The Ghost of Catherine's Hill: You Better Give Her A Ride

There's a lonely stretch of Route 182 in Maine. It's known as Black's Woods Road, and runs between Franklin and Cherryfield. This part of the state is quite rural, and the trees press heavily in on the road, particularly on a dark, moonless night. 

The road climbs a small mountain known as Catherine's Hill, and if you're unlucky you might see Catherine herself one night while driving along Route 182. Catherine is a ghost, and appears as a forlorn young woman wandering the side of the road in an evening gown, either pale blue or white in color. 

If you see Catherine, you should stop and offer her a ride. She'll tell you she's going go to Bangor. You should let her in even though it's a long drive and you might not be going that way. Otherwise, bad luck will come to you. 

Photo from Pinterest

Here's an example. One night a salesman was driving along Route 182 when he saw Catherine walking by the side of the road. He was in a hurry and was also unnerved by the sight of a young woman in a formal gown alone in the woods. He instinctively knew something was uncanny about her, so he sped past without stopping. It was a fatal mistake. As he glanced in the rear view mirror, he saw Catherine suddenly sitting in the back seat of his car - without her head. Her bloody-necked corpse filled him with terror (of course!) and he lost control of the car. He died instantly when it hit a tree.

Some legends say Catherine was driving to her prom with her boyfriend when they got in an accident and both died. She was decapitated, and now walks along Route 182 trying to find her boyfriend. Sometimes Catherine is even seen wandering headless along the side of the road. You should still stop and offer her a ride if you see her in this condition, unless you want something bad to happen to you. The bad luck isn't always immediate. Sometimes it takes a few days, but it always comes. Better to just offer her headless corpse a ride. 

There are a few variations of the legend. Maybe she died on the way to her wedding, and maybe she died in the 1800s in a carriage accident. Despite the minor fluctuating details, the core of the story remains the same: offer Catherine a ride or face the consequences. 

To me, the legend feels like a variant of the classic ghostly hitchhiker story. In that story, which is told all across the country, a driver picks up a young woman who is hitchhiking. The driver agrees to take her to her destination. Upon reaching the destination, the young woman vanishes. The driver asks somebody at the destination if they can explain what happened, and is told, "Why, that young woman was my daughter/sister/grandmother/etc. and she died in an accident this very night many years ago!" The Catherine's Hill legend includes some of these elements (the young woman who died, someone giving her a ride) but omits the revelation at the end. Instead, it substitutes a curse - anyone who doesn't offer Catherine a ride suffers a horrible fate. It's a nice twist on a classic story. 

This story has apparently been told for many years, but I just learned about it recently when someone who heard me on a radio show emailed me about it. Thank you Larry! It is a great story! If anyone is interested in learning more, this article from the Bangor Daily News is quite good. You can also check out Marcus Librizzi's book Dark Woods, Chill Waters: Ghost Stories from Down East Maine (2007). 

Speaking of books, they make good holiday gifts. My new book, Witches and Warlocks of Massachusetts, is now available wherever books are sold online. It's the perfect gift for almost anyone!

The Flesher Witch: Menace in the Maine Woods

I'm always excited when I learn about a new weird legend, so I was pretty happy recently when I learned about the Flesher Witch of Haynesville, Maine. Thank you Jeremy for pointing this one out! The Flesher Witch legend is creepy, unique, and blends old and new folklore motifs into one gruesome package.

Still from The Incredible Melting Man (1977)

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Haynesville is located up in Aroostook County, and it's quite small. Like really small. The last census counted fewer than 200 people living there. Haynesville may be tiny, but it's rich in spooky folklore. A lot of it focuses on Route 2A. The stretch of 2A that passes through the Haynesville Woods is notoriously winding and treacherous, particularly in the winter, and has been the site of many fatal car and truck accidents. 

All of those accidents have earned this part of Route 2A a reputation as one of the most dangerous roads in America. Country singer Dick Curless even had a hit in 1965 with "A Tombstone Every Mile," which was a country song about the dangers of trucking on Route 2A:

All you big and burly men who roll the trucks along

Better listen you'll be thankful when you hear my song

You have really got it made if you're haulin' goods

Anyplace on earth but those Haynesville Woods

It's a stretch of road up north in Maine

That's never ever ever seen a smile

If they'd buried all them truckers lost in them woods

There'd be a tombstone every mile

Count 'em off there'd be a tombstone every mile...

Curless was born in Aroostook County and lived much of his life in Maine, so he knew what he was writing about. The song's bouncy and catchy, but there's nothing fun about driving on Route 2A during the winter. Because of all the fatal accidents it's said to be one of the most haunted roads in New England. Many forlorn lost souls have been seen wandering along Route 2A, including a hitchhiking woman in white who disappears once a driver stops to pick her up. She's a classic "vanishing hitchhiker" type of ghost. 

I'm not here to really talk about ghosts, though. There's more happening in Haynesville than just ghosts. I'm here to talk about the Flesher Witch, a terrifying being who supposedly lurks in the Haynesville Woods. 

According to a local story, in the 1800s a young girl named Annie Wilcox moved with her parents and brothers to Haynesville. Shortly after they moved in, Annie began to complain of strange things happening at night. She said he heard a scratching noise at her window, as if something were trying to get in. Her parents ignored her - young children have active imaginations - but the phenomena got stranger as time went on. Annie said something unseen pulled off the blankets while she slept, and she sometimes felt something (or someone?) biting her skin late at night. She also heard a voice softly whispering indistinguishable words in the darkness. 

Her parents thought she was just trying to get attention, but they changed their minds one night when Annie ran into their bedroom in tears. Her face was covered in bloody scratches. She said an old woman with a face like melting wax had attacked her. When they searched her room it was empty. They let Annie sleep with them that night. 

The weird phenomena in their house stopped after this, but it wasn't the end of Annie's ordeal. One day about a month later, the Wilcox family was walking through the woods. The parents realized that Annie, who had been bringing up the rear, was no longer visible. They heard a terrifying scream ring out, but despite searching for hours her family was unable to find her. She had vanished.

Some hunters made a gruesome discovery several weeks later. They found Annie's dead body in a clearing in the woods. Her face was missing. Lying next to her on the ground was the corpse of an old woman whose face looked like melting wax.  

The Incredible Melting Man (1977)

Annie's death devastated her family. Her mother hanged herself, and her two brothers drowned while swimming. Mr. Wilcox was the sole survivor, and he slowly lost his sanity, scratching endlessly at his face as if he wanted to remove it. He wandered off into Haynesville Woods one day and was never seen again.

People say the Flesher Witch still lurks in the Haynesville Woods, even today. An old woman with a melting face is sometimes seen walking among the trees, and whenever animals or children go missing she is blamed. No one know who she is, and no one wants to get close enough to find out. 

So there's the legend of the Flesher Witch. I like it. Some parts of it draw on classic New England legends. Witches are one of the most common topics in pre-20th century New England folklore, and the nighttime attacks on Annie are every similar to witchcraft stories from the 1600s. In older stories the witch is usually a curmudgeonly neighbor, but the Flesher Witch seems to be a purely supernatural being. She's not just some mean old lady down the road. I think this is an improvement because it means no one's going to get hanged for being a witch up in Haynesville. 

Other parts of this legend seem more modern to me. The melting face seems modern and possibly inspired by horror movies, as does the witch trying to steal someone's face. That's not something you'd hear in a legend before the mid-20th century. And that's OK. Folklore changes over time. People in the 21st century are scared by different things than our ancestors were. 

In some ways this story reminds me of the Freetown State Forest witch who is described in Christopher Balzano's 2007 book Dark Woods: Cults, Crime and the Paranormal in the Freetown State Forest. Like the Flesher Witch, the Freetown Forest witch menaces young people and also seems to be a purely supernatural being. Are these witches really ghosts? Demons? Particularly gruesome land spirits? Or maybe just the manifestation of how people feel about the place they live? The woods can be pretty scary.

These stories are fascinating. If you know about any other strange modern witch legends please let me know, either in the comments or by emailing me. And of course, be careful when you go wandering out in the woods. 

The Ghostly Nuns of Dudley Road

Haunted roads. Doesn't that phrase sound magical? There's just something really evocative about combining those two words. There's real synergy there; the whole is greater than its parts.

Haunted roads are appealing because they remind me of my adolescence, driving around aimlessly with friends waiting for something to happen. The lure of a haunted road has stuck with me into adulthood, and I've been to a few different haunted roads recently: Route 44, Albino Road, and Ghost Road. But just recently I went to what is supposed to be the most haunted road in Massachusetts: Dudley Road in Billerica.

There are several legends associated with Dudley Road, many of them focused on nuns. The most lurid story claims that back in the 19th century a group of nuns from a local convent decided to worship Satan. They would sneak out of the convent at night and gather in an abandoned house for their sinister rituals. Eventually the locals figured out what was happening and hanged the nuns in a nearby field.

St. Thecla's Retreat Center, run by the Sisters of St. Paul, is on Dudley Road

Apparently the spirits of Devil-worshipping nuns don't rest easily, because according to local legends they have been seen wandering around the road at night, and in particular haunt the field where they were hanged. Since their deaths the house where they celebrated the Black Mass has slowly been sinking into the ground. Is it descending to Hell? Strange smells and sounds emanate from the building at night.

Creepy stuff! There are also other legends about ghost nuns. One claims that a nun was hit by a car late one night while walking home to the convent. She was killed instantly when the impact knocked her into a tree, but her ghost still haunts Dudley Road. Some say she can be seen lurking under the tree her body was thrown against, while others say that she wanders the road at night asking for directions back to the convent. She is, quite literally, a lost soul.

Is this house sinking into the earth?

Another legend claims that a nun from the convent became pregnant after having an affair with a priest. She hanged herself in shame and her ghost can still be seen haunting the tree where she died. These stories share similar elements - ghosts, nuns, trees, hangings - but are all slightly different. Everyone seems to agree that something bad happened but the legends differ over what it was.

Not all the ghosts are nuns. A man dressed like a farm-worker is also said to haunt the road at night. He stands by the side of the road just under the trees, his face perpetually hidden in shadow. Don't stop if you see him. Just keep driving.

When Tony and I drove down Dudley Road I was surprised how nice it was. There are a lot of large well-maintained homes and quite a few horse farms, but I guess even upscale neighborhoods have ghosts. Parts of the road seemed new but other parts were older. The older parts were narrow and quite twisty with Colonial era homes and bordered by lichen-encrusted stone walls. I can easily see how creepy legends could get attached to this street. We only visited during the day - I imagine it is much spookier at night.

The stories about Dudley Road seem to be at least several decades old. Commenters on this post claim they heard the stories at least thirty years ago, and others say they were told the story by their parents. A few commenters even say the stories are true and that they have seen some of the ghosts.

I am not a debunker; people may very well see strange things on this road. However, I don't think the story about the hanged nuns is corroborated by any historical records. The last people executed for witchcraft in Massachusetts were hanged in Salem in 1692, so it's very, very unlikely that anyone was  killed in the early nineteenth century for Devil worship. And the house that is supposedly sinking into the ground looks a lot like a storage building to me. It also has big "No trespassing" signs posted on it so please stay away.

So if the nun legend isn't true why do people see ghost nuns? I don't know for sure, but I do think New England has it's own psychic landscape which is influenced by history, the people living on it, and the land itself. New England has it's own folkloric personality. Some people might find old houses, stone walls and dense woods charming, but other might experience them as creepy, particularly at night. A commenter on that post claimed that his teenage son went to Dudley Road with some friends on a lark, but things didn't go quite as planned. He returned home terrified and in tears. Was it all in the boy's head, or did he encounter something that only manifests to people who have the right mindset?

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments. I would love to hear from some people who have seen strange things on Dudley Road.