The Deadly Ghost of Harvard College: Killed by a Prank

I'm giving a tour of Harvard Square for a group of friends this weekend, and have been trying to find good ghost stories I can tell. Cambridge is an old city and Harvard is America's oldest college, so there must be ghost stories, right? 

No surprise, there are a lot of ghost stories about Harvard Square, including this one from a 2012 Boston.com article titled "Nine ghost stories in haunted Cambridge." The author of the article heard it on a Harvard Square ghost tour:

... an incident that happened at the Porcellian Club, one of the oldest, secretive final clubs at the school. A group of men wanted to trick a skeptical man into believing ghosts were real. 

A man dressed as a ghost and woke the other man up, who then swallowed his tongue and died. The man now allegedly haunts the hall as a warning. 

I like a good Scooby Doo story (you know, one where the ghost is fake at the end), but in this one, the fake ghost results in a real ghost. It's an added twist. If it's true I feel bad for the poor skeptic, forced to spend eternity as the very thing he didn't believe in! 

I was curious about where this story came from, since it's so good. When did it happen, and to whom? I did a little browsing in my library and found some clues. My friend Sam Baltrusis had written about it in his 2013 book Ghosts of Cambridge, and happily Sam cites the source, an 1846 book by Felix Octavius Carr Darley. 

But Sam doesn't say the dead skeptic haunts the Porcellian Club, and neither does Darley. In fact, the title of Darley's book is Ghost Stories; Collected with a Particular View to Counteract the Vulgar Belief in Ghosts and Apparitions. Yes, you read that title right. Darley's book is a collection of ghosts stories aimed at counteracting the belief in ghosts. Darley doesn't believe in ghosts, and doesn't want you to either. It's an entire book of Scooby Doo stories.

"It's not your undead mother, it's just a dog."

Every ghost Darley writes about is revealed to have a logical, non-supernatural explanation. That undead noblewoman haunting a French chateau? It's really just a dog that sneaks into the bedroom at night. That demonic figure seen in an old German town? Just a local priest in disguise scaring people away so he can have some peace and quiet. That pale wet hand a sleeper on his face feels at midnight? Just someone trying to see if his sister has rented out his bed to a lodger. 

The Harvard ghost story was told to Darley by Washington Allston, a prominent 19th century painter. He's not particularly well-known today, but he was very popular in his time. He was so popular, in fact, Boston named one of its neighborhoods after him. Allston graduated from Harvard in 1800, and claims the ghost story happened while he was a student there. It goes something like this...

Washington Allston, Self-Portrait, 1805. He's projecting "Timothee Chalamet
chaotic twink" energy. 

One night a group of Harvard students were telling each other ghost stories, but one student was skeptical ghosts existed:

The thing was too absurd in itself to gain his belief. He would never believe in ghosts till he should see one with his own eyes. As for fearing them, "he would like to see the ghost that could frighten him"(Darley, Ghost Stories, p. 13).

Upon hearing this, one of the other students decided to test the skeptic's bravery and disbelief. He didn't necessarily believe in ghosts either, but he didn't like the skeptic's attitude and wanted to play a trick on him. 

The next night, he dressed up in a white sheet and snuck into the skeptical student's bedroom. The skeptical student reached under his bed, pulled out a pistol, and fired at the 'ghost.'

Happily, the trickster knew the skeptic kept a loaded gun under his bed, and had secretly removed the bullets earlier (but not the gunpowder). The skeptic didn't know this and thought the gun had fired after the gunpowder went off. Upon seeing the ghost was unharmed after being shot, the skeptic panicked. 

Instantaneously the appalling belief came over the mind of the unhappy beholder that he was actually in the presence of a spirit from the other world. All his preconceived opinions - all his habits of thought, all his vaunted courage vanished at once. His whole being was changed; and he instantly fell into the most frightful convulsions (Darley, Ghost Stories, p. 14).

Uh-oh. The prank had gone too far. The student continued to convulse. The fake ghost and some other students tried to help him, but were unable to revive him.

Convulsion succeeded convulsion; and the unfortunate youth never recovered sufficient consciousness to be made aware of the trick that had been played upon him, until the melancholy scene was closed by his untimely death (Darley, Ghost Stories, p. 14).

The moral of this story is, obviously, don't pretend to be a ghost. Reading it reminded me of something that happened when I was a freshman in college. A friend and I were jogging around the track one night when another friend of ours, a notorious prankster, jumped out from under the bleachers wearing a hockey mask and waving some kind of weapon. My friend and I briefly panicked, thinking we were about to be attacked by a homicidal killer, but we soon realized it was just our friend and the weapon was just a hockey stick. Lucky for him we didn't go into deadly convulsions! Still, it's interesting that college student behavior hadn't changed much over 200 years.

It's also interesting to see how different the story in Boston.com is from the original version. For one thing, the Boston.com story is more specific than the original. Washington Allston doesn't say it happened at the Porcellian Club, but I suppose it could have, since he was a member. He also doesn't say the student choked on his own tongue, just that he died of convulsions. But most importantly, he doesn't say the student came back as a ghost. 

The whole point of Darley's book, including Allston's story, is that ghosts aren't real. Darley wants to convince people ghosts don't exist. If the student came back as a ghost, it would defeat the whole purpose of the book. But I suppose that wouldn't make it a good story for a ghost tour. Someone obviously read Allston's story and decided to embellish it for the tour. 

Personally, I'm a little skeptical that even Washington Allston's original story is true. Wouldn't it be better known that some Harvard students scared another student to death? Wouldn't they have been arrested? Or was there some conspiracy of silence? It sounds like the premise for a good horror movie, particularly if the dead student's brother started murdering the other students while disguised as a ghost. I Know What You Did Last Summer of 1799! And of course it would have a sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer of 1799. 

Haunted Houses and Terrifying Specters: Ghost (?) Stories from Weare, New Hampshire

There are a lot of ghost stories from New England, and one of my favorite types is what I call the "Scooby-Doo" ghost story. In these stories, the ghost is rationally explained away at the end. There is nothing supernatural in these stories, although people in them initially think there is. I call them Scooby-Doo stories because each episode of the Scooby-Doo ended with the ghostly terror being revealed as someone impersonating a ghost, not something supernatural. These stories are similar, but without all the greedy real estate developers and smugglers.

You can find these Scooby-Doo ghost stories in a lot of the local town history books which were written in the 19th century. I found a bunch of them recently in William Little's The History of Weare, New Hampshire, 1735 - 1888 (1888). In one story, an early settler named John Hodgdon was riding home to Weare on horseback one night when he saw something creepy in his cornfield. As the hair on his neck stood up, he saw a large white object appear on a small knoll in the field. It disappeared with an uncanny sound, only to reappear again. Hodgdon dismounted and walked through the dark field to the knoll, determined to discover what this ghostly object (or entity) was. He learned it was not a ghost, but was instead a large basket some of his workers had left in the cornfield. When the wind blew it rolled up the hill, and when the wind subsided it rolled back down. Mystery solved!

William Little, author of The History of Weare, New Hampshire

In another tale, David and Betsy Purington lived in an old shanty, and "one winter were terribly troubled with ghosts." David Purington thought it was the spirit of his deceased father-in-law. One night, a neighbor came to visit the Puringtons. As they sat talking a strange rapping sound was heard from the attic loft above them. It grew louder and louder and louder. David screamed out for the ghost to desist, but the infernal rapping grew louder! Their neighbor was the only one brave enough to climb into the attic to confront the ghost. After climbing the rickety ladder, she saw a chicken whose legs and been frozen by the cold. It was unable to walk, and made a rapping sound as it tried to stand. "The hen was carried to the room below, and the ghost was laid." Mystery solved! Hopefully the hen recovered from being frozen. 

In East Weare, there was another house that was supposedly haunted. A minister had once lived there, but after he moved away the house stood abandoned. People reported hearing strange noises and even seeing strange lights at night. Some brave schoolboys once approached the house during the day, but fled when they heard an eerie noise and heard the doorknob rattle. Eventually the apparitions stopped. When someone finally went into the haunted house, they saw a dead cat lying on the middle of the floor. Apparently the minister had left it behind when he moved and it had caused all the noise. Mystery solved! 

Or is it? A cat doesn't create ghostly lights. And clearly people didn't take very good care of their animals then...

William Little does include at least one ghost story in The History of Weare that's slightly ambiguous. A man name Mr. Eaton was out hunting raccoons one misty autumn night with some friends. Mr. Eaton paused to rest, when out of the mists emerged a terrifying ghost. "He could see the sunken eye-balls, the worm-eaten face, the shriveled hands, and he shook with terror." One of his friend arrived and Mr. Eaton explained what he had seen. The ghost was not visible to the friend. Many people in Weare believed Mr. Eaton had truly seen a ghost, but others suspected that he had just been drunk. So that mystery was perhaps not completely solved. 

There are a lot of books like The History of Weare out there, histories of New England towns written in the mid-to-late 19th century by people who lived in these places. New England had become a modern industrial area by this time, and you can sense the pride the authors feel in the progress their towns had made. At the same time, they're fascinated by the earlier, pre-industrialized way of life that is vanishing and the supernatural worldview that went with it. Maybe these rationalized ghost stories are the authors' way of straddling both worlds, of indulging the wonders and terrors of the past but also explaining them away with the light of reason. 

A Connecticut Ape Man; Or, Is Scooby Doo For Real?

Did you ever watch the Scooby Doo cartoons?

I used to watch them all the time when I was a kid. This was in the early 1970s, and each week Scooby Doo and the gang enacted the same basic story. First, they drove in their groovy van (the Mystery Machine) to some spooky location like an abandoned amusement park or creepy old hotel.

Next, someone told them the location was haunted. This was where the writers were allowed some creativity. The creatures haunting the location included a wide variety of ghosts (pirates, headless phantoms, armored knights, clowns, etc.) and other less categorizable monsters like ape men, a tar monster, and something called the Spooky Space Kook.

Spooky Space Kook!

After learning about the creature, Scooby Doo and his friends then encountered it. Hilarious hijinks ensued as they ran down corridors, hid in garbage cans, played tricks on the monster, etc.

Every episode ended the same way. The monster was unmasked as someone with a financial interest in scaring people. The Black Knight was really nerdy Mr. Wickles, who was stealing paintings from the museum. The Kooky Space Kook was really Henry Bascombe, who wanted to scare people living near an abandoned Air Force base so he could acquire the land for free and sell it back to the government. Whew! That's a complicated motive.

Spooky Space Kook unmasked!!

Scooby Doo once even encountered the ghost of Bigfoot, who was haunting a Vermont ski lodge. He was revealed to be old Mr. Crabtree, who ran an operation selling stolen cars. He dressed like Bigfoot's ghost to scare away anyone who might witness his criminal activity.

The ghost of Bigfoot...

... is really Mr. Crabtree!

After the villain was unmasked they'd always say something like "I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids!" as the police dragged them away. Hooray! Mystery solved and monster vanquished. 

At a certain point every kid who watches Scooby Doo catches on to the formula. The fun then becomes figuring out who the monster really is. But at some even later point it also becomes obvious that the show's formula is ludicrous. Dressing up like ghosts and monsters to scare people away from their property doesn't seem plausible. No one would actually try this in real life, would they?

Surprisingly, the answer is yes. Apparently someone did try it in Connecticut in1926. Here is a brief article from the April 3, 1926 issue of Oakland California's Tribune:

Ape Man Scare Said To Be Land Deal Plot

North Stonington, Conn., April 3. - Taugwank's "ape man" is a plain human being in fur coat and trousers. A game warden has come to that conclusion after a thorough search of the Horace D. Miner farm in Taugwank.

Further, he declared his belief that the man was attempting to frighten Muriel, 19, and Mildred Miner, 16, orphans, into selling the farm. The ape man has variously been reported by the girls and neighbors as a hairy creature of terrifying mien, that slipped along in the manner of an ape, and jumped about with considerable more agility than a human being. (quoted in Chad Arment's excellent book The Historical Bigfoot)

More information can be found in the April 2 edition of Biddeford, Maine's Biddeford Weekly Journal. The game warden was named George Denison, and he searched the 2,000 acres of the Miner farm.

The girls, whose father died a month ago, reported that a fear-inspiring figure, scarce human in appearance, lurked about the house, danced on the summit of a rock 300 feet from the door, and uttered cries like those of an infant. They professed to believe that an attempt was being made to force them to leave the place and sell the farm. They said that an offer had been made to their father to sell the estate during the year preceding his death.

The game warden said the object of his search was to settle once and for all the rumors that a “strange creature” had been seen in the swamp and woods of Taugwank.

... An aged caretaker, Frank Miller, who had been staying at the farm, resigned yesterday. Miller believed in ghosts and was terrified at the situation.

“Every time a wind blew with the wind or the coal shed door squeaked he persisted in saying it was a ghost,” the girl said. “When the strange creature was first seen, we told Miller it was a real ghost. He was so frightened that his teeth chattered and his knees knocked together.” (article quoted in full here)

Even more information can be found in an article in the Syracuse Herald on April 3. According to the Herald, the two Miner daughters were not scared. Instead they were heavily armed.

Loaded firearms await the ape-man masquerader and, according to Denison, that is why he has not been seen in the last few days.
 
"If that fellow goes out there again they are going to put the lead to him," was how he summed up matters after yesterday's visit to the farm. "I wouldn't try it again if I were he."
 
Neighbors of the Miner girls are standing with them, and there is many a loaded shotgun standing in readiness to do duty when Taugwank's terror next appears. (article quoted in full on Rense.com. FYI, site is full of conspiracy theories!)

So there you go. I was apparently wrong when I thought Scooby Doo plots were implausible. I wonder if there are other situations where this happened?

However, I am compelled to point out the following: I couldn't find evidence they ever unmasked the ape man as a particular greedy neighbor. I don't think the culprit was ever discovered. No one in 1926 Connecticut said "I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids."

If that's the case, how do we even know that this Connecticut ape-man was even really a fraud? Which is more implausible - someone dressing up as ape monster to scare teenagers off their family farm, or a random monster who appeared in the woods and then vanished? I leave that up to you.

Perhaps Bigfoot's ghost is still out there in the woods, waiting to be unmasked. Maybe it will be mean old Mr. Crabtree, or maybe it will be something even more frightening.