May 17, 2024 • 18 mins
George Noory and author Jeff Belanger explore paranormal legends and mysteries from around New England, including a haunted factory in Rhode Island, a ghostly piano in a Connecticut beach house, a haunted hotel in New Hampshire as well as the Salem witch trials.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mel Here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you,
Jeff Bland, you're back with us. Author, podcaster, storyteller, adventurer,
explorer of the strange and unusual. He's written more than
a dozen books that have been published in six languages.
He's the Emmy nominated host, writer, and producer of the
New England Legend series on PBS and Amazon Prime, and
(00:26):
hosts a weekly podcast with that same name. Jeff, Welcome back,
my friend. Have you Ben?
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I've been great, George, good to be back with you.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
YouTube family good.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Yeah, everybody's great. Man getting older, which happens right You
traveling a lot, you know, it's nice to be moving
around again. Yeah. Post COVID, I'm getting around, especially around
the northeastern US, so it's been great to get out
there and stretch my legs again.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
How did you get involved in the unusual?
Speaker 3 (00:53):
So where I grew up in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, and
I think growing up in New England, we just sort
of have a love for, you know, for history and
a sense of preservation. But I would be remiss to
say that that's the town next to Monroe, Connecticut, and
that's where Ed Lorraine Warren lived. So I knew them
since I was about thirteen years old, and I'm sure
(01:14):
that had an influence seeing them give their talks in
the Fall. And that was back in the eighties, you know,
that's before the Internet and everything. They were very much
regional celebrities, and I was just intrigued at the idea
that you could even make a living looking for ghosts
and strange things all over And I went to school
to be a journalist, started that way and loved covering
these weird stories, and I guess the rest is history.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Ed and Lorraine they were one of the best as
they were.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I mean, what a thing, you know, And I mean
back then it was just it's so hard for people
to understand because folks like that have their own TV
shows today, you know, But back then they were really
putting their necks out there to say, hey, I believe
in ghosts, we go looking for them. We think there's
demons and monsters and all kinds of strangeness out there.
They were writing books and doing things. There are a
(02:00):
few others, of course, Hans Holzer and Brad Steigers and
folks like that. But but but these were my neighbors,
you know, Lorraine went to our church, and so I
think that you know, say what you will about what
they've done, but I mean they were pioneers in a
lot of ways.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
You mentioned Brad Steiger, he's passed away. Yeah, and in
Lorraine they've passed away. Are we replacing these incredible UFO
investigative haunting researchers.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Yeah, of course we are. And you know, today, celebrity,
the power of celebrity can't be understated, right, And I
know that the folks we see on TV get most
of the attention, but there's still tons of great people
out there doing research. They're writing books, they're they're putting
blogs and podcasts out there. I think they are getting replaced,
and time will tell too, right. I mean, those folks
(02:51):
did what they did for their whole adult lives. So
I think part of it is going to be, you know,
the test of time, how many people stick with it
and keep doing the work and keep documenting it and
being as objective as they can.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
I've got some great topics for you that we're going
to go through tonight, Jeff, and we'll take calls with
you next hour. But let's start with some haunted areas.
The ram Tail Factory in Foster, Rhode Island. Tell us
about that.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
This is one of my favorites, because we're going to
begin at the end in you know today, there's just
a bunch of stone ruins out there in the woods
of Foster. You know, you walk by a stream and
you're going through some trails and you see some old
colonial stone walls and then some cellar holes. But what
drew me there was a very boring book called the
eighteen eighty five Rhode Island Census, and it's lifted with
(03:38):
all kinds of very short listings. You know, this town
contained these these three factories, this one had this farm,
this many cows. But there's one listing that says Ramtail
Factory and then in parentheses says haunted. That's it, and
it's become Rhode Island's official haunt. In the census. It's
the only time you see ghost or haunting or anything.
(03:59):
And when you hear about the story, you realize why
this is so compelling. So the Ramtail Factory was a
water driven factory, a woolen mill that first opened in
the early in the mid eighteen hundreds, and it was
sorry I found. It was found in eighteen thirteen by
four people, but one of them was Peleg Walker and
(04:21):
William Potter, and these business partners started this mill and
each day Peleg Walker's job was to ring the work
bell to get people to work, and they would come
in and do it. And eventually Pelig Walker got into
some financial troubles and needed to be bought out, but
he didn't want to leave his business. But basically his
partner said, we'll buy you out. You'll have your money,
(04:42):
but you're gone. You're out of the business. We want
you out. And so Peleg had the keys to the
factory and said, you know, the next time you get
these keys, that will be out of the hands of
a dead man. And that night was supposed to be
his last night, and as he locked up the factory,
he stayed inside and he took his own life. And
the following morning, well, the bell didn't ring, and eventually
(05:05):
people get curious, you know what, we're running late, what's
going on, And then when they finally got inside, they
found him. Now everyone was sort of spooked working at
the mill after that. Strange things were happening at one point.
One of the accounts was that the water wheel was
running backwards to gravity, you know, was running against the
stream and so on. But when the factory eventually burned down,
(05:26):
people would still hear the bell ringing to call you
to work. Even though the bell was gone, people would
see a lantern moving through, you know, moving through in
the night and in the dark. And Pillig's walker, his
grave epitaph is so ominous. It says, you know, life
how short, eternity how long? And we believe he's the
(05:49):
one that's still out there. And even though the factory
is long gone, there's nothing but woods and some cellar
holes and some stone walls out there. Today people claim
to still hear the bell. His grave can still be visited,
not not too far from where the foundations are, and
the story endoors and it's been known since eighteen eighty
five as Rhode Island's official haunt.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
What caused the factory to burn down?
Speaker 3 (06:12):
You know, eventually it's sort of closed up, and when
it's just left out there in the woods and it's
you know, wood, you know, the fire was kind of
unknown and mysterious. But what's interesting is it had the
haunted reputation. It's you know, right there in the census book,
and you can see old photos of people that would
go out there in the early nineteen hundreds and they
would picnic by the factory ruins, back when there was
(06:33):
a little more to see. And I think people were
intrigued even back then, not just that the woods are
beautiful and the stream is nice, but that the story
kind of calls to them. So that's the thing, George
about a haunt. When I tell you, if you go
to this place, this specific location, and it's haunted, you're
intrigued enough that you want to go and find out
for yourself. Right, you go and you say wow, even
(06:55):
if you say I'm a skeptic, I don't believe. Well,
but enough of you says but I'll still go. Look
or maybe you look and you get more than you bargain.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
For Gardner Lake and Shalem, Connecticut.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
This is one of my favorite stories. This is a
weird one man. And there's literally postcards to back this
one up, old postcards from the late eighteen hundreds. It's
the ghost story there starts as you'll hear a phantom
piano playing, you know at night, especially in the winter,
(07:29):
you'll just hear this piano noise and have no source
for it. But the backstory is amazing. So there was
a wealthy gentleman named Thomas LeCount and he was a
grocer from Niana, Connecticut, and he had a two and
a half story home on the south shore of Gardner Lake.
But he also owned some land on the eastern shore
of the lake, and he really wanted to move his
(07:50):
home to the other side of the lake. It was
done back then, very expensive, very tricky process, as you
can imagine, to lift a home, get it onto you know,
sort of some sort of a cart where you can
move it with horses and so on. But that's when
they came up with an idea. In the winter of
eighteen ninety five, it was so cold that the lake
(08:12):
had frozen more than ten inches thick, and that's when
an engineer came up with the brilliant idea, We're going
to just lift this house and we're going to put
it on sleds and just drag it across the frozen
lake to the other side to where your property is easy,
no problem. This will be the easiest house move they've
ever done. And it was such a cold winter, and
sure enough, February comes long and they get the house lifted,
(08:35):
they get it on skids and they start dragging it
across the ice and it's going well, it's going pretty well.
They get it maybe, you know, a few hundred feet
out onto the ice, until they run out a day
and they have to come back the next day with
more horses. No problem, you know, this is all going fine.
The next day they come back and the ice starts
(08:55):
to crack, and uh, oh, there's a problem. And now
the house is is breaking down into the ice and sinking.
What they didn't know, and what nobody knew, is that
there's there's a dam that controls some of the water.
And while the process would have gone just fine. The
dam was was released the night before to let some
water down further down the stream, it was just enough
(09:18):
to create create a gap between the ice on the
lake and the water.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Below now melted ice the well.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Once you know, ice floating on water is a lot
more solid than ice floating on air. So once there
was a gap there, the house just cracked through and
started to sink into the ice. And they George. They
didn't even take you know, the bureaus and the furniture
and the clothing out of the house. They left it
all in there. They said, this will be so easy,
just leave it in. We'll drag it to the other
(09:45):
side and your house is in place, so then it's
become a rescue mission. But of course the house had
a piano in it, and it had a wood stove
and things like that, things that were just too heavy
to pull out of this house that just kept sinking
and sinking, and for the rest of that winter people
would ice skate around it. There were postcards made of
this house, picture it going in at like a fifteen
(10:06):
degree angle. And then of course spring came and the
house just slowly sunk. And for years you could see
this house out in the middle of the lake, just
slowly disintegrating. But the piano was never rescued. And the
story that endoors is that you can still hear the
piano playing out on Gardner Lake.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Who's playing it?
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Well, that's the question, isn't it. But what I love
about these stories is that you start at the end, right,
You've got a weird piano playing in the middle of
the lake in the middle of the night, and it
begs you to ask the question, well, what happened here?
You know, what took place? Why would there be a piano?
And then you go back in time and you see
these amazing postcards and you see the pictures and you say, oh,
(10:51):
this was a time where someone was trying to do
something creative from an engineering point of view, and it
turned into a disaster.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Jeff well Land, you're with us as webs side is
his name linked up at coast tocosdam dot com. Tell
us about the Mount Washington Hotel in New Hampshire.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
The Mount Washington Hotel is a beautiful, beautiful place. Have
you ever seen the Stanley Hotel? And so they are twins,
except the Stanley Hotel is smaller, but they look very similar,
the you know, big white turn of the century grand hotel.
(11:27):
And the Mount Washington is right at the base of
Mount Washington, which is New England's highest peak, in the
middle of New Hampshire, in the beautiful white mountains of
New Hampshire. It's gorgeous. When you come up to it,
you see this sprawling, incredible, you know, white and red hotel,
and then behind it is just these majestic mountains. It
is absolutely gorgeous. I was built in nineteen hundred. It
(11:50):
was a very expensive project built by Joseph Stickney. He
hired two hundred and fifty Italian artisans for the construction,
and he followed this old superstition to vary the number
of steps to the second floor in order to confuse
the ghosts. So there's two main staircases when you walk
in today, one by the front desk and one by
(12:10):
the ballroom, and there's a different number of steps, so
the rise and run is just a little bit different.
So you could say they were superstitious right from the
get go. Now, Stickney had married a younger widow named Carolyn,
and when Stickney passed away within the first year of
the hotel being opened, Carolyn inherited everything and she became
(12:31):
known as the Princess because she eventually married French royalty.
And she would throw these lavish parties at the Mount Washington.
She would invite all the fanciest people around who were
coming to vacation and holiday in that region, and she
always was last to the party. She used to like
to look down over the balcony and see how all
the other women were dressed, so she could make sure
(12:53):
that she was dressed better than all of them, and
then she would of course make her grand entrance. She
would even stick there, stick around there in the winter.
This is where she was happiest her This was her castle,
and eventually once she passed away that first winter they
used to close it up for the winter. Back then,
that first winter they would say lights on and say, well,
(13:14):
that's strange, we must have left something on, and they'd
have to go back and check. But pretty soon they
realized it's it's absolutely her spirit still floating around there,
and seeing a woman peek over the balcony became commonplace.
Her main suite is called the Princess Room that's haunted,
and people requested months out in order to stay there
and try to experience something. And when you check into
(13:37):
the hotel today, there's a painting of her up on
the wall and a kind of like a faux banister
that they've put in front of the painting, so she's
literally looking down on you just as you check in,
and the stories just endure, you know, with so much
time that's passed there, there's been so many ghost sightings
throughout that building. You know, hotels are such transient places.
(14:00):
Of course, some people go there with no intention to
check out she was. You know, she's not the only
ghost there, but she absolutely is the most prominent.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
What about Gloucester, Maine, Massachusetts? What's going on there?
Speaker 3 (14:14):
So Gloucester, Maine, there's a strange story called the Specter
Leaguers of Gloucester. And you have to put this one
into some context. This one dates back to July of
sixteen ninety two. Sixteen ninety two, of course, was the
same time of the Salem witch Trials, which is right
next door to Gloucester. We're neighbors. And what people don't
(14:37):
talk about enough with the Salem Witch Trials. People just
think of, you know, some Puritans that were just you know,
spooked and easily fooled and so on. But King William's
War was raging just to the north in Canada, and
this is a war between the Native Americans, French, and
the British, and it's creating a refugee crisis. That's sending
(14:59):
colonists and as they head south through what is now
modern day Maine, they're coming to the region of Gloucester
and the region of Salem. And so you've got refugees
looking for shelter. You've got you know, Native Americans that
are that are out there, you know, fighting for their land,
and you've got preachers in the pulpit saying, you know,
these these are heathens. They're there words not mine. Of course,
(15:22):
they're saying, these are in league with the devil. And
when you hear about a village being wiped out or
a family being wiped out by by soldiers of Native
American soldiers, it's not that much of a stretch to
think that there really is evil out there, and so
everybody's scared. So the Salem witch trials that that's the
context for that, but that's also the context for what's
(15:44):
happening in Gloucester. People are spooked, and it was the
it was the summer July of sixteen ninety two when
you have you have strange sightings around Gloucester. Now, at
first they think they're just seeing French and Native American
wars outs in town, which is cause for alarm, but
then those scouts can never be found. Everybody's on high alert,
(16:07):
you know, they've they've got the garrison armed, they've got
people coming in, you know, looking for for any sign
of trouble, and.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
No social media they'll let people know what's going.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
On no radio either, No, nothing right, it's just the
Coconut Telegraph. It's just word of mouth, one person telling another,
and so stories start to circulate of you know, of
problems of happening. You know, things like Ebenezer Babson, who
has a place there. He's a very well respected person
(16:36):
and he was coming home one night and he saw
someone running around his house and he runs in to investigate.
He believes they're scouts that had broken in, either to
steal something or get information. Chases the men down, but
then they vanish. And you could say, okay, that's just
that's just one example. Maybe you know they just got
away and gave him the slip. But now everyone's on
(16:57):
high alert and events like this keep happen. Pretty soon
you're seeing more and more scouts. Soldiers are shooting at them,
claiming I hit them. I'm sure I hit them. But
then you go and there's no one there. And so
eventually when you've got you know, night after night weeks
of this of now garrison soldiers on the watch all
the time saying we're seeing them, we're shooting at them,
(17:20):
we're chasing them, and you can't find a single one either.
Everyone's a terrible shot, or there's literally ghosts, literally ghosts
that are hunting them down and keeping everyone on edge.
So you've got the Salem Witch Trials, and next door
you've got the Specter Leaguers of Gloucester that's got everyone
(17:41):
completely scared all the time.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Have you been to many of these places, Jeff, I've
been to all of.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Them is I've been doing this for so long now,
And gosh, it was about six or seven years ago
when I started my Newing the Legends podcast, but I said,
all right, I'm going to challenge myself. Can I find
a story every single week and go check these things
out and start to just sort of chronicle I mean
the tagline is chronicle every Legend in New England, which,
(18:09):
let's be honest, if I live to be a thousand,
I'll never do it. But it's a lofty goal, and
I think we should set lofty goals. And as I
started doing this, and as we started to build an audience,
something sort of amazing happened. The stories became crowdsourced. People
started telling hey, have you heard about this? Have you
heard about that? And you start to realize just how
(18:29):
powerful these stories are. I mean, they all belong to
a community, you know, and the community identifies with it
and takes ownership of it and shares that story with
people that they trust, and it's a really profound and
powerful thing, and it's a profound connection to our past.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
dot com for more
Mel Here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you,
Jeff Bland, you're back with us. Author, podcaster, storyteller, adventurer,
explorer of the strange and unusual. He's written more than
a dozen books that have been published in six languages.
He's the Emmy nominated host, writer, and producer of the
New England Legend series on PBS and Amazon Prime, and
(00:26):
hosts a weekly podcast with that same name. Jeff, Welcome back,
my friend. Have you Ben?
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I've been great, George, good to be back with you.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
YouTube family good.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Yeah, everybody's great. Man getting older, which happens right You
traveling a lot, you know, it's nice to be moving
around again. Yeah. Post COVID, I'm getting around, especially around
the northeastern US, so it's been great to get out
there and stretch my legs again.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
How did you get involved in the unusual?
Speaker 3 (00:53):
So where I grew up in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, and
I think growing up in New England, we just sort
of have a love for, you know, for history and
a sense of preservation. But I would be remiss to
say that that's the town next to Monroe, Connecticut, and
that's where Ed Lorraine Warren lived. So I knew them
since I was about thirteen years old, and I'm sure
(01:14):
that had an influence seeing them give their talks in
the Fall. And that was back in the eighties, you know,
that's before the Internet and everything. They were very much
regional celebrities, and I was just intrigued at the idea
that you could even make a living looking for ghosts
and strange things all over And I went to school
to be a journalist, started that way and loved covering
these weird stories, and I guess the rest is history.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Ed and Lorraine they were one of the best as
they were.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I mean, what a thing, you know, And I mean
back then it was just it's so hard for people
to understand because folks like that have their own TV
shows today, you know, But back then they were really
putting their necks out there to say, hey, I believe
in ghosts, we go looking for them. We think there's
demons and monsters and all kinds of strangeness out there.
They were writing books and doing things. There are a
(02:00):
few others, of course, Hans Holzer and Brad Steigers and
folks like that. But but but these were my neighbors,
you know, Lorraine went to our church, and so I
think that you know, say what you will about what
they've done, but I mean they were pioneers in a
lot of ways.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
You mentioned Brad Steiger, he's passed away. Yeah, and in
Lorraine they've passed away. Are we replacing these incredible UFO
investigative haunting researchers.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Yeah, of course we are. And you know, today, celebrity,
the power of celebrity can't be understated, right, And I
know that the folks we see on TV get most
of the attention, but there's still tons of great people
out there doing research. They're writing books, they're they're putting
blogs and podcasts out there. I think they are getting replaced,
and time will tell too, right. I mean, those folks
(02:51):
did what they did for their whole adult lives. So
I think part of it is going to be, you know,
the test of time, how many people stick with it
and keep doing the work and keep documenting it and
being as objective as they can.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
I've got some great topics for you that we're going
to go through tonight, Jeff, and we'll take calls with
you next hour. But let's start with some haunted areas.
The ram Tail Factory in Foster, Rhode Island. Tell us
about that.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
This is one of my favorites, because we're going to
begin at the end in you know today, there's just
a bunch of stone ruins out there in the woods
of Foster. You know, you walk by a stream and
you're going through some trails and you see some old
colonial stone walls and then some cellar holes. But what
drew me there was a very boring book called the
eighteen eighty five Rhode Island Census, and it's lifted with
(03:38):
all kinds of very short listings. You know, this town
contained these these three factories, this one had this farm,
this many cows. But there's one listing that says Ramtail
Factory and then in parentheses says haunted. That's it, and
it's become Rhode Island's official haunt. In the census. It's
the only time you see ghost or haunting or anything.
(03:59):
And when you hear about the story, you realize why
this is so compelling. So the Ramtail Factory was a
water driven factory, a woolen mill that first opened in
the early in the mid eighteen hundreds, and it was
sorry I found. It was found in eighteen thirteen by
four people, but one of them was Peleg Walker and
(04:21):
William Potter, and these business partners started this mill and
each day Peleg Walker's job was to ring the work
bell to get people to work, and they would come
in and do it. And eventually Pelig Walker got into
some financial troubles and needed to be bought out, but
he didn't want to leave his business. But basically his
partner said, we'll buy you out. You'll have your money,
(04:42):
but you're gone. You're out of the business. We want
you out. And so Peleg had the keys to the
factory and said, you know, the next time you get
these keys, that will be out of the hands of
a dead man. And that night was supposed to be
his last night, and as he locked up the factory,
he stayed inside and he took his own life. And
the following morning, well, the bell didn't ring, and eventually
(05:05):
people get curious, you know what, we're running late, what's
going on, And then when they finally got inside, they
found him. Now everyone was sort of spooked working at
the mill after that. Strange things were happening at one point.
One of the accounts was that the water wheel was
running backwards to gravity, you know, was running against the
stream and so on. But when the factory eventually burned down,
(05:26):
people would still hear the bell ringing to call you
to work. Even though the bell was gone, people would
see a lantern moving through, you know, moving through in
the night and in the dark. And Pillig's walker, his
grave epitaph is so ominous. It says, you know, life
how short, eternity how long? And we believe he's the
(05:49):
one that's still out there. And even though the factory
is long gone, there's nothing but woods and some cellar
holes and some stone walls out there. Today people claim
to still hear the bell. His grave can still be visited,
not not too far from where the foundations are, and
the story endoors and it's been known since eighteen eighty
five as Rhode Island's official haunt.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
What caused the factory to burn down?
Speaker 3 (06:12):
You know, eventually it's sort of closed up, and when
it's just left out there in the woods and it's
you know, wood, you know, the fire was kind of
unknown and mysterious. But what's interesting is it had the
haunted reputation. It's you know, right there in the census book,
and you can see old photos of people that would
go out there in the early nineteen hundreds and they
would picnic by the factory ruins, back when there was
(06:33):
a little more to see. And I think people were
intrigued even back then, not just that the woods are
beautiful and the stream is nice, but that the story
kind of calls to them. So that's the thing, George
about a haunt. When I tell you, if you go
to this place, this specific location, and it's haunted, you're
intrigued enough that you want to go and find out
for yourself. Right, you go and you say wow, even
(06:55):
if you say I'm a skeptic, I don't believe. Well,
but enough of you says but I'll still go. Look
or maybe you look and you get more than you bargain.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
For Gardner Lake and Shalem, Connecticut.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
This is one of my favorite stories. This is a
weird one man. And there's literally postcards to back this
one up, old postcards from the late eighteen hundreds. It's
the ghost story there starts as you'll hear a phantom
piano playing, you know at night, especially in the winter,
(07:29):
you'll just hear this piano noise and have no source
for it. But the backstory is amazing. So there was
a wealthy gentleman named Thomas LeCount and he was a
grocer from Niana, Connecticut, and he had a two and
a half story home on the south shore of Gardner Lake.
But he also owned some land on the eastern shore
of the lake, and he really wanted to move his
(07:50):
home to the other side of the lake. It was
done back then, very expensive, very tricky process, as you
can imagine, to lift a home, get it onto you know,
sort of some sort of a cart where you can
move it with horses and so on. But that's when
they came up with an idea. In the winter of
eighteen ninety five, it was so cold that the lake
(08:12):
had frozen more than ten inches thick, and that's when
an engineer came up with the brilliant idea, We're going
to just lift this house and we're going to put
it on sleds and just drag it across the frozen
lake to the other side to where your property is easy,
no problem. This will be the easiest house move they've
ever done. And it was such a cold winter, and
sure enough, February comes long and they get the house lifted,
(08:35):
they get it on skids and they start dragging it
across the ice and it's going well, it's going pretty well.
They get it maybe, you know, a few hundred feet
out onto the ice, until they run out a day
and they have to come back the next day with
more horses. No problem, you know, this is all going fine.
The next day they come back and the ice starts
(08:55):
to crack, and uh, oh, there's a problem. And now
the house is is breaking down into the ice and sinking.
What they didn't know, and what nobody knew, is that
there's there's a dam that controls some of the water.
And while the process would have gone just fine. The
dam was was released the night before to let some
water down further down the stream, it was just enough
(09:18):
to create create a gap between the ice on the
lake and the water.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Below now melted ice the well.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Once you know, ice floating on water is a lot
more solid than ice floating on air. So once there
was a gap there, the house just cracked through and
started to sink into the ice. And they George. They
didn't even take you know, the bureaus and the furniture
and the clothing out of the house. They left it
all in there. They said, this will be so easy,
just leave it in. We'll drag it to the other
(09:45):
side and your house is in place, so then it's
become a rescue mission. But of course the house had
a piano in it, and it had a wood stove
and things like that, things that were just too heavy
to pull out of this house that just kept sinking
and sinking, and for the rest of that winter people
would ice skate around it. There were postcards made of
this house, picture it going in at like a fifteen
(10:06):
degree angle. And then of course spring came and the
house just slowly sunk. And for years you could see
this house out in the middle of the lake, just
slowly disintegrating. But the piano was never rescued. And the
story that endoors is that you can still hear the
piano playing out on Gardner Lake.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Who's playing it?
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Well, that's the question, isn't it. But what I love
about these stories is that you start at the end, right,
You've got a weird piano playing in the middle of
the lake in the middle of the night, and it
begs you to ask the question, well, what happened here?
You know, what took place? Why would there be a piano?
And then you go back in time and you see
these amazing postcards and you see the pictures and you say, oh,
(10:51):
this was a time where someone was trying to do
something creative from an engineering point of view, and it
turned into a disaster.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Jeff well Land, you're with us as webs side is
his name linked up at coast tocosdam dot com. Tell
us about the Mount Washington Hotel in New Hampshire.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
The Mount Washington Hotel is a beautiful, beautiful place. Have
you ever seen the Stanley Hotel? And so they are twins,
except the Stanley Hotel is smaller, but they look very similar,
the you know, big white turn of the century grand hotel.
(11:27):
And the Mount Washington is right at the base of
Mount Washington, which is New England's highest peak, in the
middle of New Hampshire, in the beautiful white mountains of
New Hampshire. It's gorgeous. When you come up to it,
you see this sprawling, incredible, you know, white and red hotel,
and then behind it is just these majestic mountains. It
is absolutely gorgeous. I was built in nineteen hundred. It
(11:50):
was a very expensive project built by Joseph Stickney. He
hired two hundred and fifty Italian artisans for the construction,
and he followed this old superstition to vary the number
of steps to the second floor in order to confuse
the ghosts. So there's two main staircases when you walk
in today, one by the front desk and one by
(12:10):
the ballroom, and there's a different number of steps, so
the rise and run is just a little bit different.
So you could say they were superstitious right from the
get go. Now, Stickney had married a younger widow named Carolyn,
and when Stickney passed away within the first year of
the hotel being opened, Carolyn inherited everything and she became
(12:31):
known as the Princess because she eventually married French royalty.
And she would throw these lavish parties at the Mount Washington.
She would invite all the fanciest people around who were
coming to vacation and holiday in that region, and she
always was last to the party. She used to like
to look down over the balcony and see how all
the other women were dressed, so she could make sure
(12:53):
that she was dressed better than all of them, and
then she would of course make her grand entrance. She
would even stick there, stick around there in the winter.
This is where she was happiest her This was her castle,
and eventually once she passed away that first winter they
used to close it up for the winter. Back then,
that first winter they would say lights on and say, well,
(13:14):
that's strange, we must have left something on, and they'd
have to go back and check. But pretty soon they
realized it's it's absolutely her spirit still floating around there,
and seeing a woman peek over the balcony became commonplace.
Her main suite is called the Princess Room that's haunted,
and people requested months out in order to stay there
and try to experience something. And when you check into
(13:37):
the hotel today, there's a painting of her up on
the wall and a kind of like a faux banister
that they've put in front of the painting, so she's
literally looking down on you just as you check in,
and the stories just endure, you know, with so much
time that's passed there, there's been so many ghost sightings
throughout that building. You know, hotels are such transient places.
(14:00):
Of course, some people go there with no intention to
check out she was. You know, she's not the only
ghost there, but she absolutely is the most prominent.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
What about Gloucester, Maine, Massachusetts? What's going on there?
Speaker 3 (14:14):
So Gloucester, Maine, there's a strange story called the Specter
Leaguers of Gloucester. And you have to put this one
into some context. This one dates back to July of
sixteen ninety two. Sixteen ninety two, of course, was the
same time of the Salem witch Trials, which is right
next door to Gloucester. We're neighbors. And what people don't
(14:37):
talk about enough with the Salem Witch Trials. People just
think of, you know, some Puritans that were just you know,
spooked and easily fooled and so on. But King William's
War was raging just to the north in Canada, and
this is a war between the Native Americans, French, and
the British, and it's creating a refugee crisis. That's sending
(14:59):
colonists and as they head south through what is now
modern day Maine, they're coming to the region of Gloucester
and the region of Salem. And so you've got refugees
looking for shelter. You've got you know, Native Americans that
are that are out there, you know, fighting for their land,
and you've got preachers in the pulpit saying, you know,
these these are heathens. They're there words not mine. Of course,
(15:22):
they're saying, these are in league with the devil. And
when you hear about a village being wiped out or
a family being wiped out by by soldiers of Native
American soldiers, it's not that much of a stretch to
think that there really is evil out there, and so
everybody's scared. So the Salem witch trials that that's the
context for that, but that's also the context for what's
(15:44):
happening in Gloucester. People are spooked, and it was the
it was the summer July of sixteen ninety two when
you have you have strange sightings around Gloucester. Now, at
first they think they're just seeing French and Native American
wars outs in town, which is cause for alarm, but
then those scouts can never be found. Everybody's on high alert,
(16:07):
you know, they've they've got the garrison armed, they've got
people coming in, you know, looking for for any sign
of trouble, and.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
No social media they'll let people know what's going.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
On no radio either, No, nothing right, it's just the
Coconut Telegraph. It's just word of mouth, one person telling another,
and so stories start to circulate of you know, of
problems of happening. You know, things like Ebenezer Babson, who
has a place there. He's a very well respected person
(16:36):
and he was coming home one night and he saw
someone running around his house and he runs in to investigate.
He believes they're scouts that had broken in, either to
steal something or get information. Chases the men down, but
then they vanish. And you could say, okay, that's just
that's just one example. Maybe you know they just got
away and gave him the slip. But now everyone's on
(16:57):
high alert and events like this keep happen. Pretty soon
you're seeing more and more scouts. Soldiers are shooting at them,
claiming I hit them. I'm sure I hit them. But
then you go and there's no one there. And so
eventually when you've got you know, night after night weeks
of this of now garrison soldiers on the watch all
the time saying we're seeing them, we're shooting at them,
(17:20):
we're chasing them, and you can't find a single one either.
Everyone's a terrible shot, or there's literally ghosts, literally ghosts
that are hunting them down and keeping everyone on edge.
So you've got the Salem Witch Trials, and next door
you've got the Specter Leaguers of Gloucester that's got everyone
(17:41):
completely scared all the time.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Have you been to many of these places, Jeff, I've
been to all of.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Them is I've been doing this for so long now,
And gosh, it was about six or seven years ago
when I started my Newing the Legends podcast, but I said,
all right, I'm going to challenge myself. Can I find
a story every single week and go check these things
out and start to just sort of chronicle I mean
the tagline is chronicle every Legend in New England, which,
(18:09):
let's be honest, if I live to be a thousand,
I'll never do it. But it's a lofty goal, and
I think we should set lofty goals. And as I
started doing this, and as we started to build an audience,
something sort of amazing happened. The stories became crowdsourced. People
started telling hey, have you heard about this? Have you
heard about that? And you start to realize just how
(18:29):
powerful these stories are. I mean, they all belong to
a community, you know, and the community identifies with it
and takes ownership of it and shares that story with
people that they trust, and it's a really profound and
powerful thing, and it's a profound connection to our past.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
dot com for more
The Best of Coast to Coast AM News
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.