Kimball Tavern: Ghosts for Sale

How many haunted taverns are there in New England? A lot, I guess, because this is my second post about a haunted tavern this summer.

Today's tavern in question is the Kimball Tavern in my hometown of Haverhill, Massachusetts. The tavern sits near Bradford Common on the south side of the Merrimack River, and was built around 1690 by Benjamin Kimball. Seven generations of the Kimball lived in it for the next two centuries.

The tavern played an important part in local history, because it was here that a group of local landowners met to create Bradford Academy (later Bradford College) in 1803. In 1921 the building was sold to the Marble family, who operated an antique store there, and it was later bought by Bradford College. 

Sadly, Bradford College shut down in 2000, and Kimball Tavern was then sold to the Wood family, who ran an antiques store from it. The Woods shut down their store a few years ago, and the building is once again for sale. The asking price is $599,000.

In addition to getting a 300+ year old building with six bedrooms and three baths, the buyer may also get some ghosts. According to Roxie Zwicker's Haunted Pubs of New England (2007), a former Bradford College student named Tom experienced strange phenomena in the tavern. 

Your author in front of the tavern.

For example, once when making a presentation the projector became mysteriously unplugged, and photos taken of him during the presentation seem to show a shadowy figure standing between him and the camera. In fact, Tom could not be seen in the photos at all.

Tom also claimed that many people glimpsed shadowy figures through the windows when the building was unoccupied. Tom and a friend visited the tavern one night to take photos, and saw a group of figures looking at them from an attic window. These figures also appeared in the photos. Tom believed they were the spirits of the Kimball family.

Many local children also thought the building was haunted, and according to Christopher and Nancy Obert's Legendary Locals of Haverhill, Massachusetts (2011), people have claimed to hear the sound of a young girl inside, as well as see the shadow of a dog and hear footsteps in empty rooms. So there you go. If you buy this building you might get some ghosts. 

Sadly, I don't have an extra $600K lying around, so I won't get the chance to own this beautiful old (and possibly haunted) building. Hopefully whoever buys it will run it as a business of some kind, or even a museum, so I will get a chance to see the inside. Hopefully the ghosts will stick around as well.

*****

I'll be a guest on Midnight FM this Thursday, 8/25/21, to discuss my book Witches and Warlocks of Massachusetts. I'm excited to talk with host Tim Weisberg about New England's weird and wonderful folklore. The show airs at 10:00 pm Eastern time!

The Demon Dog and Ghostly Boy of Hell's Half Acre

For over one-hundred years people in Bristol, Vermont have said that South Mountain is haunted by ghosts. One ghost is a large dog; the other is a little boy. Although the ghosts are still said to haunt the  mountain (you can hear them on a quiet night if you listen) the explanation for how they got there has changed over time. 

The story of the ghosts begins way back in 1800. That was the year a Spanish man named DeGrau appeared in Bristol. DeGrau told anyone who would listen that as boy he had come to South Mountain with his father and a party of Spanish prospectors. They had found a rich vein of silver on the mountain and smelted in down into silver bars. And when DeGrau said rich vein he meant rich! They had more silver than they could carry out with them, so they buried the majority of it on the mountain. DeGrau's father and the others planned to come back at a future date to recover their treasure but they never did. 

An alternate version of the story claims that DeGrau was actually a Spanish pirate, and that he and his crew had been carrying their loot from the coast towards Canada when they were attacked by an Indian war-party. Most of the the pirates were killed in the battle but not before they buried their treasure. Only DeGrau had escaped alive.

And now poor DeGrau, whether vicious pirate or son of a prospector, decades later could not find the exact spot where the silver bars had been buried. The landscape had been altered by the earthquake of 1755. He dug around futilely on the mountainside for a while and then wandered off. He never returned but the rumor of the lost treasure remained. People in Bristol would sometimes try to find the treasure but like DeGrau never succeeded. They did find old mining implements which led them to think there was truth to the legend, as did the discovery of a Spanish doubloon.

Things changed in the middle of the 19th century when large group of Canadian prospectors arrived. Led by a man named Uncle Sim Corserer, this group was better organized and more determined than the dilettantes who had preceded them. For more than a decade they ran a serious mining operation on South Mountain. They dug multiple pits and tunnels into solid rock, determined to find the silver.

Corserer and his crew were guided by a spiritualist medium who told them where to dig. However, the medium also warned them that the treasure was guarded by two evil spirits. One of them was a savage dog, which the Spaniards had sacrificed near the treasure. Its ghost now wandered the mountain howling and threatening anyone who got close to finding the silver. The other ghost was a small boy, who also had been sacrificed to create a guardian spirit. He wandered the woods and slopes with a red-hot iron bar and bore the wound that ended his life: a bloody gash across his throat. 

Although some locals were skeptical the Canadian prospectors swore they had heard and seen these angry spirits. The area where they dug earned the nickname Hell's Half Acre and people began to avoid it, partially from fear of the ghosts but also because it was dangerous: the Canadians had excavated multiple half-hidden shafts and pits into which a person could easily plummet. Eventually Sim Corserer and his crew departed empty-handed. Maybe the ghosts had prevented them from finding the treasure? 

People say the ghosts still haunt Hell's Half Acre but the story about them has changed. According to the new story, many years ago a boy decided to explore the prospector's abandoned excavations on South Mountain. He brought his faithful dog with him. He never returned home and although his family searched for him they were unable to find any sign of their child or his canine companion.

Years later a hiker stumbled upon a dog's skeleton in the dense woods. It was lying next to a deep pit. At the bottom of the pit was the skeleton of a small boy. The hiker deduced that the boy had stumbled into one of the area's hidden pits and died. His faithful dog was unwilling to leave its master and stayed at the top of the pit until it too passed away.

It is said that if you listen on a quiet night you can hear the boy's cries and the howling of the spectral dog. Are they the tragic ghosts of recent legend or the more sinister demonic guardians the prospectors warned of? Either way, you explore Hell's Half Acre at great risk. The terrain is treacherous and riddled with pits and tunnels hidden in the undergrowth. You don't want to become the third ghost haunting the mountain.

*****

I got a lot of my information for this post from Joseph Citro's book Weird New England and also from online sources like this one. Treasure hunting was a popular pastime in 19th century New England and the area is full of legends similar to this one. See for example this legend from Ipswich, Massachusetts. Sim Corserer was not the only person who wasted years digging for treasure under the direction of a psychic. Hiram Marble did something similar in Lynn, Massachusetts and his tunnel still remains. 

Bradford College: The Necronomicon, Strange Lights, and Ghosts

What is it about colleges and ghost stories? It seems like most colleges have at least one restless spirit wandering their hallowed halls. Maybe it's because young people are more perceptive of the supernatural, or maybe it's just that young people like a good scary story. Either way, if you want to find a ghost college campuses are a good place to look.

I grew up in Haverhill, Massachusetts. When I lived there it was home to two colleges: Northern Essex Community College (NECCO to the locals) and Bradford College. I've never heard any ghost stories about NECCO, and Renee Mallett, author Haunted Colleges and Universities of Massachusetts, writes that "...it's not haunted in the slightest, at least as far as anyone has come forward to say." It's not a residential campus so that might be the reason why.

Bradford College, on the other hand, is the setting for many ghostly encounters and paranormal legends. Perhaps this is because it was home to thousands of young people for nearly two centuries. Bradford was founded as an academy for girls back in 1803, became a junior college in 1932 and then a four-year co-ed college in 1971. Bradford College closed in 2000 for financial reasons, and it's campus is now home to Northpoint Bible College.

Photo by Stephen Muise (my brother!)

My favorite story about Bradford College is that the Necronomicon, a legendary book of malevolent magic, is hidden somewhere in the tunnels beneath the campus. The tunnels are quite real, and a colleague of mine who attended Bradford said they were originally built so the wealthy young ladies of Bradford Academy didn't need to go outside in inclement weather. According to the legend, horror author H.P. Lovecraft was dating one of these young ladies in the 1920s and decided to hide the Necronomicon below the campus to keep it safely hidden away.

There are a couple reasons why this story is almost certainly just a legend. First, the fabled Necronomicon is not real. This mythical book was a fictional creation  Lovecraft used in many of his tales but it did not exist outside the pages of his stories. After his death several authors published their own versions of the Necronomicon, which you can still buy from Amazon or your local bookstore. I can't vouch for their magical efficacy, but they certainly aren't hidden under Bradford College.

The second reason this is just a legend? Lovecraft never dated anyone. There's no record of him having romantic feelings for anyone until he met his wife, and even then she talked him into their short-lived marriage. Lovecraft dating someone is more unbelievable than the Necronomicon.

Photo: Stephen Muise

A weirder and somehow more believable ghost story about Bradford was sent to me by someone who reads my blog. I'll call him Greg for the sake of anonymity. Greg was a freshman at Bradford College in 1980. One night in late September or early October of that year, Greg and some other freshmen were carrying a case of beer into their dorm when a sophomore named Larry stopped them in the hall. He explained that he didn't want to be alone that night. It was the one-year anniversary of something strange that happened.

He told them the following story. One year ago, Larry, his roommate Ray, and a couple other students decided to take LSD on a Friday afternoon after class. They had planned to take it outside on the beautiful campus, but rainy weather confined them to Larry and Ray's room. Things went poorly. As the acid kicked in Ray became extremely paranoid, and began to rant about a flashing red light in the corner of the room. No one else could see it. Ray started to scream accusingly at his friends so they left him alone (and tripping) in his room. Hours later Ray was still screaming about the flashing red light and was taken to the school medical facility. He never came back to his room, and several days later his father came and collected his belongings. No one ever learned what happened to Ray.

That was the end of Larry's story. Greg and the other freshmen kind of laughed at it, but a few weeks later Greg experienced something that made him reconsider the story. Greg had been hanging out in Larry's room and as he left he saw the words "WELCOME BACK RAY" appear on the door. They vanished as soon as he read them. This freaked Greg out but he didn't say anything.

The appearance of those words was the start of some weird occurrences in the dormitory. One night Greg was awakened by someone screaming in the room next to him. He listened through the wall but couldn't make out what was causing the commotion. Several days later he learned that one of the boys in that room had left Bradford College and gone back to live at his parents' house. The boy was upset because he kept seeing a flashing red light.

Greg also started to see a flashing red light, often out of the corner of his eye. Greg wrote, "I thought that either it was just my imagination or this dorm was really haunted and I was going to be its victim in some way." He had trouble concentrating and his grades began to fall. During this time Greg learned that another student had also supposedly seen a red flashing light, this time in the bathroom while he was drunk.

Hearing this did nothing to settle Greg's nerves. He continued to see the red light, his grades continued to fall, and he became deeply depressed. In the spring of 1981 he finally hitchhiked home and never returned to Bradford.

That's the end of Greg's story. I find it really fascinating and don't quite know what to make of it. Greg seems to think that "WELCOME BACK RAY" was a premonition that like Ray he too would eventually drop out of Bradford. If that's the case it came true. And did Ray's initial bad acid trip accidentally open a doorway for something uncanny to come through?

Photo: Stephen Muise

That story about the flashing red light is just one of many told about Bradford College. The most famous ghost story is that the campus is haunted by a spirit called Amy, who was a young woman who had an affair with a priest. When she became pregnant she either killed herself or was murdered by the priest. The college is also said to be haunted by the ghost of a drama professor who was murdered by student who impregnated her. Yikes! That's a lot of sex and violence for such a small college.

Are any of these stories true? I can't really say, but the folks at Ghost Encounters have investigated Bradford College and you can read their results here. Sometimes when you to college you learn things you didn't expect.

The Mechanical Messiah of Lynn, Massachusetts

When John Murray Spear became a Universalist minister, I am sure he never dreamed he'd help create a mechanical messiah destined to save the world.

Spear was born in 1804 in Boston, and in the early years of his ministry he worked towards the abolition of slavery and in support of the Underground Railroad. The Universalist Church was extremely liberal for its time - and remains so today as part of the Unitarian Universalist Church.

In the early 1850s Spear became influenced by another religious movement that was sweeping across America: Spiritualism. Started in upstate New York in 1848 by sisters Kate and Margaret Fox, Spiritualism claims that the spirits of the dead communicate with the living to give advice and inspiration. Certain people, called mediums, are more attuned to the spirit world and can communicate easily with the departed. For those of us not so gifted, the spirits are more likely to manifest as rapping sounds, movements on a Ouija board, and suddenly extinguished candles.

John Murray Spear was gifted and could communicate easily with the spirit world. The dead supposedly granted him healing powers, and also gave him knowledge that he otherwise could not know. For example, thanks to the spirits Spear once delivered a brilliant and factually correct lecture on geology, a subject he had never studied.

In 1853 a group of elite spirits called the Association of Beneficents contacted Spear. The Association, which was made up of important dead people like Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and Socrates, told Spear that had plans to reform the world. They wanted to shake up government, the educational system and marriage. But before they could do that, they needed Spear to do one thing.

He had to create a mechanical messiah.

While the previous messiah had been a man of flesh and blood, the new technological age demanded a messiah made of metal and powered by magnetism. Makes sense, right?

The Association of Beneficents told Spear this awesome being would be born in Lynn, Massachusetts. A group of Spiritualists had already been communicating with angels ion Lynn's High Rock, a rocky promontory that rises up in the middle of the city. Those angels had been a sign of the mechanical messiah's coming.

High Rock as it appears today. The tower has great views!

Spear traveled to High Rock, and with the help of the Lynn Spiritualists constructed the messiah out of metal rods, gears and magnets. They spent more than $2,000 on materials, which was a significant amount of money for that time. Spirits guided Spear's hand as he constructed the mechanical being, which was known variously as the New Motive Power, the New Motor, and the Mechanical Infant.

Unfortunately, once it was constructed the New Motive Power didn't move. It just lay there inertly on a  table in the cottage at High Rock. A body had been created, but was not inhabited by a spirit. Spear and his colleagues were filled with despair.

Meanwhile a Spiritualist woman in Boston was experiencing birth pangs. The woman was puzzled, because she had not shown any signs of pregnancy. Her puzzlement vanished when the spirits came to her and explained that she was giving birth to a purely spiritual being - the soul of the mechanical messiah. As her contractions increased she was rushed to High Rock, where she successfully birthed the soul of the New Motive Power into it's mechanical body.

Both John Murray Spear and the unnamed woman reported that they could feel pulsations traveling through the messiah's mechanical body, but it still didn't move. The Association of Beneficents instructed the woman to nurse the little robot, which she did. (Don't ask how, since I don't know.) The pulsations increased. Spear declared the creature was definitely alive!

It still didn't move, however.

The spirits finally told Spear that he would need to take the infant messiah to Harmonia, a Spiritualist community in Kiantone, New York. Harmonia was even more spiritually charged than Lynn, and the New Motive Power would thrive there.

The Spiritualists of Harmonia happily welcomed Spear and the New Motive Power, but the other citizens of Kiantone were less than thrilled to hear that a mechanical messiah had arrived in town. Okay, that's an understatement. They were outraged. They stormed Harmonia and smashed the New Motive Power into tiny pieces. Spear's dream ended under the feet and fists of an angry mob.

I have a lot of mixed reactions to this story. Spiritualism was a really powerful cultural force in the 19th century, and inspired people to do some unusual things, like dig tunnels to find treasure or try to create a mechanical messiah. From my privileged position in the early 21st century, it's easy to look back and wonder how Spear could be so dumb. Did he really think a robot was going to save our society?

Obviously he did, but he also believed that slavery should be abolished. The New Motive Power didn't work out, but Spear didn't give up hope that American society could improve. He continued to fight for abolition and saw slavery ended within his lifetime. Spear also founded several Utopian communities before he died in 1887. His body is buried in Philadelphia, but I am sure his spirit is still actively working for social justice in the after life.

*****

The main source for this week's incredible but true story is my book Legends and Lore of the North Shore, which also contains many other weird stories from Lynn. 

Rochester's Witch Rock

There are a lot of rocks in New England.

There are a lot of stories about witches in New England.

Therefore, there should be stories about witches and rocks in New England! And there are...

I was recently looking through the United States Geographic Survey for places with the the word "witch" in their name. There are quite a few, and they will probably be featured in an upcoming blog post. I was particularly struck by three rocks named Witch Rock or Witches Rock in southern New England. They each have an interesting story, but today I'm writing about one I was not familiar with.

It's located in Rochester, a town in southeastern Massachusetts near New Bedford. The rock, which sits on private property near an intersection, is quite large and imposing with a height of about 12 feet. The silhouette of a witch on a broomstick is painted on it, along with the words "Witch Rock." There's no mistaking that this is Witch Rock.

The boulder has called Witch Rock for many years. An 1899 edition of The Bay State Monthly called it a "vine-covered, romantic-looking bowlder," and it was apparently a destination for picnickers and tourists who wanted to visit the bucolic countryside.

It's not quite clear how this particular rock got its supernatural reputation. As I said earlier, there are a lot of rocks in New England, and many of them are stranger looking than this one. Why did this boulder get a spooky reputation?

A vintage postcard of Witch Rock from this amazing site about boulders!

One compelling theory is that the rock was initially a Native American holy place. In the spring 2004 issue of the New England Archaeological Society Bulletin, Martin Dudek and Craig Chartier mention a tradition that native shamans (pow-wows in the local Algonquian dialect) would sit and watch mists rise from the crevices in the stone. Perhaps this was some type of divination? English settlers usually labeled native religious practices as witchcraft, so it makes sense that an Algonquian holy rock would be renamed Witch Rock. Rather than a place for divine inspiration it became a place of terror.

The modern legends associated with Witch Rock are less sociological and more supernatural. One is that the soul of a witch hanged during the witch trials is trapped inside the rock, along with various evil spirits. All of them like to howl and sometimes try to escape through the cracks in the rock. Another legend claims the early settlers noticed the Indians avoided the rock, and concluded that it must be bewitched. A third combines all these and says the Indians avoided the rock because there was a dead witch's soul trapped in it.

Whatever the origin of its reputation, Witch Rock probably does have some connection to Native American lore. According to a May 2012 article in Southeastern Massachusetts newspaper The Wanderer, the property the boulder sits on was owned for many years by a family of Abenaki and Pequawket descent. The matriarch of the family, Shirley Vaughn Thompson Norton, told her children that the spirit of a hanged witch lived inside the boulder and would emerge every full moon. On Halloween night the boulder was naturally used as the backdrop for apple-bobbing and other festivities.

Mrs. Norton can probably be credited with maintaining the legend of Witch Rock. For example, in the 1960s she designed commemorative Witch Rock plates and sold them to the local chamber of commerce, and in the 1990s she began painting the witch's silhouette on the boulder. Sadly her family no longer owns the property but the legend seems to be firmly established now! It would be interesting to know how long her family owned the house and how long they had been telling the legend.

Rochester seems to be the place to live if you like spooky rocks. According to Mattapoisset and Old Rochester (1907) by Mary Hall Leonard, the town also has a Devil's Rock which bears the imprint of Satan's footprint. Some towns get all the fun boulders!

The Spirit Photos of William Mumler

Have you ever seen a horror movie where someone holds a seance in a haunted house? Have you ever played with a Ouija board? If you answered yes to at least one of those, then you have some idea of what Spiritualism is. 

Started in upstate New York in 1848 by sisters Kate and Margaret Fox, Spiritualism claims that the spirits of the departed communicate with the living to give advice and inspiration. Certain people, called mediums, are more attuned to the spirit world and can communicate easily with the departed. For those of us not so gifted, the spirits are more likely to manifest as rapping sounds, movements on a Ouija board, and suddenly extinguished candles.

In the 1860s, Spiritualism swept across the United States like a ghostly wildfire. Hundreds of thousands had been killed in the Civil War, and Americans longed to hear that death was not the end. Spiritualism filled an aching need in the country's heart.

One problem with Spiritualism, though, was that it was so ephemeral. Rapping noises and messages delivered through an entranced medium were nice, but wouldn't it be better to have concrete proof that your deceased loved one was still with you?

William Mumler, a Boston jeweler, was able to provide that proof. He could give you a photo.

There was of course a price. Customers would pay $10 for a dozen photos, a high price for the time, and with no guarantee the spirits would appear. Sometimes they didn't, but when they did the results were pretty spectacular. Look at this photo:

Photo from the American Photography Museum.

Mumler's customers were generally satisfied with the results, even if the spirits in the photos didn't exactly look like their relatives. The veil between the worlds was hazy, and the spirits themselves were perfected and changed in the Summerland where they dwelt on the other side. No wonder they looked a little vague when captured on film.

Skeptical Bostonians argued that Mumler's photos were faked. Was it merely coincidence, they said, that the spirits photographed were usually the same ones that customers had told Mrs. Mumler about while in the studio's waiting room? Local pundit Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a pointed essay about how easy it was double-expose film, but faithful Spiritualists ignored the criticism and continued to patronize Mumler.

Photo from the American Photography Museum.

 
That is, until they began to notice that the spirits in the photos looked suspiciously like people still living in Boston. Feeling the heat, Mumler fled Boston for New York and set up a new studio. Things seemed to be going well in the new state until he was arrested and put on trial for fraud. 

Amazingly, he was found not guilty. A string of professional photographers testified they had watched him in the studio and saw no trickery. Many of satisfied customers also took the stand, claiming the spirits in their photos were indeed their dearly departed. If his customers were happy, the defense lawyers said, how could there be fraud?

Mumler returned to Boston after being released, and despite a tarnished reputation set up a small studio at his mother's house in the South End. A small trickle of clients continued to patronize him, including one woman dressed in black who refused to lift her veil until the camera was ready. She had been tricked before and didn't want to be tricked again. She wanted Mumler to prove he was the real thing.

Mumler produced the following photo for her:

Photo from Wikipedia.

The woman was Mary Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's widow. I think you can guess who the spirit is. This is probably the last photo taken of Mrs. Lincoln before her death in 1882.

Mumler himself died in 1884. Shortly before passing away, he burned all his negatives.

************

You can find a lot more about William Mumler on the web. In particular I found this essay to be very informative.

Hammond Castle: Psychics, Skulls, and Ghosts

Every July I get together with my friend Lori up on the North Shore. Sometimes we go to the beach, sometimes we explore some odd location. Last year we visited the Danvers State Hospital cemetery. This year the weather wasn't conducive for a beach trip, so instead we went to Hammond Castle in Gloucester.

Like all dramatic homes, Hammond Castle actually has a formal name: Abbadia Mare, which is Latin for Abbey by the Sea. The seaside castle was built in the late 1920s by the wealthy and eccentric inventor John Hammond as a wedding present for his wife Irene.

Hammond had over 800 patents in his name, and at one point held the second most patents of anyone in the United States after Thomas Edison. (I think he's now slid into third place.) Hammond invented radio remote control, earning him the title of "The Father of Remote Control", and at one point built a remote control yacht that traveled 120 miles with no crew.

Although he was very much a man of science, Hammond also had a strong fascination with the past. After visiting Europe, he decided to build the castle for his wife and also as a home for his collection of Medieval, Renaissance, and Classical art.

Hammond's wealth allowed him to not only indulge his taste in art, but also some of his other eccentricities. For example, pictured below is the castle's indoor pool, which Hammond enjoyed diving naked into from a second floor balcony. There's nothing wrong with skinny-dipping, but I do think it's a little strange that the pool is surrounded not only by Medieval storefronts he brought from Europe, but also a Roman sarcophagus (in the foreground) and some other Roman funeral monuments.

In keeping with his taste for Classical art, Hammond commissioned a nude statue of himself in the style of Greek sculpture (see below), and gave it to his wife as a gift. She hated it. After adding a fig leaf to it, she placed it outside on the front lawn overlooking the ocean. Apparently during parties guests would remove the fig leaf, much to Mrs. Hammond's annoyance. There's no word on how anatomically accurate the statue is.

Hammond's parties were probably a lot of fun, but I wouldn't want to be his overnight guest. The doors in one guest room are covered with wallpaper to blend seamlessly with the walls, and Hammond could shut them remotely from another room. He had a good laugh when his guests panicked at not being able to find their way out of the room, but let's just be happy there wasn't a fire.

Hammond's taste for the macabre and creepy didn't stop at funerary art and hidden doors. He also owned the skull of one of Christopher Columbus's crew men, and kept it in a Buddhist manuscript container. If you visit the castle and want to see the skull, it's in the Great Hall tucked in an alcove near the piano.

Even though he was a scientist, Hammond had a strong curiosity about life beyond the grave. He and his wife loved cats, and would have elaborate funerals for each of their pet cats when it died. He frequently said he wanted to be reincarnated as a cat. After his death in 1965 a large black cat appeared in the house and would often sit in his favorite chair. Perhaps it was the spirit of John Hammond?

While they were alive the Hammonds also experimented with Spiritualism and tried to contact spirits of the dead. Hammond even built a Faraday Cage to block electric currents and asked psychic mediums to contact the dead from inside the cage. The intention was to limit interference from the living world and enable them to more more purely contact the spirits. The floor of the castle's Great Hall has a permanent bleached spot from the cage's electromagnetic current.

A photo of the Faraday Cage.

A psychic named Mrs. Garrett and the Faraday Cage.

Needless to say, Hammond Castle is rumored to be haunted. Some people claim to have seen Irene Hammond looking out its windows, strange voices are sometimes heard, and a mysterious red-haired woman has been known to appear at weddings that occur there. No ordinary wedding crasher, she disappears as quickly as she appears.

I got the information for this post from the Hammond Castle website, Joseph Citro and Diane Fould's Curious New England, and Dark Destinations.

Richard Carrier: Confessions of a Cider-Drinking Witch

Richard Carrier was only eighteen years old when he and his younger brother Andrew were accused of witchcraft.

He was quite surprised, but should he have been? His mother, Martha Carrier, had recently been accused of witchcraft herself, and the Carrier family had never been popular in Andover, Massachusetts. They were considered poor even by the low standards of 1692 New England, and they were also pugnacious - Richard had been in fistfights with several other men and boys. When smallpox struck their family they had lived as pariahs on the outskirts of town.

When the constables brought Richard and his brother to Salem for questioning, they were obviously terrified. (Records note that Andrew was so frightened he stuttered when he spoke.) Both brothers pled innocent, but the afflicted girls who had accused them convulsed wildly in their presence, indicating guilt. The Carrier boys were brought into an adjacent room, where the questioning continued privately and the constables tied their heads to their ankles. Under this torture, they confessed to being witches.

When he was returned to the courtroom, Richard told how the Devil had first approached him on the Andover road one night in May of 1691. The dark man in the high-crowned hat claimed he was Jesus, and offered Richard new clothes and a horse in return for making his mark in a red book. A tempting offer for a poor Puritan, and Richard signed. His initiation was complete when the Devil baptized him in a waterfall at Newbury, Massachusetts. His brother Andrew later signed the Devil's book in an apple orchard in the presence of Richard and their mother.

 

As a witch, Richard followed Satan's orders. He sent his spirit to torment Timothy Swan of Andover, who had argued with another witch about the price for thatching her roof. Richard used a simple poppet to torment the wife of Salem Village's minister Samuel Parris. He attended the witch meetings, which his spirit was summoned to by the beating of a drum.

And he drank stolen cider. 

Mary Lacy, who had been accused of witchcraft shortly before the Carrier brothers, had told the court that she, the Carrier family, and other witches had flown to the home of Elizabeth Ballard and drunken all the cider in her cellar.

"Sometimes we leave our bodies at home, but at other times we go in our bodies and the Devil puts a mist before their eyes and will not let them see us." Mary Lacy had drunken the cider while invisible.

Richard confessed to this as well, but said his spirit had done it while outside his body. Mary Lacy supported his confession. "He went in his spirit, and his body lay dead the while out of doors."

After he confessed, the afflicted girls touched his hand without convulsing, a sign of his true contrition. The court spared Richard and Andrew's lives because they had confessed to witchcraft. Their mother never confessed, and was hanged. 

***

There are lots of things I find interesting about Richard Carrier's story. For example, he was male (most of the accused witches in Salem and New England overall were women) and the torture he and Andrew endured is horrifying.

What struck me the most, though, was the cider. Richard and all the confessed witches created stories about their witchy exploits that were believable to their accusers. People in Puritan New England believed in the reality of witches; it was part of their shared worldview. Everyone knew what witches did. All it took was a little persuasion (or torture) to tell a convincing story about your own actions as a witch.

And apparently, witches sent their spirits or invisible bodies to drink their neighbors' cider. Elizabeth Ballard's cider would have been alcoholic cider, which was one of the main drinks at the time. Water was often polluted, tea was expensive, and grain for beer was too hard to grow. People drank hard cider morning, noon and night.

Spirits entering a house to drink liquor (or eat food) is an old folklore motif. For example, the Swedish historian Olaus Magnus wrote in his History of the Northern Peoples (1555) that at Yuletide werewolves break into cellars to drink beer and mead. The line between werewolves and witches is blurry, since both are shapeshifters. Many people who confessed to being werewolves talked about sending out their spirits in the shape of a wolf, much as witches sent their spirits to do mischief.

We don't believe in these things in the 21st century, of course, but a surprising number of people leave out milk and cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve. But that's just for children, right?


In parts of Medieval and Renaissance Europe it was believed that a night-riding goddess and her followers (sometimes called the Good Ladies) traveled across the countryside. To gain their favor, people would leave out food and beverages for them. In the British Isles, food was left out for faeries and elves. In many countries, food and beverages are still left out for the wandering spirits of the dead who might enter the home.

The origins of this belief in traveling spirits that enter your house to eat and drink is quite murky. Writers like Carlo Ginzburg and Claude Lecouteux trace it back to ancient shamanic practices and ideas about the dead. It sounds good to me. Apparently it is a very resilient belief that has changed shape and expressed itself differently over time.

For Halloween, maybe I'll leave out some cider for who or whatever is wandering around that night, and be thankful that I can write about this topic without being tortured. 

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I got the information about Richard Carrier from Marilynne Roach's wonderful The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Chronicle of New England Under Siege.  This is the book if you want to read a straightforward and detailed narrative of what transpired in Salem.

Pamola, the Wandering Spirit of Mt. Katahdin

I've never climbed Mt. Katahdin, which is in Maine's Baxter State Park. It's the tallest mountain in the state, and the endpoint of the Appalachian Trail. Not surprisingly, there's a lot of folklore attached to this big mountain.

One of the most interesting stories is about a creature named Pamola. I don't know if any recent hikers or climbers have encountered him, but I'm sure they'd remember if they did.

According to the Penobscot Indians, Pamola was a wandering spirit, and Mt. Katahdin was one of his favorite hangouts.

Katahdin photo from here.

According to Frank Speck's 1935 article Penobscot Tales and Religious Beliefs, Pamola has no body, but is just a large head with arms and legs. (He sounds strangely like one of those animated M&Ms who show up in the commercials.) He has no settled home, but roams around from place to place wearing a backpack, which is very appropriate given Katahdin's location on the Appalachian Trail.

Other informants told Speck they had seen Pamola flying overhead, and that he was just a giant head with wings. See what I mean about him being memorable?

Despite his unusual appearance, Pamola was considered a beneficial spirit and would sometimes give aid to humans. However, if you needed his help you'd have to time it just right.

Once a year Pamola traveled across the entire sky. Beginning at the eastern horizon he'd let out a big shout, give another one at the sky's zenith directly overhead, and then one final one when he reached the western horizon. To gain his aid, the Penobscots would burn grease when they heard his first cry. If Pamola saw the smoke as he traveled overhead he would descend and listen to the Penobscot's request for help.

Unfortunately, Speck's article doesn't say what time of year Pamola made his journey. And please note, although I am writing about Pamola in the past tense he could still be hanging around Mt. Katahdin or flying across the sky. I don't want to offend a spirit by implying it's no longer active.

Pamola is still known in parts of Maine, and is the mascot of the Pamola Lodge of the Boy Scouts of America. Or maybe he adopted the Lodge as his mascots, I'm not quite sure. These scouts portray Pamola as a man with a the head of a moose and the wings and feet of an eagle. I guess the giant flying head was probably too terrifying!

Dungeon Rock: Pirates, treasure, and spirits

Jason and Peter eye the entrance to Dungeon Rock.

Pirate treasure! Spirit guides! A mysterious cave! Dungeon Rock in Lynn has all this, and it's right off Route 1 outside of Boston.

The stairway goes down...

The Dungeon Rock story, which is recounted in many books, goes something like this: In 1658, a pirate ship was spotted off the coast of Lynn, Massachusetts. After it departed, one of the pirates, Thomas Veal, took up residence under an enormous rock in a wooded part of Lynn. A rumor spread that Veal had a large treasure with him, but it couldn't be substantiated before he was buried under the rock by an earthquake.

... but the tunnel goes down even deeper!

In 1852, a Spiritualist named Hiram Marble and his family came to Lynn, determined to find the pirate treasure under Dungeon Rock. Guided by spirits, Hiram and his son Edwin chiseled their way into the rock. And chiseled. And chiseled. They dug for 28 years, following the direction of their spirit guides. Hiram died in 1868, and Edwin followed him in 1880, but they never found the treasure.

In July 2008, Tony and I went with our friends Jason and James to explore Dungeon Rock. (If you decide to go, check with the park ranger first to make sure it will be open). Even though the day was insanely hot, and we brought inadequate flashlights ("Are you crazy?", Jason said when he saw our pathetic LED flashlights), the trip was great for 3 reasons:

Jason near the bottom, holding one of our inadequate flashlights.

1. It's easy to get inside Dungeon Rock. There are stairs, and the Marbles' tunnel is large enough to walk upright. But it did get wet and very slippery towards the bottom, so be careful!

2. There are no vermin. The tunnel is sealed with a large iron door at night, so you don't have to worry about raccoons or bats. We didn't even see any spiders. Hmm. Maybe that iron door is designed to keep something inside?

3. The tunnel is just freaky (in a good way). Although the temperature outside was above 90 degrees, the tunnel was so cold we could see our breath. New Enlgand doesn't have a lot of caves, so this may be normal. But as the man-made tunnel spiraled down and down into solid rock, I realized how weird Dungeon Rock is. The Marbles spent years of their lives creating a long dark path to nothing!

Me, dazzled by the flash. Or is it cave madness?

Hiram Marble was hoping to prove the validity of Spiritualism by finding the treasure. Some writers say his tunnel to nowhere proves that Spiritualism is invalid, but wouldn't the Marbles have to be guided by something to spend so many years chiseling away? Maybe they really were guided by spirits, but maybe the spirits wanted to have a good laugh.

You can find out more about Dungeon Rock and Lynn Woods here.