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. 

Strange and Stranger: Some American Fairy Encounters

I had the day off today, and spent some time organizing my books. As I was moving my musty tomes around I picked up Fairies: Real Encounters with Little People by Janet Bord, something I haven't looked at in a few years. Published in 1997, Fairies gives a nice overview of fairy lore and encounters from around the world. 

Although much of the book deals with the Ireland and Great Britain, Bord does devote a chapter to fairies from other places. The chapter is evocatively titled "Dwarfs, mummies, and little green men: Little People around the world." Bord discusses some interesting fairy encounters from the United States in the chapter. Here are a few of my favorites, in increasing order of strangeness.  

STRANGE: In the 19th century, a young man in Snowhill, Maryland, was wooing a young woman who lived in the nearby town of Pocomoke. One night he discussed marriage with her, but they argued because she was not really keen on the idea. As he rode away from her house in his wagon, the man noticed something strange. A little man wearing a green plaid jacket and yellow necktie stood near the woods. The little man smiled but didn't speak, even when the young man tried to start a conversation. Unnerved, the young man whipped his horses and rode off. Even though the horses were galloping at a good speed, the little man in green ran after the wagon and caught up to it. He ran next to the wagon, smiling maniacally at the young man. The little man disappeared once the wagon left Pocomoke. The young man believed the strange occurrence was an omen, warning him away from the young woman. He stopped seeing her and eventually married someone else. 

STRANGER: In an undated encounter from the Morongo Valley of California, a man was driving his truck when a little green man ran into the road. He braked and came to a sudden stop. As he sat in the truck, trying to figure out what he had just seen, he heard a noise coming from underneath his truck. He got out and saw that the little green man was trying to remove a protective metal plate near the radiator. The man got back in his car, drove to a nearby friend's house, and wired the plate back in place. The next day he found the screws lying in the road where the little green man had removed them. 

STRANGEST: The weirdest story comes from Farmersville, Texas. In 1913, a boy named Silbie Latham and his two brothers were out cutting cotton when their dogs started barking wildly. The boys ran to see what was upsetting the dogs.

What they found was a little man about eighteen inches tall, and dark green in colour. He wasn't wearing any clothes, but his body looked like a rubber suit, including a hat that looked like a 'Mexican hat.' As the boys looked on, the dogs jumped on the little man and tore him to pieces. The boys saw that he had human-looking internal organs, and red blood. Afterwards, the dogs avoided the spot where the remains lay rotting in the sun, and they seemed frightened. Next day, when the boys went to the place again, there was nothing to be found, not even a bloodstain (Janet Bord, Fairies: Real Encounters with Little People (1997), p.71)

Many years later, in 1978, Silbie Latham told his story to a staff person at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. The staff person said that Latham clearly believed the story to be true, and rejected the staff person's suggestion that the little green man had just been a large frog. 

That's really an insane story, right? Things must be bigger and weirder down in Texas, because Bord does include a few stories from Massachusetts in the book, but they're not nearly as crazy as that one. For example, she discusses the Dover Demon, the infamous humanoid cryptid seen in Dover, Massachusetts on April 21 and April 22, 1977 by several teenagers. The first person to see the creature was Bill Baxter, age 17, who was driving down a wooded road with two friends. He saw a creature 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. His two friends did not see the creature, but three other teenagers did, including John Baxter, age 15, who was walking home from his girlfriend's house. Baxter drew the following picture:

The creature was dubbed "The Dover Demon" by cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, and the name stuck. The Dover Demon has become pretty famous, and is one of those creatures that has never really been pigeon-holed or satisfactorily categorized. Was it one of the Little People, as Janet Bord suggests? Was it an extraterrestrial creature of some kind? Or was it all just a hoax? There's no clear answer, and no one saw the Dover Demon again. 

Janet Bord includes a couple other encounters from Massachusetts, and unlike the Dover Demon they involve beings that are more obviously fairies. In the spring of 1974, teenaged Jane Woodruff was walking to high school in Lexington with a friend when they saw something - or rather someone - sitting in patch of weeds on the side of the road. It was a leprechaun.

'Did you see that?' we exclaimed in unison. Surprisingly enough, we both described the leprechaun the same way: green clothes, a long thin curved golden pipe between his lips and a flopped-over conical cap (Janet Bord, Fairies: Real Encounters with Little People (1997), p.73) 

A year later, Woodruff and a friend named Orin saw hundreds of small fairies dancing in a field of blue wildflowers in the town of Ashby. The fairies were only around 5 inches tall. Although the thought of encountering hundreds of fairies is a little unnerving - what if they swarm you? - Woodruff's stories are very gentle compared to the others.

In Fairies, Bord evaluates the many possible theories about what fairies might be. For example, some people think they are really extraterrestrials, some think they are the remnants of an earlier and smaller human race, and others theorize they could perhaps be the spirits of the dead. Bord reviews all the different theories, and concludes that there's really no strong evidence for any of them. And yet people still continue to encounter them, in stranger and stranger ways. 

The Possession of Martha Robinson

Today is a beautiful sunny day, but I'm sitting inside the house reading about demonic possession in colonial New England. I'm fascinated by the story of Martha Robinson, a young Bostonian who became possessed by the Devil in December of 1740. Well, at least people thought she was possessed. Long after the Salem witch trials had ended, people in New England still thought the Devil was trying to lead people astray...

Martha was the twenty-something daughter of Samuel and Mary Robinson. Her parents were members of the Old South Church, but Martha was ambivalent about religion until she heard the famous minister George Whitefield preach. Whitefield was an evangelist who preached to huge crowds across the American colonies in the 1700s, moving people with his emotional sermons. After hearing Whitefield preach in Boston, Martha decided to join the Old South Church. 

William Blake, The Ghost of A Flea, 1819 - 1820

Her move to godliness did not proceed according to plan. After joining the church, Martha went to hear a sermon by Gilbert Tennent, another traveling evangelist. She was impressed with his preaching, and arranged a private meeting with him. But as she began to talk with Tennent, she was suddenly filled with incredible anger:

"The Devil filled me with such rage and spite against [Tennent] that I could have torn him to pieces and I should have torn his clothes off if my friends had not held me."(quoted in D. Brenton Simons, Witches, Rakes and Rogues. True Stories of Scam, Scandal, Murder, and Mayhem in Boston, 1630 - 1775, 2005)

A shocked Tennent said Martha was possessed by the Devil, and immediately began to pray over her, with the assistance of other ministers who were present. Their prayers didn't work. After that encounter with Tennent, Martha frequently blasphemed, used obscenities, and sang nonsense songs. She, her family, and friends all believed she was possessed by the Devil.

Our main source of information about the possession of Martha Robinson is the diary of Joseph Pitkin, a wealthy merchant from East Hartford, Connecticut. Pitkin was visiting Boston for business in March, 1741, and during that visit he was invited to meet Martha Robinson. She had heard that Pitkin was a devout Christian, and wanted to talk with him. Pitkin visited Martha twice during his 1741 visit, both times accompanied by local Bostonians. 

Martha displayed a wide variety of behavior during Pitkin's two visits to her home. At times she was polite and pleasant, speaking cordially with Pitkin. She prayed with him. At other times she raged, screamed, and said "There is no God" and other blasphemous statements. Martha also told Pitkin of a strange occurrence the previous night. She and her aunt had heard the noise of a large goat bleating from the inn where Pitkin was staying. The eerie bleating was then swept away by a strong wind. 

Joseph Pitkin went home to Connecticut, but returned to Boston in 1743, and once again visited Martha Robinson. She no longer acted strangely, and said she was no longer possessed by the Devil. Martha said that "God had gradually delivered her from that distress" (quoted in Simons, Witches, Rakes, and Rogues, 2005). She was apparently cured of her strange ailment. In 1746, she married a Charlestown man and settled into a more traditional life. 

Was Martha Robinson really possessed by an evil spirit? As many historians have noted, Puritan New England was not a great place to be a young woman. Young women and girls were near the bottom of the social hierarchy, having little freedom or power. Their behavior was also restricted by social norms that said women should be modest, moderate-tempered, and well-behaved. Much like the allegedly bewitched girls in 1692 Salem, acting as if she was possessed may have given Martha an opportunity to misbehave, openly express anger at authority figures, and even question the existence of God, one of the foundations of New England society. She may have consciously faked her possession, or perhaps she was acting out the role unconsciously, simultaneous defying society's restrictions but also enacting the expected social behaviors of someone who was possessed.

Joseph Pitkin's diary is available online, but I've based this blog post on material from D. Brenton Simons's excellent 2005 book, Witches, Rakes and Rogues. True Stories of Scam, Scandal, Murder, and Mayhem in Boston, 1630 - 1775. It's a great book!

A Pukwudgie Sighting in Massachusetts

Sometimes people write to me about strange experiences they've had. Just a few weeks ago, a woman I'll call Mary sent me an email about a weird encounter she had while walking a dog. 

Mary lives in Norwell, and was taking care of a friend's large Labrador retriever while the friend was traveling. The dog would wake Mary up every morning between 4 and 5 am to take it for a walk. Mary would usually bring the dog to a small nearby watershed - a patch of woods and swamp - for its morning perambulation. 

Mary and the dog went on these early morning walks for a few weeks without anything strange happening, but that changed on March 1. It was pitch black, and as they walked on a road near the watershed the dog stopped in its tracks and let out a low growl. Had it seen a raccoon, or maybe a coyote? Feeling nervous about being alone in the dark with a wild animal nearby, Mary looked around to see what startled the dog. It was not a raccoon, or a coyote. It was something much stranger. 

Crouched near the woods was a small humanoid creature. It was covered in what looked like matted, black fur. Mary thought the creature stared at her with glowing green eyes, but isn't sure if she just imagined this detail. Whatever the creature was, it was something she had never seen before. She and the dog ran home. 

A few days later the dog went home to its owner, and Mary thought that was the end of her strange experience. But on the night of March 13, Mary heard some unusual sounds coming from outside her house. It sounded as though something were quietly but insistently tapping on the side of her house, or possibly on the window. At first Mary thought maybe her daughter had locked herself out of the house, but that was not the case - she was safely inside. Nervously, Mary's thoughts then turned to the small humanoid she had seen near the woods. Was it outside her house, tapping on the walls and windows?

The next day she talked with some people at work about what had been happening, and one of them suggested she had encountered a pukwudgie. Pukwudgie is a one name for the small, hairy, magical humanoids that are said to live in the woods in New England. Basically, they are a type of fairy. Not a pretty, tutu-wearing fairy like Tinkerbell, but a scragglier, rough-around-the-edges fairy. They're the type of fairy you'd expect to see in the woods around here, which are rough, rocky, and filled with poison ivy. 

Pukwudgie is something of a modern term, at least in New England. The Native Americans in New England had other names for these beings, like makiawisug, mekumwasuck, or mikumweswack. Pukwudgie was originally a word used by the Ojibwa Indians of the Midwest to describe the small magical beings they encountered, but it has since became a popular word in New England, and particularly in Massachusetts. (You can read more about the history of the term pukwudgie here.)

Pukwudgies are believed to be mischievous at best, and malevolent at worst. Traditionally, the local Native Americans believed that the little people would help humans if treated with respect. That is not the case with pukwudgies, who supposedly like to shoot people with darts, lure them off cliffs, and in general lurk around and frighten anyone who encounters them. If I can speculate, perhaps this change in behavior is because most New Englanders don't know how to treat them with the respect they deserve? 

Mary's encounter is similar to several other well-known pukwudgie encounters. For example, in 1990 a Raynham, Massachusetts man named Bill Russo was walking his dog late at night near some woods when he saw a small hairy humanoid creature, which tried to lure him into the woods. He declined the offer. And Christopher Balzano describes a very similar situation in his 2007 book Dark Woods: Cults, Crime and the Paranormal in the Freetown State Forest. A woman named Joan was walking her dog in the Freetown State Forest when she noticed someone watching her. It was a small, grey-skinned humanoid with hairy arms and a hairy head, and it stared at her with deep green eyes. After encountering the pukwudgie in the woods, Joan noticed the pukwudgie lurking around her house several times. Apparently it had followed her home. Creepy!

After I got the email from Mary, I asked Balzano if he had any advice for people who encounter pukwudgies, particularly if the pukwudgie seems to be lurking around their house. He said the best thing to do is just ignore them. Eventually, they'll go away and the strange phenomena will stop. That sounds like good advice to me. I think that the more attention you give to weird phenomena, the more of it you'll notice. You can just get sucked down the rabbit hole!

In a subsequent email, Mary told he that she had some lucky things happen to her on the day she encountered the creature in the woods. So maybe seeing it had been a fortuitous event, even if it was spooky? In the end, the situation was oddly ambiguous, much like the pukwudgies themselves. 

A Visit to Medfield State Hospital: Charming and a Little Spooky

A few weeks ago Tony and I visited Medfield State Hospital, in charming Medfield, Massachusetts. Originally known as the Medfield Insane Asylum, the hospital is now a park open to the public. Intrigued? Read on. 

Medfield State Hospital opened in 1896, and was one of the state's first hospitals to deal with long-term patients with mental disorders. It was designed in the "cottage style," according to an informational sign erected at the hospital, with more than 50 buildings spread across 1.4 square miles. Many of the buildings are still standing, although they are now boarded up and public cannot access them. Medfield State today looks a lot like a small, traditional New England liberal arts college - but with absolutely no people. It's both charming and maybe a little spooky. 

Tony and I visited on a cold, snowy day, and there weren't many other visitors. A few people were walking their dogs, but that was about it. The hospital was quite bustling in the past, however. During World War II, almost 2,300 people lived at Medfield State. The hospital finally closed in 1993. 

In the early part of the 20th century, the hospital was self-sufficient. Patients grew crops on hundreds of acres of farmland, and tended more than 1,000 cattle and 3,000 chickens. That's quite an operation! Medfield State Hospital even was able to supply food to the other state hospitals in eastern Massachusetts. Even today there is still quite a bit of open land at Medfield State, including a bluff overlooking the Charles River. It has a great view!

You'd think there would be some weird legends associated with an abandoned insane asylum, but that's not really the case here. The only possible ghost story is quite recent. In 2017, the movie The New Mutants was filmed at Medfield State. Part of the X-Men series, The New Mutants tells the tale of five young mutants imprisoned in a spooky hospital. The movie wasn't released until 2020, and the director suggested The New Mutants might have been cursed by being filmed at the abandoned insane asylum. 

The director, Richard Boone, told The Boston Globe the following on August 20, 2020:

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.”

I would like a little more detail, but I don't want to buy the Blu-Ray. Not everyone was freaked out, though. Actor Anya Taylor-Joy said the following:

"I've shot in four abandoned mental institutions, so it's kind of a second home for me," Taylor-Joy said (ABC Seven.com)

That's a good attitude to have! Soon the hospital will be home to hundreds of people again. The town of Medfield will be developing Medfield State into apartments and an arts center, which is probably a good use of the property. Maybe some more ghost stories will emerge once people start living there full time again?