These Wampum belts at the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum in Key West, Florida, are similar to those that were taken from Anawan.
The Wampanoag tribe met the Pilgrims when they first landed in this country, and at the time, they were the dominant people in the area. Although they had been hit by disease in the years leading up to the arrival of the Pilgrims, the Wampanoags’ connection to other tribes throughout New England and their entrenched political and social systems made them a major force. Like most Native American tribes, they had no formal written language and passed on much of their belief system and history through the oral tradition. The map to their past and to who they were as a people was a series of wampum belts worn by the sachem, or leader, of the tribe. Although there is no visual record of what these belts looked like, research has uncovered certain details.
According to anthropologist and author Charles Robinson, the belts would have been about nine inches wide and could have wrapped around an average-sized man several times. Each belt would have consisted of shells and other natural elements, some worn through years of use. The most common colors may have been black and white, but similar belts from other tribes featured red, gray, and purple as well, with significance added to the color, shape, and size of each new shell that was added.
During ceremonies, the sachem would tell the history and important moments of the tribe, noting the shells that related to those moments, like a person taking out the items of a time capsule and telling our modern history through them. It was the job of the younger generation to listen and learn and eventually pass the stories on to the next generation. Until they learned to read and write, this was how the Wampanoag’s history was recorded. By the time they began to record the stories in writing, they had already been influenced by the religious and social ideas of the European settlers who had converted them.
In 1675, war broke out between the people of Plymouth Colony and the Wampanoag, with most of the tribes in the area choosing sides. King Philip’s War all but destroyed the Native American presence in New England. There are many causes of the war, and some might say the conflict was inevitable as soon as people crossed the Atlantic Ocean, but there are two definite things you can say about that dark year in America’s history. The first is that the bloody nature of the war reflects the worst in human nature. The second is that the wampum belts, which had passed through many hands in the preceding years, were lost, and the true history of the Wampanoag was lost along with them.
Massasoit, the sachem in charge when the Pilgrims landed, passed the wampum belt to his son, Alexander, upon his death. In turn, Alexander passed it on to his brother, Philip, who wore the belt through the beginning days of the war named after him. As the fate of the war seemed certain, Phillip gave the belt to his general, Anawan, for safekeeping. Philip’s visions held true for he was betrayed by one of his confidants and killed. Anawan, knowing ultimate defeat was near, surrendered in August 1676 and was stripped of the belt. Whatever became of it after that is unknown.
In his book, True New England Mysteries: Ghosts, Crimes, and Oddities, Robinson offers some possible locations for the belt based on his research. He records that General Benjamin Church did receive the belt and shipped it to England. He also found references to the belt in letters to and from England, but not proof it ever arrived. Perhaps it was lost at sea or never cataloged when it was unpacked. Or perhaps the authorities had no desire to log all the treasures of war that passed across their desks. What is clear is that few people across the pond would have understood the significance of the belt, and even fewer would have appreciated it. Despite efforts in recent years to confirm its location in England, the belt remains lost.
It would remain just a footnote, a historical mystery, if the oddities in the Bridgewater Triangle—the site of so many emotional high points of the war and the heart of Wampanoag culture today—didn’t have so many connected hauntings.
On Route 44, considered by some to be a type of paranormal artery running through the Triangle, a lasting tribute to the Plymouth betrayal draws in locals and paranormal investigators alike. The site of Anawan’s surrender and the place where he was stripped of his belt is one of the most notorious places people go to look for ghosts. In fact, people not looking for ghosts often find them there as well. People have heard voices chanting and yelling in what has been translated to be Algonquin Indian. Small fires that give off no heat or sound appear and disappear. Even phantom Wampanoag warriors roam, often ready to fight when they come across visitors.
Profile Rock, part of the Freetown State Forest, also has its share of spectral sightings. Some written sources say Anawan received the belt from Philip at that spot, and then stayed there to try to contact his father in the spirit world. Philip’s ghost has been seen on the rock. Witnesses who have seen a man sitting there with his legs crossed say he vanishes when they approach. A few have seen a translucent man standing with his arms outstretched.
Anawan Rock, site of the final betrayal.
The list goes on: A disturbed burial site causes all the workers who discovered it to relive battles from the King Philip’s War; a couple who took a memento from another disturbed site were troubled when a ghost dressed like a Native American kept visiting them at night. Time after time, witnesses within the Triangle report running into spirits who they identify as Wampanoag. Some are brief encounters, while others last years.
A news article in 2004 reported that an unidentified Wampanoag spiritualist said the murder and violence in the Freetown State Forest, which has made it infamous on a national scale, would continue until the belt was returned. It was the first time anyone made such a claim on the record. In the years that followed, others have made the connection between the violence and the paranormal activity there. The tribe now uses the forest as a reservation, so it would make sense that any curse would be concentrated in the place they now call home.
Violence and the supernatural made the forest their home long before the tribe officially made it their center. It does not end with rumors, either. So many of the ghosts in that forest—and there are many that walk among the trees—are those of Native Americans who have died. Those souls might be trapped by the belt or its agents, but one thing is certain: The hauntings show little sign of stopping.
Mediums and people who talk to the dead tell a similar story. The Triangle will continue to be a source of unexplained paranormal activity, as well as a magnet for darker elements, until a balance is restored. Even some who do not know the history cite the belt specifically as the weight that can tip the scales back. Officials within the tribe keep quiet about their views of the paranormal significance of the belt. They support the efforts to return the belt as a means of restoring their history, not to make the ghosts go away. Either way, the spirits stay and make themselves known.
Profile Rock, the haunted location where the belt was thought to exchange hands.
Both sides are looking for something different. People in the paranormal field are looking for a way to understand their relationship with the paranormal. For them, it is about the life they have now, as well as the life they may have later.
For the Wampanoag, the need is more basic. They know their past only through the eyes of the people who turned their backs on the old way. They spend time trying to retranslate a history they feel they only partly know, like trying to unravel a hand-knitted sweater stitch by stitch to make another one that looks almost the same. They do it through words now, not quite sure how to tell their tale in shells, and maybe even a bit scared that a record so fragile could once again be taken away.
Moving Moments
The din of the graduation dinner fades away, as the father chimes on his wine glass. He says a few proud words about his son and takes out a shiny pocket watch and hands it to him. Both are beaming as he tells how he received it from his father, who inherited it from his father, as if most of the people in the crowd don’t already to know the story. He comments on how the graduate is now a
man, and the people erupt in applause. The watch will live for another generation.
If any items hold the soul of a person, even of a generation, they would be family heirlooms. They are automatic histories, not bought in a store or a pawn shop, but passed down through the family and teeming with the stories of that person’s life—and often with the weight of several lives. It is not just about the age of the item. The object is meant to be a link to the past, often a trigger for stories about the dead, and it is the act of passing it down that may actually attach the spirit to it. When that heirloom is lost or abused, or the person owning it somehow needs to hear about his or her heritage, something is triggered.
There is the story of a man who was known to crush rattlesnakes with his favorite pair of boots. One day the man dies of what seems like snakebite symptoms. His son inherits the boots, but not his father’s silliness. A few weeks later, he dies in the same way, and there are some whispers about the sins of the father. The boots find their way into the deceased son’s closet until his own son turns 16. He slips them on, remembering how much he loved his grandfather and father. He’s dead soon after, another apparent victim of the curse. But when the boots are examined after the funeral, an old rattlesnake fang sticking through the sole is found, with enough venom left on it to kill 10 men.
The story is a legend, but it points to some of the ideas behind things passed down. They can be a gateway to a time long ago, but they can also be a prison, a mistake waiting to happen again and again. In some cases, they even offer a way to release a dead relative from his or her own sadness.
Pictures are a way for us to connect to our past, even if that past is one we didn’t know we had. Today everyone has a digital camera; most people even have one on their cell phones, making them within easy reach at any given time. But we are only a couple of generations removed from the time when a camera was a cherished item few people owned and even fewer mastered. Pictures were taken carefully using a different ritual than we use today, and it was after the “click” that the real work began. Owning a camera often meant having to develop the film yourself, and the intimacy with the process brought about a different love for what was captured. The pictures were transferred to slides and shown with pride. When the first moving film cameras came out, the emotional stakes were raised. You could immortalize those important moments of your life with motion. More importantly, you could pass it down.
The camera that was handed down from grandfather to grandson.
Eli remembers having to sit through his grandfather’s slide shows, although he remembers more how he tried to stay awake as his beaming grandfather would stop at every picture and tell a story about the moment. “It’s not that his stories were boring, but I guess they were,” Eli said. “I had just seen them my whole life. I loved my grandfather, but he had a way of thinking the most uninteresting things were exciting. He never really lived outside of the area he grew up in, so a trip to upstate New York was like going to Paris.”
By the time he owned his own video camera, weighing about 10 pounds and needing to be carried on his shoulder, Eli had forgotten about most of the home movies he had seen, although he remembers the process of his grandfather taking out the projector and rolling down the screen on days when he would have rather been outside playing.
“ ‘This is history, Eli,’ he used to say. ‘Your history.’ ” He fondly remembers staying at their house, but it took him years to realize why his sisters and cousins never went through the same ritual. As the only male, his grandfather must have seen him as the family historian, the person who was responsible for passing down their traditions and their stories.
His grandfather passed away when Eli was 30 years old and lived five states away. His grandmother had died many years earlier. His uncle, who cared for the old fellow, was the one who called Eli with the news. “It tore me up, but you knew it was coming. I never had a chance to say goodbye, or at least didn’t before he died. I think that didn’t sit right with him. He had to try and find a way to come back and give me one more lesson,” Eli said.
It began the night he heard his grandfather was gone. Eli spent most of the day getting things in order so he could leave to attend the wake and funeral. He was worn out when he finally fell into a heap on the living room couch. That night he dreamed his grandfather was in the room, sitting in the chair next to where he lay sleeping. He was tapping him on the shoulder, trying to wake him up, and when Eli finally opened his eyes, his grandfather was smiling at him and trying to talk. No sound came from his lips, but he was eagerly chatting, moving his hands around excitedly.
When he arrived at his grandfather’s house, he was greeted warmly by his uncle. “I remember thinking how he didn’t seem broken up at all,” Eli said. “This was a guy who had already made peace with his father’s death. I wasn’t quite there yet.” He was more surprised that the first thing he asked Eli to do was follow him into the basement. He showed him an old cardboard box and said his grandfather was adamant in his final days that Eli must have the box.
Inside was an unorganized collection of slides and 8mm films in canisters. Buried underneath were an old-fashioned film projector and film editor and a Sankyo Super LXL 250 camera used for taking film pictures. “The thing weighed at least five pounds and ran on two AA batteries. It must have cost a fortune when it first came out, but it still ran, although I was unsure where I could get film for it,” Eli said.
After the funeral, Eli brought the box back to his apartment and placed it in the basement, where he was assigned a locked storage shelving unit. He kept the camera in his bedroom because he liked the antique feel of it. “I just thought it was cool,” Eli said. “There’s this old camera, and he had left it to me. I didn’t think much about it, but everyone commented on it. To me it was only a conversation piece. I loved my grandfather very much, but I just didn’t get into the whole picture thing. It was nice having a piece of him around, but I had no intentions of being the family documentarian or anything. I had some rocky times with my folks. Nothing too bad. I was just me, and the last thing I wanted was to be the head of anything. My grandfather had other plans, though.”
The film editor.
About two months after he died, Eli’s grandfather’s birthday arrived. It was a sad day for Eli because it forced him to think about his deceased loved one again, and he was surprised at how many of the old slide stories he remembered. It was not the details of the pictures but his grandfather’s sharing of them that remained. When he returned home from work that night, the camera was on the bed. He thought nothing of it, since he shared his apartment with several other men who frequently entered each other’s rooms looking for books or CDs. “I moved it back and made a comment to the air about Grandpa not touching my things.”
That night he had a vivid dream he could not explain. A younger version of his grandfather was walking down the stairs of his house. He was pointing to an American flag hanging from a pole in the yard and walked across the lawn to where Eli’s father, who was maybe 10 or 11, held a sparkler. His father began running down the driveway and the vision shook and then went black. He woke up and turned the light on. “I remember thinking I had just seen one of my grandfather’s old movies and when I turned the lights on, the camera was on the floor again,” he said.
The dream had an impact, especially because it seemed his grandfather was trying to communicate with him. He dressed for work, vowing to not tell anyone in his family because he thought it would upset them too much. When he got home later that night, the camera was again on the bed. “I asked my roommates if they had touched it, and they looked at me kind of weird. One said he had seen it on the coffee table earlier in the day, but he hadn’t moved it because he thought I was trying to get it to work.”
Eli placed it back on his shelf, but when he went to sleep that night, he had another dream. In this one, his grandmother was entering the kitchen with a lit birthday cake. His father was seated next to his uncle, who was about sev
en. He was jumping up and down in his seat and clapping his hands and the camera shook again as he blew out the candles. Eli saw a hand appear from off camera and give the thumbs up. Then everything went black. His room was fully lit when he woke up, and in the middle of the room was the camera again.
“I was pretty freaked out by now. I knew my grandfather was making all of this happen, and he was a man who would never hurt me. That didn’t stop me from being scared at what was going on. I was always into ghosts. I think something can remain on this side when someone passes. I just didn’t want it in my bedroom.”
He moved the camera back to the shelf and went to bed. The next morning he went down to the storage area before work. The lock was still on the shelf, but when he opened it up, two canisters were placed on top of the box like someone had taken them out of the box and moved them. He brought the canisters and box up to his apartment.
“I got out the old projector and hooked up the first reel. I remember I had my blinds shut and all of the lights off and was projecting it on the wall of my room. I knew what I was going to see, and there it was: my uncle’s birthday party. The movie lasted maybe five minutes and then I watched my grandfather saluting the flag and chasing after my father on the second reel. I just sat there in my room, and it was like all of the air got sucked out of the room. I could smell his cologne in the room and just knew he was behind me.”
The raw film.
When he turned around, the camera was again on his bed. Eli made a pact with himself that he would spend the weekend going through the films in the box and brought them back to the basement.
Haunted Objects: Stories of Ghosts on Your Shelf Page 3