mary. It's located in the Evergreen Cemetery, a large Victorian-era burying ground. Even if Mary's grave weren't in it this would be a cemetery worth visiting.

The grounds are filled with mournful angels and many statues of weeping women. Most are in good shape, but a few of them are worn down from the weather. The second one is kind of creepy looking.

Evergreen also features a lot of obelisks, which are pretty dramatic-looking, particularly when they are all grouped together like this.

I think Evergreen is still an active cemetery, and there are some interesting modern monuments as well. I like this giant cube!

And here's someone who went for an old-school New England style headstone. The winged skull was long out of style when this person died, and the monument seems to be relatively new. Still, I admire someone who appreciates a classic look.

Midnight Mary's grave is at the back of the cemetery near Winthrop Ave, and is noted on the Evergreen Cemetery map as "resident ghost." It's good to know that the management acknowledges Mary's local importance. Her monument was erected in 1872, but looks newer because it was refinished in the early 1970s. The management of Evergreen Cemetery thought it was looking a little tarnished and asked a local monument maker to give it some touch ups.

There are many creepy legends about Midnight Mary (aka Mary Hart), and they are all inspired by her strange epitaph:

THE PEOPLE SHALL BE TROUBLED AT MIDNIGHT AND PASS AWAY

At high noon

Just from, and about to renew

Her daily work, in her full strength of body and mind

Mary E. Hart

Having fallen prostrate:

Remained unconscious, until she died at midnight,

October 15, 1872

Born December 16, 1824

The ominous quote at the top "The people shall be troubled etc." comes from the Book of Job. The rest of it is equally ominous but a little mysterious. What does it all mean?

The exact facts of her death are not clear, so speculation abounds. According to one legend, after Mary's death on October 15 her family had her buried in Evergreen Cemetery. That night one her aunts had a nightmare that Mary was still alive in her grave. Unable to shake her bad feeling, she had Mary's coffin unearthed. When it was opened the aunt was horrified to see that Mary had scraped at the coffin lid. Mary's face was contorted with pain, and it was clear that she had died from asphyxiation. You see, Mary had not actually died on October 15, but had merely fallen into a deep cataleptic state that made her seem dead. When her aunt finally reburied Mary she erected the ominous monument as a warning to others.

Many legends claim that Mary was a witch, and that she either rises at midnight to punish anyone who is near her grave, or that anyone who strikes her gravestone will die at midnight. For example, it is said that three teenagers came to her grave one night and struck her stone. Seven years later, one of them was found dead with his throat ripped out. The murderer was never caught. Seven years after that, the second teenager died the same unexplainable death. Finally, twenty-one years after striking Mary's grave, the final teen (now middle-aged) was found dead the same way.

Another story claims that one night three sailors came to Mary's grave to see if she would rise at midnight. Just before midnight they heard something rustling nearby. Was it a bird? A rat? Mary's vengeful ghost? Not wanting to find out, the sailors ran towards the cemetery fence and tried to climb over, but they all slipped and became impaled on the iron spikes. They were found dead the next morning.

As you can see, most of the Midnight Mary stories have the same ending: people end up dead. According to David Phillips's book Legendary Connecticut, the most popular legend claims that two men went to Mary's grave to see if she would rise at midnight. Man #1 lost his nerve and left the cemetery, but Man #2 stayed to see if Mary would emerge from her grave. When he didn't show up the next morning Man #1 went back into the cemetery to find him. And find him he did - dead, with his face frozen in a terrified expression and his pants caught on a thorny bush. Apparently Man #2 had tried to leave the cemetery but died of fright when he got stuck on the bush. He thought Mary had grabbed him in the dark and his heart gave out. The lesson is clear: even if Mary's ghost is not real, her legend is scary enough to kill people.

The famous anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski is also buried in Evergreen Cemetery, and since I studied anthropology in college I visited his grave as well. Malinowski would have approached Mary's legend with a cool, analytical eye, wondering what social function her legend serves.

Would he have been spooked by the gathering thunderclouds? Would he have felt a little unnerved at being the only person in a large, ostensibly haunted cemetery? What would he make of the flocks of cawing crows that were in the trees?

I don't know what Malinowski would have felt, but by the end of my visit to Evergreen Cemetery I was definitely feeling a little creeped out. I'm happy I went, but I wouldn't want to be stuck there after dark.

Note: I originally posted about Midnight Mary back in 2010, but thought it was worth revisiting the topic since I actually had a chance to visit her grave!

The Witch's Grave of York Maine: Is The Story True?

A while ago someone who reads this blog asked me to post about an alleged witch's grave in York, Maine. What a great idea! I love old graveyards, and I love New England witches. So here's a post that brings those two great tastes together like a Reese's peanut butter cup of the uncanny.

When I was a kid my family went to York, Maine a few times for vacations. I remember going to the beach, and visiting the zoo there. When I was a kid I think it was called York Wild Animal Farm, but these days it's York's Wild Kingdom.

As far as I know, we did not visit the Old Burying Ground, which is located in charming and historic York Village. It's too bad, because as with most charming cemeteries around here it has a weird legend is attached to it. I probably would have enjoyed hearing it.

The legend is about the grave of Mary Nasson, who who passed away in 1774. Her gravestone is a little different than the others. It has a portrait of Mary on it, and is covered with a big stone slab.

Photo from The Journal Inquirer.

A plaque on the cemetery wall indicates that the stone slab was put there by her family to prevent animals from digging around in Mary's grave. Local folklore gives another explanation: it was put there to keep Mary, who was a witch, from rising from the dead.

I think the stone succeeded in keeping the animals away, but it hasn't kept Mary's ghost from coming up to the surface. According to Joseph Citro's Weird New England, her ghost has reportedly been seen pushing local children on swings and giving them wildflowers. Hmmm. For a witch's ghost she doesn't seem particularly menacing. Online I've found quite a few sites claiming that Mary Nasson only acquired her witchy reputation because she was an effective herbalist. Her neighbors didn't understand how her cures worked and therefore thought they were magic. Oh, and maybe she could perform exorcisms...

Image from Atlas Obscura

Those stories indicate that Mary was basically a good person, and if she was a witch she only practiced white magic. Other, creepier stories say Mary was executed for witchcraft and that her gravestone emanates a strange heat. The crows that flock around the cemetery are said to be her familiars. Spooky!

So, was Mary Nasson a good witch, or a bad witch, or just someone who has an unusual gravestone? Are any of these legends true?

I don't know if they are true, but they definitely are old. I thought they might just be recent urban folklore but found they date back to at least the 19th century. I found this passage in ‪1894's Ancient City of Gorgeana and Modern Town of York (Maine) from Its Earliest Settlement‬: ‪Also Its Beaches and Summer Resorts‬ by George Alexander Emery:

Near the southwest corner of the old burying-ground is a grave, with head and foot stones, between which and lying on the grave is a large flat rock, as large as the grave itself. The inscription reads thus: - "Mary Nasson, wife of Samuel Nasson, died August 28, 1774, aged 29 years." No one, at least in this town, seems to know anything about her origin, death or even of the singular looking grave. No other occupant of a grave bearing this cognomen can be found in this cemetery, and the name is unknown in the town. A great many surmises and conjectures have been advanced in regard to this matter, in order to arrive at the facts, if there be any, and to clear up the dark affair, but nothing definite has ever come out of the effort. The writer of this, when a youth, living in York, was given to understand that this stone was placed there to keep down a witch that was buried beneath it.

In short, no one knows the real, historically-documented truth about Mary Nasson. Although George Alexander Emery doesn't believe Mary Nasson was a witch, he adds fuel to the fire by providing yet another legend. According to this one, a disembodied evil spirit used to haunt some rooms in an old house near the cemetery. It was banished from the house, but now roams the cemetery's perimeter, waiting for Mary to arise from her grave and join it.

I don't like to debunk legends; I like to savor them, so I'll just close with a couple thoughts. First, anomalous gravestones often attract legends. Rightly or wrongly, people tend to think that strange graves must contain strange occupants. 

Second, the idea is very old that special effort is required to restrain a restless spirit. For example, in old European vampire lore a stake to the heart literally nails a vampire into its grave. Closer to home, Eunice Cole, an accused witch of Hampton, New Hampshire, was supposedly staked through the heart after death and had a horseshoe placed on top of her. It's not unreasonable (in folk belief) to think that a big rock might keep a ghost from coming out of the grave.

One last note: I am now writing a bi-monthly column for Spare Change News called Bizarre Boston. If you live or work in Boston be sure to buy an issue and help the city's homeless community. You can see one of my columns (about a Boston smallpox epidemic) here.