Tales from Granary Burying Ground: James Otis and the Lightning Bolt

I love the term "burying ground," don't you? There's something very raw and primitive about it, but at the same time it's kind of charming because no one really uses the term anymore. Modern people inter their dead in cemeteries, not in burying grounds or even graveyards. I can understand why. Cemetery is a more gracious sounding word that masks what happens to the deceased, while burying ground is quite blunt. Yup, this is where we bury them.

The Granary Burying Ground on Tremont Street is one of Boston's oldest cemeteries. It was originally founded in 1660, and got its current name in 1737 from a granary that stood next to it. In the 1830s some Bostonians tried to rename it to Franklin Cemetery, after Benjamin Franklin's family who are buried inside the graveyard. The name didn't catch on, though, and we still know it by it's older, blunter, primitive name.

Many famous people have their final resting places within the Granary Burying Ground: patriots, Puritans, mariners, politicians and poets. Some of them, like lawyer James Otis, have strange stories surrounding their lives and deaths.

James Otis's grave on a stormy evening.

James Otis (b. 1725, d. 1783) is probably best known for coining the phrase "Taxation without representation is tyranny." It's a phrase many children learn in school while studying the American Revolution. Otis uttered those words during a five-hour (!) speech he made arguing against the "writs of assistance," which were laws that allowed British troops to search any colonist's home without needing a search warrant or even probable cause. Naturally the writs were extremely unpopular in Massachusetts. Otis lost his case agains the writs of assistance but parts of his epic speech were reprinted as a pamphlet and helped rouse ant-British feeling in the colonies.

Surprisingly, Otis had originally been pro-British. He came from a prominent Loyalist family, but he joined the revolutionary cause when his father was denied a promised appointment as Chief Justice of Massachusetts. Perhaps his abrupt transition from Loyalist to Revolutionary helps explain why the British troops despised him so much. In 1769 he got into an argument with several British officers in a coffeehouse. The fight turned physical, and one of the officers struck Otis on the head with a cudgel.

Here comes the strange part of the story. After the attack Otis's mental capacities declined precipitously and he was unable to work further as a lawyer. Some sources say his mental decline began before the fight, while others claim the blow to his head caused it. Whatever the cause, Otis left the Boston area to live at a friend's home in Andover. His sister came to visit often, and whenever she did Otis told her that he wished God would take him from this world with a lightning bolt. I guess he wanted death his to be fast, painless, and just a little dramatic.

James Otis

He got his wish on May 23, 1783. While standing outside the Andover house with some family members, Otis was struck by a bolt of lightning. He died instantly. No one else was injured, and Otis’s body was not burned or damaged in any visible way. Witnesses say the corpse had an expression of calm repose.

Did God hear his wish? Was it just luck? It's hard to say. In Ancient Greece it was considered a holy act to die by lightning, and Otis's contemporaries in Massachusetts seemed to feel the same way. Many years later, in the 19th century, workers who opened his grave discovered the roots of a mighty elm tree growing from his skull. This too was taken as a good omen, as his brain "had been transformed into branch and leaf and blossom, thus breathing itself forth again into the free air and the Universal Flow.”

The elm tree is long gone but you can still visit Otis's grave, which is prominently located in the front of the burying ground near Tremont Street.

UFOs, Angels, and Demons: The Abduction of Betty Andreasson Luca

Last night Tony and I watched a horror movie called Dark Skies, which I thought was pretty creepy. A young suburban family coping with the Great Recession finds their home has been invaded by some unpleasant aliens.



The aliens in this movie are quite demonic, which is how a lot of real life abductees view the beings who take them. Sleep paralysis, missing time, and of course painful probes - these visitors from outer space seem like bad news.

Surprisingly, not everyone holds that opinion. Some people, like Betty Andreasson Luca of South Ashburnham, Massachusetts, had quite the opposite experience.

In the mid-1970s, Betty answered an ad placed by UFO researcher Allen Hynek, who was looking for people who thought they had been abducted. When placed under hypnosis, she revealed an amazing story.

Betty Andreasson Luca under hypnosis.

On the evening of January 25, 1967, Betty was at home with her seven children and her parents. As she cooked and washed dishes, Betty had an uneasy feeling. At first she attributed it to the fog that a January thaw had brought on, but when a pulsing reddish light filled her yard and house she realized something stranger than warm weather was happening. Soon her father saw five small beings floating through the air towards the house, and Betty gathered her children in the living room for protection.

The five beings floated through the locked kitchen door and approached Betty. They were between four and five feet tall, had large heads and small facial features, and wore overalls. Although she was nervous, the Biblical passage "Entertain strangers for it may be angels unaware" entered her mind.

The beings put Betty's family into a state of suspended animation, but took Betty into a small craft that joined up with a larger mother ship. Betty was frightened of the aliens because they were so strange, but also sensed great love emanating from them. While she was on board the mother ship she was subjected to various examinations, which were painful but led her to have a visionary experience of a being she thought was God.

Quazgaa's spacecraft, from this site.

Before returning her home an alien named Quazgaa told Betty that the aliens loved mankind and were here to watch over them. They also gave her a forty-page book full of diagrams, formulas and poetry that she was allowed to keep but was not supposed to show anyone. When she got back to her house her family was released from suspended animation. No one had any memory of what had happened (except Betty) and everything returned to normal.

Well, almost normal. Betty's youngest daughter had recurring nightmares about the alien experience, so Betty showed her the book as proof the aliens were benevolent. Having broken her promise to keep it secret, the book disappeared. Betty eventually lost most memories of the incident until they were recovered through hypnosis.

What are we supposed to make of this story? The UFO researcher Allen Hynek was at first hesitant to meet with Betty because her story was outside the materialist viewpoint that UFOs are purely physical phenomena. UFOs are supposed to be machines from another planet piloted by biological beings, but Betty's story is basically a religious one. She was taken up into the heavens by angelic beings, met God, and was even given a holy book that disappeared, much like the golden plates from which Joseph Smith transcribed the Book of Mormon. Betty then spread the word of the heavenly beings.

If this were a different era people would probably think Betty was a prophet. Then again, maybe they'd think she was a witch. Dealing with creatures from the Otherworld can be a tricky business. Sometimes they're angels, sometimes they're demons, and sometimes they're something else entirely. I suppose Betty had the best approach: keep an open mind, hold love in your heart, and keep faith that it will all work out.

I found a lot of my information about Betty Andreasson Luca on the web, and found this interview particularly informative. I also used T.M. Gray's book More New England Graveside Tales.