Transcript

Music

Jake:
[0:05] Welcome To Hub history, where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston, the hub of the universe.
This is Episode 208 Ghost stories.
Hi, I’m Jake. In honor of Halloween, I’m going to be sharing some of my favorite Boston ghost stories this week,
from haunted houses and inexplicable premonitions recorded by Cotton and Increase Mather in the years leading up to the Salem witch hysteria,
to Nathaniel Hawthorne, encountering his friend in the reading room at the Athenaeum for weeks after the friend’s death, to the apparition that only seems to appear in Boston’s most venerable gay bar when only one person is there to see it,
this week’s episode will cover nearly 400 years of paranormal claims.
Maybe these stories will convince some of you, but even a skeptic like me can clean insight from the fantastic stories about the people who believe them.

[0:58] But before we start telling ghost stories, it’s time for the final edition of the Boston Book Club and our upcoming historical event.

[1:06] If you’re wondering why I’m calling this the final edition of the Boston Book Club, check out my fourth anniversary bonus episode that just came out.
The T. L. D R version is that I’m going to streamline this show starting in November, cutting out the weekly book club and upcoming events segments, and I’m gonna move the show to a twice a month schedule instead of weekly if you want to know why the bonus episode can fill in the details.
So with that said, I have two picks for the Boston Book Club this week.
First up is a fun activity book called The Greater Boston Challenge that was recently given to me as a gift.

[1:41] You know that it’s always impossible to find a gift for the guy who has everything, man. When it comes to books about Boston, I’m a guy who has everything.
Yet on a recent camping trip, a good friend pulled out this slim volume, and I was surprised to see it was a book that I hadn’t come across before.
This little book is full of puzzles that test your knowledge about Boston.
They’re fun quizzes about local history, sports crimes, neighborhoods, businesses and other topics.
With each topical chapter containing a 75 question quiz and a bonus crossword puzzle, you could test yourself against the book or even better challenge your friends to go head to head.
It was written by Gordon and Ann Mathieson, who also created a board game about Cape Cod.
A Quincy native, Gordon has also written 11 volumes of mostly young adult fiction, most of which is set in the Boston area.

[2:37] I also thought that the final edition of the Boston Book Club would be a good opportunity to showcase some of our competition.
When Nikki and I first started Hub history four years ago, we did it in part because we wanted to listen to a show about Boston history and none existed.
Well, my how Times change.

[2:56] Now they’re at least half a dozen podcast about Boston in Boston history, plus a couple more Siri’s that don’t exactly count as podcasts.
I want to run down some of what’s available out there and include a couple that have popped up in the book club before.
First up, though, we have a few that have not been mentioned on the show before.
Revere House Radio is, as it sounds, produced by the folks at the Paul Revere House Historic site.
They’ve released about 15 episodes since starting up this May, with each one focusing on some facet of Paul Revere’s life, from his apprenticeships to his career to the details of his famous ride along a similar line.
The folks that revolution to 50 have recently started their own podcast to celebrate the on going 250th anniversary by highlighting historic sites, reenactors and historians who keep renewing and refreshing the historical memory of the revolution.
They just passed Episode seven after starting the show in early September.
Then there’s Old Dirty Boston, an offshoot of the block by the same name.
Like us, they’re a generalist show, but they focus on more recent history, covering everything from bussing to the combat zone to the Winter Hill gang.
Like us, they’ve been around for a few years, racking up about 50 episodes since they started in late 2018.

[4:15] Last seen is a podcast on a whole different scale. Podcasters associated with small organizations like the Revere House and independent podcasters like Old Dirty Boston and Me get by on shoestring budgets,
without much more than a U. S. B. Mic in a blanket for sound treat.

[4:33] Last seen was a partnership between view are in The Boston Globe, which pretty much means they had access to all the resource is us Andy’s dream about, and they use those resources to a good end.
That being a 10 part Siri’s breaking down the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist in detail from the mechanics of the robbery to the personalities involved in the investigation to the leads that make the case still seemed tantalizingly close to cracking.

[5:00] I want to briefly mentioned two shows that have been Boston Book Club selections in the past.
After a seven month hiatus, the channel story just released their 10th episode.
As they’ve been teasing since the beginning, this episode begins to explain how the beloved South Boston rock club was targeted by and then taken over by the Boston mob.
And even though it’s not a history show, my favorite Boston theme podcast is Greater Boston.
In this fictional story, set in a slightly off kilter version of Bust and the streets air permanently sticky from the molasses flood, terrorists, wheeled tea, party tea and hot Boston baked beans,
and dark forces gather in the abandoned amusement park it Wonderland.
After a few initial episodes of the various plotlines seemed to branch out in all directions, the show evolved into a tightly interwoven story, following multiple main characters with Ernest leads deeply concerned with social justice,
they’re on hiatus right now is the writers put together the fourth season, which means that you have time to go back and catch up from season one.

[6:08] And finally, let’s talk about to Siri’s that don’t really count as podcasts over at the old North Church Historic site, education manager T.
J. Todd has been making a series of videos on their YouTube channel called 99%.
Sure, the seven episodes so far generally about 5 to 7 minutes long, and they cover different aspects of the history of the building, the crypts and, of course, Paul Revere’s famous ride,
as a video.
Siri’s 99% sure isn’t really a podcast, but it’s pretty darn close.

[6:44] Similarly, Season three of a show called Fiasco is available only in the luminaria.

[6:51] I generally don’t support Luminary because I think their practice of promoting AP exclusive shows is destructive to the entire podcast industry.
This third season of fiasco, however, covers the important topic of desegregation and the bussing crisis in Boston.
In all the depth of a seven episode season of a well funded corporate audio. Siri’s I thought it would be fun to highlight all these different perspectives for the final Boston Book Club.
Boston history. Podcasts are a big enough tent for all of us, and for our upcoming event this week, I have a partnership between the History Project and historic New England.
On November 12th, they’re teaming up to present a program called Looking for the First Gay American Novel for Gotten Book by Sarah Orange.
Ooh, it, you might remember Sarah Orange Ooh, its name from our episode about so called Boston marriages, where 19th century women engaged in long term, deeply committed monogamous relationships that may or may not have been sexual,
Ju it and Annie Adams Fields lived together on Charles Street at the foot of Beacon Hill.
They hosted the most amazing star studded salon nights that you can possibly imagine.
The History project is the premier New England organization cataloging and recording the L G B T. Q history of Boston and beyond.
Working with historic New England, they’re turning to Sarah Orne Jewett in their search for the first gay American novel.
Here’s the description from the historic New England website.

[8:21] The popularity of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City and Hanya Yanagihara is recent hit.
A Little Life indicates the profound connection people feel with L G B T Q plus fiction, but who authored the first gay American novel?
Scholars have proposed origins for the tradition, and Margaret sweats Ethel’s love life and bared Taylor’s Joseph and his friend A Tale of Pennsylvania.
However, Professor Don James McLaughlin of the University of Tulsa makes the case in this virtual talk that a marsh Island, a little known 18 85 novel serialized in the Atlantic by Sarah Orange.
Ooh, it is significant for being the first novel to explore Major now familiar facets of a burgeoning modern gay American consciousness.
The talk will begin at 5 p.m. On Thursday, November 12 tickets will be priced on a sliding scale, starting at $25 and going down from there, according to Need.
I’ll include the link you need to buy a ticket, as well as links to the Greater Boston Challenge and all the Boston podcasts I featured this week in the show. Notes.
Just Goto Hub history com slash 208 for details.

[9:38] Before I move on with the show. I just want to thank our patryan sponsors for sticking with us through this transition.
With your continued support, I hope to keep making AH, high quality show just one that comes out a little less frequently.
Moving to a twice monthly schedule should ease some of the stress behind putting out the show, but it unfortunately won’t change much with the expenses involved in making hub history.
We’ll still be on the hook for podcast media hosting, Web hosting, insecurity and research fees, though we should see a slight break in the cost of audio processing and transcription.
So thanks again for sticking with us as we shake things up. And hopefully we can recruit a few more sponsors during this transition.
If you aren’t yet sponsoring the show and you’d like to just go to patryan dot com slash hub history or visit hub history dot com and click on the Support US link.
And now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

[10:36] In the earliest days of English colonization in Boston, the Puritans believed that the devil was Justus realize you’re me walking among the houses at night looking for a likely soul,
because the devil was a constant presence. Apparitions were common.
Puritan Minister increased, Mather wrote a volume called Remarkable. Providence is as a book length argument from Christian doctrine for the existence of witchcraft.
The book is full of strange and horrifying experiences taken as evidence among which was the story of a man whose house turned against him.
It sounds like something out of a low budget horror movie, perhaps paranormal activity. Puritan Edition.
It begins, as there have been several persons vexed with evil spirits, so diverse houses have been woefully haunted by them.
In the year 16 79 the house of William Morse was strangely disquieted by a demon.

[11:38] It all started on December 3rd, when Morse and his wife woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of something landing on their house, saying that it sounded like branches or stones rattling on the roof.

[11:50] William got up and looked out the window, but there was nothing to see.
The couple went back to sleep and then woke up again a few hours later to the sound of a hog.
Sure enough, when they got up, there was a hog in the house. But they opened the door, which had been shut fast, and the hog ran out.
Nothing to supernatural there, at least so far. Less than a week later, the situation began to escalate.

[12:17] On December 8th, in the morning, there were five great stones and bricks by an invisible hand thrown in the west end of the house where the man’s wife was making the bed.
The bedstead was lifted up from the floor, and the bed staff flung out the window and a cat was hurled at her.
Long staff danced up and down the chimney, burnt brick in a piece of weather board were thrown into the window.
On the same day, the long staff, but now spoken of, was hanged up by a line and swung to and froze. Oh, the man’s wife laid it in the fire, but she could not hold it there, and as much as it would forcibly fly out.
Yet after much ado with joint strength, they made it to burn.
A shingle flew from the window, though nobody near it. Many sticks came in at the same place.
Only one of these was so scrag did that it could enter the whole but a little way, whereupon the men pushed it out.
A great rail. Likewise, was Dustin at the window, so is to break the glass.

[13:18] Things only get weirder. From there, furniture floated unaccountably through the air with a chair landing in the middle of the dinner table. One night, in spoiling the families meal, things in the house went unaccountably missing.
One key from a ring of three would disappear, while the other two floated around the house, jingling loudly.
An ink pot disappeared, as Mr Morse was using it to write, knitting needles disappeared from the knitting and reappeared in the bed clothes.
For a week, the entire family was plagued by ashes blowing out of the fireplace into their eyes, their hair and clothes, and into their food.
As they tried to eat for another week, they were pelted with Cal manure by an unseen hand, spoiling the milk because they milk their cows, coming through the windows and spoiling their dinners and being flung at them in the fields and streets.

[14:10] The families young son seemed to be the greatest suffer of these afflictions, with the account by Mather continuing On the 18th of December, he sitting by his grandfather, was hurried into great motions,
and the man thereupon took him and made him stand between his legs.
But the chair danced up and down, and I’d like to cast both man and boy into the fire, and the child was afterwards, flung about in such a manner, said they feared his brains would have been beaten out,
and in the evening he was tossed a za four, and the man tried the project of holding him.
But ineffectually, the lad was soon put to bed, and they presently heard a huge noise and demanded What was the matter?
And he answered that his bedstead had leapt up and down, and the man and wife went up and that first found all quiet.
But before they had been there long, they saw the board by his bed trembling by him and the bedclothes flying off him.
The latter they laid on immediately. But there were no sooner on than off, so they took him out of his bed for quietness.

[15:15] Today we describe all sorts of causes to these strange afflictions was an enemy of some sort. Throwing the bricks and cow Patties at the family?
Were the visions of flying furniture occurring an elusive dream? Was the damage to the house caused by a sleepwalker?
Could the boys violent movements around the room have been a simple prank.
In the Puritan world of Increased Mather and William Morris. For that matter, there could only be one explanation for events like this.
The devil himself, the elder Reverend Mather relates how the haunting of the Morse house was brought to an end.

[15:52] Neither were there many words spoken by Satan all this time only once having put out their light, they heard a scraping on the boards and then a piping and drumming on them, which was followed with a voice singing Revenge.
Revenge, Sweet is revenge, and they being well, terrified with it, called upon God,
the issue of which was that suddenly, with a mournful note, there were six times over uttered such expressions as, alas, me knock no more mean knock gnome or and now all ceased.
Suspicion among the neighbors fell on Mrs Morris, who in Whispers was accused of being a witch.
She’s lucky that these events, or at least the accounts of them, didn’t happen. A few years later, when whispered rumors of witchcraft were enough to get a woman hauled before the court of oyer and term inner toe argue for her life.

[16:49] Still, it was publications like the remarkable Providence Is and Men Like Increased Mather that fed the fires of the witch hysteria leading to the deaths of many innocent people.
Increased Mother’s account of the haunted Morse House was published over a year before the tragedy of the Salem Witch trials.

[17:08] A year after the trials began, with dozens of people in jail in awaiting their fates, Cotton Mather, the son of Increase and also a powerful Puritan minister, published wonders of the Invisible world.
It was framed as a historical account of the trials that have recently concluded, but it was far from a balance narrative.
The younger Mather, combed through the records of the Court of Oyer and term inner, then in the end published an account that Onley presented the prosecution side,
as a close ally of the state and one of the leading voices in arranging the trials that left 20 people dead.
The book was Cotton Mather’s defense of the trials and executions and his argument that witchcraft was riel and wonders of the invisible world. Cotton Mather doesn’t just jump straight into the witch trials.
Instead, he starts with the story that would have been deeply shocking at the time.
It was titled A Narrative of an Apparition, which a gentleman in Boston had of his brother, just then murdered in London.

[18:12] It begins. It was on the second of May in the year 16 87 that a most ingenious, accomplished and well disposed gentlemen, Mr Joseph Beacon by name,
about five o’clock in the morning is he lay, whether sleeping or waking, he could not say, but judge the latter off them had a view of his brother, then at London, although he was now himself in our Boston distance from him. 1000 leagues.

[18:39] So Joseph Beacon was asleep in Boston, Massachusetts, and he had a vision of his brother in London all the way in old England.
This his brother appeared unto him in the morning about five o’clock in Boston, having on him a Bengal gown, which he usually wore with a napkin tied about his head.
His countenance was very pale, ghastly, deadly, and he had a bloody wound on one side of his forehead, Brother says. The afraid of Joseph.
Brother answered the operation, said Joseph. What’s the matter, brother? How came you here?
The operation replied brother. I’ve been most barbarous Lee and injurious Lee, butchered by a debauched, drunken fellow whom I never did any wrong in my life.

[19:27] Okay All the way from far away London. The brother appeared to Joseph, showed off a fresh head wound and said that he’d been the victim of a random assault by a drunk in the streets of London.
The apparition of the brothers, then alleged to have given very particular details. The perpetrators plans to flee the country and come to Massachusetts, saying that he had changed his name and giving the exact ports by which you might try to affect an immigration.
To this. The specter said I would pray you on the first arrival of either of these two. Get in order from the governor to seize the person whom I have now described.
And then do you indict, um, for the murder of your brother?
I’ll stand by you. Improve the indictment. And so he vanished.

[20:13] Joseph was understandably shaken up by this dream or vision or whatever it waas.
But he went on about his normal business for a little less than two months.
All this while Mr Beacon had no advice of anything amiss attending his brother than in England.
But about the latter end of June following, he understood by the common ways of communication that the April before his brother, going in haste by night to call a coach for a lady, met a fellow, then in drink with his doxy in his hand,
some way or other, the fellow thought himself affronted with the hasty passage of the speaking and immediately ran into the fire side of a neighboring tavern from whence he fetched out a fire for where with he’d previously wounded Beacon in the skull.
Even in that very part where the apparition showed his wound.

[21:03] After almost two months had passed since he saw the vision, Beacon got a letter from England saying that back in April, a month before the vision, his brother had bumped into someone while rushing to call a cab for his girlfriend.
That’s someone took a fence and bashed him in the head with a fireplace poker, leaving a wound exactly what the apparition have been seen with a bloody napkin tied around its head.
And that’s not even the spooky part Mather is. Account continues of this wound. He languished until he died on the second of May, about five of the clock in the morning at London.
If you recall, May the second at 5 a.m. Is exactly the moment when Joseph Beacon saw his vision in a world before time zones. That was an amazing coincidence.
At the very moment of his death, over 3000 miles away, Joseph’s brother not only appeared before him in a vision but also offered to stand by him and proved the indictment,
that is to provide the very spectral evidence that it’s so controversially led to 20 executions just a few months before.

[22:13] Moving into an era when spirits and apparitions were not taken quite so literally. We have a ghost sighting from the 17 seventies.
Later on, Benjamin Russell would go on to be a Continental soldier, and probably the most famous moment of his military career was serving as one of the guards who escorted spy John Andre, who was execution after the war.
He published the newspaper The Colombian Sentinel, in Boston for 40 years, exercising the trade he had learned as an apprentice to revolutionary newspaperman Isaiah Thomas.
Back in those apprentice days, sometime before Russell’s father died in 17 78 young Benjamin saw a ghost, or so we thought.
In 18 50 book about the American newspaper business, Joseph Tinker Buckingham published a profile of Benjamin Russell and The Sentinel, where he related.
The story is if it was told to him writing, I have heard Russell relate many anecdotes of his boyhood, of which the following is one and as nearest could be recollected in his own words.
Then it continues in Russell’s voice.

[23:22] It was part of my duty as an assistant in the domestic affairs of the family to have the care of the cow.
One evening after it was quite dark, I was driving the cows or pasture ridge, the common passing by the burial ground adjoining the stone chapel, meaning the king’s chapel burying ground.
I saw several lights that appeared to be springing from the earth among the graves and immediately sinking again to the ground or expiring to my young imagination.
These lights could be nothing but ghosts.
I left the cow to find her own way to the common or wherever else she pleased and ran home at my utmost speed when you were accounted the story to Buckingham.
Much later, Russell was an old man, a veteran, someone who had seen deaf when he was younger, however, hit yet to see much of life and death.
I like to imagine that his ghost story was inspired by the Boston massacre, which would have happened when Benjamin Russell was about nine years old.
Whatever the inspiration, Buckingham recalled what had happened after he saw this mysterious apparition in the king’s chapel burying ground.

[24:32] Having told my father the cause of my fright as well as I was able, while in such a state of terror and agitation, he took me by the hand and led me directly to the spot where the supposed ghosts were still leaping and playing their pranks near the surface of the ground.
My hair rose on end and seemed to lift my very hat from my head.
My flesh was chilled through to my very bones. I trembled so that I could scarcely walk.
Still, my father continued rapidly marching towards the spot that inspired me with so much terror when low.
There was a sexton up to his shoulders in a grave, throwing out as he proceeded in digging bones and fragments of rotten coffins.
The phosphorus in the decaying wood, blended with a peculiar state of the atmosphere, presented the appearance that had completely unstrung my nerves and terrified me beyond description.

[25:26] Once upon a time when I was about 12 years old. In a way at summer camp, I discovered a patch of glow in the dark Indian pipes.
You know, the weird white flowers that grow in the deep forest. What kind of look like something that should be growing in a cave.
We’re sleeping out under the stars. One night I looked over and saw dozens of the waxy blooms glowing green in the darkness of night.
Upon investigation in the daylight, they turned out to be growing out of an old rotten log that must have been loaded with natural phosphorescence, causing them to glow.
Ben Russell adds, I was never afterwards troubled with the fear of ghosts.
Me neither been me neither.

[26:12] Another chilling tale, set in 17 70 was briefly the most influential ghost story in America, influencing everyone from Nathaniel Hawthorne toe Herman Melville in 1987 episode of the Saturday morning cartoon The Real Ghostbusters.
The legend says that Peter Rugg was a resident of Middle Street in Boston, today’s Hanover Street in the North End, that he had a terrible temper and that his language was so profane that when he began cussing up a blue streak.
His proper powdered wig would rise straight up off his head in attempt to get away.

[26:49] One morning in the late autumn, probably about this time of year, maybe on night, Just like tonight,
Rugg and his 10 year old daughter, Jenny, loaded up their two wheeled open carriage or chase and headed out to visit, Conquered for the day as they started for home that evening, a violent thunderstorm caught up with him.
Justus the night fell in the original telling of the tale.
The father and daughter stopped at a friend’s house in Cambridge or Arlington.
Is the storm worsen at dark? He stopped at monogamy, now West Cambridge, at the door of Mr Cutter, a friend of his who urged him to Terri the night on rugs, declining to stop. Mr Cutter urged him vehemently.
Why, Mr Rugg said, Qatar, the storm is overwhelming you. The night is exceedingly dark. Your little daughter will perish.
You’re in an open chase, and the tempest is increasing.
Let the storm increase, said Rugg with a fearful oath. I will see home tonight in spite of the last tempest or may I never see home.

[27:54] At these words. He gave the whip to his high spirited horse and disappeared in a moment.

[28:01] But Peter Rugg did not reach home that night, nor the next, nor when he became a missing man. Could he ever be traced beyond Mr Cutters and monogamy?
Be careful what you wish for, Rugg vowed. A C home tonight or never again. See home would be fulfilled.
The legend says that he was cursed to roam the highways and byways of New England forevermore for all eternity.
He would look for the way home look for Boston, but he would never find it For a long time.
After on every dark and stormy night the wife of Peter Rugg would fancy, she heard the crack of a whip in the fleet tread of a horse and the rattling of a carriage passing her door.
The neighbors to heard the same noises, and some said they knew it was rugs. Horse. The tread on the pavement was perfectly familiar to them.
This occurred so repeatedly that at length the neighbors watched with lanterns and saw the rial Peter Rugg with his own horse and chaise, and the child sitting beside him passed directly before his own door,
his head turned toward his house and himself, making every effort to stop his horse but in vain.

[29:12] According to this account, the chaise matching Peter rugs was seen one night in Hartford the next night in the White Mountains and on the next in Rhode Island.
At every stop, he was described his writing at reckless speed with his daughter curled up next to him.
He would ask any fellow traveler who acknowledged his presence for directions to Boston, and he was always incredulous that he wasn’t in the right place.
One witness who claimed to have spoken with Peter Rugg many times recounted.
He is a famous traveler, held in late esteem by all in holders, for he never stops Thio, eat, drink or sleep.
I wonder why the government does not employ them to carry the mail. I that is a thought bright only on one side.
How long would it take in that case to send a letter to Boston, to my knowledge, been more than 20 years traveling to that place,
he looks as though he never eat, drank er slept, and his child looks older than himself, and he looks like time, broken off from eternity and anxious to gain a resting place.

[30:18] As for his horse, he looks fatter and Gaier and shows more animation. Encouraged that he did 20 years ago.
The last time Rugg spoke to me, he inquired how far it was to Boston. I told him just 100 miles.
Why? Said he. How could you deceive me? So it’s cruel to mislead a traveler.
I’ve lost my way. Pray direct me to the nearest way to Boston.
I repeated it was 100 miles.
How can you say so? Said he. I was told last evening it was but 50.
I’ve traveled all night but said, I, you are now traveling from Boston. You must turn back.
Alas, said he It is all turned back.
Boston shifts with the wind and plays all around the compass.
One man tells me it is to the east, another to the west and the guide posts to They all point the wrong way.

[31:17] But will you not stop and rest? Said I. You seem wet and weary.
Yes, said he. It has been foul weather since I left home.
Stop then and refresh yourself. I must not stop. I must reach home tonight, if possible.
So I think you must be mistaken in the distance to Boston.
He then gave the reins to his horse, which he restrained with difficulty and disappeared in a moment.

[31:47] The narrator himself encountered the figure of Peter Rugg on a stormy night as he got ready to check into Ah, Hartford Hotel.
After hearing stories of the legendary coachman for so long, he vowed he would speak to the man.
So is the chase past. He held up a hand in greeting.
Rugg reined in his horse and came to an impatient stop.

[32:09] Ser said. I may I be so bold as to inquire if you are not Mr Rugg, for I think I have seen you before.
My name is Peter, Rugg said. He, I have, unfortunately lost my way. I’m wet and weary.
I’ll take it kindly of you to direct me to Boston.
You live in Boston, do you? And in what street? In Middle Street, When did you leave Boston?
I cannot tell. Precisely. It seems a considerable time, but how did you and your child become so wet?
It’s not rained here today.

[32:48] It is just rained a heavy shower up the river. But I shall not reach Boston tonight. If I Terry, would you advise me to take the old road or the turnpike?

[32:59] Why The old road is 117 miles and the turnpike is 97.
How can you say so? You impose on me? It’s wrong to trifle with a traveler. You know, it’s about 40 miles from Newburyport to Boston. But this is not Newburyport. This is Hartford.
Do not deceive me, sir. Is not this the town Newburyport and the river that I’ve been following The Merrimack?

[33:28] No, sir. This is Hartford. And the river is the Connecticut.
He run his hands and looked incredulous. Have the rivers to change their courses as the cities have changed places. But see, the clouds are gathering in the south and we shall have a rainy night. Oh, that fatal oath.
Ah, that fatal oath with that he drove his horse off into the night and in the history.

[34:01] The Story of Peter Lug was originally serialized in 18 24 in the New England magazine, published by None Other Than Joseph Tinker Buckingham, who also related the story of Benjamin Russell, 17 70 Haunting.
It was written by William Austin, who was featured as one of the duelists in our episode about an unusual political duel fought between a federalist and a Democratic Republican in 18 06,
The Rugg story spread so widely and was repeated so many times that many came to believe that it was an old traditional New England tail.
If people were aware of the publication by William Austin, they thought he had simply written down a story that have been previously handed down in oral tradition.
The tail was repeated and adapted by many other authors, most prominently Nathaniel Hawthorne.
As part of his 18 42 collection, Mosses for the Old Man’s, he included the short story of Virtuosos collection.
In it, he describes a visit to a fictional new museum that was opening in Boston containing the collection of oddities curated by the titular virtuoso.
Among the collection was the wolf did eight Little Red Riding Hood, the albatross from the rime of the ancient Mariner.
The serpent attempted the IV the raven that inspired Edgar Allan Poe and dozens of other legendary literary or downright extinct creatures.

[35:29] The story is told in the first person. As the narrator takes in the museum of mythical Animals.
He slowly gets acquainted with the museum’s mysterious doorkeeper.

[35:40] Three shillings Massachusetts tenor said he No, wait.
I mean, half a dollar, as you reckon these days, While searching my pocket for the coin, I glanced to the doorkeeper, the market character and individuality of who’s aspect encouraged. We do expect something not quite in the ordinary way.
He wore an old fashioned greatcoat, much faded, within which his meager person was so completely enveloped that the rest of his attire was indistinguishable.
But his visage was remarkably wind flushed, sunburnt and weather worn, and had a most unique nervous and apprehensive expression.
It seemed as if this man had some all important object in view, some point of deepest interest to be decided, some momentous question to ask mighty but hope for a reply.
After viewing all the items of interest in the museum, the narrator take stock of the doorkeeper and soon learns that he is also part of the collection.
Me thinks a shadow would have made a fitting doorkeeper to such a museum, said I,
although indeed yonder figure has something strange and fantastic about him, which suits well enough with many of the impressions which I have received here, pray who is he?

[36:57] While speaking, I gazed more, scrutinizing Lee than before the antiquated presence of the person who had admitted me and who still sat on his bench with the same restless aspect and dim, confused questioning anxiety that I had noticed on my first entrance.
At this moment, he looked eagerly towards us and half starting from his seat, addressed me.
I beseech you, kind sir, he said, a cracked, melancholy tone.
Have pity on the most unfortunate man in the world. For heaven’s sake, answer me a single question.
Is this the town of Boston?
You have recognized him now, said the virtuoso. It is Peter Rugg, the missing man, a chance to meet him the other day, still in search of Boston and conducted him hither.
And as he could not succeed in finding his friends, I have taken him into my services Doorkeeper.
He is somewhat too apt to ramble, but otherwise a man of trust and integrity.

[37:59] Peter Rugg virtuosos Doorman isn’t the only ghost one might stumble across in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writings.
In another famous literary haunting, you recorded a ghostly encounter at the Boston Athenaeum.

[38:13] The date is a bit uncertain because the story was not among his published works.
Instead, it was part of a story told the family of John Pemberton, Hey, would the American consul in Liverpool.

[38:26] Hawthorne stayed with the family while he was visiting England, and he entertained them with stories like this one.
Then he wrote it down at their request.
Only after his death was the story uncovered and published.
First is a newspaper serial and then in his collected stories.
Probably in the 18 thirties, Hawthorne was a member of the Boston Athenaeum Ah private library at the top of Beacon Hill.
He visited the library nearly daily, taking his place among the regulars who gathered in the reading room every day, poring over the newspapers in the comfortable, leather upholstered and overstuffed silence.
Among the regulars was the Reverend Dr Thadeus Mason Harris, the Unitarian minister at First Church in Dorchester.
Ah, Harvard graduate and the author of The Natural History of the Bible.
In Hawthorne’s description. He was very far advanced in life, not less than 80 years old and probably Mawr.
And he resided, I think, a Dorchester suburban village in the immediate vicinity of Boston,
he was a small, withered, infirm but brisk old gentleman with snow white hair, a somewhat stooping figure but yet a remarkable alacrity of movement.

[39:46] I remember it was in the street that I first noticed him. The doctor was plotting along with staff, but turned smartly about on being addressed by the gentleman who was with me and responded with a good deal of vivacity.
After seeing the old man in the reading room every day, Hawthorne began to regard him as part of the library landscape.
So it didn’t seem unusual when, as he later wrote one day, especially about noon, as was generally is our I am perfectly certain that I had seen this figure of old Dr Harris and taken my customary note of him.
Although I remember nothing in his appearance at all different from what I had seen on many previous occasions.
But that very evening, a friend said to me, Did you hear that old Dr Harris is dead?
No, I said very quietly, and it cannot be true, for I saw him at the Athenaeum today.
You must be mistaken. We’re joined, my friend. He is certainly dead and confirmed the fact with such special circumstances that I could no longer doubt.

[40:51] Now, of course, our Mr Hawthorne was keeping an eye out for the departed Mr Harris. And it wouldn’t be long until he was seen again.
The next day, As I ascended the steps of the Athenaeum, I remember thinking within myself.
Well, I shall never see old Dr Harris again with this thought in my mind. As I opened the door to the reading room, I glanced toward the spot in the chair where Dr Harris usually sat.
And there, to my astonishment, sat the gray, infirm figure of the deceased doctor reading the newspaper, as was his want his own death must have been recorded that very morning in that very newspaper,
from that time for a long time thereafter, for weeks at least.
And I know not. But for months I used to see the figure of Dr Harris quite as frequently as before his death.
It grew to be so common that at length that regarded the venerable defunct no more than any of the other old fogeys who best before the fire and dozed over the newspapers.

[41:54] After some undefined period of time, Hawthorn became convinced that the old reverend was attempting to strike up a conversation from the other side of the veil.
Unfortunately for him, Hawthorne wrote, the Ghost has shown the bad judgment common among the spiritually brotherhood, both as regarded the place of the interview and the person whom he had selected is the recipient of his communications,
in the reading room of the Athenaeum, Conversation is strictly forbidden.
I could not have addressed the apparition without drawing the instant notice. An indignant frowns. The slumber Isolde gentleman around me, I myself to at that time was a shy as any ghost and followed. The ghosts rule never to speak first.
And what an absurd figure should I have made solemnly and awfully addressing what must have appeared in the eyes of all the rest of the company as an empty chair like a bad romance.
The two figures made lingering eye contact across the library for weeks or maybe months,
but eventually all things must come to an end.

[43:00] After a long while of the strange intercourse if such a could be called, I remember once it least I know not, but often her a sad, wistful, disappointed gaze, which the ghost fixed upon me from beneath the spectacles,
a melancholy look of helplessness which, if my heart had not been as hard as a paving stone I could hardly have withstood.

[43:25] But I did withstand it, and I think I saw him gnome or after this last appealing look, which still dwells in my memory is perfectly is while my own eyes were encountering the Dem and cleared Eyes of the Ghost.
And whenever I recall this strange passage of my life, I see the small, old withered figure of Dr Harris sitting in his accustomed chair, the Boston Post in his hand, his spectacles shoved upwards and gazing at me as I closed the door of the reading room,
with that wistful, appealing, hopeless, helpless look.
It is too late now. His grave has been grass grown, this in many a year.
I hope he has found rest in it without any aid for me wonderfully creepy story and appropriate to the season.
But Hawthorne’s writing was full of references to the supernatural, like the short story The Great Champion, which incorporated the legend of the Angel of Hadley, which we talked about in our episode about the 16 89 uprising in Boston,
or the Virtuosos Collection, which we just heard about.
While the story is sometimes presented this proof of a haunting at the Athenaeum, the content of the story in the context of its creation make it seem more like a good campfire story that Hawthorne embellished a bit by writing it in the first person.
Far from the rial and menacing presence of the devil found in writings by the Mathers, this was good, clean fun.

[44:54] Perhaps the most persistent ghost story in Boston is the legend of the Lady in Black.
According to this tale, a lieutenant, Andrew Lanier of Georgia, was among the many Confederate soldiers and politicians imprisoned at Fort Warren on Boston Harbor in 18 62.
Learning of his fate, his wife, Melanie, made her way to Boston, cut her hair short, don men’s clothing and infiltrated Georgia’s island.
She signaled her husband, and he lowered a rope to allow her to climb in through one of the loopholes.

[45:28] She had brought a pistol in a pick ax. The plan was a tunnel into the forts. Arsenal armed the prisoners and overpower the garrison.
Unfortunately for them, the noise of the digging alerted the guards.
When they rushed in to arrest the conspirators, Melanie sprang out with their pistol drawn in the confusion. There was a misfire, or perhaps a ricochet or some other accident.
Her bullet struck her own husband, and he fell dead.
She was sentenced to hang, is a Confederate spy, and in her grief, her only request was that she be allowed to dress in mourning for her husband.

[46:07] Accordingly, a long black gown and veil were procured, and she wore them to the gallows on Georgia’s island for execution well into the 20th century, soldiers and visitors to the fort would claim to see the apparition of a woman in black growing.
The parapets are stalking through the basement. Under the case mates, this story is complete bunk.
There are no recorded escape attempts from Fort Warrant. There are no recorded escape attempts from Fort Warren prior to 18 63,
and very importantly, no prisoner, male or female was ever executed at Fort Warren.
In fact, the only woman executed is a spy during the Civil War was Mary Sarah, who was hanged for her role in the conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln.

[46:59] However, the Legend of the Lady in Black was inspired by a true story. The story of the most successful escape from Fort Warren.
One Confederate captain named J. W. Alexander would later account how he and an accomplice escaped from Fort Warren in 18 63 and very nearly made it to freedom in Canada.

[47:19] Four of us determined to escape. Many plans were suggested and discussed, but none seem feasible.
Indeed, situated as we were on an island and strictly guarded day and night, with sentinel station in front of our doors confined within solid masonry, constructed to resist the shot from the heaviest guns, it seemed quite impossible to escape,
and yet the escape was easily accomplished in the basement.
Under the room in which we were confined was a pump where we obtained our water.
And in the outer wall of this basement were two openings called musket tree loopholes.
These were something over 6 ft high, two or 3 ft wide at the inside of the wall and gradually sloping to a point so that the outer side of the wall there are only a little over seven inches wide.
One day while bathing, the thought struck me that I could get through this whole.

[48:16] Captain Alexander found that if he stripped naked, then turned his head as if he was looking over his shoulder, he could squeeze through the gap.

[48:25] It took three attempts for him to get off the island. Outside the walls of the fort, the conspirators discovered that it was easy to evade the youth.
Outside the walls of the fort, the conspirators discovered that it would be easy to evade the union sentinels.
As the guards walked toward one another, the Confederates would lie still in the islands. Tall grass.
When the sentinels met and turned to walk away from one another, they would crawl forward until they were over the seawall.
They would then lie still in the water with their heads propped on the base of the sea wall in their bodies, hidden underwater.
The first time out, they realized that there were no boats they could easily steal and ended up sneaking back to their cells.
The second time they took along to Confederate sailors who were strong swimmers.
They repeated the process, and the two sailors swam to another island to find a boat.
They never came back.

[49:22] The third time proved to be a charm for Alexander. This time, he and one accomplice went into the water themselves.
They found a wooden target used for riflery practice and used it as a float to help them swim across the Narrows and out to Boston Light.
There, they stole a small boat, but by the time they made it back to George’s Island, the son had come up. Their remaining two accomplices have been captured.
Turning north, they sailed their small craft toward the Maine coast, hoping to eventually make it to neutral New Brunswick.
Along the way, they went a short, a lonely house near Rye Beach, New Hampshire.
The laconic New Englander they found listen calmly as the two naked men with Southern accents explained how they came to be in a small boat with cut anchor lines off the coast of New Hampshire.
We told him that we had sailed out from Portsmouth for a lark and had gone in bathing and while in the water, our clothes had blown overboard and asked him to get us some clothes if he could, and bring us some water and something to eat.
He went on shore and soon returned with some old clothes a good supply of plain food, some tobacco and a small bottle of cherry brandy.
I am satisfied he knew what we were, but we said nothing except to thank him for his kindness.

[50:45] On the third day, a revenue cutter found them and quickly returned them to Fort Warren.

[50:53] Two decades after the Civil War, the Boston Globe printed a ghost story that took place on Mission Hill.
Supposedly, a death had taken place quote some time ago in an orchard on what was then called Parker’s Hill.
In the story, a distraught man committed suicide by hanging himself from the branch of an apple tree and one of the many orchards that Roxbury was duly famous for.
In those days, the neighborhood swirled with tales of strange sounds and ghostly figures among the trees.
And the globe pointed out that as the years rolled by, there wasn’t a soul in Roxbury who didn’t claim to have seen something spooky on Parker Hill.
One would tell you that he saw the figure of a man swaying to and froze Oh, as if gently impelled by the wind he could identify. The tree is the same as that upon which the suicide have given up the ghost.
Another would tell of a man clad and deep black who could be seen between the hours of 12 and one pacing through the orchard with head bowed down as if in deep thought and his hands clasped behind his back,
he would walk through the deep foliage in summer and the snows in winter, his footsteps always inaudible.
After circling the tree a few times, he would pause beneath its out, spreading branches and once mawr, enact the process by which he had passed from life to death.

[52:14] One thing, however, appeared never to vary, and that was no sooner. The body ascended into the air than it became on the instant invisible.

[52:25] Another story, this one, perhaps, which has more directly to do with the present sketch, is that in the deep shade of the tree, with back pressed against the trunk could be seen on moonlit nights.
A man clothed in white, motionless and to all appearance nailed there after many years had passed.
The Globe reported how, just a few weeks before Halloween, in 18 84 a man rushed into a crowd of men who were discussing politics in the public square and, in a terrified voice, told them of what he had seen.
He declared that while passing by the haunted orchard a few minutes before, it was then 10 o’clock he saw plainly outlined against the trunk of a tree, a figure clothed in white.
He thought at first that he must have been mistaken and looked a second and a third time.
Each time he looked, the figure doubled its size until at last it seemed to be a stall. Is that until it last, it seemed to be a stall? Is the tree itself?

[53:26] You can imagine the quick conference that was held there on the street corner as the crowd debated whether to go investigate.
In the end, they decided they would go, but not until somebody went and fetched the blacksmith Sweeney, with the Globe explaining among a certain class of people and for many generations past it has been believed in.
A blacksmith can exert more influence over the spirit world than anybody else, his commands and prayers being, as it were, more particularly and specifically regarded than those of other men.
And this belief it waas that induced the superstitious of Parker Hill to stick out Sweeney the blacksmith before proceeding to the scene of the weird mystery.
Sweeney, on being found, readily assented to make one of their number and forthwith armed himself with a massive prayer book.

[54:18] Of course, besides any alleged mystical powers, a blacksmith brought the additional advantage of the upper body strength that comes along with swinging a £5 hammer all day, every day.

[54:31] So with Sweeney’s prayer book and strong shoulders getting their backs, the reluctant mob went up Parker’s hill, moving slower and slower as they approach the orchard.

[54:41] They finally rounded the last clump of bushes and saw the motionless figure of a man in white standing with his back, pressed up against an apple tree.
It was at this moment that the crowd managed to push Sweeney up to the front, where the globe reported that, he,
shouted in a voice to which the occasion seemed to lend a subcultural ring in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Ghost, I ask, Who are you?

[55:09] And oppressive silence followed when nothing daunted by the first repulsed on the part of His Majesty the Ghost Swinney advanced solemnly, apace, nearer and repeated,
and the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Ghost. I ask, Who are you?
Still, the figure in white remains silent and motionless as the charm is generally in the third call.
Sweetie was not surprised that the goes to danger, reply to their 1st and 2nd, screwing up all the courage you could summon. The big man advanced to within just a few feet of the figure in white.
After a long, silent pause while he gathered his wits, the blacksmith let loose with a third in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy Coast. For the third time, I ask, Who are you?
And this time a deep, guttural voice replied, Well, yes, go to the devil and find out.

[56:08] Nerves in the party had already been stretched tighter than a guitar string. And with this they snapped.
The globe relates how the party scattered the party, waited for gnome or for turning on their heels.
All rushed from the orchard lead by the heroic Sweeney.
Some finding themselves outstripped by their more fortunate neighbors, began to divest themselves of their hats, coats and shoes in order to put as much distance as possible between them and the ghost, who has now seem to move from beneath the trees.

[56:42] When they reached the neighborhood of civilization, the wildest excitement prevailed.
Indeed, a panic seem to have visited that hitherto quiet spot.
Mother screamed for their Children and husbands for their wives, while the calmer of the mob fell upon their knees and sought relief in prayer.

[57:01] And just a few minutes, the white clad figure came walking casually down the hill toward them, causing most of the party to scatter to the winds.
The few who were left behind, either because they were brave or because they were too scared to run, soon uncovered the truth behind the ghostly figure,
as he came into the circle of light cast by the gas lamps, they recognized the ghost of a neighbor named Donovan, who worked as a plasterer,
according to the Globe article.
As Donovan was returning home from work that evening clothing, his ordinary working clothes the same being as is customary with plasterers made of white material, he stopped to see a certain friend.
While there, he indulged a little too freely in fire water and, as he started for home, was feeling considerably mellow, being in a happy go lucky sort of mood.
When he reached the neighborhood of the haunted orchard, he did not hesitate to cross the neglected much sun precincts in order that he might the more readily reaches home.
When, about three quarters there, he stopped under a tree toe latest pipe that he might better accomplished this.
He leaned his back up against it and thus dozed off to sleep.
It was in this position that he was first seen by the frightened traveler and afterwards, accosted by the inquisitive mob headed by the blacksmith.

[58:28] Donovan said that hearing a loud voice, he opened his eyes and gazed about him in a semi conscious way upon making out that a number of men were about him. His first thoughts were that a job was being worked at his expense.
It was this that decided him on answering, as he did and thus the ghost of Parker Hill Orchard dissolved into a tipsy, harmless plasterer.

[58:53] The report in the Globe appeared on October 4th, 18 84 just days after the incident was supposed to have happened.
By this point in the 19th century, ghost stories were seen as harmless fun.
Sweeney’s moment of panic notwithstanding, and October was seen as the appropriate season for sharing a good ghost story.

[59:15] I want to go out on a more modern note and 2015 a story on the New England folklore, Blawg speculated.
Whatever ghosts are Boston allegedly has haunted House is haunted dormitories, haunted theaters and a haunted hotel.
It might also have a haunted gay bar. Jocks Cabaret in Bay Village.
Since the Playland Cafe in the former Combat Zone closed in 1998 jocks, Cabaret has been the oldest gay bar in Boston.
It originally opened in 1938 just a year after the play Land, and catered to a mostly straight clientele for the first couple of years.
By 1940 Jacques started to attract them or gay crowd, part of a community that was just beginning to come out of the shadows.

[1:00:05] Soon, Jax was joined in the Park Square area by the Napoleon Marios and the Punch Bowl During this era, there were still raids where, as one patron recalled,
they’d come in and line everyone up against the wall.
The youngest cop would question us and ask for IEDs and call us faggot and other names. It was scary.
If you don’t have ID, they’d arrest you, Put your name in the paper.
Despite the danger of being outed and losing everything, Boston’s gay scene continued slowly moving into the public eye.
By January of 1955 Shocks and the other Bay Village clubs were on a list of 11 Boston bars that all members of the U.
S military were officially banned from entering, which must have meant that plenty of service members were patronizing the bars before the ban in 1965 shocks narrowly avoided being tourney down for redeveloped.
With one city councilor fuming, we will be better off without the’s incubators of homosexuality and indecency.
We must uproot thes joints so innocent kids won’t be contaminated.

[1:01:15] Through the 19 sixties and early seventies, Shocks attracted a largely lesbian clientele before adding cabaret to the name and switching over to a format that featured drag shows.
Later in the seventies, Boston magazine quote a period guidebook to say that by World War two, Park Square was the national headquarters for female impersonators.

[1:01:38] The proprietors of jocks took the practice out of the shadows and put it on stage, where the shows have evolved into competitive drag reviews.
Today in non pandemic times, there’s some sort of live entertainment every night, from drag karaoke to comedy open Mic Night, two full on semi professional drag shows,
with pretty wild entertainment and what’s otherwise a quiet residential neighborhood.
Jack’s has been fending off complaints for neighbors for a long as it’s existed.
Whoever noise complaints from nosy neighbors aren’t the only problem the chocks faces.
And being Boston’s oldest gay bar isn’t its only claim to fame regulars Air adamant that the club is haunted so they can’t agree on which ghost stalks the halls.
Writing in his New England folklore, Blawg Peter Muse describes the two competing theories.

[1:02:34] After a comedian said the energy he encountered it, jocks felt like it had a bit of an attitude.
Jack’s manager suggested it might be the ghost of Sylvia Sidney, the Bars most famous performer.
A drag pioneer known as the Bitch of Boston, Sydney issued that gentle femininity that most early drag performers cultivated and instead indulged in crude humor.
Sidney died in 1998 at the age of 68 so perhaps her ghost still wants another moment in the spotlight.

[1:03:07] If you’re feeling brave but don’t want to summon Sydney’s ghost, you can watch one of her performances on YouTube be warned.
They’re full of toilet humor, sex jokes, racial slurs and nose picking.
Oh, in a really dirty story about Nat King Cole, I don’t believe that Sidney died in a particularly traumatic way.
But her ghost may not be the only one haunting jocks.
According to a rumor that has circulated for many years, the bar may also be haunted by the victims of the infamous and tragic coconut grove fire.

[1:03:43] Those have been listening for a while may recall that we describe the tragic 1940 to fire at the Coconut Grove nightclub an episode 39.
It was Boston’s deadly, a single disaster, killing 492 people in just seconds.

[1:04:00] The site of the Coconut Grove is just around the corner from jocks. So Muse continues.
What’s the connection to jocks? Well, according Toa longstanding rumors in the gay community, Jax was used as a temporary morgue for the victim’s bodies.
It’s not proven, but it is entirely possible.
Photos show the bodies being laid out on Piedmont Street, so it’s not inconceivable that the police would have used a nearby Borras. Well, according to this rumor, some of the victims still haunt the place where their bodies rested.
And that’s a theory that you contest as soon as we can go out to bars again.
I think that about wraps it up for 336 years worth of Halloween stories toe. Learn more about these historic hauntings.
Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 208,
I’ll have links to the sources I quoted from for each of this week’s stories, as well as links to past episodes related to the stories of The Lady in Black, Peter Rugg, the missing man and two episodes related to the ghosts, jocks.
And, of course, the have links to information about our upcoming event are Boston Book Club Pics and the bonus episode explaining the upcoming changes to this show’s format.

[1:05:22] If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email us at podcast of Hub History. Com.
We’re hub history on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram or go Toe Hub History comma. Click on the Contact US link while you’re on the site, hit the subscribe link and be sure that you never miss an episode.
If you subscribe on Apple podcasts, please consider writing us a brief review.
If you do drop us a line and we’ll send you a hub history sticker is a token of appreciation.

Music

Jake:
[1:05:54] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there, listeners.