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. 

Bottomless Ponds of New England: Monsters, Witches, and Dead Horses

I read a lot of books about local legends and folklore, and have discovered some weird things. I recently learned there are several bottomless lakes and ponds here in New England. Yes, you read that correctly. There are several bodies of water here that are immeasurably deep. And some have monsters in them...

One of these bottomless bodies of water is Hall's Pond in Brookline. Hall's Pond is located just off Beacon Street, one of the Boston area's busiest thoroughfares, and you can even take the Green Line trolley to it. Very convenient!

The pond is now part of Amory Park, and there is a nice boardwalk that leads you around it. The last time I visited it was teeming with fish, turtles, and birds. Hall's Pond used to be much larger and swampier, and is actually the remains of an ancient cedar swamp. The soil is quite peaty, and creates an oily sheen on the water. 

Hall's Pond in Brookline

The January 28, 1902 proceedings of the Brookline Historical Society, include the following information about the development of Amory Park:

The town's purchase was about eight acres, which includes a part of Hall's Pond, the dreaded hole and terror of youngsters, which was believed to be bottomless.

The 1954 - 1955 proceedings of the Society include the following reminiscence from one Mrs. Luquer:

The story goes that, in my childhood, one dark night, a man with his horse and buggy went down what he thought was Essex Street straight down to Beacon Street right down into Hall's Pond where there was quicksand and he was never seen again. I remember I often skated on the Pond and always wondered whether I was over the horse and buggy.

It's a grim story, but not as terrifying as the stories told about Dublin Lake in Dublin, New Hampshire. According to a July 26, 2017 issue of the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, in the early 20th century people thought the lake was bottomless. More contemporary legends say it is the home of hideous monsters who live in underwater caves:

Lore surrounding the lake monster dates back to the 1980s, when a free-diver allegedly went missing after a routine dive. The diver was found a number of days later, naked and incoherently babbling about monsters. 

Another version of the story states a diver was using a diving bell when exploring the lake’s bottom, but the tether was not long enough as he descended. 

After heading down deeper to find the caverns, the diver disappeared. A group of hikers found the diver in the woods naked days later, with the diver once again was babbling about monsters. ("The search for the Dublin Lake Monster," Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, July 26, 2017)

I think the whole "naked diver babbling insanely about monsters" is pretty creepy. Perhaps those monsters are from another planet, because another legend claims there is a spaceship or UFO at the bottom of the lake. 

Dinglehole, a small pond in Millis, Massachusetts, is also believed to be bottomless. Much like Hall's Pond, Dinglehole was once larger and swampier. In the 18th and 19th century, legends said it was haunted by a headless ghost who misled travelers. People also heard the ringing of a mysterious bell near the pond, giving it the name Dinglehole. (The bell went "dingle dingle dingle.")

Hall's Pond in Brookline

A headless ghost and mysterious bell are bad enough, but the the Devil and his witches would gather near Dinglehole to celebrate the Witches Sabbath. The witches arrived in the shape of weasels, raccoons, and other small woodland animals. 

One evening, a local hunter was walking home when he noticed a large raccoon watching him from a tree. Unable to resist such an easy target, the hunter shot the raccoon and hit it squarely in the chest. Nothing happened to the raccoon. It sat there unharmed. Did the hunter notice a slight smirk on its face? He fired several more shots, each time hitting the raccoon, which continued to ignore the bullets.

Finally, it dawned on the hunter that this was no ordinary animal. He plucked a branch from a nearby witch hazel shrub, a plant known for its magical powers, and fired it from his rifle like a small harpoon. It hit the raccoon in the face. The animal then vanished. Several days later, the hunter learned that Murky Mullen, a local woman suspected of witchcraft, had an unexplained injury on her face. Clearly, she (or her spirit) had been wandering the woods in the shape of a raccoon. (That story appears in Ephraim Orcutt Jameson and George James La Croix's 1886 book The History of Medway, Mass. 1713-1885.)

Hall's Pond, Dublin Lake and Dinglehole are just three bottomless bodies of water I learned about while researching other things. I assume there are probably others out there in New England. Of course, modern science says a bottomless pond or lake is an impossibility. After all, the center of our planet is hot and molten. If a lake reached all the way down to Earth's molten core it would probably be some kind of volcano, not a nice body of water you can swim in or skate on. 

I suspect the idea of a bottomless lake reflects an older view of the world, one in which the universe was filled with water. We now know that our planet is a sphere floating in the void of outer space. Many earlier civilizations believed the world was a flat disc that floated in an infinite abyss of water. For example, in the Babylonian creation myth, the only two beings that exist at the beginning of time are Apsu, the primal god of fresh water, and Tiamat, the dragon goddess of the sea. There is no land. It only appears after Apsu and Tiamat are slain and the god Marduk divides the waters using Tiamat's corpse. 

A similar situation is seen in the Biblical Book of Genesis, where God separates the waters from the waters during the creation of the world. There is water above the world, and water below the world.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

So in a traditional Biblical view, the world looks something like this:

The Earth is surrounded by water, both above and below. This is alluded to in the Flood story, where not only are the "windows of heaven" opened to make it rain, but "all the fountains of the great deep broken up" as well. God is letting all the primal waters back in, returning the world to its primal state of chaos. 

I think local legends about bottomless bodies of water might reflect this older cosmology, even if accidentally. The ponds and lakes in these stories are not only immeasurably deep, but they are also associated with terrifying things. Dead men and dead horses, lost in the middle of the night. Monsters so hideous they cause insanity. Witches, ghosts, and even the Devil himself. The forces of chaos are lurking just below the surface, ready to drag the unwary down into the fathomless waters. These things are probably just lurking in our subconscious, not in the water, but I'd still be careful. You don't want to wander too far from shore and get in over your head. Who knows what you might find there?

*****

I wanted to give you an update on my new book, Witches and Warlocks of Massachusetts. I got my author's copies the other day, and they look great. I'm really excited for people to read this one. 

It's currently available for pre-order on Bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million, Amazon, and most other places you buy books. It will be available on September 1, just in time for the fall and spooky season. 

Cursed Movie Filmed in Abandoned Insane Asylum

A new X-Men movie is being released this week. The New Mutants comes out on the 28th, and is notable for two reasons. First, it's actually being released in theaters, so if you dare to to the movies you can see it on the big screen. Second, it was filmed in Massachusetts in 2017, but its release was delayed for several years. The director has hinted that the movie is "cursed."

The New Mutants tells the tale of five young folks who are imprisoned in a spooky hospital because their mutant powers are considered dangerous. Much of the movie was shot at Medfield State Hospital, an abandoned 100-year old insane asylum in Medfield. It sounds like an appropriately spooky setting.

Medfield State Hospital. Photo by Ghostfacesouthshore on Wikipedia.

The movie was originally supposed to be released in 2018, but was delayed due to studio mergers and conflicting opinion's over the final tone of the film. The director, Josh Boone, has suggested the movie is cursed and that perhaps filming at Medfield State caused it.

It was during the press push for the first trailer that Boone first spoke of “weird” things happening to crew members at Medfield State Hospital during filming. 

“Literally every single person on my crew — all my grips — all those people had weird things happen to them while they were there,” Boone told IGN of the abandoned state hospital, which also served as a filming location for “Shutter Island” in 2009. “I even told the behind-the-scenes crew to go interview everyone who had weird stuff happen to them for an extra on the Blu-ray.” (from Boston.com, "The story of ‘The New Mutants,’ the ‘cursed’ Marvel movie filmed in Mass.")

I was of course intrigued by the idea of a haunted insane asylum nearby, so I did a little research. Here's what I found. Medfield State Hospital opened in 1896 and was composed of dozens of buildings spread out over 900 acres of land. The hospital was designed on a "cottage plan," with many small buildings intended to create a homey atmosphere. It closed in 2003, and is now open to the public as a park. You can walk on the grounds (it looks like a college campus) but can't enter any of the buildings for safety reasons.

Here's what I didn't find: any stories about ghosts, hauntings, or a curse. I was a little surprised, given it's an abandoned insane asylum, but most visitors say Medfield State is very peaceful.
The citizens of Medfield really seem to enjoy the park-like atmosphere, and several articles I've read online have recommended visiting. 

The cast of The New Mutants

There are probably a few reasons why no spooky stories are attached to Medfield State. It's hard to think of a place as scary when people are walking dogs, playing frisbee, and having picnics there. By opening it up to the public the town has effectively made it wholesome and inherently unspooky. Fencing it off and putting up "No Trespassing" signs would have done the opposite.

Also, the hospital only closed in 2003, which isn't that long ago. It's probably not long enough for any really good local legends to arise or gain traction. Maybe they'll show up in a few years.

It's quite possible The New Mutants will kick off some new legends. Maybe locals will say, "Oooh! Medfield State is so creepy. I heard they filmed a movie there and it was cursed!" It certainly sounds like the start of a good urban legend, doesn't it? The only problem is that you have to buy the Blu-ray to learn about the creepy stuff. Hopefully someone at Marvel will release those interviews on YouTube or another format so the legend can spread. 

Paging Dr. Freudstein: Burials Inside Old Houses?

Have you ever seen a horror movie called The House by the Cemetery (aka Zombie Hell House)? It's from 1981, and although it was directed by infamous Italian goremeister Lucio Fulci much of it was actually filmed in Concord and Scituate, Massachusetts.

One British reviewer called it "hackwork of almost awesome incoherence." The story, such as it is, involves researcher Norman Boyle and his wife Lucy moving with their son Bob from New York City to a spooky New England mansion. Norman's boss had previously lived in the house - that is, until he killed his girlfriend and then committed suicide under strange circumstances. For some reason Norman thinks it will be the perfect location to write a book about old houses.

The Boyles move into the house, aided by a local realtor who neglects to tell them that the old house has been the site of many, many multiple murders in the past. But why let some inconvenient history get in the way of a good commission? The house of course is also located next to an old spooky cemetery.

This is actually the Ellis Estate in Scituate, Massachusetts.

Italian horror movies from the 1980s are famous for their almost nonexistent plots, and House by the Cemetery certainly fits that mold. Norman researches the old house. Lucy realizes the door to the cellar is nailed shut. A mysterious babysitter that no one asked for arrives and starts to care for Bob. Everyone hears weird noises. The realtor is killed by something lurking in the cellar. The babysitter cleans up the mess. Bob meets a little girl in the cemetery that no one else can see. The cellar-monster kills more people. And so it goes for 87 minutes of gore and non-sequitur filled dialogue.

I confess: I love House by the Cemetery. It's a terrible movie, but somehow the incoherence and bad dubbing makes it all seem dreamlike to me. It's also nicely filmed. Even though I love it, I don't think Lucio Fulci really understood much about New England when he made it. For example, the house is located somewhere called "New Whitby, Boston." Didn't Fulci didn't know that Boston is a city, not a state?

A sinister babysitter!

There is also a scene that made me roll my eyes. While Lucy is cleaning the house she rolls back an old rug. What's that underneath it? Why, it's a gravestone embedded in the floor. The house's original owner, one Dr. Jacob Freudstein (!), is buried under the living room. Lucy freaks out, but when her husband comes home he calms her down. "Most of the old houses in the area have tombs in them," he says. "That's because in the winter it freezes here."

That's when I rolled my eyes. I have been in innumerable old New England houses, I grew up in an old house, and none of them had tombs in them. Lucio Fulci just made that up, I thought.

But maybe I was wrong. Because at least one old New England might have a tomb in it. Maybe Lucio Fulci was right?

The house in question is the Gideon Straw House in Newfield, Maine. Built in the 1700s, the kitchen of this large farmhouse supposedly contains the grave of Gideon Straw's daughter, Hannah Chadbourne. According to Robert Ellis Cahill's book New England's Ghostly Haunts (1983), her final resting place is marked by a gravestone on the floor that reads:

SACRED to the memory of Mrs. Hannah

Wife of Ira Chadbourne

Who died March 2, 1826 - age 30

Blest are the dead, who die in Christ

Whose triumph is so great. 

Who calmly wait a nobler life

A nobler life shall meet

According to Cahill, the Straw House was used as a hunting lodge for many years, and it was traditional for the hunters to stand around Hannah's grave and salute her with their beers. Cahill also says some of them made rude jokes at Hannah's expense.

Perhaps it's no surprise that the house has a reputation for being haunted. One owner reported strange whistling noises coming from all the fireplaces, while still another claimed to have seen Hannah's ghost looking in the window. That owner also said he awoke one night to find Hannah caressing his cheek. Yikes!

At one point the building was sold to two schoolteachers, who at first enjoyed living in a haunted house. They changed their minds after one particularly noisy night when something unseen slammed the doors and charged up and down the stairs until sunrise. The two teachers left shortly thereafter.

So after reading Cahill's book I thought maybe Lucio Fulci was really on to something. But then I tried to find more information about the Gideon Straw house and Hannah's ghost. It turns out that the story just isn't true. Several past owners have said they never experienced any ghosts, and that Hannah is definitely not buried in the kitchen. The gravestone people talk about was probably just a spare marker kept on the property after the family replaced it with a nicer one. If it ever was on the property it's not there now. All this information is from a site specializing in the paranormal. When even a paranormal site tells you there's no ghost, there's probably no ghost.

It's a little disappointing that the Straw house is (probably) not haunted because it does make for a good story. It would have been nice if Lucio Fulci had included some authentic old New England lore in House by the Cemetery. On the other hand, I suppose he did include an authentic legend, even if it was not true.

Fulci made one other film set in New England: City of the Dead, aka Gates of Hell. This film is set in H. P. Lovecraft's mythical town of Dunwich, but in Fulci's movie it looks suspiciously like a small dusty town in Italy. The plot involves the ghost of a priest that committed suicide who makes people vomit up their innards when he stares at them. Maybe I should see if that's a piece of authentic folklore too?

*****

Just a reminder, I will be speaking about the monsters of Cape Cod on Saturday, May 13 as part of the Provincetown Paracon. Other speakers include Adam Barry and Amy Bruni from the TV shows Ghost Hunters and Kindred Spirits, and there will be a special Traveling Museum of the Occult and Paranormal as well. I hope you can make it!

Me and Paracon organizer Sam Baltrusis talking about the event on What's New Massachusetts.

The Pigman Cometh! Vermont's Porcine Horror Returns.

It is Halloween, and every Halloween I become jealous of the citizens of Northfield, Vermont. I'm not jealous of their clean country air or access to great dairy products. No, I'm jealous because Northfield has its very own special monster associated with Halloween.

I am jealous because they have the Pigman.

The Pigman first trotted into the public eye in 1999 when author Joseph Citro published Green Mountains, Dark Tales, a collection of spooky Vermont folklore and stories about the paranormal. Citro included an allegedly true story about a creature known as the Pigman, which lurked outside of Northfield in an area called the Devil's Washbowl. Citro heard the story from a Northfield man named Jeff Hatch at a public reading he was giving, but Citro estimated that hundreds of people were also familiar with the Pigman.

The Pigman's fame grew through subsequent books that Citro published, through para-normal themed TV shows, and through the internet. If you are not familiar with the Pigman, here are the basics.

In 1971 a group of Northfield high school students snuck out of a school dance to smoke and drink beer in the woods behind the school. Their illicit fun was spoiled when a naked hairy humanoid with a swine's head lurched out from the trees, grunting. The teens fled back into the school in panic. What was this creature and where had it come from? No one was quite sure. Some locals thought it was the offspring of a farmer who was inappropriately affectionate with his livestock, while others thought it might be a teenage boy who disappeared the previous yet and had gone insane. Others murmured ominously about gnawed animal bones found in caves near the Devil's Washbowl and a pale white thing that menaced teens in parked cars...

Another pig-headed monster appears on this year's season of American Horror Story.

That's the original basic story told by Citro. Another origin story appeared in 2013. According to this version, in 1951 the Pigman was just an average Vermont teen named Sam Harris. On October 30, Sam went out with some eggs and toilet paper to vandalize his neighbors' houses. October 30 is called Picket Night in Northfield, and it's the night that kids cause their Halloween mischief. (Coincidentally, that is tonight!) Unlike his peers, Sam never came back home after egging houses. The police and hundreds of volunteers searched for the boy but he was never seen again.

Well, maybe he was. A male figure seen wearing a pig's head was seen roaming through the gloomy autumn woods. People whispered that Sam had given himself to the Devil the night he disappeared and now was a force of evil. His parents dismissed these rumors, preferring to believe he was dead, until the night Sam appeared briefly on their porch, squealing like a hog and chewing animal entrails. His distraught mother killed herself thirteen days later by throwing herself into a pen full of hungry swine. Later, a local historian who tried to defend Sam's reputation in the newspaper disappeared and was found dead in the woods with the words "Picket Night" carved on her forehead. No one defended Sam after that. Instead, they just feared the Pigman.

Those are the two basic Pigman stories. People still report Pigman sightings, though, and every year around Halloween I search the Web for some new tales of this porcine horror. This year, I didn't even need to look! Someone posted a Pigman story as a comment right on one of my old posts. Here it is.

My father was a very practical man who was well grounded ... not one for an interest in strange sightings. There was a time, however, he told me about two encounters he had with what he described as seeing " A DOG WITH A HUMAN HEAD "... they happened in 1984 and 1985. I believe what he saw was the Pigman as they both occurred in the Northfield, Vt area, specifically West Brookfield, and Brookfield. My brother-in-law was with him when they witnessed the first encounter. My mother was present during the second. He ran inside his home to get a rifle to shoot it because he said it didn't look natural and needed to be killed (I wouldn't have killed it ... I would have reported it to the police) but it was gone when he came back out. It REALLY shook them up .. I even found a cryptozoology sighting form in a dresser drawer he obviously decided against mailing out.

I'm not giving my name because I know what kind of backlash there would be... I don't need it ... but every word I've written is true. 

I'm grateful to whoever left me this little Halloween present, although it leaves me with questions. Did someone's Dad really see the Pigman AND then mistake it for a dog with a human head? Where does one get cryptozoology sighting forms? There probably aren't good answers to those questions, but it's the time of year for scary stories, whether or not they're 100% true.

Of course, I write that from the safety of my well-lit home in the city. If I lived up in Northfield, I'd probably be a little more nervous now that the days are short and the woods are very, very dark.

*****

If you want to read more about the Pigman, you can see my other posts here, here and here. Oh, and here too!

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!