Black Agnes, the Statue That Kills

I love exploring cemeteries. They're peaceful, full of beautiful sculpture, rich in history, and sometimes just a little bit creepy. Legends about ghosts and other supernatural happenings are also attached to a lot of cemeteries.

For example, consider the Green Mount cemetery in Montpelier, Vermont. The ghost of a small girl is rumored to haunt the walkways of this burying ground, searching for the gravesite of her mother. Green Mount is also home to Black Agnes, a funerary monument with an unsavory reputation.

Black Agnes is actually a large statue titled Thanatos (which means "death" in Greek). Sculpted by Karl Bitter, Black Agnes/Thanatos marks the grave of John Erastus Hubbard (1847 - 1899), a wealthy Montpelier businessman.

According to the legend bad things will happen to anyone who sits in Black Agnes's lap. Depending on who tells the story, the unlucky person will:

Encounter three strokes of bad luck

Have an uncountable amount of bad luck

Die within seven days

There are some variations of the story. Some say that sitting in Agnes's lap will just bring bad luck, but actually lying down on the statue will bring certain death. Others say that death will only come if you sit on Agnes during the full moon. Hmm. I say just avoid the statue altogether.

One story claims that three teenagers sat on Black Agnes during the full moon, trying to show how brave they were. They all drove home safely that night and thought they had escaped the curse. But within a week one was in a serious car accident, one fell and broke his leg, and the third drowned when his canoe capsized in the Winooski River. Just coincidence or the malevolent power of Black Agnes?

Black Agnes photo from T.M. Gray's More New England Graveside Tales.

I first read about Black Agnes in T.M. Gray's More New England Graveside Tales. Ms. Gray says locals claim John Hubbard was murdered, which is why his monument is charged with supernatural evil. She also says this story isn't true - records indicate he died of liver cancer.

Gray's book and these two websites also note that the Black Agnes statue actually represents a man, not a woman. I suppose Agnes could be his nickname or drag persona, but I think something else is going on here.

According to Snopes.com the Black Agnes story is actually found in many different parts of the country, including the Washington, DC area and in the Midwest. Snopes claims the original Black Agnes statue was in a cemetery in Baltimore, but was ultimately moved to the Dolly Madison House in DC because too many frat boys and sorority sisters were breaking into the cemetery for terrifying late-night initiations on Agnes's lap.

The Black Agnes statue in DC is of indeterminate gender but gets its name because it marked the grave of Civil War soldier Felix Agnus (1839 - 1925). Over time Agnus became Agnes, and in some places the statue is now simply called Black Aggie.

I'm not sure how the legend moved from Baltimore to Montpelier, but even if the Snopes explanation is true I don't think it lessens the power of this legend. Looming behind the narrative details of foolish teens and murderous statues is the very ancient idea that the dead have power and shouldn't be mocked. Sitting on a gravestone or a funeral monument is disrespectful to the dead - should we be surprised that they retaliate?

Like Midnight Mary, Black Agnes is another of those spirits who instructs us in how to show proper etiquette towards the dead. After all, when we've joined them on the other side we won't want obnoxious teens sitting on top of us either.

Black Agnes: Montpelier's Death-Cursed Statue

As I mentioned before, Tony and I recently traveled up to Montpelier, Vermont to see our old friend Brian. He showed us around Vermont's charming capital, and also showed us some of its spooky sights, including the infamous Black Agnes statue. 

When we reached Montpelier, Brian immediately took us on a tour of Green Mount Cemetery. He is a Montpelier native, and had a lot of gossip and stories about the different folks buried in Green Mount. For example, he showed us a funerary statue of a young girl called "Little Margaret." Little Margaret's family commissioned a local sculptor to carve the statue after she died (apparently of spinal meningitis), but refused to pay because one of the statue's shoes only had five buttons instead of six. The sculptor was about to apologize when he looked again at the photo of Little Margaret the family had given him to work from. One of her shoes was missing a button in the photo. The sculptor stormed back to Little Margaret's family, showed them the photo, and angrily collected his payment.  

Brian also told us that the road leading to Green Mount Cemetery has been the site of many deadly auto accidents. "When I was young, this road was routinely covered in human viscera," he said, morbidly joking. At least I hope he was joking. 

The Black Agnes statue

Towards the end of the tour, we reached the grave of John Erastus Hubbard (1847 - 1899), a wealthy Vermont businessman. Hubbard's grave features a spectacular bronze sculpture of a robed figure titled Thanatos. This statue is more popularly known as Black Agnes. 

According to legend, terrible luck comes to anyone who sits on Black Agnes's lap. Accounts differ as to what form the bad luck will take. Some say three unlucky things will occur to the person who sits on her lap, others say it will be an uncountable amount of bad luck. That doesn't sound good. Still another legend claims that anyone who sits on Black Agnes's lap will die within seven days, which is perhaps the worst luck of all. 

Many years ago, three teenage boys went to Green Mount Cemetery during a full moon. They dared each other to sit on the statue's lap. Not wanting to look cowardly, each boy took a turn sitting on Black Agnes. They all laughed. It was just a dumb statue, after all. Nothing to be afraid of. But within a week, one fell and broke his arm, one was in a serious car accident, and the third boy drowned while canoeing on the Winooski River. Some people said these misfortunes were just coincidences, but others said it was the curse of Black Agnes. 

Well, at least that's one legend. All the legends vary slightly, with some saying, for example, that you only suffer Black Agnes's wrath if you sit on her when the moon is full. Personally, I say why take the risk? Just don't sit on the statue, regardless of the moon phase. I don't recommend sitting or climbing on any cemetery statue. It is disrespectful to the dead, even if there isn't a death curse. 

Brian told us that the Black Agnes legend didn't exist when he was a kid, and that it must be relatively recent. That could very well be the case - new legends arise and old ones disappear all the time. There are in fact other allegedly cursed statues named Black Agnes around the United States. There is one in Washington, DC, which was originally a grave marker in Baltimore for a dead Civil War general in the Union Army named Felix Angus. It was apparently moved from Baltimore because too many fraternity and sorority pledges kept sitting on it as part of their rush process, daring each other to risk the death curse. It seems likely the Black Agnes legend traveled from the DC area to Montpelier, but I'm not sure how. 

Some folks, apparently in an attempt to debunk the Montpelier version of the legend, have pointed out that the statue is clearly of a male, so therefore the legend cannot be true. This argument doesn't hold up for me. It's 2023, and we all know that gender is a social construct. A statue of a male can easily be named Black Agnes. 

John Erastus Hubbard (1847 - 1899)

John Erastus Hubbard, upon whose grave Black Agnes sits, generated some controversy while he was alive. Hubbard came from a prominent Vermont family, and his wealthy aunt left a significant amount of money in her will to the city of Montpelier to build a library. Hubbard was unhappy about this, and managed to get his aunt's will overturned and inherit the money himself. Montpelier officials took him to court, and he eventually agreed to pay for the library. Upon his death, he left the majority of his fortune to Montpelier as well. However, this late generosity did not necessarily win him many fans among the city's citizens, some of whom noted that a terrible thunderstorm raged through Montpelier the night Hubbard died, which they took as an omen indicating the state of his soul. 

Visiting Strange Graves: A Scary Encounter with the Countess

It was a November night in 1984, and we had just seen A Nightmare on Elm Street in my hometown of Haverhill, Massachusetts. The "we" in this case were me, my friend Christine, and Cesar, an exchange student from Mexico spending the year at our high school. We had screamed and been appropriately terrified during the movie, and we were in the mood for more scary stuff after it ended. We had watched teenagers encounter terror and death. Maybe we wanted to encounter them ourselves?

"Let's go to the Countess's grave," Christine suggested in the parking lot.

"Yes!" I said. I knew about the grave but never been there myself.

"What is the Countess's grave?" Cesar asked.

We tried to explain. I had first heard about the grave when I was in fourth grade. Some kids from Haverhill's Rocks Village neighborhood told me what they were doing on Halloween night. They were going to wait outside an old cemetery to see if the Countess emerged from her grave. I'm not sure what would happen next, but having seen old Dracula movies I assumed that a countess must also be a vampire. They seemed to feel the same way too.

As a teenager I knew the vampire legend probably wasn't true but the grave still had a reputation as being spooky and somehow supernatural. Perhaps it was haunted, or possibly cursed. It was the perfect place to visit after seeing a horror movie so we got in Christine's car and followed the river until we reached Rocks Village. The old Colonial homes of Rocks Village are charming during the day but they were pretty spooky that night. The Greenwood Cemetery was even spookier, surrounded as it was by a black iron fence.

The Countess's Grave. Photo from Haverhill Public Library.

We drove into the cemetery. Spookiest of all was the Countess's grave. Her gravestone was surrounded by a black iron cage. What supernatural evil had it been built to contain? What horror was trapped within? What...

Suddenly we heard something scratching on the roof of the car.

"Oh my God!" Christine said. "Did you hear that?!"

Conversation came to a stop as we listened intently. Then we heard it again. Something scratching on the roof. It sounded like fingernails, or maybe knives. We had just seen Freddie Kruger terrorize teenagers with his knife-fingered glove...

Then we heard laughter from the back seat. Christine and I turned around to see Cesar with his hand out an open window, scratching his fingers along the car's roof.

*****

We didn't know it at the time, but the Countess's gravestone had originally been enclosed in the iron cage to keep tourists from chipping pieces off as souvenirs. Mary Ingalls (1786 - 1807) was apparently the United States's first countess, a title she assumed after marrying Count Francois de Vipart when she was only 21. Count de Vipart had wound up in Rocks Village after fleeing a rebellion in Guadaloupe and he supposedly fell in love with Ingalls at first sight. Their marriage was passionate but unfortunately short-lived. Mary died a few years later after they wed and her husband returned to France. 

Their doomed romance was immortalized by the poet John Greenleaf Whittier in his 1863 poem "The Countess." The poem was quite popular in the 19th and early 20th century and Mary's grave became a tourist attraction. Fans of the poem who visited the grave chipped off small pieces as souvenirs until an iron cage was put up around it. 

I say Whittier "immortalized" the Countess but none of my friends knew anything about his poem or the Countess's real life. They certainly weren't taught to us in high school literature or history courses. We just knew that it was a strange grave, and a strange grave must have a strange story attached to it. Not knowing the real story we just made one up that seemed appropriate.

This is actually pretty common in New England. There are lots of strange-looking graves that are perfectly innocuous, but strange legends arise because of the grave's unusual appearance. Here are just a few I know about:

Midnight Mary's Grave, New Haven, Connecticut. Mary Hart's epitaph describes how she died at midnight on October 15, 1872 and contains this ominous quote from the Book of Job: "The people shall be troubled at midnight and pass away." Because of that ominous quote, legends have developed claiming that Mary was buried alive, was an evil witch, and/or that she kills anyone who visits her grave at midnight.

Black Agnes, Montpelier, Vermont. This large sculpture of a robed figure is actually titled Thanatos (death in Greek) and marks the grave of a wealthy businessman. Most graves in the Green Mount cemetery are much more modest, and so folklore has transformed Thanatos into Black Agnes, a statue that kills anyone who sits on it.

The Witch's Grave, York Maine. Mary Nasson's grave in York's Old Burying Ground is covered with a huge stone slab. A plaque nearby explains that the slab was placed there to keep animals from digging up her body but local legends claim Mary was a witch. The slab keeps her restless soul from rising out of her grave.

Colonel Buck's Monument, Bucksport, Maine. The large funerary monument erected to honor the founder of Bucksport has a strange stain on it shaped like a boot. The stain is probably caused by iron in the stone. Legends claim that it was placed there as a curse by a witch the Colonel executed.

You get the idea and may even know of some similar graves yourself. These legends may not be historically accurate but they definitely are psychologically powerful. Cemeteries remind us of our own mortality and these strange graves speak to us with particularly loud voices. 

Like a good horror movie they tell us the scary things we secretly long to hear. They tell us about the thin line between the living and the dead, about our darkest fears, and about the inescapable power of death itself. But also like a horror movie, our encounters with these strange graves are voluntary. We choose to visit them and (possibly) experience frightening things, but (usually) escape intact in the end. 

The Countess's gravestone was removed for repairs and sadly no longer stands in the Greenwood cemetery. I haven't seen Christine or Cesar in many, many years but I still fondly remember that night we visited a haunted grave.

Book Review: Wicked Strange by Jeff Belanger

Is New England one the weirdest parts of the United States? With all the strange stories and legends we have, sometimes it seems that way,  

It's hard to measure weirdness, but New England is certainly one of the oldest parts of the country. The first English colonists arrived in the early 1600s, bringing folklore about witches, ghosts, and the Devil with them. To put that in perspective, consider this: some of those early Pilgrims and Puritans would have once been Queen Elizabeth's subjects, and could have seen the first performances of Shakespeare's plays. Not that the Puritans approved of theater, but maybe a few of them snuck in a matinee or two...

Those stories about ghosts, witches and the Devil lingered here long after the Puritan church disappeared. They're still remembered in place names, old legends, and even urban folklore. Other weird stories arose over time as well. Some incorporated elements from the local Algonquin cultures, others came from the mass media or more recent immigrant groups. 

Today, four-hundred years after the Pilgrims set foot on Cape Cod, New England is just chock-full of weird legends and folklore. It's not surprising that Poe, Lovecraft, and King, the three greatest American horror writers, were all born here. 

There are more stories and legends here than can fit into one book, and authors have been collecting them for years. Many local town histories from the 19th century included chapters about ghosts and witches, which were often described as "something our ancestors believed in, but we don't now." Some broader collections of New England folklore appeared then as well. For example, in 1884, Charles Godfrey Leland wrote Algonquin Legends of New England, while Charles Skinner included dozens of New England legends in Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (1896). 

Those authors may have garbled some of the details, but 20th century folklorists like Richard Dorson tried to do better in books like Jonathan Draws the Longbow (1946). Later authors, like Vermont's Joseph Citro, followed in this same vein while keeping their books entertaining. After all, what's the point of telling a ghost story if it's not spooky?

Happily, a new collection of New England legends has just come out. It's called Wicked Strange: Your Guide to Ghosts, Monsters, Oddities and Urban Legends from New England. The publisher sent me a free review copy, and I'm glad they did, because it's a great book. 

The author is Jeff Belanger, who is well-known in the paranormal scene. He's written other books, like Weird Massachusetts and The Fright Before Christmas, and has worked on TV shows like Ghost Adventures and Paranormal Challenge, and co-hosts The New England Legends podcast. In other words, he knows his stuff! The book has beautiful photos by Frank Grace, which add to the weirdness. 

Here are three reasons I like this book:

It Covers All Six States: Wicked Strange includes over 100 short chapters on different topics, evenly divided among the six New England states. Little Rhode Island gets as much coverage as Maine, and the division by state lets you find stories closest to you, which is useful. This past weekend, Tony and I visited a nearby haunted site after reading about it in Wicked Strange. 

Topical Variety: There are some different ways to write about local legends. You can focus on one topic, like I did with Witches and Warlocks of Massachusetts, or you can write about a variety of topics. That's the approach that Jeff Belanger takes in Wicked Strange. He covers some of the classic topics, like America's Stonehenge in New Hampshire, Montpelier's Black Agnes, and Boston's Great Molasses Flood, but also less well-known ones like the Woonsocket werewolf, the Devil's Baked Beans in Lyndeborough, New Hampshire, or the Hoodoo Hearse of Holden, Maine. The book covers haunted locations, cryptids, weird crimes, and a lot of uncategorizable weird happenings.

Beautiful Photography: Frank Grace's photos are beautiful and unsettling. They make the subjects look as strange as the stories that are told about them. The press release for the book says, "Frank has been photographing weird and wonderful New England for the last thirteen years." Thirteen is sometimes considered unlucky, but that's not the case here!

I'm glad to add Wicked Strange to my library, and I think you'll enjoy it, too. 

Connecticut's Haunted Fairy Village

Here's a nice creepy story. Not every fairy tale has a happy ending...

*****

Once upon a time, in the early 1900s, a woman and her husband built themselves a stone house in Middlebury, Connecticut. They liked peace and quiet, so they built it out in the woods.

Things went well in their new house for a while, but after a few months the wife became strangely agitated whenever she left home.

One day when they were walking back from town she grabbed her husband's arm. "Can you hear them?" she asked her husband.

"Hear what?" he said.

"Them. The little people in the woods," she said. "I think they're talking to me. I've heard them for weeks now..."

"My love, perhaps you need to rest. I only hear leaves blowing in the wind."

His wife rested, but it did nothing to cure her of the idea that fairies in the woods were talking to her. "They want something from me," she said, "but I don't know what it is. I'm scared they'll come into our house..."

Her husband didn't believe in fairies, but he loved his wife, so at her request he put bars on their windows to keep out the fairies.

One night after they had gone to bed the woman turned to her husband and said, "I know what they want from me. They don't want to hurt us, they just want houses like we have. They want a home like we have. They want us to build them a village!"

From Roadtrippers.com.

In the moonlight the man could see the manic gleam in his wife's eyes, but he loved her, so the next day he set to work building small houses in the woods. Under his wife's direction he built dozens of tiny structures out of stone, brick and shingles.

When the last house was finished his wife clapped with delight. "Now the only thing left to make is the throne," she said.

"A throne? For who?"

"For me. Because I'm going to be the Queen of the Fairies!"

The husband rolled his eyes, but he had already put bars on the windows and built a tiny village, so what was one more concession to his wife's madness? After all, he did love her.

Using a pick-axe he carved a gully into one of the rocky hills, and mortared the stones into a throne. It took him all day, and when it was done he called his wife out to see his handiwork.

From this site about haunted Connecticut.

Exhausted, he sat down on the throne. "What do you think, my love?"

A look of rage came over his wife's face. "What do I think?!"she screamed.

Her husband cowered. "My dear, what's wrong..."

"What do I think?!" She grabbed the pick-axe. "I think you need to get off my throne! I'm the Queen of the Fairies, not you!"

And with that she swung the pick-axe and split her husband's head in two.

The fairy voices suddenly went silent. For months they had been whispering, chattering, singing to her, and now they were gone. Aghast at what she had done and howling with grief, she ran to their house and hanged herself.

*****

Isn't that a great, gruesome story? There is also another version where the husband finally can't take it anymore and kills his wife, but either way it doesn't end well for this poor couple.

The story is told to explain one of the weirder places in Connecticut: the Little People's Village in Middlebury.

The Little People's Village consists of remains of multiple stone structures located out in the woods. There's a house-sized building with bars on the windows, there are the remains of many miniature buildings, and there is also something that looks suspiciously like a throne.

According to local folklore, the throne is cursed and anyone who dares sit on it will die within seven years. Either the fairies, the woman's ghost, or her husband's ghost don't want people to sit there. Needless to say, local teenagers of course go to the Village to sit on the throne.

Other legends say that anyone who lingers too long in the Village will begin to hear the fairy voices and go insane.

Historians say the Village was not built at the bidding of a fairy-maddened woman, but was instead simply part of a local amusement park that has long since gone out of business. Visitors would ride a miniature railroad through the village and admire the charming little fairy houses. It's interesting how something charming and twee can quickly become a source of horror.

I also think it's interesting how supernatural stories arise to explain things that seem anomalous or strange. For example, when I was teenager in Haverhill, Massachusetts one of the local cemeteries contained a headstone surrounded by an iron cage. My friends and I had been told the cage was there to keep the grave's undead resident in, but in reality the cage was to keep people away from the stone. The grave was for a countess who was the subject of one of John Greenleaf Whittier's poems, and in the 19th century fans of the poem would chip off pieces of the stone. The cage was built to keep souvenir seekers away, not to keep a vampiric spirit in. 

That's a bit of a digression, but the same principal is at play with the Little People's Village. The origin of something becomes forgotten and legends arise to explain it. Certain patterns repeat in these legends. For example, the throne in Middlebury is not the only lethal site in Connecticut. People who visit Midnight Mary's grave in New Haven are also rumored to die after seven years. Further north in Montpelier, Vermont, anyone foolish enough to sit on the statue of Black Agnes will die in seven days.

A cursed site, death, and the number seven. You can see how the pattern repeats. I think people find great satisfaction in these stories, grim as they are. We all suspect there are secret powers at work in the world, even in our own hometowns. These stories are reflections of the secret order we hope and fear operates behind the mundane world.

Tony and I had hoped to visit the Little People's Village this spring but we didn't make it. If you go don't vandalize anything (many of the houses have been severely damaged) and watch out for ticks, which may be deadlier than evil fairies. If you can't go, you might want to watch this video of the village.


My sources for this post were Damned Connecticut, Roadtrippers.com, and this page about haunted sites in Connecticut. All excellent sources if you want more information.

One last thought: if you do visit, don't sit on the throne. You never know when a legend might be true.