The Nantucket Merman

I've always liked monsters. Well, at least I like reading about them. I've never met one face-to-face but plenty of New Englanders have. People see all sorts of things around here: Bigfoot, extraterrestrial creatures, pukwudgies, and even the occasional lake monster.

What people don't see much of these days is mer-people. Mermaids and mermen don't seem to be very common around here now, but in the past they were apparently more plentiful. For example, an aggressive triton was seen off the coast of Maine in the early 1600s, while a sailor named Captain Dodge exhibited a mermaid's corpse in a Boston museum in the 1820s.

A merman was even seen off the coast of Nantucket. The year was 1714, and a minister named Valentyn was sailing past Nantucket's Great Point when it happened. Here is a quote from the good reverend's journal:

“It appeared like a sailor, or a man sitting on something; and more like a sailor, as on its head there appeared to be something like an English cap of the same color.

We all agreed he must be some shipwrecked person. After some time I begged the captain to steer the ship more directly toward it. … We had got within a ship’s length of him, when the people on the forecastle mad such a noise that he plunged down, head foremost, and got presently out of sight.

The man who was on watch at the masthead delared that he had… a monstrous long tail.” 

There's something a little creepy about that account. I can imagine the ship's crew going from "Oh, look there's a sailor in the water" to "Oh crap, that guy's got a giant fish tail!" in just a few panicky moments. I know I would.

That may not have been the only sighting of a mer-person near Nantucket. According to folklorist Edward Rowe Snow, the keeper of Great Point's lighthouse claimed to have seen something humanoid crawl out of the ocean and head into nearby Coskata Woods in the early 1900s. Some other locals claimed to have seen signs of something living in the same forest.

Great Point Light from Wikipedia.

The Coskata Woods are very old and have not been logged since 1711. It makes sense that an ancient primal sea being would want to visit an ancient forest.

Perhaps memaids and mermen are still swimming in the waters off our coast. I hope so, because I do like monsters. And make no mistake, mer-people do have a monstrous side. Folklore tells of mermaids who sink ships by raising storms or abduct handsome sailors to be their lovers, while mermen and tritons sometimes attack young women walking alone on the beach. So though I hope there are still some mer-people out there, I don't want to meet one face-to-face, and hope you don't meet one either.

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Most of the information about the Natucket merman can be found in Edward Rowe Snow's book Legends of the New England Coast. 

Matinicus Rock Light: A Ghost Behind Closed Doors

I'll be busy this weekend so I'm publishing my blog post a little early. Enjoy!

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Here's a nice little ghost story from Horace Beck's 1957 book The Folklore of Maine. While researching the book Beck visited various locales around Maine, including the lighthouse on Matinicus Rock, which is located about five miles from Matinicus Island in Penobscot Bay.

Matinicus Rock isn't very big (only about 30 acres), but there has been a lighthouse on it since 1827. For many years there were two towers with lights, one each on the north and south ends of the building. When Beck visited only the south light was in use. The north tower had been decommissioned and the door was locked tight.

Beck asked the Coast Guard crew who manned the lighthouse why the north tower was locked. Their answer: to keep the ghost inside.

They told Beck that many years ago a lighthouse keeper had hanged himself in that tower, and since that time his spirit could be heard roaming through the tower on dark, windy nights. The ghost also broke dishes, slammed doors, and made equipment malfunction. The crew on the island learned the only way to control the ghost was to keep the north tower door locked. For some reason, the ghost wouldn't pass through the locked door.

A few years prior to Beck's visit a Coast Guard officer had come to Matinicus Rock for an inspection. When he heard the ghost story he demanded that the crew abandon their superstitious nonsense and unlock the door. They did as they were ordered, and that night all the lights on the island failed. The crew once again locked the door to the north tower and the lighthouse hadn't seen any trouble since.

Beck couldn't find any record of a suicide at that lighthouse, but the Coast Guard crew was quite adamant about there being a ghost. The ghost story continued until at least the 1970s, when men stationed on the island claimed a strange light could be seen coming from the abandoned north tower on dark nights. They believed the light was the ghost of a lighthouse keeper who had killed himself. The crew nicknamed the ghost Moe.


Matinicus Rock light was automated in 1983 and has been unmanned since then, at least by the living. I suppose the ghost is still out there.

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I like the idea that you can contain a ghost by locking the door. It seems appropriately symbolic, and reminds me of those Japanese horror films like The Grudge where ghosts were sealed behind doors with masking tape. But was (is?) Moe even really a ghost? There is no record of any suicides on the island so maybe the ghost is really some other spirit that likes lonely lighthouses. Skeptics might say the Coast Guard crew just made the story up, but personally I will withhold judgement until I spend a dark night alone out on Matinicus Rock.

I found the two lighthouse images on this great sight devoted to New England lighthouses. Good stuff!