Vale End Cemetery: A Blue Lady, Terrifying Encounters, and Pukwudgies

Recently we took a trip to New Hampshire. We met up with our old friend Pasha, and then we did what anyone does on a beautiful early spring day: we went to look at haunted cemeteries.

Our first stop was Vale End Cemetery in Wilton, New Hampshire. Wilton is a beautiful town but Vale End has acquired an ominous reputation, particularly in the last few years. Demons, malevolent ghosts and pukwudgies have all been reported at this historic cemetery. To be honest I was a little scared as we drove up to New Hampshire!

HISTORY AND A BLUE LADY

The oldest grave in the cemetery, that of Phebe Cram, dates from 1752. The cemetery is first mentioned in town records in 1772, when the town voted to "fence the burying ground." In 1780 the town voted to upgrade the fence to a stone wall and to build a road to the cemetery. Someone donated more land to the burying ground in 1869, and in 1871 it was named Vale End Cemetery. 

I found that information in 1888's History of the Town of Wilton, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire by A.A. Livermore and Sewell Putnam. The authors don't mention anything about ghosts, demons or troll-like creatures at all. Not many town histories do but I was hoping to find some mention of Vale End's most famous ghost, the Blue Lady.

According to legends the Blue Lady has haunted Vale End cemetery for generations, but some of Wilton's older residents (and members of Wilton's historical society) say the story only dates to the 1970s. The Blue Lady is said to be the ghost of Mary Ritter Spaulding, who died at age 35 and was buried in the cemetery in 1808. Mary was the first wife of Captain Isaac Spaulding and shares a grave with his second wife, also named Mary Spaulding.

Mary Ritter Spaulding's grave

By all accounts Mary Ritter Spaulding was a kind and loving wife and good mother to her seven children. Some people even say that Mary worked as a healer in Wilton and cured illness with herbal remedies.  Her benign nature while alive is reflected in her activities as a ghost. The Blue Lady manifests primarily as a column of blue light above her grave and more infrequently as a woman in old-fashioned attire wandering through the cemetery. Does she have unfinished business? Is she watching over the loved ones buried around her? Most people who see the Blue Lady say the encounter is spooky and odd but not terrifying.

I do find the Blue Lady interesting. The column of light is so impersonal but also feels almost religious somehow. Her title, the Blue Lady, reminds me of the many times people have seen the Virgin Mary as an apparition in blue. I'm not saying that the Virgin Mary is appearing in this cemetery, but maybe people's experiences of paranormal phenomena are colored by pre-existing cultural patterns. Maybe the first person who reported seeing the Blue Lady at Vale End made an an unconscious connection between two kind, loving mothers named Mary.

A SHOCKING DEATH AND... DEMONS?

Up until the early 2000s legends about Vale End focused on the Blue Lady. That changed and the cemetery has since acquired a more sinister reputation. The change seems to date back to November 1999, when paranormal investigator Fiona Broome and some associates were investigating hauntings at Nashua's Gilson Road Cemetery. Broome's photographer Nancy had brought her teenage daughter along, but the daughter became frightened during the investigation. Nancy and her daughter left and decided to visit a friendlier cemetery: Vale End in Wilton. After all, the Blue Lady was quite benign compared to the restless spirits at Gilson Road.

Nancy and her daughter drove to Vale End that same night. Unfortunately their experience there was terrifying. As they walked towards the Blue Lady's grave they saw something dark rise up from a nearby grave. They ran back to the car in terror and drove off so quickly one mirror was knocked off as they swiped a tree.

 

Later that night the daughter called Fiona Broome. She was scared, and wondered if anything ever follows people home from graveyards. Fiona assured her nothing does.

Five days later Nancy the photographer was found dead in her car in a Wilton parking lot. A coroner claimed it was a sudden heart attack. Nancy wasn't known to have any heart disease, though, and Fiona Broome and other paranormal investigators wondered if something sinister really had followed her home from Vale End.

In the spring of 2000 Fiona and some colleagues decided to investigate Vale End at night. As they made their way towards the Blue Lady's grave Fiona saw a three-foot tall hairy red humanoid. She said the creature reminded her of a muppet like Elmo or Grover. As she walked towards it she slammed into what felt like an invisible force field - and an unmistakably evil presence. Dozens more of the small humanoids began to appear and she and her colleagues fled the cemetery, but not before taking photos. Only when she was ten miles away did the feeling of evil fade.

When Fiona developed the photos they were completely black and showed nothing, except for one with a vaguely humanoid red blob. Was it one of the small humanoids? Perhaps, but when one of Fiona's friends turned the image around she thought it looked like a classic image of Satan.

OUR VISIT TO VALE END

You can read Fiona Broome's full account on her website. She discourages anyone from visiting Vale End, particularly at night, but her story of demons and small humanoids has of course had the opposite effect. A lot of people have a hunger for the supernatural, and what better place to feed that hunger than a cemetery possibly haunted by demons?

Some people have recently speculated that those small humanoids she saw were actually pukwudgies, one of the names for New England's local magical little people. If you read the comments on this page, you'll see that someone even claimed to have successfully photographed one at Vale End.

Many cultures make connections between fairies and the dead, so I suppose it's not surprising that someone would see pukwudgies at a cemetery. I have written about them before, and hearing that people have seen them at Vale End was one reason I wanted to visit. So I don't know whether I am disappointed or relieved that we didn't see any when we were there. Probably relieved!

As I wrote earlier, I was a little scared on the way to Vale End, but nothing unusual or bad happened to us. The weather was beautiful and we all found the cemetery to be quite peaceful. There are a lot of interesting stones to see, like that of Samuel Greele, who was "suddenly killed by the fall of a tree on the 25th of September, 1798", or the marker for Edward Herrick which has this rhyming epitaph:

Afflictions sore longtime I bore

Physicians were in vain

Till God did please, and death did seize

To ease me of my pain

We of course also visited the grave of Mary Ritter Spaulding. Her gravestone is easy to find since it has been dramatically broken. We did not see a column of blue light but we noticed that people leave coins on her grave, probably as a way to honor the cemetery's resident ghost.

Vale End Cemetery is open during daylight hours only, not at night, which decreases your chances of encountering a malevolent entity. The Wilton Police patrol the cemetery and will remove you from the cemetery if they find you there after dark. You may not see a pukwudgie but you will see a patrol car! If you visit obey the rules and please don't disturb any of the stones. And you might want to leave a coin for the Blue Lady.