In progress. Last updated 8/30/2000.

Ghosts -- New England is full of ghost stories. I have summarized several from a few books: Joseph A. Citro, Passing Strange. True Tales of New England Hauntings and Horrors (Boston, 1996, 1997) and (more to come).

• Boston Athenaeum -- In the 1830s, the famous writer Nathaniel Hawthorne saw a ghost while employed at the Customs House. Doing his daily research at this private library, he would often see one Dr. Harris, an elderly clergyman, reading the Boston Post by the fire. Dr. Harris had, however, Hawthorne eventually learned, died sometime before, but the writer continued to see him for several weeks. He never approached him, however: not only was he unwilling to ruin a perfectly good ghost story, but talking was forbidden in the research room, and anyway he and Dr. Harris had never been introduced. (Summarized from Citro, Passing Strange.)
• Bowman Mansion, Cuttingsville, VT -- A "haunted house." According to local legend (but not entirely according to documented fact -- oh well), eccentric millionaire John P. Bowman lost his family through unknown tragic circumstances, after which he devoted himself to the study of the occult, specifically, the resurrection of the dead. He built a large mausoleum in the cemetery across the street to house the remains of his wife and daughter, and put a pale marble statue of himself kneeling in mourning on its stairs. When he died, his will, it is said, provided for the upkeep of the mansion and mausoleum, and even called for occasional meals to be prepared, on the off-chance that he or his family would rise hungry. Generations of curious local teenagers report spectral figures and even the ghostly crying of a baby. (Summarized from Citro, Passing Strange.)
• Butler, Nelly -- In Machiasport, ME, in 1799, Capt. Abner Blaisdel and his family began to notice odd and unexplainable noises in the house. In January of the following year Blaisdel and his daughter heard a female voice coming from the cellar; it turned out to be the disembodied communications of one Nelly Butler, whose husband was known casually to Blaisdel and whose father was still living. Nelly's father David Hooper was summoned and, after questioning the voice, declared that it was indeed the spirit of his daughter. Thereafter she would often have the townspeople brought to Blaisdel's cellar, where she would, sometimes in the form of a female figure clad in shining white, harangue them about their poor morals and give religious sermons. She appeared outside the cellar rarely; once, early on, in the fields nearby, to the Blaisdels' son Paul (after he ran away she complained bitterly about his rudeness in not greeting her); another time, and apparently on the last occasion she was ever seen, to a local minister who was on his way to the Blaisdel home to put a stop to what he considered must be a blasphemous hoax. The minister, a Rev. Abraham Cummings, was thereby made a believer and spent the rest of his life as an itinerant preacher convinced he had seen evidence of eternal life; in his old age (in 1859) he even published a book entitled Immortality Proved by the Testimony of Science. (Summarized from Citro, Passing Strange.)
• Lithobolia, or, the Stone-Throwing Devil -- A pamphlet written in 1698 by Richard Chamberlain, secretary for the colony of New Hampshire, describing events he witnessed some sixteen years previously at the home of one George Walton in Great Island. Walton's house was plagued for three months by an heavy-object-throwing poltergeist. (Summarized from Citro, Passing Strange.)
• MORE TO COME...

Monsters and Fantastical Creatures

• Bigfoot -- Most famously a Northwestern phenomenon, several hairy "wild men," many leaving large footprints, have apparently been seen in New England as well. Citro (Passing Strange) collects several Bigfoot stories: In the early 1800s, Hugh Watson, a woodsman who lived in the area of Mt. Katahdin and present-day Baxter State Park in Maine, watched from safe concealment as a group of large hairy manlike creatures ransacked his camp; he and some companions were to see them again in the same area in 1866. According to Watson, they had seen "Pomoola," the "Indian Devil." A troop of Massachusetts Boy Scouts saw such a creature on Katahdin in 1988.  --  The shy but not modest "Winsted Wild Man" of Winsted, CT, a tall naked hairy humanoid who ran away when encountered, was first spotted in August 1895 by a town Selectman; for the next few months locals reported seeing him and there was even an effort made to try to capture him. He or his descendants were also seen a few times in the area in the early 1970s.  --  [to be continued]
• Pamola / Pomoola -- A spirit in Penobscot Indian mythology haunting Mt. Katahdin in northwestern Maine. Part man and part eagle, with the head and antlers of a moose, this vengeful storm spirit resided in the area of the Knife's Edge, the narrow ridge connecting Baxter Peak and the peak that bears Pamola's name. He made sure mere mortals daring the area were never seen again. The name has also been given to creatures of the Bigfoot type sometimes seen in the area of Katahdin; these generally peaceful creatures can supposedly become quite nasty when disturbed or threatened. (I have filled out a vague memory of hearing about this creature when I went camping in Maine once with information found in Citro, Passing Strange; a travel article from Boston magazine; and a piece on Baxter State Park on the GORP [Great Outdoor Recreation Pages] website. Perhaps it was Pamola who mysteriously stole the trashbag outside my tent one night without leaving a trail, or, more probably, it was just a very tidy bear or a passing camper with good night vision.)
• Sea Monsters -- The most famous New England sea monster is Champ, your basic Nessie-type long-necked dinosaur who supposedly lurks in Lake Champlain on the Vermont/New York/Quebec border, who first came to media attention in 1883 when it was seen by a local sheriff. Sightings go back centuries and continue today; the creatures (it is generally assumed that there are more than one) are even protected "from any willful act resulting in death, injury or harassment" by the state legislatures of Vermont and New York.  --  A peaceful but nonetheless alarming sea-serpent "as long as the mainmast of a seventy-four" (whatever that means exactly) was spotted "almost daily" in August 1817 in Gloucester Bay and Nahant Bay off Cape Ann, Massachusetts; an attempt to capture it proved futile. Perhaps it was the same creature said in 1641 by John Josselyn in his Account of Two Voyages to New England to have been seen by English sailors near Cape Ann a few years earlier. In any case, sea-serpents have been sighted in this area ever since; in 1912 the Gloucester Daily Times reported that a 60-foot specimen had been killed by the combined effort of the crews of three fishing boats who were thereafter too tired to haul it to shore and cut it loose. Either they didn't finish it off or it had relatives, as one was seen just two years later, and newspaper reports of its occasional appearances along the coast of New England and eastern Canada continued into the 30s. Most recently, such a creature was seen in 1997 by fisherman up in Newfoundland. (I have filled out a brief description in Samuel Adams Drake, New England Legends and Folk Lore [Seacaucus, NJ, 1993, but apparently written in the 1880s], with information gleaned from an account by J.P. O'Neill excerpted online.)
• Unicorns -- Dr. Olfert Dapper, in his book Die Unbekante Neue Welt (Amsterdam, 1673), writes that in the area of present-day Maine, along the Canadian border, "there are sometimes seen animals resembling horses, but with cloven hoofs, rough manes, a long straight horn upon the forehead, a curled tail like that of the wild boar, black eyes, and a neck like that of the stag" (quoted in Odell Shepard, The Lore of the Unicorn, New York etc. 1979, p. 97f.; Shepard points out that this is the "region of the moose"). Peter S. Beagle dedicates his novel The Last Unicorn to Dapper's memory.

Vampires of Rhode Island (and environs) -- Newport, RI writer and tour guide Christopher Rondina (Vampire Legends of Rhode Island, North Attleboro, MA, 1997, p. xi) claims that Rhode Island has been called "The Vampire Capital of America," and argues that the legends of vampires in New England influenced Bram Stoker (and that local belief in vampires into the 1890s encouraged him to publish his novel), as the writer was familiar with them; the legends certainly were the basis for H.P. Lovecraft's story "The Shunned House." Rondina's book presents the cases of four consumptive vampire babes from the Ocean State who plagued their apparently intermarried families during the nineteenth century (and a little before): Sarah Tillinghast, Nancy Young, Juliet Rose, and Mercy Brown. He also tells of the more recently fabricated legend of Nellie Vaughn and a few other seemingly connected New England vampires.

• Brown, Mercy -- The most famous and best documented Rhode Island vampire story took place in 1892, in Exeter, RI (site of the Tillinghast vampire legend from nearly a hundred years before). Mercy's mother Mary had died of consumption eight years previously, as had her sister Olive the following year. Five years after that, her brother Edwin contracted the illness, and went west to Colorado Springs to recuperate. While he was there, Mercy suddenly fell ill and died -- also of consumption. Edwin returned to Exeter. The locals urged George, Mercy's father, to save his son by exhuming the corpses and destroying the vampire, which would be revealed by whichever corpse still had blood. George eventually gave in to pressure, although he did not himself believe in vampires. The bodies were examined by the equally skeptical Dr. Harold Metcalf, who found decomposed blood in Mercy's heart; as her liver was also well preserved, it was burned along with the heart to appease the superstitious onlookers, although Metcalf told the Providence Journal, which ran two lengthy stories about these macabre events in March, 1892, that the state of preservation was not unusual for a corpse buried only nine weeks before. Edwin, still very ill, was supposed to drink a potion containing the ashes in order to recover. He soon died anyway (on Beltaine, for what it's worth), but the Brown family was apparently not afterwards plagued by the disease. Rondina underlines the similarity of the names "Mercy" and Stoker's "Lucy"; perhaps more convincing is that John and Mina Harker also lived in an "Exeter." (Summarized from Rondina, Vampire Legends of Rhode Island and Citro, Passing Strange; one piece from a local newspaper can be found here with ominous soundtrack.)
• Burton, Rachel -- Alleged vampire of Manchester, Vermont. She died of consumption, and her husband Isaac remarried; his second wife Hulda soon began to waste away too. The community leaders concluded that Rachel was to blame, and she was exhumed and her organs burned. Hulda died anyway soon afterwards in September 1793. (Summarized from Rondina, Vampire Legends of Rhode Island.)
• Carey Mansion -- This mansion located along Newport, Rhode Island's Cliff Walk, now owned by Salve Regina University, served as "Collinwood," the ancestral home of the Collins family in the original Dark Shadows series (which was set in a fictional town on the coast of Maine). Fans of the show often visit the house, even though the interior is not open to the public. (Summarized from Rondina, Vampire Legends of Rhode Island.)
• Corwin Family -- In 1834 the eldest son of the Corwin family of Woodstock, VT died of a mysterious wasting disease. When another son took ill, the people of Woodstock advised the Corwins to take precautions against a vampire. The eldest brother was dug up and burned and his ashes were buried in an iron container beneath the town square. (It isn't clear what happened to the younger brother.) Some time later some locals thought it would be fun to dig up the vampire's ashes, but were deterred by the smell of brimstone and an unearthly noise. According to Rondina, the Corwins seem to have had relatives in Rhode Island and Connecticut. (Summarized from Rondina, Vampire Legends of Rhode Island.)
• JB, the vampire of Griswold, CT -- A skull found by children in a gravel pit in the early 90s (I find "1990" and "1993" in separate accounts) revealed a forgotten graveyard dating to the early or mid-1800s wherein 29 relatives of a family named Walton were buried. Archaeologist Nicholas Bellatoni found one decomposed coffin, labeled only "JB 55" (apparently the corpse's initials and age at death), containing remains which had been arranged with the femur bones and the skull placed in a "skull-and-crossbones" pattern over the broken ribcage. The arm bones were also broken. The skeleton, along with most of the other bodies found nearby, showed signs of tuberculosis (a.k.a. consumption), and it seems likely that JB was treated as a vampire; researchers found that J.B.'s bones were disturbed about a decade after he died. Rondina underlines the fact that the parents of Nancy Young hailed from just north of here and that Griswold was founded by the family of Mary Rose (née Griswold), once married to a Tillinghast and stepmother of the alleged vampire Juliet Rose (see below). (Summarized from Rondina, Vampire Legends of Rhode Island with details from Citro, Passing Strange.)
• Ray, Horace -- Alleged vampire of Jewett City, Connecticut. Horace (his name is also given as Henry) died (apparently of a mysterious illness) in 1847, and two sons died over the next few years. When a third son fell ill, Horace and the other two sons were exhumed and burned. This ended the string of illnesses in the Ray family. (Summarized from Rondina, Vampire Legends of Rhode Island.)
• Rose, Juliet -- Alleged Rhode Island vampire. In 1874 William G. Rose of Peacedale, RI, having recently lost his daughter Juliet, who had died of fever, became convinced that a vampire was to blame, a conviction that grew stronger when, a few months later, his daughter Rosalind appeared to be suffering from the same fever. He was uncertain what to do about it until his wife, who had once been married to a Tillinghast, revealed what she knew of vampire lore. William realized that Juliet herself was the source of the problem, and went to disturb her remains. At the cemetery he saw an apparition of Juliet, but that did not deter him. He dug up the body and was shocked to see that her shroud was stained with fresh blood. Steeling himself with thoughts of his sick daughter Rosalind, he plunged a knife into Juliet's heart, hearing a gasp from beneath the shroud. Apparently that did the trick -- Rosalind soon recovered. (Summarized from Rondina, Vampire Legends of Rhode Island.)
• Tillinghast, Sarah -- Alleged Rhode Island vampire. In 1796 Sarah, the 19-year-old daughter of Stuckley and Honor Tillinghast of Exeter, RI, was the focus of a recurring nightmare that plagued her father: while working in his orchard, he heard her call him; he sought her through spooky cold winds and so forth, and when he returned to work half his orchard had rotted away. Not long after, Sarah fell ill and died (the diagnosis was consumption). A few weeks later, the Tillinghast's youngest son James complained of a pain in his chest "where Sarah touched me" in a dream; he soon died of a wasting sickness. Over the next year and a half, four more Tillinghast children fell ill, telling of nocturnal visitations from Sarah; they, too, died. As his wife and son Ezra were touched with fever, Stuckley Tillinghast, after speaking with family friends, resolved on a course of action and exhumed the bodies of his dead children. Sarah's corpse was strangely intact -- at least until Stuckley cut her heart out and burned it. Ezra died soon after, but Honor recovered (and lived to be 87), and the remaining seven Tillinghast children outlived their parents -- but half of the Tillinghast "orchard" had rotted away. This is the earliest vampire legend from Rhode Island, and Christopher Rondina mentions that the other families plagued by vampires in his book all have "at least one Tillinghast ancestor, by blood or marriage." (Summarized from Rondina, Vampire Legends of Rhode Island.)
• Vaughn, Nelly -- Alleged vampire of Rhode Island, or at least a ghost. This nineteen-year-old girl buried in West Greenwich, RI, died in 1889. Her gravestone bore the curious inscription "I am waiting and watching for you." According to a Providence Journal article cited by Rondina, in 1967 a school teacher at Coventry High School told his students that a vampire was buried in a cemetery along Route 102, and somehow this led to the identification of Nelly as the monster (although many of the better documented vampire legends in the state involve people buried in cemeteries along that route). People reported seeing apparitions at the cemetery, and it was claimed that no vegetation would grow on the grave. In 1993, however, a woman doing gravestone rubbings saw an apparition of a young woman who "vehemently denied" that Nelly was a vampire, whereupon the figure vanished. There is no evidence of a vampire legend involving Nelly before 1967, but at any rate the cemetery and the adjoining church have been plagued by vandals ever since; the broken tombstone has been removed in hopes that the vandalism will stop. (Summarized from Rondina, Vampire Legends of Rhode Island.)
• Young, Nancy -- Alleged Rhode Island vampire. The eldest daughter of Captain Levi Young of Foster, RI, and his wife Anna, Nancy died of "galloping consumption" in 1827 at the age of 19. A few months later her sister Almira contracted the same wasting disease. When Almira told her father that Nancy had appeared to her and told her that the pain would soon be over, Capt. Young grew alarmed. The town elders were as well; it was decided that a demon was plaguing the Young household, and that it inhabited the body of Nancy. The coffin was exhumed and burned as the Young family joined hands around it "so that the vapors from the blaze would cleanse them from the contamination."  Unfortunately, it didn't work; Almira still died from the mysterious fever, as, eventually, did four more children. (Summarized from Rondina, Vampire Legends of Rhode Island.)

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