Ghosts of Salem

Haunts of the Witch City

Sam Baltrusis

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781626193970
• eBook ISBN: 9781625849281
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Beyond the witch trials . . . The paranormal expert and author of Ghosts of Boston  "explores the cursed history underlying Salem's supernatural beings" (Neighborhood View).
 
Nestled on the rocky coast of Massachusetts, Salem is a city steeped in history and legend. Famous for its witch trials, the storied North Shore seaport also has a dark history of smugglers and deadly fires. It is considered one of New England's most haunted destinations. Inside Howard Street Cemetery, the ghost of accused witch Giles Corey wanders among the gravestones. Outside the Ropes Mansion, the ghost of Abigail Ropes can be seen peeking out of the windows. The Gardner-Pingree House on Essex Street is host to the spirit of sea captain Joseph White, a man whose murder in 1830 inspired literary giants like Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Join author and paranormal journalist Sam Baltrusis on a chilling journey through the streets of Salem as he chronicles the historic haunts of the Witch City.
 
Includes photos!

Chapter 1

CEMETERY HAUNTS

Haunted burial grounds? It’s a no-brainer. As far as encounters with the ghosts of Salem’s past, all paths lead to a small, two-block path in downtown Salem called Charter Street. Crafted in 1768, this well-trafficked pathway once connected the town wharf and the present-day Market Street. It also boasts the second-oldest graveyard in the country and arguably Salem’s most visited. For the record, the oldest maintained cemetery in the United States is the Myles Standish Burial Ground in Duxbury, Massachusetts, dating back to the pilgrims of 1620. Salem’s Old Burying Point, also known as the Charter Street Cemetery, is a familiar location for pop culture representations of the “Witch City,” serving as a backdrop for paranormal-themed shows like the Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures and Syfy’s Ghost Hunters.

It’s also where Salem’s dead people go to chill out, especially after Halloween, when this seasonal tourist destination becomes a literal ghost town. Paranormal investigators, like Adam Berry from Syfy’s Ghost Hunters, believe the older the cemetery, the more likely it will attract lingering spirits. “Cemeteries are where they go to rest and don’t want to be bothered,” Berry told Ghosts of Salem. “I don’t believe they’re bound or held captive in that specific spot. However, I do feel they’re abundant.”

Berry, who spent hours in old cemeteries armed with an electromagnetic voice phenomenon (EVP) recorder before auditioning for Ghost Hunters Academy and joining the Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS), said burial grounds naturally attract paranormal activity. “Cemeteries have a lot of activity. The [spirits] want to talk to you, and they may have a story to pass on,” he remarked.

As far as Salem’s cemeteries, investigator Tina Storer from Paranormal Xpeditions said the 1692 witch trials hysteria left a psychic imprint of sorts on the area. “Something as tragic as the witch trials can definitely attract activity, from the mere disrespect that occurred to the bodies after death,” she said, adding that the lack of a proper burial for the nineteen innocent victims who were hanged at Gallows Hill and one, Giles Corey, who was pressed to death, could serve as a spirit magnet. However, Salem’s creepy burial grounds aren’t necessarily the city’s most active places. “It’s easy to think of cemeteries as being haunted. It’s a place associated with death. But I don’t think it’s any different than any other location personally,” Storer continued. “Spirits are everywhere, and cemeteries are just pinpointing a location to their place of rest.”

Mike Baker, a scientific-minded paranormal investigator with Para-Boston, echoes Storer’s belief. The researcher conducted an exhaustive study for his New England Center for the Advancement of Paranormal Science (NECAPS) on points of geothermal and electromagnetic energy in New England in an attempt to predict active locations. According to Baker, patterns did emerge including a preponderance of paranormal incidents along fault lines, railroad tracks and areas where there are higher reports of UFO sightings. However, the study concluded that graveyards were oddly void of activity. “We left no stone unturned, even cemeteries.” Baker said. “We found that there is no correlation to hauntings and cemeteries which goes against what a lot of people believe.”

Haunted or not, Salem’s cemeteries continue to be a hot spot for ghost lore enthusiasts and amateur investigators. In fact, Sarah-Frankie Carter, a Salem-based tour guide and featured subject on the History Channel 2’s documentary highlighting the city’s haunted history, said she stays away from the Howard Street Cemetery after having an alleged encounter with the ominous ghost of Giles Corey. However, this infamous cemetery apparently isn’t Salem’s most haunted. According to Carter, the most active graveyard is in nearby Peabody. “There’s one spirit that resides at the St. Mary’s Cemetery on Route 114,” Carter claimed. “I’ve seen a full-bodied apparition of a woman there three different times. She’s pretty reliable. I’ve seen her almost every time I’ve gone in there.”

According to multiple reports, visitors at St. Mary’s Cemetery in Peabody have spotted “faint white lights” that move around and experienced a foreboding sensation that one should quickly leave. There are also several EVPs of both male and female voices. Carter claimed she had several close encounters of the paranormal kind with one of St. Mary’s resident lady specters.

Sarah-Frankie Carter, a Salem-based tour guide and featured subject on the History Channel 2’s Haunted History documentary, claimed to have a face-to-face encounter with the ghost of Giles Corey at Howard Street Cemetery. She says her favorite haunted hot spot in the area is St. Mary’s Cemetery in Peabody. Illustration by John Clinkscale.

The first time was around 3:00 a.m. a few years ago, when Carter and her two friends spotted what looked like a plastic bag stuck in a tree. After a second glance, she said it was a female spirit wearing a nightgown. “She crawled out of the tree and started running right at us,” Carter emotively recalled. “It was so dark, but we could see her. She was glowing. We were terrified, and we ran out.” Carter’s second visit was with a psychic friend who also spotted the female phantom. “The spirit was in her twenties, and she died young. I haven’t gone back to find her gravestone, but she hangs around a certain spot in the cemetery.” The third time that Carter encountered the female specter was with a friend who didn’t believe in ghosts. “He looks up and sees her,” Carter recalled with a laugh. “He quickly ran out and refused to go back.”

Why does so much ghost lore surround Salem’s old-school burial grounds? “People are fascinated with cemeteries,” explained the late, great historian Jim McCabe in a 2007 interview with the Boston Herald. “It’s like going to a historical house.”

BROAD STREET CEMETERY

As far as haunted cemeteries in Salem, the second-oldest burial ground in the city is often overlooked. Because of its relative seclusion on Lawes Hill, a small mound bordered by Summer, Broad and Gedney Streets, this picturesque cemetery located a mere stone’s throw from the allegedly haunted Salem Inn and the Witch House is rarely visited by the living. But it’s apparently a hot spot for the dead.

Why? Broad Street Cemetery was established in 1655 and is the final resting place for Court of Oyer and Terminer judge Jonathan Corwin, as well as one of Salem’s more infamous players from the 1692 witch trials era, Corwin’s sadistic nephew, high sheriff George Corwin. After mysteriously dying from a heart attack at age thirty, the younger Corwin was arguably the city’s most despised man. And rightfully so. The then twenty-something sheriff reportedly got a kick out of torturing the men and women accused of witchcraft. Although it was the uncle, Magistrate Jonathan Corwin, who tried and accused the innocents, it was the sick and twisted nephew who enforced the unjust verdicts.

Established in 1655, the Broad Street Cemetery is the final resting place for Court of Oyer and Terminer judge Jonathan Corwin, as well as his notoriously sadistic nephew, high sheriff George Corwin. Courtesy of the Detroit Publishing Co.

“Sheriff Corwin was so disliked by the people of Salem, that when he died of a heart attack in 1696, his family didn’t dare bury him in the cemetery for fear he’d be dug up and his body torn limb from limb,” wrote Robert Ellis Cahill, himself a former Essex County sheriff turned author, in Haunted Happenings. Corwin’s cruelty is legendary. For example, he sent an officer to accused witch Mary Parker’s home in Andover on September 23, 1692, literally the day after her execution, demanding that her son fork over the dead woman’s farm and goods. Parker’s son, who was still mourning the loss of his mother, had to cough up a large sum of money to stop Corwin’s demands for corn, hay and cattle.

Of course, Corwin is also known as the man who tried to squeeze a confession out of Giles Corey, the elderly landowner who was pressed to death after a torturous two-day ordeal. “Do you confess?” demanded Corwin, as his men piled more rocks on the stubborn Corey. Corwin reportedly would stand on top of the rocks as the old man demanded “more weight.”

“In the crushing, Giles Corey’s tongue was pressed out of his mouth and the sheriff, with his cane, forced it in again,” wrote Robert Calef in his account of the torture. According to legend, Corey cursed the sheriff and Salem right before he passed. “Damn you, Sheriff,” Corey allegedly cried out. “I curse you and Salem.”

When Corwin died in 1696, he was a wanted man. Phillip English, a wealthy merchant who fled Salem to Boston and ultimately New York with his wife, Mary, after wrongfully being accused, supposedly threatened to place a lien on Corwin’s body until his property was returned. For the record, the sheriff’s cronies had ransacked English’s estate and English demanded posthumous justice. Corwin was buried beneath his home, at the current location of the Joshua Ward House at 148 Washington Street, and was later moved when tempers cooled to the Broad Street Cemetery with his equally disliked uncle, Judge Jonathan Corwin.

As far as hauntings, Corwin’s final resting place is said to be a lesser-known hotbed of paranormal activity. Floating orbs of light, an indicator of high levels of residual psychic energy, have been spotted in the cemetery. There have been several reports of an apparition of an older gentleman wearing period garb wandering the old-school gravestones. One spirited encounter from 1975 indicates that the Broad Street Cemetery ghost is a whistler. “All of sudden, a glimmer of white caught my eyes,” recalled one visitor interviewed by the Boston Globe in October 1975. “There, on a grave to the right, was a man’s shoulder, the shadow of his head was turning, and out from his mouth came a jagged, high-pitched whistling sound.” The freaked-out witness continued, “Something that night didn’t want us around Salem. Driving away, we believed that it was Corwin, warning us to leave, not to deal in forces and intrigues we were just novices at.”

Is it Sheriff Corwin’s spirit? Perhaps. However, the descriptions of the garb of the “whistling man” spirit seem to date back to the eighteenth century. Also, Corwin’s spirit is rumored to linger at his former homestead, the land currently occupied by the Joshua Ward House. Meanwhile, it’s said that the residual energy of Corwin’s uncle supposedly left its imprint at the nearby Witch House.

One theory suggests that the whistling specter isn’t a Corwin but a man called Jonathan Neal.

Broad Street Cemetery is directly across from Salem’s picturesque Chestnut Street neighborhood, which continues to be a hub of photo-seeking tourists. The Jonathan Neal House, originally thought to have been built by its namesake in 1767, is now believed to date back to 1652 thanks to the discovery of a deed proving the conversion of a barn on the property forty years before the Salem witch trials hysteria. Oddly, Neal suffered a freakish death in 1790. The carpenter from Marblehead and grandson of early settler John Neal ran a local waterfront warehouse and, after drinking a few too many in a “house of intemperance,” fell head first into the mud and died tragically. Based on the research of famed paranormal investigators like the late, great Dr. Hans Holzer, it’s common for spirits who have died accidentally while intoxicated to stick around.

Some believe Neal may be what is known as a “stay behind” who lingers in the area surrounding the Broad Street Cemetery near his home. Holzer, in an interview in 2005, explained the phenomenon. “‘Stay behinds’ are relatively common,” he said. “Somebody dies, and then they’re really surprised that all of a sudden they’re not dead. They’re alive like they were. They don’t understand it because they weren’t prepared for it. So they go back to what they knew most—their chair, their room, and they just sit there. Next, they want to let people know that they’re still ‘alive.’ So they’ll do little things like moving things, appear to relatives, pushing objects, poltergeist phenomena, and so on.”

The odd thing about Neal is that he was known to whistle and was possibly doing so when he fell face first in the mud that freakishly killed him. Spine-chilling whistles from the afterlife? Yep, it’s an attribute of one of the many spirits of Salem hanging out in its historic cemeteries.

File under: whistler’s ghost

HOWARD STREET CEMETERY

While it’s not Salem’s oldest burial ground, Howard Street Cemetery is reportedly its most haunted. Opened next to the old Salem Jail, the spooky graveyard on a hill is the final resting spot for seafarer Benjamin Ropes, who was buried there on August 5, 1801. Cause of death? Ropes was fatally crushed while launching the historic ship Belisarius’s top mast. Oddly, a large percentage of those buried in the Howard Street Cemetery had a fate similar to Giles Corey, the only witch trial victim who suffered the “peine forte et dure” form of execution. Yep, a large percentage of those buried there were accidentally or purposefully crushed.

“We did some research with the city, and we found that a high number of the people buried in the Howard Street Cemetery, around 15 percent, were crushed to death,” explains historian and Salem Night Tour co-owner Tim Maguire. “It’s so interesting because that was the site where Giles Corey was crushed to death during the witch trials.”

The Salem Night Tour owner rattled off a series of bizarre “accidents” of those buried at the Howard Street Cemetery. “For example, the floor of the jail collapsed and killed ten prisoners,” he said. “A high number of people buried there were crushed to death because of various accidents.”

Considered to be Salem’s most haunted burial grounds, Howard Street Cemetery is the site where landowner Giles Corey was crushed to death over a two-day period. It’s also where locals allegedly spot Corey’s full-bodied apparition before tragedy strikes Salem. Photo by Sam Baltrusis.

Maguire was a featured player on the History Channel 2’s documentary focusing on a handful of Salem’s alleged haunts. The evidence he unveiled on the show, specifically a photo taken at the Howard Street Cemetery, was shocking. The picture looked like a crowd of Puritan-era revelers, gathered in a lynch mob sort of way, around what is believed to be the exact spot where Corey was stripped naked, placed under a wooden board and crushed to death over a two-day period in 1692.

“Someone on my tour took a photo of the cemetery,” Maguire said on the History Channel. “By the end of the tour that person came forward to share the photo they took. Definitely not what we were looking at. There seems to be figures of people standing over someone. Most people who feel like they found the spirit of Giles Corey or have seen his apparition, they think it’s a reminder of what we have done to him there.”

Maguire told Ghosts of Salem that he rarely gives daytime tours. However, a Christian-based group requested an earlier time slot one day, and they snapped the infamous picture. “In the photo, you see what looks like flames in the background, and you can make out a couple of faces in the photo,” he said, convinced he captured something paranormal. “When we were standing there, it was a nice, clear sunny day.”

Over the years, Maguire said he’s heard of multiple Corey sightings. “People often see an old man go around a tree in there. It seems to be the spirit of Giles Corey,” he said, adding that the burial ground’s proximity to the old Salem Jail adds to its negative energy. “What’s interesting about the Howard Street Cemetery is that it was built to accommodate inmate atrocities. It was the only coed jail in the country. Women were on one side, men on the other and children in the middle. There was a four-year-old boy who served a two-month sentence for breaking something.”

It’s common for visitors to report heart palpit...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Cemetery Haunts
• 2. Crime Haunts
• 3. Cursed Haunts
• 4. Hawthorne Haunts
• 5. Nightlife Haunts
• 6. Overnight Haunts
• 7. Witch Haunts
• Sources
• About the Author