by Bob Curran
Although much of this is simply speculation, there may be some fragment of truth in the tales. And such people might have been nachtmerrie—a terror that the settlers brought with them from the Netherlands to the New World. The outline on the ground may have been the fungal form of one of these Dutch vampires who might have placed the whole house under its dark spell.
What finally became of the eerie shadow is unclear. Perhaps it did eventually succumb to the cleansing agents that were used against it. Maybe it faded away on its own. It could be still there, buried under earth and rubble in the cellar. The original house is, of course, believed to have been long pulled down, but the shadow might remain. And what of its influence—does it still try to draw the energies from those who happen to be in its vicinity? The area of Schenectady is still there and is still populous. Maybe the shadow is still there, waiting to break a holy spell that entraps it...waiting patiently.
MASSACHUSETTS
Off Route 127, traveling toward the village of Annisquam in the city of Gloucester, and way up among the clumps of twisted trees and roots that cover the area, lies a scattering of stones and boulders with the outline of something that had once stood. Although there are car parks nearby, the area is still a wilderness, heavily forested, and just as it might have been in the 1600s. However, these stones and boulders—a number with inscriptions on them—are the last vestiges of the remarkable settlement of Dogtown, perhaps Massachusetts’s most celebrated abandoned village.
The hills and valley of the New England coast are peppered with the fragments of many settlements that have come and gone throughout the years and in which the early settlers strove to make a living in a new and harsh environment. Some were incorporated into greater townships, others simply abandoned to the elements and environment. All have their own dark histories.
One such place is the settlement of Old Colony or Plymouth Colony, now long abandoned, which was almost wiped out by an epidemic of “consumption” (tuberculosis) around 1807. With the majority of the population of the village dead from the disease, the survivors became worried that they had fallen prey to a vampire. One family was suspected, even though they had fallen victim to the epidemic as well. They are unknown, but the family was a large one, certainly one of the oldest and most venerable in the district consisting of 14 children. However, in 1807, only a mother and one son remained; all the others died within one year of each other. When the boy began to cough and struggle for breath, several of the remaining inhabitants decided to test the theory of vampire intervention. It was thought that one of the family—the 13th girl, who had been one of the first to die at the age of 16, had been returning from the grave to attack her family and perhaps the wider community. Rumor was that the girl had been something of a strange character, greatly interested in ways of foretelling the future, which counted in the local mind as witchcraft. Consequently, it was decided that her body should be exhumed and examined for traces of vampirism. This was done in the presence of her mother and ailing brother. When the coffin was opened, the mother claimed she saw the visage of someone who had been a tenant of the silent grave, but lit up with the brilliancy of youthful health. The curls were thick and lustrous, the cheeks dimpled, and the eyes had lost none of their blue vibrancy. This was a corpse that should have been rotting! What sort of measures were taken is not recorded, but it is said that the boy in question was so shocked by what he saw that he lasted barely a year afterward, with the mother quickly following him to the grave. Others died too, and the settlement was abandoned some years after this. The story was later published in the Old Colony Memorial and Plymouth County Advertiser in 1820 as “a curiosity of former days,” showing that the idea of the vampire stalking the tiny village families and community still hadn’t gone away. It was still right there in the social memory.
But it was not only disease and vampires that troubled the communities around Gloucester and Cape Ann. During the 1700s, the waters around the Cape were a haven for pirates who often attacked shipping coming into the port of Gloucester. One of the most notorious buccaneers in the region was Captain John Phillips, who commanded the former British schooner Revenge, and who preyed on vessels along the Massachusetts coast between the years 1723 and 1724. Although not as flamboyant a rogue as Black-beard, William Kidd, or Barbarossa, Phillips was greatly feared by the coastal communities.
Phillips had started his working life as a carpenter. While voyaging from England to Newfoundland in 1721, his ship was taken by pirates under the command of Thomas Anstis, who forced Phillips to join his crew. He served Anstis for a year as the ship’s carpenter. In 1721, while off the island of Tobago, Anstis sent a number of his crew to careen a captured vessel; as they were doing so, a British warship showed up. Anstis took flight, abandoning Phillips, and the others took refuge by hiding in the woods. Phillips and his companions retuned to Bristol, England, where he tried to settle down again in his trade as carpenter. But piracy had got into his blood and he was soon off to sea again.
His decision was aided by the arrest and trial for piracy of some of his former comrades; in order to avoid capture, he took passage once again in 1723 for Newfoundland. There, he resolved to take a ship and return to the pirate life. With only four companions, he managed to capture a British schooner that had anchored in Petty Harbour in Maddox Cove, which he renamed the Revenge; with the stolen vessel, the four of them sailed south to Barbados, taking a number of fishing boats along the way and building up their crew. After attacking a couple of merchantmen, Phillips counted among his crew both the brutal John Rose Archer and a man named Pedro. After attacking and plundering several ships off Tobago (and killing most of their crew) Phillips and his men sailed for the American coast.
During 1723 and the early part of 1724, Phillips plundered the New England coast, attacking settlements there at will. It was not only booty that the pirates sought, but people as well. This was for two reasons: First, Phillips wanted to build up his crew (several of which had been killed in the taking of ships in the West Indies), and second to sell as slaves in the Caribbean. It is unclear how many persons he took before sailing north again for Cape Sable near Nova Scotia, where he captured a sloop. The vessel’s commander was Captain Andrew Harradine, who conspired with several other prisoners to take the Revenge and kill Phillips. Harradine and his confederates attacked the ship’s crew on April 18th, 1724, killing Phillips, the gunner, the boatswain, and the sailing master, and overpowering the associates. Then they sailed for Annisquam Harbor and later for Boston. Most of the pirates were hanged, although Archer was temporarily spared only to be executed later in Boston. Phillips had only been a pirate for eight months, but the terror he caused along the New England coast had been profound. And he was not the only one who raided in these waters. From time to time, bands of marauders raided the coastline, taking away captives that they could then sell in the plantations of Jamaica and Barbados. Pirate captains such as Henry Sturgis, William Fly, William White, and others found such raids fairly lucrative, so many of the coastal communities often lived in terror of pirate ships.
To avoid the attentions of the sea wolves, many communities moved further back into the hinterland and away from the immediate coast. Although they still maintained a connection with the ocean, their houses were well away from it and in high, rather inaccessible places that were easy to defend against any form of raid. It’s possible that the settlement that would become known as Dogtown was one of these. Even today, the “lost village” of Dogtown is remote and difficult to get to.
Cape Ann was, nevertheless, a place with a rather ghostly reputation. Two miles inland from Gloucester’s main settlement, in 1692, ghostly armies had been seen, late at night, traversing the difficult terrain; shouts and musket fire from an unseen battle were heard by a number of people living there. The times in this period were vastly unsettled; the wars going on in Europe touched American shores. Local English were fighting the French in what became known as King William’s War, as England�
�s William III took on the forces of the French King Louis XIV in Holland and Belgium. Natives threw themselves into the mix as well, fighting for whichever side paid the most or whomever they thought would be of the most benefit to them. By 1692, the wars had reached Cape Ann, and the town of Gloucester was extremely unsettled. Is it any wonder there were tales of phantom armies and spectral Indian raids among them? One prominent story in Gloucester told of an incident in 1675 during what was known as King Philip’s War. This was a series of battles fought by the colonists against a local Wampanoag sachem (chieftain) named Metacom (who styled himself as King Philip), which is described as one of the bloodiest conflicts to be fought on American soil. One night during the conflict, a house was apparently set on fire and burned to the ground by a group of Indian raiders. A number of people saw the conflagration and the flames rising up into the night sky as the Indians whooped and displayed their hatchets, threatening to kill anyone who ran from the blaze.
The next morning, however, the house was there, not burned down, and the family who lived there had apparently been untroubled during the night. Yet many had seen the blaze for miles around. They spoke of an old grandmother staggering from the burning building with an Indian knife half in her body, and yet, there she was, alive and hearty as ever. In fact, when anxious relatives called, she was found eating breakfast! The occurrence was simply dismissed as a spectral vision.
However, about a week afterward, the area was attacked by a roving band of Wampanoag, and the house was indeed burned down and the old lady was killed. A detachment of local militia was sent to drive the Wampanoags back into the scrubby hinterland and into the woods. The original vision was dwelt upon as a premonition of things to come. Again, in 1692 (the same year as the celebrated witch trials in Bay Colony, further along the coast), Ebenezer Babson thought his own house was under attack. Returning home one evening, he claimed he saw two men run from the back of the building and into his corn patch. Convinced that his wife and family had been butchered, Babson burst into the house to find them enjoying a typical evening together. They had neither heard nor experienced anything, and a subsequent search of the immediate countryside revealed nothing. And yet, Babson was absolutely certain he had seen the men and had heard what they said. And his story was not untypical of the area. Stories of phantom armies and spectral Native American raids crossing and re-crossing Cape Ann were extremely common in these unsettled times. Perhaps it was actually because of the times that such legends flourished. They did, however, give an insight into the minds of the people living around the Cape and how they framed their world in terms of demons, ghosts, and visions. Incidents such as the burning house or Babson’s vanishing raiders were not ascribed to delusion or mistake, or even to the internal pressures that the colonies were suffering (Native American attacks, wars, and difficult harvests), but to some supernatural origin that could threaten the colonists’ existence. It was only to be expected that such tensions would spread to the witch trials in Salem.
The settlement that became known as Dogtown was established around 1693 between the colonies of Gloucester and Rockport (or Sandy Bay as it was known then), and was built on high rocky ground, well away from the coast, to protect against both pirate and Native American attack. By the early 1700s, much of Cape Ann had been thoroughly deforested in preparation for settlement and to discourage attacks (because they used the undergrowth for cover), so that the rocky surface of the town was fully exposed with scarcely a tree or bush to relieve the eye. This clearance had been turned into a rather profitable lumber business, and soon wood was being exported from Gloucester in rather large quantities—it would be later claimed that an entire fleet of the British Navy would be made from Cape Ann hardwoods. A large and important sawmill had been established on the very edge of the forest around 1642, and New England cordwood and other lumber flowed through the port of Gloucester at an impressive rate. While the woods had been cleared in the Gloucester/Rockport area, however, the land that had been left was possibly the worst type—rocky, infertile ground that would bear next to no crops. This did not overly worry the selectmen of Gloucester, who saw the future of the settlement not in farming or in agriculture, but in fishing and merchant shipping in and out of the ports. The cabins and houses of fishermen and trading men would take up much of the region, they believed. And, no matter how infertile and rocky the soil, these dwellings needed to be well away from the coastline to protect against pirate raids. Ships were still seen prowling the waters off the Cape, and whether they were or not, these were believed to be pirate craft or French privateers. The location of the new settlement—to be known as the Common Settlement or Common Town—also lay on a direct route between Sandy Bay and Gloucester. Only people of quality would live there, and it is estimated that by 1750, more than 100 respectable families had settled.
Around 1721, officials measured out 43 lots across the rough highland terrain, which would make the basis for the village. It was just over a minor river from Gloucester, which was sometimes no more than a stream, and was known locally as the Alewife Brook. It was also within walking distance of the Green, which was the town’s gathering and social center, and where much of the commerce of the area took place. This also facilitated the use of the various mills in the area along the Mill River, into which the Alewife Brook flowed.
When planning the new village, the local selectmen had assumed that it would entice new families and settlers into the area and expand the local population. However, it was some of Gloucester’s own families who began to colonize the cleared land, breaking up the boulders and hard rock that still remained. Those who came were a Godly group, steeped in Biblical tradition (as many Puritan families were), and well aware of the spiritual value of hard work. It served them well in this inhospitable landscape, and soon a thriving settlement was raised, ready for the families to put down roots. Some agriculture was attempted using seaweed—rich in nutrients—as a mulch to encourage growth, but while some crops thrived, the land was too rocky and too strewn with boulders (just as it is today) to entertain any serious farming. Nevertheless, it was a triumph of achievement against the terrain and, as a village, it would continue to thrive for many years until its decline was brought about by a man named Nathaniel Coit.
The disputes within the developing village began with the rebuilding and relocation of the area’s First Parish Meeting House. In early New England, it is difficult to overestimate the importance of the Parish Meeting House. It combined much of the spiritual and practical aspects of communal life. They were places where the communities gathered both for religious and civic matters. Property sales, announcements regarding colonial law, and even marriage announcements were all posted there for locals to read. The heads and hides of predatory wolves and other threats to the population were placed on display, and the House was often used as a place for storing gunpowder and weaponry in case of Indian or French attack—which was still very much a possibility in those early days. Indeed, those attending religious services often brought firearms with them in case of a sudden attack. It was the center for everything. The Meeting House also preserved the status quo in most communities through its internal arrangements. Seating was set so that the leaders of the village were assigned seats at the front, and a gradual diminution in social status ran all the way to the back of the hall. The seating plan was not an arbitrary one—people could not just sit where they liked at public gatherings. Parish committees were even created to allocate the seating at public meetings based on a mix of lineage, wealth, and public service. Many of the community’s elder statesmen were allocated the most prestigious seats, and this served to solidify their perceived social status. The Common Town Meeting House provided something of a problem in this respect—the building was old and drafty, and parts of it were not suited to some of the more venerable, but infirm, community elders. And there was a mix in the seating arrangements. Whereas some of the “incomers” were descendants of established Gloucester families, others were not
, so the seating was being continually rearranged in order to satisfy local egos. Seats were allocated by the Parish Committee on the express understanding that there should be no grumbling, but this did not prevent quarrels and falling-outs. The 19th-century New England historian Alice Morse Earle tells of two sisters-in-law who, although allocated seats beside each other, continually fought over who had the more “dignified” one. The dispute became so heated that a special meeting of the town’s selectmen had to be convened to resolve the matter. Some other disagreements were so severe that they were passed down for several generations.
In an attempt to both sort out the decaying building and establish a proper seating pattern, it was suggested that a new Meeting House be built and the congregation be relocated. However, this was not as simple as it first appeared. Many of the village’s older inhabitants opposed any attempt to move the Meeting House to a different location, as a new Hall might change the seating arrangements among the more venerable, which had been carefully worked out through the years. Change, they argued, was not necessarily a good thing. Among those who took this view was Nathaniel Coit. Coit was a village elder, in his 70s, but with an extremely sharp mind, and as one of the more venerable community members, was well used to getting his own way. His only interest was in maintaining the status quo, the way that things had been done for many years.