Something Grisly From Cape Cod: The Forgotten Bonnet

I was on Cape Cod recently and had dinner with friends who live in Wellfleet. I really recommend visiting Wellfleet if you can. It has beautiful old buildings from the 18th and 19th century, a bustling little harbor, and lots of green space. Wellfleet has everything you could want in a small New England coastal town, even a pretty white wooden church. But as readers of this blog know, quaint old towns often are the scene of gruesome stories, and sometimes bad things even happen in pretty churches. 

I've mentioned a few spooky Wellfleet stories on this blog before, like those about the witch Maria Hallett (who is still remembered in Wellfleet to this day) or accounts of the mysterious Tarzan of the 1930s (who seems to have been forgotten). But while we were in Wellfleet my friend David told me a story I had never heard before. And it's not just spooky, it's downright gruesome. Hearing a new story always makes me happy, and David swears this one is true. He works at the Wellfleet Historical Society and has written a book about town history so I believe him.

The story is about the Gross family, a large and prominent clan in Wellfleet's past. Many of the Gross men were famous sailors, and one of them even married a Hawaiian princess in 1789. But the family members best remembered today are the ten Gross sisters who posed for this photo in 1850 or 1851:

Photo of the Gross sisters from Wellfleet Historical Society

The sisters were  famous on Cape Cod because there were ten of them and they all lived long healthy lives, which was quite rare at the time. Tbe oldest sister, Lurania, was born in 1767. The youngest, Maria, was born in 1794. Photography was relatively new when this photo was taken, and the sisters had to travel all the way to Boston to pose for it. Clearly they were an important family if they could afford to have their picture taken and travel to do it. 

In addition to being numerous the Grosses were also devout. They belonged to Wellfleet's Methodist church where all the sisters were members of the choir. The Methodist church still exists in town, although the current building is of a more recent date. 

Wellfleet Methodist Church

The sisters faithfully attended choir practices, which were held in the church in the evening. This is where the gruesome story begins. One evening one of the Gross sisters walked all the way home after choir practice when she suddenly realized she had forgotten her bonnet at the church. (I wasn't told which sister it was, so let's just call her Ms. Gross.) Ms. Gross remembered that she had left her bonnet in one of the pews. How embarrassing! No proper woman would dream of being seen without a bonnet. She turned and began the long trek back to church.

She lived quite a distance from the church, and in the time it took her to walk back the sun had set. Everyone else had already left the church, and its windows were dark. Unfortunately Ms. Gross had not brought a lantern, but she bravely opened the door to the church and stepped inside anyway. She spent a lot time inside the building and thought she was familiar with every inch of it. What could possibly go wrong?

The church was pitch black. Ms. Gross walked cautiously down the aisle, guiding herself by holding onto the backs of the pews. She remembered which pew she had left her bonnet in and when she reached it she began to feel along the seat. But much to her surprise she didn't find her bonnet. Instead she found the face of a man who was lying in the pew. His face was cold, and it was wet.

Ms. Gross screamed in surprise and horror. She backed out of the pew in a panic, but then tripped and fell into another pew across the aisle. As she fell she steadied herself with her hands - which came to rest on another man. She felt his wet, soggy clothes and his cold, inert body. She smelled the ocean.

Sobbing, Ms. Gross stumbled down the aisle, feeling her way along in the darkness. She tried to keep her hands on the backs of the pews, but occasionally she slipped, and each time she did she felt another corpse, touching here a cold face, there a wet foot or a clammy hand.

When she finally escaped the church she ran to the nearest house and pounded hysterically on the door. The family inside took her in and listened to her tale. When Ms. Gross had calmed down they explained to her what why the church was full of corpses. 

After choir practice had ended, a wagon had come up to the church from the harbor. It had been filled with dead bodies. Apparently a ship had sunk of the coast of Wellfleet and the crew's bodies had washed ashore in the harbor. The Methodist minister agreed to store them overnight in the church while the townspeople decided where to bury them. The minister certainly didn't think anyone would come stumbling in to find them. After all, everyone had left after choir practice. 

That's the end of the story, but I wonder how Ms. Gross felt. Was she relieved to know there was a logical explanation for all the corpses which suddenly appeared in the church? Or was she saddened and horrified to realize she really had been touching the dead bodies of men who drowned at sea? I also wonder how she felt about her bonnet. Did she vow to never forget her bonnet again, or did she instead vow to never wear one again? Significantly, in the photo of the ten sisters the youngest one, Maria, is not wearing a bonnet... 

This story reminds me of that old Halloween game for kids, the one where you are blindfolded and touch various things that are supposed to be body parts. You touch cold grapes and someone tells you they are eyeballs, you touch spaghetti and someone tells you it is intestines, etc. In Ms. Gross's case, though, she actually did touch dead bodies. If there's any lesson to be learned it might this: gruesome things can happen anytime of the year, and they even happen in small towns with pretty white churches.

New England Folklore In The News: UFOs, Sasquatch Graffiti, Monomoy and Witch Talk!

There has been a surprising amount of strange New England folklore in the news this week. Summer is usually a slow time for news, but I guess that doesn't hold true if it's really weird and unusual.

UFOs in New Hampshire

First up, someone in Merrimack, New Hampshire took a photo of an unidentified thing in the sky on June 26. What is it? An alien craft? A giant space jellyfish?

Something strange seen over Merrimack, New Hampshire

The photographer sent the photo to NH1 News and several other websites. A NH1 meteorologist thought it might be the sun refracting off some clouds, while the people at UFO Sightings Hotspot thought it was probably just a lens flare.

The photographer didn't actually see the object/flare with their naked eye, only through their camera. They wrote the following on UFOStalker.com:

I took my kids to the park, clouds came in and it got dark, the sun was shining threw the clouds on the right so I started taking photos as it was beautiful as I was looking at the pictures I captured I noticed it away from the sun under the clouds not with my eyes with my photo.  so here it is no idea what it is but it's interesting

New Hampshire has a long and venerable history with UFO sightings. And as many people know, one of the most famous UFO abductions allegedly occurred in the Granite State when Betty and Barney Hill had an unusual encounter on a lonely road in 1961. Were they really abducted by aliens, or is there another explanation? Their niece Kathleen Marden recently spoke at a UFO convention in Roswell, New Mexico. You can read her thoughts on the case here. 

Bigfoot Graffiti in Kennebunk, Maine

Meanwhile, people up in Kennebunk, Maine were disturbed by strange activity of another kind. Not alien abductions, but rather someone defacing property with spray-painted images of Sasquatch. CBS News reports that Kennebunk police arrested a 36-year old man they say is responsible and charged him with criminal mischief and possession of drugs. There's no word on what motivated him to paint images of Sasquatch around town. 

Weird Tales from Monomoy Island

The Boston Globe recently ran an article about Cape Cod's Monomoy Island. Currently uninhabited, Monomoy once was home to a small village of fishermen and their families. The Globe notes that the islanders also had the reputation for being shipwreckers:

On stormy nights, Monomoyers would walk a limping old horse down the beach with two lanterns hanging from a pole mounted on his saddle. Mariners trying to get around the Cape would mistake the lanterns for the lighthouse, turn too soon, and wreck on the bars. The most sinister version of this story has the villagers murdering the ship’s crew. Wrecking continued until as recently as 1909, with the wreck of the Horatio Hall. Today, many homes in Chatham have china and silverware from the Hall and other wrecks.

Someone in the comments posted a link to an article in Cape Cod Life that downplays the shipwrecking and argues instead that most of the Monomoyers actually tried to save people from shipwrecks. That same article also notes that the island was haunted by a ghost called Old Yo-Ho who stalked Monomoy's shore at night, carrying a lantern and endlessly calling out his own name. 

Image from Cape Cod Life. 

Let's Talk About Witches!

Do you want to hear me talk about witchcraft? If you said yes, this is your lucky day. WAMC, an NPR affiliate from New York, interviewed me for their podcast "Listen With The Lights On." I talk about an early witchcraft trial from Springfield, Massachusetts, a young lady who was tormented by a spectral witch in the 1840s, and some teenage boys who encountered something witchy in the Freetown State Forest. 

That's it for this week. Who knows what weird stories will show up next? I'm hoping they're as good as these were!

Sam Bellamy, Maria Hallett, and the Wreck of the Pirate Ship Whydah

Tony and I were down on the Cape recently and finally visited the Pirate Museum in Provincetown. I've wanted to go for quite a few years and was glad to finally find the time.

The museum's exhibits are focused on the pirate ship Whydah (pronounced "widdah"), which sank off the coast of Wellfleet in 1717. The wreck was located by divers in 1982, and the artifacts they found, including gold coins, a cannon, and the ship's bell, are featured in the museum.

Here are some interesting facts I learned:

• Pirates used a primitive form of hand grenade when attacking ships.
• Venereal disease was common among pirates, but the cure - an injection of mercury directly into the bladder - was probably worse than the sickness.
• Pirates who had a limb amputated received an extra stipend of gold.

The Whydah was originally commissioned as a slave ship, and is named after the African coastal city of Ouidah. It was captured by notorious pirate Black Sam Bellamy while it was sailing in the Caribbean. Bellamy took the ship as his own, loaded it with approximately four tons of stolen gold, and headed north to Cape Cod. He never reached the Cape, but died with almost all his crew less than a mile off Wellfleet's Atlantic coast in an April storm. He was 28 and is believed to have been the wealthiest pirate in history.

There are quite a few legends associated with Sam Bellamy and the Whydah. The most enduring is about his love for a local Cape Cod girl named Maria Hallett. On Cape Cod he met and fell in love with Maria Hallett, who was young (only 15!) and beautiful. Her parents didn't approve of Sam - he was just a poor sailor - but one thing led to another and Maria became pregnant with Sam's child. Declaring his undying love for Maria, Sam set off for the Caribbean to make his fortune. He vowed to return a rich man.

Some stories say Sam intended to find sunken treasure in the Caribbean, but found his way into piracy instead. Maria, who was left at home on the Cape, was shunned by her family and neighbors. Premarital pregnancy was not uncommon in colonial New England, but it usually led to a speedy marriage. Maria didn't have that option. She bore her child alone and unmarried in a isolated hut in the woods.

There are many variations of the legend, but they fall into two broad types. In the first, Maria grows bitter. Really, really bitter. She's been shunned by her community and abandoned by the man who said he loved her. Alone and angry, she turns to the one person who always was available to the New England outcast - the Devil. In return for her soul, and possibly the life of her child, the Dark Man makes her a witch. When Maria learns that the Whydah is approaching Wellfleet she climbs onto one of the high dunes and raises a storm. The man who ruined her life is drowned, the Whydah sinks, and Maria dances in the wild wind and rain. The area where she cast her spell is now called the Lucifer Land, Satan's Harvest, or the Devil's Pasture in local folklore.

That's the grim, gloomy version. The slightly less grim version claims that Maria remained faithful to Sam, watching and waiting patiently for his return. On the night of the storm she watched from the dunes, hoping the Whydah would make it safely to shore. When it didn't, she lost her mind from grief and ran down to the beach. The next day she was found on the shore, screaming and wailing as she wandered through the wreckage and drowned corpses. Her ghost is still said to walk near Marconi Beach in Wellfleet, and her cries can be heard on dark stormy nights.

Tony scanning the Atlantic coast for pirates, ghosts, witches, etc.

 There's a lot of historical documentation on Sam Bellamy's life, but there's no documentation about Maria Hallett. Did she even exist? It's impossible to know, but Hallett is an old Cape Cod name so it's entirely likely. Records from the early 1700s can be a little spotty.

Legends and strange phenomena surrounded the Whydah even into the modern age. Barry Clifford, the explorer who found the Whydah in 1982, claims that the expedition was plagued by bad luck and strange mechanical malfunctions while it was searching for the wreck. The divers and crew once even heard a voice over their radio repeat the following words: "We want your boat... We want your boat..." The weird shenanigans stopped only after Clifford and his crew poured rum into the ocean and toasted the dead pirate crew. Shortly after making this offering to the dead they discovered the sunken ship and its treasure.

In 1998, the staff at a Wellfleet restaurant also reproted a strange encounter. One of their customers emerged from the restroom in a panic. He said he had seen a young woman in an old-fashioned dress, but that she had disappeared. The staff checked the restroom and found it unoccupied. The customer hastily signed his name of the credit card slip and ran out of the restaurant. His last name was Bellamy.

The story of Sam Bellamy and Maria Hallett can be found in many places, including Elizabeth Reynard's The Narrow Land and Mark Jasper's Haunted Cape Cod and the Islands. The stories about the modern ghosts are from the Houston Museum's website.

Aunt Rachel's Curse: A Witch Story From Plymouth

This is the story I meant to tell last week, before I got distracted by the consumptive vampire legend. The story comes from Plymouth on Massachusetts's Cape Cod.

As most American school kids know, Plymouth and Cape Cod were colonized by the Pilgrims. Although they were similar in many ways to the Puritans who settled Connecticut and the rest of Massachusetts, the Pilgrims were also quite different. One important difference is that the Pilgrims never executed anyone for witchcraft, and there weren't many witch trials on Cape Cod. But Cape Cod still has a rich tradition of witch stories - this was one seems to be have been first written in the 1840s, but may be much older.

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Aunt Rachel lived on the outskirts of Plymouth in a small rundown house. Many years ago her husband and only son had died in a shipwreck in the town's harbor. Since that time Rachel lived off her neighbor's charity and whatever money she could make telling fortunes.

Most of Rachel's clients were sailors who wanted to know if their voyages would be successful. Would they get rich? Would they get home safely? Rachel would answer their questions by reading their palms. Her talent for deciphering the lines and mounds of a client's hand was exceptional, and her predictions were quite accurate. Some townspeople whispered they were too accurate, and that that old Aunt Rachel was a witch.

One day a group of sailors came to her home to get their fortunes told. They were departing on a merchant ship for a long voyage the next day and wanted to know if they would return safely. Rachel peered at their hands and told them what she saw, but when she held the hand of the last sailor she gasped. She dropped his hand and stood up from her chair. Pointing one bony finger at him she said:

"You have set false beacons and wrecked ships for plunder. It was your fathers and mothers who decoyed a brig to these sands and left me childless and a widow. He who rides the pale horse be your guide, and you be of the number who follow him!"

The sailor laughed coldly at the old woman and walked out. That night Aunt Rachel's house was set on fire, and her neighbors saw her flee into the dark night, howling with rage and sorrow.

The air still smelled like smoke the next morning when the people of Plymouth gathered to watch the merchant ship set sail. As the ship raised anchor and sailed across the harbor a gaunt figure clad only in scorched rags appeared in the crowd. It was Aunt Rachel.

As the ship sailed safely past the various sand bars and shoals in the harbor, Rachel muttered strange words under her breath. Just as the ship was about to leave the harbor her muttering became a loud chant, and a wild look filled her eyes. The ship foundered and stood still in the water. It seemed to have hit a rock, even though no rock had ever been there before. The townspeople watched helplessly as the crew took to the life boats, and within minutes the ship sank to the bottom of the harbor. All the men on board escaped safely except for one - the sailor that Aunt Rachel had cursed the night before.

In the commotion of the shipwreck no one at first noticed that Rachel had collapsed onto the ground. She was dead, but her mouth was set in a grim smile that stayed on her face until she was buried. The rock that mysteriously appeared in the harbor is now called Rachel's Curse in her honor.

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This story appears in Charles Skinner's Myths and Legends of Our Own Land, but it seems to have first been recorded in the same 1842 edition of The United States Gazette where I found last week's story. Like many other Cape Cod witch stories, it's focused on a conflict between witches and seafaring men. Land and sea, male and female, magic and mercantilism - there's a lot going on in these old stories!