Ghosts, Strange Graves and General Weirdness at Gilson Road Cemetery

I always like to read about a haunted location before we visit it. It helps me know what I should look for when I get there.

One of the first things I read about Gilson Road Cemetery really intrigued me. According to an urban legend, a ghost will appear if you leave the cemetery and shout "Betty Gilson, I have your baby!" The ghost appears as a woman in Colonial-era clothing, and is sometimes seen in the middle of Gilson Road. At other other times she hides behind the trees that line the road.

Who is Betty Gilson? Why is she so concerned about her baby? Unfortunately I didn't learn the answers to these questions when we visited Gilson Road Cemetery recently. Actually, I came away with even more questions.

Gilson Road Cemetery is located on a quiet rural street in Nashua, New Hampshire. The cemetery itself is quite small and doesn't have a lot of gravestones standing, but it's pretty obvious there used to be more than there are today. For example, a quick scan showed that there were several stone bases that used to support gravestones that are no longer there. I'm sure there are many more graves that are completely unmarked.

I couldn't find any historical records of this cemetery online. The oldest grave, that of Hannah Robbins, seems to date from the 1790s. Most of the graves are from the 1800s. Many of them are for members of the Gilson family, although the Fiskes, Searles and other families are buried here as well.

Lisa Rogak's 2004 edition of Stones and Bones of New England claims it had a reputation as New Hampshire's most haunted cemetery, and ghost hunter Fiona Broome has been investigating since 2008. Many, many people have seen ghosts there. Orbs, strange lights, apparitions and small ghostly children have all been sighted by visitors to Gilson Road. My Facebook friend Sandra has gone to many haunted locations and said that she saw strange faces in photos she took at Gilson Road Cemetery.

Did we see ghosts? No. Was Gilson Road Cemetery weird? Yes. Unlike Vale End, which I blogged about last week, Gilson Road does not feel well-maintained. It feels vaguely neglected. Neglect doesn't necessarily equal weird in my book, but Gilson Road Cemetery is also the site of a lot of human activity. That's what made it seem so strange.

Visitors to cemeteries will sometimes leave coins on the graves of famous or important people. I think that's common. But visitors to Gilson Road have left coins on many, many graves and no one famous is buried there. I think people are leaving coins to honor (or perhaps propitiate?) the restless spirits that are said to reside there.

The neglect and the coins make Gilson Road Cemetery feel weird, and so do all the child graves. And there are a lot of them. For example, there are three identical tiny gravestones for unnamed babies from the Gilson family. Coins have been left on all of them. Perhaps these graves marked "Baby Gilson" have given rise to the legend about Betty Gilson and her baby?

Here is another child's grave, this time with a stuffed Big Bird left at it. All the graves are all quite old, so it's very, very unlikely Big Bird was left by someone who knew the child while he was alive.

The most memorable grave is probably that of little Walter Gilson, who died in 1811 when he was just over three years old. Walter's gravestone has a round hole drilled all the way through it. I haven't found a definitive explanation for this and have never seen another grave like it anywhere else.

People have left a lot of items at Walter's grave, including Barbie dolls, a solar powered crucifix, toy cars, and a rubber space alien. I think the stuffed Scooby Doo is particularly appropriate. A ghost-hunting dog is probably the best toy for a haunted cemetery.

Finally, adding to the weirdness, we saw this object on the ground. Was it a charm of some kind? It definitely had a Blair Witch vibe to it, but I suppose it could just have been a broken dreamcatcher. Or maybe not. We just left it right where it was. I'm not messing around with somebody else's graveyard magic, thank you very much.

There are a few theories about why the cemetery is supposed to be so haunted. According to one it was the site of a bloody battle between two local Native American tribes. Another claims the cemetery was the site of not one, but two deadly house fires. I don't think there's any evidence to back up either theory so they may just be legends. Still, true or not, they reflect the eerie atmosphere of the cemetery.

I guess you can see why I came away from Gilson Road Cemetery with a lot of questions. It's one of the more interesting graveyards I've been to recently and I recommend visiting if you get the chance. Maybe you'll find more answers than I did! My usual caveats apply: don't go at night and don't damage anything. This is someone's final resting place so be respectful. 

Defending Your House Against Evil Magic

Do you ever feel like your house is being attacked by evil witches? Do you sometimes think that malevolent demonic forces are targeting your homestead?

I would suggest that healthy skepticism is usually the best defense against these feelings, but the Puritans of New England thought otherwise. They felt the world was a battleground between good and evil, and the Devil and his minions (human and otherwise) were out to cause trouble for the good people of New England.

To keep evil forces out of the home, the Puritans used some very simple forms of defensive magic. Local ministers thought that all magic was evil, but the average New Englander knew that sometimes you needed to fight fire with fire. If your house was under magical attack, you needed some magical defenses. These magical practices lingered well into the 18th and 19th centuries, well after the Puritans had faded away.

These practices tend to focus on doors, windows, and chimneys. These openings were obviously necessary for a functioning home, but they could also allow access to unwanted spirits or witches. I've written a few times before about horseshoes, which were one of the main ways to guard the house against attack, but there were others as well.

For example, a coin put under the door sill would prevent a witch from entering the house. This was pretty simple to do, providing you had money to spare. I suppose the symbolism here is two-fold. Coins obviously represent abundance and financial security, which are things a witch would hate. They are also made of metal, which tends to repel supernatural entities (think of silver bullets and werewolves, or iron and fairies). This type of magic is still widely practiced today. As this discussion on Snopes.com indicates, many people put pennies on their window sills. The practice is now said to be done for "good luck," but has it's origin as protection from witches or demons.

Fireplaces were central to the colonial home. Cooking was done there, and families gathered around fireplaces in the winter for warmth. While chimneys let smoke out, they unfortunately also could let evil beings into the home. People would often enclose shoes in the walls near the chimney to protect it. There is a lot of speculation about why this was done, but the predominant theory seems to be that somehow the witch or evil spirit would get trapped in the shoe and would be unable to escape.

If you were feeling crafty, you might want to carve a daisy wheel above a doorway, window or fireplace. The daisy wheel looks like this:

From a church in England.

Daisy wheels were easily made by carpenters using a compass, and have been found in many old homes in New England. For example, the 1699 Winslow House in Marshfield, Massachusetts has several carved above the fireplace, while the home of Salem historian Emerson Baker has one carved above the front door. They are also known as witch marks, hexafoils, or apotropaic marks, if daisy wheel sounds too silly for you. People aren't quite sure why daisy wheels were supposed to avert evil, but some historians have speculated it is because they represent the sun.

So again, if you really, really think your house is under attack by evil forces you might want to try some of this magic. I do think skepticism is the best defense, but as the days grow shorter and colder sometimes that skepticism is hard to muster.

*****

I found some of this information in Emerson Baker's book A Storm of Witchcraft, and in a few places on the web.

I hope those readers who practice Wicca or other forms of modern witchcraft realize that when I refer to "evil witches" I am referring to how witches were viewed by the Puritans and other early inhabitants of New England. I know that Wiccans and modern witches are not evil!