Haunted Providence

Strange Tales from the Smallest State

Rory Raven

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781596293878
• eBook ISBN: 9781614232629
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

The Ocean State's capital city is awash in ghostly tales told by "mentalist, mindbender, and professional skeptic, the always entertaining Rory Raven" (Providence Daily Dose).
 
Author Rory Raven has collected stories and tales drawn from the history and folklore of one of the oldest cities in the nation. From restless spirits and mysterious deaths, to vampires and shadowy strangers—including H. P. Lovecraft, one of the most influential horror writers of the twentieth century— Haunted Providence explores the events and untold tales that have made this capital city strangely unique . . . and uniquely strange.
 
Includes photos!

PART I

HAUNTED PROVIDENCE

AMERICAN INDIAN GHOST STORIES

I am always in search of new stories to add to my rather weird collection. Over the years, I have heard countless stories of shadowy figures at the foot of the bed, mysterious cold spots, footsteps heard in otherwise empty rooms and probably too many anecdotes ending in: “And when I looked back, she was gone.”

One area of spooky folklore that intrigues me is that of American Indian ghost stories—legends that must have been told here long before Columbus ever set sail. What little I have been able to unearth so far indicates that, for the most part, Native American tribes didn’t have a particularly strong ghost story tradition in the way that the white man did. Native Americans have a very different understanding of spirits and the spirit world. Most tribes have a tradition of feeling very connected to the spirits of their ancestors—meaning both specific family members in particular and ancestors in general. This tradition is often a source of great comfort and even strength. Their spirits are there to help, not to haunt.

And I am well aware that anyone who presumes to speak of “American Indian beliefs” or “Native American culture” can easily land in trouble. There are hundreds of tribes and thousands of stories spread out across the Americas, and a Wampanoag may not have very much in common with a Cherokee or an Aztec.

In the nineteenth century, the golden age of the American magazine, noble savages were in vogue and many authors simply took familiar tales, recast them with “Indian” characters and made another sale. When I came across one story recounting the tale of Chief Stick-In-The-Mud, I began to suspect that this was probably not an authentic Algonquian folktale as the author claimed.

Still, I have discovered one story concerning spruce trees. According to legend, Narragansett Indians hold that each spruce tree marks the spot where a warrior fell fighting the white man—every spruce tree grows from Narragansett blood and is, in its way, a monument.

One day, a white settler looked out across his land and saw too many spruce trees for his liking. He took up his axe and set about chopping down every spruce tree he saw—clearing his land of any vestige of Native American presence. He didn’t get too far in his project, as one of those spruce trees fell on him and killed him.

It might also be noted that American Indians began to tell more ghost stories after they made first contact with Europeans. Most of those stories, unsurprisingly, involve the spirits of the dead returning to warn fellow tribesmen to beware of white men.

BENEFIT STREET AT DUSK

Benefit Street, on Providence’s East Side, is one of the oldest streets in the city. It was originally laid out in the 1750s and was called Back Street, as it ran along a pathway at the back of the house lots running up the hill from North and South Main Street, then called the Towne Street. In the early 1770s, Back Street was straightened and widened and renamed Benefit Street, as it was said at the time that it would be “a Benefit for All.” With its beautifully preserved and restored Colonial and Federal houses, it remains one of the most popular and most photographed neighborhoods in the city. It is a destination for tourists, historians and architects alike. But beneath its picture-postcard perfection, Benefit has a strange history known only to a few.

Until about the time of the Revolution, Providence had no common burying ground. This was the result of having been founded by freethinkers and dissenters, the religious and philosophical refugees mentioned earlier.

While a plot of land had been set aside for a graveyard, most of Providence’s early citizens chose instead to bury their dead on their own land—usually out back along that pathway that became Benefit Street. It sounds pretty ghoulish to us, but those were different times and different people.

Eventually, the remains in all those little family graveyards were removed to North Burial Ground, but there is a persistent rumor that some of those bodies were missed, left behind and remain buried along Benefit Street to this day. Perhaps the more tight-fisted residents simply moved the headstones. Something you may want to bear in mind on your next moonlit stroll.

Edgar Allan Poe visited Providence five times to court the widowed poet Sarah Helen Whitman. And although Poe died in Baltimore on January 19, 1849, many say that his visits to Providence continue. On several occasions, a man in black has been seen stalking down the street in the middle of the night, wearing a tall hat and carrying a walking stick, and many feel it is the restless author of “The Raven.”

A postcard of old Benefit Street, looking north, much as Poe and various ghosts might have known it. Courtesy of Louis McGowan.

When Poe was in Providence, he sometimes stayed at the Mansion House hotel, a place that had fallen on hard times. When it opened in the eighteenth century, it was known as the Golden Ball Inn and was one of the best inns in the colonies. George Washington stayed there, the Marquis de Lafayette stayed there—both enjoyed a warm bed and the cordial hospitality of the taproom. But over the years it changed hands (and names; for a while it was known as Dagget’s Tavern) a few times, and eventually it became a ramshackle place where one stayed when he could afford nothing else.

Toward the end of its days, one of the roomers—a student—was rummaging around the back of his closet and found an old, worn slipper in the back corner. The young man asked up and down the hall if anyone knew whose it was, but nobody did, and nobody even remembered who lived in the room before him. But from the day he discovered the slipper to the day he moved out (a short time later), he was kept awake night after night by the swishing sound of a woman’s skirts, as though a ghostly girl was looking for something she had long ago misplaced.

The Mansion House is long gone now. Benefit Street declined over the years and was occasionally described as “a slum,” and the once-fashionable Mansion House was apparently another victim of the neighborhood’s changing fortunes.

An eighteenth-century advertisement for the Mansion House. Courtesy of Christopher Martin.

The Mansion House in the early twentieth century. Although largely the same building, Poe and the other guests mentioned wouldn’t have recognized it. Sadly, this spot is now a parking lot. Courtesy of Christopher Martin.

Downtown Providence in bygone days. Courtesy of Louis McGowan.

A friend from college used to live in an old house just off of Benefit Street where, he told me, he and his housemate would frequently see a figure on the staircase. He said the figure wore a long white shirt and a tricorn hat, and as they thought he looked like a pirate, they called him “the Captain.” They saw the Captain several times over the year they rented the house, and would often greet him as they passed on the stairs, but he never responded.

A woman who lived in an old house on Benefit reported hearing piano music at odd times of the day—the same few pieces being played over and over, and not always well. Asking among the neighbors, perhaps hoping to find where the music was coming from, she was told that her house was once a music school some seventy years ago.

An old miser, rumored to possess a great fortune, lived just off of Benefit Street, and each night he patrolled his house with a fireplace poker in one hand and a loaded pistol in the other. He continued to make his rounds after his death, though his house stood empty and no one ever found the rumored fortune. A junk dealer bought the house for five dollars—the neighborhood had begun its slow decline and houses were going cheap. He stripped out the lead sash weights and sold them as scrap for fifteen dollars. The ghost was never heard or seen again. One misty evening, a young woman was sitting in a little sculpture park on Benefit when she looked up from her sketchbook and saw a horse-drawn carriage roll silently by her. She told me it was in her view for a few seconds before it disappeared completely.

Another resident reports walking down the street late one night when a woman in an eighteenth-century ball gown ran across the sidewalk in front of him. She dashed out into the middle of Benefit Street—where she disappeared. When the man looked back to see from where she had come, he discovered that she had not come out of a door, but straight out of a blank wall.

THE LAMPLIGHTER OF MILL STREET

As you stroll down Benefit Street and admire the houses some evening, pause for a moment to look at the streetlamps. Although electric, the lamps are designed to resemble the old-style gas lamps that once illuminated the street. The gas lamps were installed in 1874, replacing the earlier oil lamps, and seventy-five lamplighters made nightly rounds. One worthy of note was John Quinn, who worked his way through Brown University lighting lamps and later became a lawyer. Described by one source as “a cripple,” Quinn gave an account of the lamplighter’s lot:

We used to carry a ladder, weighting 21 pounds, and a container holding sufficient fluid to light our respective districts…We were paid…3½ cents for lighting oil lamps, and 1½ cents for gas…and had eighty minutes to light the lamps in our section, the time depending on the season of year and the hour the moon came up…Winter or no winter; blizzard or no blizzard, you had to get the lights lit…there were no streets cut in many places, and it was hard to find your way in the dark.

Another lamplighter once lived on Mill Street, a little lane near Benefit Street. He lived in a modest house with his only child—a daughter—his wife having died some years previously. They were devoted to one another, and each night when the lamplighter returned from making his rounds the daughter would have supper waiting for him—“cold mutton and even colder apple pie,” as the story goes.

One especially bitter winter, the girl became gravely ill and her worried father rushed through his nightly route and raced home to be with his ailing child. Every night when he came through the door she seemed thinner and paler.

One of the modern streetlights along Benefit Street. Photo by Robert O’Brien.

Finally, she lost her struggle and died one cold afternoon, and her poor father was inconsolable.

He laid the girl’s body out in a black coffin, which he placed in the front room of the house, under the window that looked out onto Mill Street. He surrounded the coffin with tall black candles, which he kept lit night and day. He never again left the house to make his rounds lighting lamps, he just stayed home tending to his daughter’s body, combing her hair, stroking her face and talking to her.

After a few weeks of this, the other neighbors up and down Mill Street grew understandably worried. Calling in the authorities, the poor lamplighter was taken into custody and his daughter was given a decent Christian burial.

The house stood empty for a number of years after the events just described—no one wanted to live there after that.

Still, passersby in the street often claimed to see the young girl’s face at the window—sometimes thin and sickly, sometimes healthy and rosy—smiling and waving, occasionally sticking her tongue out and laughing. But th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: Haunted Providence
• Part II: Stories From Beyond Providence
• Epilogue
• About the Author