Dr. Bourne and the Witch's Ghost

As many people know, for centuries Christmas was not well-regarded in New England. It was actually illegal to celebrate Christmas until 1681, and Christmas was not made a legal holiday until 1855.

The Christmas the Puritans wanted banned was quite different from what we celebrate today. Before the 19th century Christmas wasn't focused on presents from Santa and decorated evergreen trees, but was instead an occasion for heavy drinking and unruly behavior, timeless and rowdy traditions that had been imported from the Old World to America.

Even in the centuries when Christmas was banned or frowned upon in New England it was still celebrated, particularly by working class men, sailors, and fishermen. Coastal towns were often hotbeds of illegal Christmas celebrations.

So it's no surprise that back in 1810 one Dr. Richard Bourne was out celebrating on Christmas Day in Hyannis the traditional way - by getting extremely drunk. Even though he was a physician and the local postmaster, as a Cape Cod resident Dr. Bourne would have been exposed to Christmas celebrations by the many mariners and fishermen who called the peninsula home.

After spending Christmas Day drinking at a tavern, Dr. Bourne began to make his way home to Barnstable after sunset. It was a journey of four miles and the road led through a dense forest that had once been home to Liza Tower Hill, a well-known witch. But Dr. Bourne didn't worry as his horse made her way slowly through the snowy, moonlit woods. She had made the journey many times before and the good doctor was fortified against the cold with rum, beer, and holiday good cheer. Besides, Liza Tower Hill had been dead for twenty years.

Dr. Bourne didn't worry (or even notice) when his horse strayed from the path and trotted towards Half Way Pond, where the witch had been known to dance in the moonlight. He didn't even care when his horse stopped by the pond and a beautiful woman approached, asking him to dance. 

If he had been sober he would have wondered what a young lady was doing out alone in the icy woods wearing only a light dress. He would have wondered why he, a respectable member of Cape Cod society, found her so irresistible as they danced around the pond. And he most certainly would have wondered about the man in black clothing who watched them from under the bare trees.

As the night went on Dr. Bourne and the young lady left off dancing and enjoyed more intimate activities. But when the sky began to grow light Dr. Bourne started to become sober. He noticed the lady had vanished, but the man in black clothing was standing nearby. He held out a large black book to the good doctor, indicating he should sign. 

The alcohol fog lifted. In a panic Dr. Bourne pulled on his clothes and leapt upon his horse, but he left his boots behind. He was found in a panicky state that morning by a group of men who were traveling through the woods. They didn't believe his story but were amazed that he had survived the night outdoors in freezing temperatures.

After his encounter with Liza Tower Hill's ghost Richard Bourne's life took a turn for the worst. His neighbors mocked him as a lying drunk who claimed he had slept with a ghost, and he lost his job as postmaster. Even worse, the government claimed he had not turned over all the postage fees he had collected and levied a fine against him of nearly $1,000, an enormous amount of money in the 1800s.

After he died penniless the government realized its error (he had only owed $30) and gave his daughter Abigail the $1,000 they had erroneously collected. It was too late for Dr. Bourne, but I'm sure his daughter appreciated both the money and the fact that her father's reputation was now at least partially rehabilitated.

*****

Witches, ghosts, infidelity in the woods, Satan, heavy drinking and Christmas - there's a lot to like in this story! It's from Elizabeth Reynard's The Narrow Land, and she got her information from Amos Otis's Genealogical Notes of Barnstable Families. I do wish things ended more happily for Dr. Bourne though.

I think the presence of witches and ghosts in a Christmas story might be surprising to some modern Americans, but in much of pre-modern Europe Christmas was actually a time when ghosts were said to be wandering the land. Dickens didn't just include four ghosts in A Christmas Carol randomly. He was drawing upon ancient traditions. Even today in America Christmas is tinged with the supernatural, what with Santa, flying reindeer, and those elves working away at the North Pole. And there's only a very fine line between elves and ghosts. As Jacob Grimm wrote, "The dead were known to the Norsemen as elves."

Liza Tower Hill, the Witch of Half Way Pond

Elizabeth Lewis was born in Barnstable, Massachusetts sometime early in the 18th century.

Although she and her parents lived near Crooked Pond, an area of Cape Cod which at the time was quite remote, as a child she walked without fear in the dense forest, unafraid of wild animals or getting lost after dark. There were rumors she even hunted with the local Indians.

To her English neighbors it all seemed a little uncanny. Why wasn't she afraid like other girls her age?

As she grew older Elizabeth, or Liza as she was known, also became quite wise in the ways of curing animals and diagnosing problems with crops. Wiser than one so young and pretty should be, her neighbors whispered. Who (or what) had given so much knowledge to Liza? Perhaps she was a witch and in league with the Devil.

Liza's uncanny reputation didn't stop William Blatchford from proposing to her, and when she was sixteen she and William built a house even further in the forest near Half Way Pond. Isolated from the community, they raised a family deep in the woods, coming into the town of Barnstable only to attend Sunday services. By this time Liza had a full-blown reputation as a witch and other women would avoid her touch when she drew near. Her husband's family had originally come from the Tower Hill section of London, so when the townspeople whispered about her they called her Liza Tower Hill, half in derision and half in fear.

Many stories were told about her witchy ways. The forest near Half Way Pond was supposedly luminous, and on moonlit nights travelers said they saw Liza dancing on the surface of the pond as animals and other less easily identifiable creatures watched with delight.

Some travelers found their way to Liza's pond unwillingly. The historian George Lyman Kittredge was told by an elderly neighbor how one Mrs. Loring of Barnstable was riding homeward through the woods one day when her horse unaccountably headed towards Half Way Pond. No matter how hard Mrs. Loring tried, the horse refused to obey her and instead circled the pond for hours. Clearly, Mrs. Loring said, her steed had been bewitched.

Liza allegedly used her witchcraft to protect her family as well. One of her daughters took a servant job at the home of the wealthy Allyn family, who mistreated the girl. Shortly thereafter their house became haunted. A large cat appeared mysteriously in the Allyn house, howling at all hours of the night. Even when the cat was turned out it could still be heard in halls and on the stairs, roaming invisibly. Chairs were smashed by unseen hands, and tables were knocked over. Many members of the Allyn family claimed the haunting was Liza Tower Hill's vengeance.

Of course, Liza was also accused of riding men in the night like horses, a traditional witch activity. For example, a Mr. Wood of West Barnstable said Liza saddled him and rode him to Plum Pudding Pond in Plymouth for midnight witch meetings. Since she was an attractive woman, this may just have been wishful thinking on Mr. Wood's part.

Liza may have met her end because she rode another man like a horse. Benjamin Goodspeed of East Sandwich claimed that Liza rode him nightly, and to escape her witchery he boarded a ship sailing from Barnstable. As the ship departed he thought he was free, but as he looked landward he saw a large black cat swimming after the ship. Needless to say the sight made him uneasy. That night Liza came to him in his dreams and rode him even more furiously than before.

Exhausted, the next morning Goodspeed once again saw the cat swimming after the ship. Realizing it was Liza's spirit in feline form, he loaded a gun with pages from the Bible and shot the cat in the head. The supernatural feline howled and sank below the waves. Back in her cottage by Half Way Pond Liza died suddenly at her spinning wheel, her eyes wide open and staring into the void.

It's a dramatic story but it may not be true. Records show that Liza Tower Hill died in July of 1790 from old age, not mysteriously at her spinning wheel. Although she had lost her beauty she had retained her independent spirit to the end.

Personally, I think Liza Tower Hill is a really nice embodiment of the mythic witch. She's the type of witch everyone would like to be! She was wise and attuned with nature, but definitely not someone you'd want to mess with. She was independent and feisty, but not particularly malevolent. If she had lived in the previous century and outside Cape Cod she undoubtedly would have been brought to trial for witchcraft. Happily she was born after the witch trial fury had burned out, and Cape Cod never had many witch trials to begin with. Perhaps even then people on the Cape were a little more tolerant of eccentrics.

Although Liza died in 1790, it's hard to keep a good witch down. Witches are able to send their spirits out of their bodies while alive, so for many witches death is just a minor inconvenience. Well, at least in folklore. Next week I'll tell you what happened to Liza after death. Conveniently it's also a Christmas story!

Most of the information for this week's post is from Elizabeth Reynard's The Narrow Land, while the story about Mrs. Loring's horse is from George Lyman Kittredge's Witchcraft in Old and New England.