The Glocester Ghoul: A Monster and A Pirate in Rhode Island

A while ago I was poking around on the Internet and saw articles about a monster called the Glocester Ghoul. I had never heard of this terrifying creature before, and of course wanted to find out more. This is what I learned...

The monster supposedly lurks in the woods and swamps of Glocester, Rhode Island, a small town in the northwestern part of the state. Here's a fun fact about Glocester. Its name used to be spelled "Gloucester," like the town in Massachusetts, but in 1806 its citizens decided to change the spelling to "Glocester" to avoid confusion with the Massachusetts port. The two towns are different in other ways, as well. Gloucester, MA is haunted by witches and sea-serpents. Glocester, RI, is haunted by a large scaly monster that roams through the woods: the Glocester Ghoul. 

Image from TeePublic 

One of the earliest accounts of the monster was an article that appeared in various newspapers (including The Boston Globe) in January and February of 1896. Titled "Monster, Cow, or Ghost?," the article claims a Glocester man named Neil Hopkins encountered a monster while walking home from work one night:

"It seemed to be all a-fire; it had a hot breath," Hopkins told his neighbors. "There was a metallic sound, like the clanking of steel against steel... I could hear the dead branches and twigs crackling under the heavy tramp."

Unfortunately Hopkins only caught a brief glimpse of the creature before it ran off into the woods, but he said "it was as big as an elephant, and that he is certain it had no tail." 

The article goes on to suggest the creature may have been the same one seen seen in 1839 by Albert Hicks and three other local men. They believed Captain Kidd had buried some of his treasure on a Glocester farm and were digging to find it, but their efforts were interrupted by the appearance of a monster. Hicks described the following:

"It was a large animal, with staring eyes as big as pewter bowls. The eyes looked like balls of fire. When it breathed as it went by flames came out of its mouth and nostrils... It was as big as a cow, with dark wings on each side like a bat's. It had spiral horns like a ram's, as big around as a stovepipe. Its feet were formed like a duck's... The body was covered with scales as big as clam shells, which made a rattling noise as the beast moved along..."

That's an impressive monster, even if it's only as big as a cow, and not an elephant, like Neil Hopkins said. It sounds like some kind of dragon, doesn't it? 

Beyond the scaly monster, there are a few other interesting things about this story:

1. Treasure-digging was a common activity in the 18th and 19th centuries. People thought New England was full of buried treasure, and would get together with friends to try to find it. They never seemed to succeed, though, often saying they had been on the verge of finding the gold only to be scared off by a monstrous guardian of some kind, like demonic dogs, sinister black cats, and maybe even the Devil himself. Digging for Captain Kidd's treasure and encountering a monster would have been a familiar theme to a 19th century newspaper's readers.

2. Albert Hicks, who was digging with his friends for pirate treasure, ironically later became one of the last people in the United States to be executed as a pirate. Hicks was born in 1820 in Foster, Rhode Island, and was executed in New York in 1860 after killing three men on a small boat to steal their money. He dictated a confessional biography before his execution. In it, he claimed to have killed dozens (if not hundreds) of people as a pirate and highway robber. Hicks had a reputation as a teller of tall tales, so he may have exaggerated his victim count. 

Drawing of Albert Hicks from an 1860 newspaper (via Wikipedia).

3. Despite being fond of tall tales, there's one thing not found in Hicks's biography, The Life, Trial, Confession and Execution of Albert Hicks, and that's a large scaly monster. Hicks does mention digging for treasure when he was young, but says nothing about encountering a monster. If he had encountered a monster I'm sure it would have been in there. So perhaps this story was created by someone else?

According to folklorist Stephen Olbrys Gencarella, the story was written by a reporter for a New York newspaper, The New York World, where it was published on January 12, 1896. That reporter based their story on an earlier one that had appeared in The Providence Journal on May 5, 1889, which was titled "Glocester Gold Digging." The Journal article contains various Glocester legends, including one about six men who went digging for Captain Kidd's treasure on November 13, 1833. One of the men was indeed Albert Hicks, and the six men saw a creature that looked exactly like the one in The New York World article. The big difference between the two articles are that the men also see a meteor strike the earth before they see the monster, and it is other men who describe the monster, not Albert Hicks. Hicks only played a minor role, but The New York World reporter probably played it up to capitalize on Hick's notoriety. 

One note about that meteor: the six men took the meteor as a good omen, and didn't seem to connect it with the appearance of the monster. 

The story about the Glocester monster appeared in various newspapers in 1896, but then more or less disappeared for over a century. The story reappeared on the blog Strange New England in 2019, where the monster was given the catchy name "The Glocester Ghoul." The name seems to have stuck, and I've seen the Glocester Ghoul mentioned a few places online. You can now even buy a Glocester Ghoul tee-shirt online:

From TeePublic

I feel like every state deserves a good monster, so hopefully knowledge of the Glocester Ghoul will spread. Is there really a large, scaly creature lurking in the woods and swamps of Glocester? Probably not, but I write that from the safety of my home on a sunny summer day. I might have a different opinion if I were out in the woods at night. I don't think anyone's allegedly seen the creature since the 1800s, but if you have drop a note in the comments. I'd be curious - and a little scared - to know more...

*****

I got a lot of my information from Stephen Olbrys Gencarella's article "Lovecraft and the Folklore of Glocester's Dark Swamp," which appeared in Lovecraft Annual, No. 16 (2022), pp. 90 -127. 

Treasure Digging, Terror and the Devil in Northfield, Massachusetts

Last week, I wrote about small cavemen on the Connecticut River. This week, more weird shenanigans on the same river!

In the 19th century, residents of Northfield, Massachusetts believed the notorious pirate Captain Kidd had buried his treasure on an island in the Connecticut River. This island, called Clarke's Island, was not particularly large, and no one could explain why Kidd would choose this location to bury his ill-gotten booty. 

Abner Field lived in Northfield at the time and was determined to unearth the treasure. He consulted with a "noted conjurer" who told him where to dig, and also told him the precautions he had to take. Because, you see, Captain Kidd had murdered one of his crew and buried his body next to the treasure. The dead man's ghost watched over the treasure and would defend it from anyone who dared disturb it. This was the reason no one in Northfield had tried to find the treasure before. 

The conjurer told Abner to take the following precautions:

1. He had to dig at midnight when the full moon was high overhead.

2. Abner couldn't dig alone. He needed two companions, because three is a magic number and three men were needed to find the treasure. 

3. The men needed to form a triangle as they dug. 

4. Abner and his companions couldn't speak until they opened the treasure chest and had the gold in their hands. Breaking this magical rule of silence would lead to disaster. Disaster!

On the next full moon, Abner and two friends rowed out to Clarke's Island and began to dig. It was hot work, but despite working up a good sweat the three men didn't speak. They were determined to get their hands on Captain Kidd's treasure. 

Finally, after digging for what seemed like hours, they heard their shovels hit something solid. They had found the hidden treasure chest. 

John Quidor, The Money Diggers (1832), Brooklyn Museum

In excitement, one of the men blurted out, "You've hit it!" He had broken the rule of silence, and the treasure chest immediately sank deeper down into the ground. A ghostly pirate suddenly appeared and flew at the men, terrifying them with its hideous undead countenance. Abner and his friends ran back to their rowboat. 

This was bad, but things got even worse. They heard a roar from the island, and saw the Devil himself running towards them at tremendous speed, cutting clear though a haystack in his eagerness to attack the interlopers. The Devil splashed into the river but Abner and his friends reached the other shore safely and ran off in fear. They had lost the treasure, but counted themselves lucky to keep their lives and their souls. 

For many years after, Abner would tell anyone who'd listen about how close he'd come to finding the buried treasure. Many people in town believed his story, but others said a local man named Oliver Smith and one of his friends had learned about Abner's midnight expedition and disguised themselves as the ghost and the Devil to prank the treasure diggers. 

Treasure digging was a very common activity in New England (and the the Northeast in general) in the late 18th and early 19th century. It was generally practiced in small, rural towns where people had few economic prospects. A Maine treasure digger told traveler Edward Augustus Kendall the following:

"We go on toiling like fools; digging the ground for the sake of a few potatoes, and neglecting the treasures that have been left behind by the those that have been before us! For myself, I confess it, to my mortification, that I have have been toiling all my life, to make a paltry living, and neglecting all the while, the means that have been long in my hands of making a sudden and boundless fortune." (Quoted in Alan Taylor, "The Early Republic's Supernatural Economy: Treasure Seeking in the American Northeast, 1780 - 1830," American Quarterly, Spring 1986, Vol. 38, No.1)

Sadly, very few people ever found anything. Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church, allegedly found golden tablets inscribed with the Book of Mormon, but certainly no one ever found a vast horde of pirate gold. 

Treasure digging (also called money digging or treasure seeking) was a common activity, and it was also a magical one. Many people learned where to dig through their dreams, and others used dowsing rods or looked into stones to locate the treasure. Treasure diggers would also consult magical specialists (often called seers or conjurers) who told tell them where to dig and what precautions to take. As historian Alan Taylor notes, the seers were often female, Black, or adolescent. In short, they were the marginalized members of early American society and therefore easily associated with a marginalized occult activity. 

Buried treasure was always said to be guarded by a spirit, usually the soul of a murdered pirate, but the guardian could appear in many different forms: a hideous ghost, a giant, soldiers on horseback, black cats. People also believed the buried treasure could move away from anyone trying to unearth it, and they tried to prevent his from happening by drawing magic circles or triangles on the ground around it. In the Northfield story, the three men need to stand in a triangular formation. Magic circles and triangles have deep roots in European ceremonial magic where they are used to contain dangerous spirits. 

Treasure diggers were almost always told to remain silent as they dug. The surest way to lose the treasure was to speak. Part of me wonders if people thought the guardian spirits couldn't hear them if they remained silent, but the rule of silence appears other places in New England folklore. For example, a spell cast with a magic bridle could be broken by speaking, and Vermonters remained silent as they gathered bittersweet root as protection against witches. 

I think treasure digging sounds like fun. I'd want to hang out in the woods with my friends doing something vaguely spooky at midnight! Unfortunately, I think a lot of people were motivated by bone crushing poverty, not a need for entrainment.  

One last thought on this story: it has what I call a "Scooby Doo" ending, where the supernatural occurrence is explained away as being caused by humans. It feels tacked on to me. Almost every treasure digging story ends in the same way: someone speaks, hideous apparitions appear, and everyone runs away. Most of them aren't explained away as a prank because the people who dug for treasure believed that ghosts, demons, and the Devil were quite real. It's easy for you and me to be skeptical, but if we were out on some island silently digging at midnight we might more easily become believers. 

Other than the Alan Taylor article, my main source was A History of the Town of Northfield, Massachusetts (1875) by J.H. Temple and George Sheldon. Also, special thanks to Mark E. for emailing me about treasure diggers and inspiring me to write this post. 

Special bonus fun fact: there is an area in Northfield called Satan's Kingdom. Extra bonus fun fact: there's also a park in Westwood with the same name. Massachusetts is great!

Chicken Blood and Steel Rods: Magic and Treasure in 18th Century Vermont

In the 18th and early 19th centuries many New Englanders believed the area was riddled with buried treasure. I've written about this a few times before, but basically people thought pirates, or sometimes Spanish explorers, had buried gold and silver all over New England. It was in fact a very common pastime for people to dig for treasure. All you needed was spare time and a shovel - and some magic.

Before you could dig for treasure you had to find it. Sometimes local legends provided the location where the treasure was buried. For example, that's the case with Dungeon Rock in Lynn, Massachusetts, which according to legend collapsed onto a pirate and his treasure during an earthquake and was subsequently the site of a famous attempt to unearth the buried booty. The treasure was never found.

However, if local legends were no help you'd need some magic to locate the treasure. Many people turned to dowsing rods for assistance. Traditionally dowsing rods were made from forked witch hazel branches, but in some cases they were made of various metals, sometimes expensively. They were most often used to find water but in theory could also find buried gold. Well, at least in theory.

If the dowsing rod wasn't working out you could always try following your dreams, and I mean that literally. There are many accounts of New Englanders dreaming about the location of buried treasure. For example, Silas Hamilton (1736 - 1816) of Whitingham, Vermont, kept a notebook where he recorded dozens of tips and stories he'd heard about buried treasure across New England. Many of them involved dreams:

... Mrs. Woodbury and her daughters have dreamed sundry times in a remarkable manner of money or  hid (sic) treasure in Brookfield on her husband's farm in Brookfield in the Bay State. 

Ebenezer Felton of New Salem dreamed of money hid.  

Mr. Lamb informs that Bezalel Pierce informs that his brother of South Hadley dreamed of a large quantity of money hid near Mount Tom on the West Side of the Connecticut River.  

Also Capt. Doneson dreamed of hid money on Fisher's Island on Mount Prospect near a rock not the bigness of a haycock. Said Prospect is on on the west end of the island. 

You get the idea. But still, learning where the treasure was hidden (or "hid" as Hamilton would say) was really just the start of the process. You still had to dig it up, which sounds easier than it was. Yes, New England soil is stony, but that's not why it was hard to get the treasure. It was hard because the treasure was almost always protected by supernatural guardians and magic spells.

Various legends tell of the eerie guardians that watch over the hidden gold. Giant ghosts on horseback, armies of black cats, devilish hounds, and undead pirates - these were just a sample of the demonic beings a treasure-digger might encounter. Certain magical precautions had to be taken to ward them off. Treasure-digging should only take place at midnight, for example, and strict silence must be observed by all participants. Some stories also claim the digging had to be doe within a protective circle drawn on the ground.

Breaking any of these rules would allow the demonic guardians to attack, but even worse it would make the treasure move. That's right - even after you found the treasure, it could still move to a new location. Many treasure-diggers claimed they had the hidden gold within reach, just a single shovelful of dirt away, only to see it disappear or sink deeper into the earth when someone spoke or made too much noise. Imagine their frustration. It's like being one number away from winning PowerBall. The whole process of finding the treasure had to begin all over again.

Silas Hamilton believed that he had a solution to this problem. It involved animal blood:

Take nine steel rods about ten or twelve inches in length, sharp or piked to pierce into the earth, and let them be besmeared with blood from a fresh hen mixed with hogging. The make two circles around  the hid (sic) treasure. One of the said circles a little larger in circumference than the hid treasure lays in the earth, the other circle some larger still, and as the hid treasure is wont to move to North or South or East or West place your rods as described on the other side of this leaf (page).

Silas Hamilton's illustration from Green Leaves from Whitingham

In essence, the rods created a cage around the treasure which prevented it from moving away. The circular formation is reminiscent of the magical circles that have been cast by ceremonial magicians for centuries.

Just a few words about Silas Hamilton. He was a wealthy landowner, and helped found Whitingham in the 1770s. He was an important and reputable person, yet he was writing about smearing steel rods with chicken blood to prevent buried treasure from moving around in the ground. I think it shows how prevalent and normal magic was in New England at  the time.

I don't think Silas Hamilton ever found any pirate gold, and I don't think many people ever did. That didn't stop them from trying, though. Treasure digging sounds like a fun activity to me. You got to run around late at night in the woods with your friends, hoping to get rich while simultaneously scared of encountering a ghost or some demonic animal. It sounds like a lot of the paranormal shows that are on TV right now, or even some weird legend trips I've been on myself. Perhaps finding the treasure wasn't really the point. No one ever got rich, but I'm sure people kept doing it because they wanted to hang out with their friends and have some spooky fun.

One closing thought. Whitingham, Vermont is a small town on the Massachusetts border, and one of its most famous residents was Brigham Young, the second leader of the Mormon Church. The Mormon Church was founded by Joseph Smith, who was also born in Vermont and later said he was led by an angel to unearth a book written on golden plates buried in a hill.

*****

I got the information about Silas Hamilton from Clark Jillson's 1894 book Green Leaves from Whitingham, Vermont: A History of the Town.

The Demon Dog and Ghostly Boy of Hell's Half Acre

For over one-hundred years people in Bristol, Vermont have said that South Mountain is haunted by ghosts. One ghost is a large dog; the other is a little boy. Although the ghosts are still said to haunt the  mountain (you can hear them on a quiet night if you listen) the explanation for how they got there has changed over time. 

The story of the ghosts begins way back in 1800. That was the year a Spanish man named DeGrau appeared in Bristol. DeGrau told anyone who would listen that as boy he had come to South Mountain with his father and a party of Spanish prospectors. They had found a rich vein of silver on the mountain and smelted in down into silver bars. And when DeGrau said rich vein he meant rich! They had more silver than they could carry out with them, so they buried the majority of it on the mountain. DeGrau's father and the others planned to come back at a future date to recover their treasure but they never did. 

An alternate version of the story claims that DeGrau was actually a Spanish pirate, and that he and his crew had been carrying their loot from the coast towards Canada when they were attacked by an Indian war-party. Most of the the pirates were killed in the battle but not before they buried their treasure. Only DeGrau had escaped alive.

And now poor DeGrau, whether vicious pirate or son of a prospector, decades later could not find the exact spot where the silver bars had been buried. The landscape had been altered by the earthquake of 1755. He dug around futilely on the mountainside for a while and then wandered off. He never returned but the rumor of the lost treasure remained. People in Bristol would sometimes try to find the treasure but like DeGrau never succeeded. They did find old mining implements which led them to think there was truth to the legend, as did the discovery of a Spanish doubloon.

Things changed in the middle of the 19th century when large group of Canadian prospectors arrived. Led by a man named Uncle Sim Corserer, this group was better organized and more determined than the dilettantes who had preceded them. For more than a decade they ran a serious mining operation on South Mountain. They dug multiple pits and tunnels into solid rock, determined to find the silver.

Corserer and his crew were guided by a spiritualist medium who told them where to dig. However, the medium also warned them that the treasure was guarded by two evil spirits. One of them was a savage dog, which the Spaniards had sacrificed near the treasure. Its ghost now wandered the mountain howling and threatening anyone who got close to finding the silver. The other ghost was a small boy, who also had been sacrificed to create a guardian spirit. He wandered the woods and slopes with a red-hot iron bar and bore the wound that ended his life: a bloody gash across his throat. 

Although some locals were skeptical the Canadian prospectors swore they had heard and seen these angry spirits. The area where they dug earned the nickname Hell's Half Acre and people began to avoid it, partially from fear of the ghosts but also because it was dangerous: the Canadians had excavated multiple half-hidden shafts and pits into which a person could easily plummet. Eventually Sim Corserer and his crew departed empty-handed. Maybe the ghosts had prevented them from finding the treasure? 

People say the ghosts still haunt Hell's Half Acre but the story about them has changed. According to the new story, many years ago a boy decided to explore the prospector's abandoned excavations on South Mountain. He brought his faithful dog with him. He never returned home and although his family searched for him they were unable to find any sign of their child or his canine companion.

Years later a hiker stumbled upon a dog's skeleton in the dense woods. It was lying next to a deep pit. At the bottom of the pit was the skeleton of a small boy. The hiker deduced that the boy had stumbled into one of the area's hidden pits and died. His faithful dog was unwilling to leave its master and stayed at the top of the pit until it too passed away.

It is said that if you listen on a quiet night you can hear the boy's cries and the howling of the spectral dog. Are they the tragic ghosts of recent legend or the more sinister demonic guardians the prospectors warned of? Either way, you explore Hell's Half Acre at great risk. The terrain is treacherous and riddled with pits and tunnels hidden in the undergrowth. You don't want to become the third ghost haunting the mountain.

*****

I got a lot of my information for this post from Joseph Citro's book Weird New England and also from online sources like this one. Treasure hunting was a popular pastime in 19th century New England and the area is full of legends similar to this one. See for example this legend from Ipswich, Massachusetts. Sim Corserer was not the only person who wasted years digging for treasure under the direction of a psychic. Hiram Marble did something similar in Lynn, Massachusetts and his tunnel still remains. 

Wild Men Invaded Connecticut in 1888

Things always feel a little weird when the days grow short. The circle of civilization contracts and the wilderness encroaches with the growing darkness. Who knows what might be lurking out there in the gloom? Wild animals, criminals, ghosts... or maybe even wild men. We don't hear too much about wild men these days, but they were a popular topic in the 19th century press.

For example, the January 4, 1888 issue of The Boston Daily Globe, ran this shocking headline:

Lonely Regions Infested by Wild Men Who Terrorize All.

Connecticut Now Overrun with These Weird Creatures, Who Scare Children, Fight Men and Scream All Night. 

Cow Hill Forests and the Man with the Bearskin

Mr. Dunham's Midnight Fight by the Light of A Lantern

That's a really long headline, but I would say an effective one, since it certainly drew me in. Tell me more, Boston Daily Globe!

The article describes a variety of "wild men" who were causing trouble in Connecticut. For example, in Willimantic, a "well-dressed, wild-man who was about 40 years old" ran down the street screaming "Chloroform!" After several citizens tackled him he said his name was John Mullin, that he had deserted from the Italian Navy, and that government officials were pursuing him with the intent of chloroforming him. He ultimately escaped his captors, screaming "Chloroform!" as he ran off.

Someone dressed as Bigfoot during a 2015 snowstorm in Boston. Photo from the New York Times. 

Much creepier was the wild man who terrorized women in Spofford, Connecticut. This particular wild man, who was was "very tall, garbed in funereal black," would silently sneak up on women, grope them, and then disappear into the darkness. This wild man stopped his molestations after one of his victims, a Mrs. William Brown, emitted an ear-piercing shriek and collapsed onto the ground in terror.

One of the wild men was not a man at all, but was actually a young girl who leapt out of the bushes at some hunters in a swamp near Madison. She laughed hysterically at them and the hunters fled in fear.

The fourth wild man the Globe mentions seems like the wildest, and by wildest I mean least connected to civilization.

At Cow hill, near Mystic, there is a wild man of the woods. He wears a big black bearskin, and he looks hideous. His other clothes are not worth much. He says not a word, but he glares with a wild, determined stare. He advances on a man who approaches his lair in the forest of Cow hill, glares straight in the man's eyes once and then runs...

A man named George Dunham encountered this wild man while chopping wood and struck him on the head three times with his axe handle. The wild man ran off into the woods.

Meanwhile, outside of Norwich, a brawny man with a red face would appear in the woods at night. Carrying a lantern, he would shout "Murder!" and then dig a hole in the ground with a shovel. When confronted by a group of locals he disappeared into the dark forest.

A similar wild man haunted Monet's Valley on Rhode Island's Block Island that winter. He too would dig a hole late at night accompanied by a lantern, and when people went to investigate he would vanish with his light, leaving only a hole behind. Block Islanders were of mixed opinion about their wild man, with some thinking he was just a treasure hunter and others that he was a ghost from either the shipwrecked Palatine or Captain Kidd's pirate crew.

Wow! There's a lot to digest in that article, starting with the concept of the wild man. Although wild men appear frequently in 19th century American newspapers, the wild man is a cultural archetype who has been with us since the beginning of Western civilization. In the Sumerian Gilgamesh epic a hairy wild man named Enkidu dwells outside the city walls and frees prey from hunters' traps. Ancient Greeks and Romans thought the woods were filled with half-human satyrs and fauns, while art from Medieval Europe depicts hairy, club-carrying men lurking in the forests. When you leave the boundaries of civilization you enter the wild man's domain.

It's interesting to see how broadly this Globe article applies the term wild man. The bearskin clad man and the young girl seem the most archetypal, the first wearing an animal skin and the second scaring hunters from their prey. They also both seem to live outside of any town in the woods and swamps. But some of the wild men discussed just behave outside cultural norms and don't actually live in the wilderness. The "chloroform!" man (who sounds mentally ill) and the sexual predator who wore black fit in that category. We would use other terms to describe them today, but in 1888 they fit in the catch-all category of wild man. 

I'm not sure what to make of the two nocturnal hole-diggers, and it sounds like people in 1888 weren't either. Heck, one of them might have been a pirate's ghost, but I suppose they were also living outside cultural norms. The Norwich digger was described as "brawny," and this is a description often applied to other wild men of the time. An 1879 wild man spotted in Truro, Massachusetts was powerfully built and shirtless, while Connecticut's Winsted wild man was large, muscular and capable of breaking iron chains. I guess all the fresh air is good for your health.

An image from the 1974 TV show Korg: 70,000 BC.

Our own modern version of the wild man is Bigfoot. He's large, he's hairy, he lives in the woods, and like the 1888 Connecticut wild men is very elusive. Some wild men described in 19th century newspapers are described as ape-like and actually sound similar to Bigfoot. For example, the Winsted wild man was described by some witnesses as looking like a gorilla, and many cryptozoologists consider this an early Bigfoot sighting.

Is the wild man human, or is he a monster? Were early reports really Bigfoot sightings, or were they some kind of hoax? It's hard to say, and personally I don't think the wild man can be pinned down so easily. It just goes against his wild nature. He'll continue to elude capture and haunt the spaces outside the boundaries of civilization. Just be careful when you go out walking in the woods at night!

Hannah Screecham and the Pirates' Treasure: She Was Evil But Loved Her Job

We still have a couple weeks until Labor Day, so I'm still in a Cape Cod state of mind. Here's a weird story about one of the more colorful characters in the Cape's history, Hannah Screecham.

Hannah lived on Grand Island off the coast of Barnstable back in the 1600s. Grand Island (aka Oyster Harbors) is now a very posh neighborhood, but three centuries ago it was desolate and windswept. Hannah Screecham lived there nearly alone - except for occasional visitors who came at night from the ocean.

You see, Hannah was in league with every pirate captain who traveled the New England coast. Smuggling, privateering and piracy were all huge parts of the local economy, and Hannah played a vital yet unsavory role in it. She helped the pirate captains bury their treasure. That might sound like honest hard work, but you've heard the saying "Dead men tell no tales?" That was Hannah's job. She was quite good at it, and was hired by many notorious pirates, including Captain Kidd.

It worked like this. Late at night, a pirate captain would row ashore to Grand Island with a chest of gold and only one other member of his crew. The crew member was always a very recent recruit. Hannah would meet the two men on shore, and lead them to a secluded spot on the island where they could bury their treasure. She would stand watch as the captain and his man dug a pit and lowered in the chest.

Then, once the treasure was put into the deep pit, she would push the unsuspecting crew member down into it as well. The sandy soil would collapse onto the injured (but still living) pirate and bury him alive. When the deed was done Hannah would issue forth a terrifying, shrill cry, which signaled to the waiting pirate ship that its captain was ready to come back aboard.

The pirate captains would pay Hannah with a small pouch of silver, or a pillaged ring, or even a token of their love. But secretly they feared her. She seemed to like her work a little too much. She relished pushing unsuspecting men to their deaths, and her shrill cry had a note of deep pleasure in it.

Eventually Hannah was done in by greed. She lived comfortably off the small payments the captains gave her, but wanted more. She knew where every treasure was buried, so why not take some gold for herself? One moonlit night she took her shovel and unearthed a particularly rich trove of gold. But as she opened the chest she saw pale figures gather above her around the mouth of the pit. They were the ghosts of the men she had killed! As she opened her mouth to plead for mercy a ghostly figure appeared inside the pit with her and wrapped its cold fingers around her neck. As Hannah gasped for breath the pit collapsed around her, burying her forever.

Hannah was just too evil to rest in peace, though. Her own ghost is still supposed to haunt Grand Island, and her trademark shriek can sometimes be heard echoing over the dunes. The treasures she helped hide still remain undiscovered.

That version of Hannah Screecham's story can be found in Elizabeth Reynard's 1934 book The Narrow Land. Another story about Hannah, which appears in a few other sources like Cheri Revai's Haunted Massachusetts, claims that she was not evil, but just an outcast old woman feared by her neighbors. When an outbreak of smallpox struck Barnstable they accused her of causing it through witchcraft and hanged her without a trial.

A group of pirates came ashore by night and cut down her body, burying it in an undisclosed location. When confronted by the townspeople the lead pirate, who was Captain Kidd himself, said that Hannah had been his mother. He had buried her body with his treasure so her spirit could guard it. The people of Barnstable searched many years for Kidd's gold but never were able to find it. Hannah's ghost haunts the dunes near Barnstable, shrieking like a gull.

Hannah was not the only notorious person named Screecham. She had a sister named Sarah, who was a witch. More about her next week!

Sam Bellamy, Maria Hallett, and the Wreck of the Pirate Ship Whydah

Tony and I were down on the Cape recently and finally visited the Pirate Museum in Provincetown. I've wanted to go for quite a few years and was glad to finally find the time.

The museum's exhibits are focused on the pirate ship Whydah (pronounced "widdah"), which sank off the coast of Wellfleet in 1717. The wreck was located by divers in 1982, and the artifacts they found, including gold coins, a cannon, and the ship's bell, are featured in the museum.

Here are some interesting facts I learned:

• Pirates used a primitive form of hand grenade when attacking ships.
• Venereal disease was common among pirates, but the cure - an injection of mercury directly into the bladder - was probably worse than the sickness.
• Pirates who had a limb amputated received an extra stipend of gold.

The Whydah was originally commissioned as a slave ship, and is named after the African coastal city of Ouidah. It was captured by notorious pirate Black Sam Bellamy while it was sailing in the Caribbean. Bellamy took the ship as his own, loaded it with approximately four tons of stolen gold, and headed north to Cape Cod. He never reached the Cape, but died with almost all his crew less than a mile off Wellfleet's Atlantic coast in an April storm. He was 28 and is believed to have been the wealthiest pirate in history.

There are quite a few legends associated with Sam Bellamy and the Whydah. The most enduring is about his love for a local Cape Cod girl named Maria Hallett. On Cape Cod he met and fell in love with Maria Hallett, who was young (only 15!) and beautiful. Her parents didn't approve of Sam - he was just a poor sailor - but one thing led to another and Maria became pregnant with Sam's child. Declaring his undying love for Maria, Sam set off for the Caribbean to make his fortune. He vowed to return a rich man.

Some stories say Sam intended to find sunken treasure in the Caribbean, but found his way into piracy instead. Maria, who was left at home on the Cape, was shunned by her family and neighbors. Premarital pregnancy was not uncommon in colonial New England, but it usually led to a speedy marriage. Maria didn't have that option. She bore her child alone and unmarried in a isolated hut in the woods.

There are many variations of the legend, but they fall into two broad types. In the first, Maria grows bitter. Really, really bitter. She's been shunned by her community and abandoned by the man who said he loved her. Alone and angry, she turns to the one person who always was available to the New England outcast - the Devil. In return for her soul, and possibly the life of her child, the Dark Man makes her a witch. When Maria learns that the Whydah is approaching Wellfleet she climbs onto one of the high dunes and raises a storm. The man who ruined her life is drowned, the Whydah sinks, and Maria dances in the wild wind and rain. The area where she cast her spell is now called the Lucifer Land, Satan's Harvest, or the Devil's Pasture in local folklore.

That's the grim, gloomy version. The slightly less grim version claims that Maria remained faithful to Sam, watching and waiting patiently for his return. On the night of the storm she watched from the dunes, hoping the Whydah would make it safely to shore. When it didn't, she lost her mind from grief and ran down to the beach. The next day she was found on the shore, screaming and wailing as she wandered through the wreckage and drowned corpses. Her ghost is still said to walk near Marconi Beach in Wellfleet, and her cries can be heard on dark stormy nights.

Tony scanning the Atlantic coast for pirates, ghosts, witches, etc.

 There's a lot of historical documentation on Sam Bellamy's life, but there's no documentation about Maria Hallett. Did she even exist? It's impossible to know, but Hallett is an old Cape Cod name so it's entirely likely. Records from the early 1700s can be a little spotty.

Legends and strange phenomena surrounded the Whydah even into the modern age. Barry Clifford, the explorer who found the Whydah in 1982, claims that the expedition was plagued by bad luck and strange mechanical malfunctions while it was searching for the wreck. The divers and crew once even heard a voice over their radio repeat the following words: "We want your boat... We want your boat..." The weird shenanigans stopped only after Clifford and his crew poured rum into the ocean and toasted the dead pirate crew. Shortly after making this offering to the dead they discovered the sunken ship and its treasure.

In 1998, the staff at a Wellfleet restaurant also reproted a strange encounter. One of their customers emerged from the restroom in a panic. He said he had seen a young woman in an old-fashioned dress, but that she had disappeared. The staff checked the restroom and found it unoccupied. The customer hastily signed his name of the credit card slip and ran out of the restaurant. His last name was Bellamy.

The story of Sam Bellamy and Maria Hallett can be found in many places, including Elizabeth Reynard's The Narrow Land and Mark Jasper's Haunted Cape Cod and the Islands. The stories about the modern ghosts are from the Houston Museum's website.

The Dover Demon

I've been blogging about "ye olde tyme foklore" for the past month, so I am shaking things up this week by posting about something a little more current (if you consider 1977 current). However, there's still a surprising "olde tyme" angle so neither you or I will go into complete withdrawal.

And besides, now that it's October, it's time for something even weirder and more uncanny than usual.

****

On the night of April 21, 1977, seventeen year old Bill Bartlett was driving two of his friends down Farm Road in their hometown of Dover. Dover, located about 15 miles from Boston, is one of the nicest suburbs in Massachusetts, with lots of woods, open fields, and old stone walls.

As he drove past one of those stone walls, so characteristic of charming New England towns, Bill saw something unusual in his headlights. At first his mind didn't quite register what it saw, but when it did he turned the car around and drove back to the wall.

He had seen something that looked like this: 

That drawing is the actual one Bill made that night. He claimed he saw a creature about the size of a baby, with long spindly limbs and fingers that wrapped round the rocks. Its eyes glowed bright orange in the car headlights. On the right hand side of the drawing Bill wrote "I, Bill Bartlett, swear on a stack of Bibles that I saw this creature." Bartlett, now a professional artist living in Needham, still believes he saw something strange that night, but he has never made another drawing or painting of the creature since.

The passengers in Bill's car didn't see the creature, but three other teenagers did. John Baxter, age 15, was walking home from his girlfriend's house around 12:30 am, about two hours after Bill Bartlett's encounter. As John neared the intersection of Miller Hill Road and Farm Road he saw a figure walking towards him. Thinking it was a friend, he called out, but the person didn't respond. John and the figure walked closer towards each other, and when John was about 25 feet away he realized there was something strange about the other person. The proportions didn't seem quite right. Was it even a person at all? Abruptly, the figure ran into the woods.

John ran after it. Was it a monkey? A small child? It stopped, perched on a rock near and staring at John. Its eyes glowed orange as it waited for John to draw closer. He didn't, but instead ran back to Farm Road. When he reached home he made this drawing of what he had seen:

The Dover Demon made one last appearance. The next night, eighteen year old Will Taintor and fifteen year old Abby Brabham were driving down Springdale Ave. in Dover when they saw something by the side of the road near a bridge. At first they thought they were looking at an ape, but something didn't seem right. Abby later said, "It had bright green eyes, and the eyes just glowed like they were just looking exactly at me."

Word soon spread around town, and articles appeared in the South Middlesex Sunday News, the Boston Globe, and the Boston Herald. Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman traveled to Dover to investigate, and christened the creature the Dover Demon. The name stuck. Thanks in part to its catchy name, the Dover Demon has become one of the most popular cryptozoological creatures in the world. It was even immortalized as an action figure.

Dover demon action figure. Image from Loren Coleman's wonderful Cryptomundo.

What was the Dover Demon? It might have been a UFOnaut, but no strange lights or saucers had been seen near Dover at the time. Someone thought it was a baby moose, but April isn't the right season for moose calves, and moose were quite rare in Massachusetts in 1977. Could it be an escaped monkey of some kind? But what type of monkey is hairless and has no mouth, nose or tail? An elaborate hoax devised by bored teenagers? Maybe, but many adults vouched for the witnesses' honesty. Given its enduring popularity, if the Demon was a hoax it obviously tapped something resonant for many people.

Maybe if the Dover Demon showed up again we could figure out what it was, but it never appeared again after that night - or at least not so obviously. One night in 1978 John Bartlett was in a parked car with his girlfriend when they heard something thump the side of their vehicle. They saw a small figure running into the woods, but couldn't see who (or what) it was. Was it the Demon? Possibly, or just a local kid pulling a prank. If it was the Demon, that was the last time it has been seen.

The Demon may have appeared before 1977, though. In a 2006 Boston Globe article, Mark Sennott of Sherborn told a reporter that he and some friends had seen something similar at Channing Pond near Springdale Avenue in 1972. The police investigated at the time but nothing came of it.

Farm Road has a history of unusual activity, as noted in Frank Smith's 1914 book Dover Farms: In Which Is Traced the Development of the Territory from the First Settlement in 1640 to 1900. Smith writes that "in the early times", a large rock on Farm Street was named after a man who had seen "his Satanic Majesty as he was riding on horseback in this secluded spot." The area was also rumored to be the site of buried treasure, and in the folklore of the time treasure was often guarded by a supernatural entity, like a ghost or demonic animal.

Satan. Buried treasure. Teenagers in cars. A weird alien creature crawling on a wall. There's no easy summary to this story. Maybe when those forces from the other side erupt through on a dark night, we see them in the shapes our culture determines for us, like a fallen angel galloping by on a black horse, or a spindly-limbed monster crawling over a stone wall. Are those forces extra-dimensional entities, demonic beings, or archetypal forces hiding in our own minds? I don't know, but I suspect if you go poking around in the woods after dark you might find out.

***

My main sources for this post were the previously mentioned Boston Globe article, this article by Christ Pittman, and Joseph Citro's Weird New England.

Dungeon Rock: Pirates, treasure, and spirits

Jason and Peter eye the entrance to Dungeon Rock.

Pirate treasure! Spirit guides! A mysterious cave! Dungeon Rock in Lynn has all this, and it's right off Route 1 outside of Boston.

The stairway goes down...

The Dungeon Rock story, which is recounted in many books, goes something like this: In 1658, a pirate ship was spotted off the coast of Lynn, Massachusetts. After it departed, one of the pirates, Thomas Veal, took up residence under an enormous rock in a wooded part of Lynn. A rumor spread that Veal had a large treasure with him, but it couldn't be substantiated before he was buried under the rock by an earthquake.

... but the tunnel goes down even deeper!

In 1852, a Spiritualist named Hiram Marble and his family came to Lynn, determined to find the pirate treasure under Dungeon Rock. Guided by spirits, Hiram and his son Edwin chiseled their way into the rock. And chiseled. And chiseled. They dug for 28 years, following the direction of their spirit guides. Hiram died in 1868, and Edwin followed him in 1880, but they never found the treasure.

In July 2008, Tony and I went with our friends Jason and James to explore Dungeon Rock. (If you decide to go, check with the park ranger first to make sure it will be open). Even though the day was insanely hot, and we brought inadequate flashlights ("Are you crazy?", Jason said when he saw our pathetic LED flashlights), the trip was great for 3 reasons:

Jason near the bottom, holding one of our inadequate flashlights.

1. It's easy to get inside Dungeon Rock. There are stairs, and the Marbles' tunnel is large enough to walk upright. But it did get wet and very slippery towards the bottom, so be careful!

2. There are no vermin. The tunnel is sealed with a large iron door at night, so you don't have to worry about raccoons or bats. We didn't even see any spiders. Hmm. Maybe that iron door is designed to keep something inside?

3. The tunnel is just freaky (in a good way). Although the temperature outside was above 90 degrees, the tunnel was so cold we could see our breath. New Enlgand doesn't have a lot of caves, so this may be normal. But as the man-made tunnel spiraled down and down into solid rock, I realized how weird Dungeon Rock is. The Marbles spent years of their lives creating a long dark path to nothing!

Me, dazzled by the flash. Or is it cave madness?

Hiram Marble was hoping to prove the validity of Spiritualism by finding the treasure. Some writers say his tunnel to nowhere proves that Spiritualism is invalid, but wouldn't the Marbles have to be guided by something to spend so many years chiseling away? Maybe they really were guided by spirits, but maybe the spirits wanted to have a good laugh.

You can find out more about Dungeon Rock and Lynn Woods here.