Satanic Imps, A Wizard and Grim Predictions in Easton, Massaschusetts

A while ago my friend Sam Baltrusis asked me if I knew anything about a haunted mill pond in Easton, Massachusetts. I did not – this legend was new to me. I am always excited to learn about a new local legend, so thank you Sam for pointing me towards this one. 

I did some research and found some interesting stories about the pond and the alleged wizard who used to live nearby. If you visit Mill Pond in Easton today, you will find the following sign:

 “Site of the the sawmill built by John Selee in the 18th century and continued by his son, Nathan, a wizard who purportedly used satanic imps to run the mill at night.”

William Seltzer Rice, "Mill on the Stanislaus," 1940

The sign was put up in 1999, and I appreciate that Easton’s Conservation Commission included the legend of Nathan Selee on it. Legends like this one are an interesting and important part of our local history and heritage. And who doesn't love a story about Satanic imps?

Nathan Selee was born in 1733, served as a private in the American Revolution, and died in 1815 at age 82. That’s what Vol. 103 of the Daughters of the American Revolution Lineage Book (1928) tells us. The Lineage Book doesn’t say anything about Selee’s alleged supernatural antics, though. For that, I turned to to William L. Chaffin’s History of the Town of Easton (1886), which says the following about the Selee sawmill:

Nathan Selee sawed lumber there late in the century; and strange stories were told, and even believed by superstitious people, about the Devil or his imps running the mill at night, Nathan Selee being reported as knowing too much about magic arts, and being on too good terms for awhile with their author. But sawing logs by water- power on cold nights seems rather uncongenial work for his Satanic Majesty; it would be more easy to credit his running a steam saw-mill, with a blazing furnace. It is wiser to acquit Mr. Selee of any such questionable partnership, and to think that the rolling and buzzing of wheel and saw, which the belated passers-by supposed they heard, were all in their own brains, and might easily be accounted for by the strength and quantity of hard cider or New England rum they had taken.

According to legend, witches were often given small demons (called familiars or imps) to help them with their work by the Devil, and male witches were often credited with being unnaturally industrious by their superstitious neighbors. These are of course only legends, and Chaffin is basically saying Nathan Selee's neighbors were just drunkards who mistook the routine sounds of the mill for something supernatural. 

This might be true, but it seems Nathan Selee definitely had a sorcerous reputation around Easton, because Chaffin includes another legend about him in his History:

Mr. Selee was a clairvoyant, and many stories are current of what he saw and foretold. He was in Stimson Williams's house on one occasion, and knowing his gifts in that direction, one of Mr. Williams's daughters asked him to tell her fortune, but he declined; and after leaving the house, he said to a man who came out with him that if she could see what the next week would bring her, she would not have asked to have her fortune told. She died the next week.

Spooky! That sounds like a classic legend to me. Despite supposedly having accurate psychic powers, though, Nathan Selee ultimately gave up on the magical arts. He didn't want to deal with the Devil. Again, from Chaffin’s History of the Town of Easton: 

The story is still believed also, that, having sought long for a certain book on magic which he thought would perfect him in the art, the door of his shop opened one day and a stranger handed him the book and vanished. Directly upon the departure of this strange visitant a wild storm began to rage; the winds howled, the lightnings flashed, the thunders roared, and destruction seemed to impend. Mr. Selee took the book and all other books of the kind that he possessed, and threw them into the fire; and then going to the door and looking out he saw the sun shining, and everything beautiful and peaceful. This determined him to have no more to do with the dangerous subject.

I'm not sure why folks in Easton thought Selee was a wizard. In the 1600s, people who were demanding and cantankerous were the ones often accused of witchcraft by their neighbors. I haven't found anything that indicates Selee was either of those things, but that may have still been the case. 

Happily, Nathan Selee was born after the witchcraft trials ended, because otherwise his sorcerous reputation could have led to his execution by hanging. Rather than a tragic tale, he's left a legacy of interesting legends and a nice sign alongside a peaceful pond. 

I wish I had learned about this story while I was writing my book Witches and Warlocks of Massachusetts, but maybe I can include it in a second edition? If you want to read lots of other stories about witches in the Bay State, you can find my book wherever you buy books online. 

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!