Ghost Stories and Legends of Eastern Connecticut

Lore, Mysteries and Secrets Revealed

Donna Kent

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781596293175
• eBook ISBN: 9781614233787
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Who or what lurks below the decks of the ships at Mystic Seaport? Does playwright Eugene O'Neill still live in his family's cottage on the New London shore? Are there really vampires in Connecticut? Can Israel Putnam's ghost still see the whites of your eyes? This captivating book presents tales and legends from Eastern Connecticut's most haunted locations dark deeds and lore from New London and Mystic, and stretching all the way to Brooklyn, Windham and Franklin. Like eerie and desperate whispers on the wind, the ghosts of Connecticut's past reveal their deepest, darkest secrets to author and paranormal investigator Donna Kent as she sheds new light on this collection of spine-tingling legends.

The Charles W. Morgan and the Buckingham House, Mystic Seaport

Have you ever noticed that most ghost stories begin with some version of “It was a dark and stormy night”? Maybe you’ve noticed that a lot of ghostly sightings or occurrences happen during thunder and lightning storms? The truth is that ghosts and spirits use these conditions to better manifest and become more visible to the human eye.

It really was a dark and stormy night when Cosmic Society members embarked on our investigation of the nineteenth-century whaling ship called the Charles W. Morgan, permanently docked in Connecticut’s famous Mystic Seaport since 1941. I wanted to be sure it had all the haunted qualifications required for inclusion in my tours. As it turned out, the Charles W. Morgan had all of these and more!

The history of this vessel is quite interesting. She was built in 1840 at a cost of $48,849.85 for a Quaker whaling merchant named Charles Waln Morgan. She launched her maiden voyage on July 21, 1841, and through eighty years of service she sailed more miles in pursuit of whales than any other whaling ship on the seven seas. She made thirty-seven voyages ranging in duration from nine months to five years and had twenty-one captains, five of whom had their wives and families onboard. Each voyage averaged about thirty-three crewmen per trip. In total, her berths rested over one thousand whalemen of all races and nationalities who worked the decks together—a testament to their ability to overcome racial prejudice. The crew onboard the Morgan was sometimes called a “checkerboard crew” due to the variety of skin color—black, red and white. There are unsubstantiated tales of the ship being part of the “Freedom Train.” The train carried the original versions of the United States Constitution, Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights on its tour of more than three hundred cities in forty-eight states as a way to reawaken Americans to the principles of liberty that many had forgotten or taken for granted in the postwar years. It was also established that Charles W. Morgan, the man for whom the ship was named, was a fierce abolitionist.

The Charles W. Morgan.

One month before Pearl Harbor, the Morgan, beaten up by the 1938 hurricane and years of abandonment, almost sank into the Mystic River before reaching the sand and stones of the seaport where she sat for thirty-two years. In January 1974 she was freed from her former berth and restorations began.

The Morgan stands today as America’s oldest wooden whaling ship, the sole survivor of a fleet that, in 1846, numbered 736 vessels. The Morgan weathered more than her share of brutal and deadly maritime adventures, and it’s possible that those who worked her might have stayed aboard, even after their physical deaths.

The Morgan survived a fire in New Bedford, Massachusetts, when a steamer named Katy caught fire. Her ropes aflame, the Katy drifted into the Morgan, catching the Morgan on fire in the process. Ice and snow were other perils, and one of the ship’s captains lost his son when he fell overboard and froze to death in the water during a winter storm. The ship was attacked by cannibals in the South Seas and defended by the whalemen with harpoons. Imitation gun ports were either painted or nailed to outside of the vessel to dissuade potential pirates. Many times the whales themselves would purposely attack the vessel, hurling their massive frames into the wooden hulls in an attempt to fight off capture.

Imagine the dangers and conditions the crews faced on their journeys. Isolated and lonely, away from loved ones and family, harsh conditions, seasickness and the ever present danger of imminent death wreaked havoc on their emotions. Many captains were downright fiendish, some were religiously delusional and many committed suicide if mutiny didn’t kill them first. All of these adversities—the emotional torture, physical abuse and insanity—make the conditions for a haunting quite ripe.

While Betty and I were scouting out the Morgan the first day, we stepped onboard, and I felt nothing abnormal (or paranormal) on deck of the ship. However, when we entered below deck and made our way to the very lowest level, I immediately sensed a shift in energy and thought, “Well, if there’s anything here, this is where I’ll find it.”

When we arrived with the full Cosmic Society crew one night, we began by breaking up into smaller groups of two and three and exploring the different areas of the ship. We set up the electronics in the hull, and what started out as normal filming lasted about three minutes. Then, all at once, every camcorder and audio device was drained of energy. Fully charged battery packs were now registering empty on all of our equipment. All the gear was running on separate batteries—nothing was plugged into outlets. The odds of such a widespread, simultaneous battery power outage occurring by pure coincidence are almost little to none.

A view from the deck.

A video camera set up during a Cosmic Society investigation of the Morgan.

On the upper deck, one of our members had a feeling of lightheadedness and breathlessness and began sweating profusely, but only from the neck up. The rest of her body was abnormally cold. This phenomenon happened only onboard the ship, and she returned to normal when we disembarked. She also smelled a cherry-scented tobacco in the captain’s quarters where, of course, no one had smoked for years.

In the summer of 2006, I received a letter from a CosmicSociety.com website viewer with these comments:

Dear Donna,

I attended your Halloween tour last year and I am disappointed that I can’t attend your meetings. I am excited, however, that you will be investigating the Morgan in Mystic. I had an experience there when I was touring the boat. As I was walking through the captain’s and sailor’s quarters, I felt an intensely oppressive feeling. I felt as if the boat was still populated. When I walked past one of the sailor’s bunks, I had a mental flash, or visualization of a man in his late twenties or early thirties. He was sitting on his bunk, leg bent, and foot on his knee, reading a book. He looked up from his book and gave me a cold, hard stare. I felt a sense of resentment and curiosity. The oppressive feeling finally got to me after that and I had to leave the boat. If it’s still there, you might also want to check out the Australia. Last I knew it was a wrecked ship in one of the buildings. You used to be able to walk through the ship. I did several years ago and I felt that same oppressiveness as on the Morgan. When I got home that night I had consistent nightmares. Just flashes of being on that ship and desperate people trying to communicate with me. I felt their fear and desperation.

Jennifer Rivera

The ship has other claims to fame aside from its haunts and history. The Charles W. Morgan appeared in four movies, three of which were filmed prior to 1940: Miss Petticoats (1916), Down to the Sea in Ships (1922) and Java Head (1934). In 1997, Steven Spielberg used the “blubber room” of the Charles W. Morgan to depict the hold of the slave ship Amistad for his movie of the same name.

Crewmen’s quarters aboard the Morgan.

The Morgan is also credited with saving the seaport financially. Acquiring the ship just prior to the Great Depression created a huge boost of interest in the seaport and ever since has brought in record numbers of new visitors.

In 1967, by order of the secretary of the interior, the Charles W. Morgan was formally designated a National Historic Landmark, and the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp honoring the vessel in 1971. The Associated Press reported that trees downed in Hurricane Katrina were donated for the extensive renovations of the Morgan planned for 2007.

On September 10, 2007, Brian Jones and I revisited the seaport to make final evaluations before writing this chapter. A security officer directed us to Howard W. Davis, interpreter at Mystic Seaport, who granted us a candid interview about his own history with the Morgan. The interview has been edited down to the most essential information:

Howard Davis, a living icon at Mystic Seaport.

DK: Tell us first about you.

HD: First, ya gotta know, I got seventeen years background in shipbuilding in commercial yards. In 1958 there was no more wooden boats to build. So, Mystic Seaport offered me a temporary job here in September of ’58. They only promised me a job through January of ’59. And so January ’59, he said, “You’re in the budget. They raised you $2 an hour.”

DK: An impressive boost in salary!

HD: So I’ve had some raises but I’m still in the budget. So, thirty-one years I worked in the shipyard here…restoration of the ships and now I’ve been talking about it for seventeen. So I’ve got forty-eight and a half years in as of now. Well, I’m aiming for fifty at least.

DK: Wow!

HD: Now, my grandfather had told me, “Never work in the shipyard”—because he had for most of his life—“and never be a ship caulker.” That’s the one that makes the ship watertight, because he had been a caulker. So, I did not become a caulker. I learned to build the boats. My father went in the office and kept the books. My grandfather was a caulker and my other grandfather was a sail maker. So, I came by this naturally, so they say. When I came here, they said, “You got your grandfather’s caulking tools?” So there’s a pict...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• The Deadly Grounds of Old Trinity Church, Brooklyn
• Israel Putnam’s Gravesite and the Mortlake Manor, Brooklyn
• The Charles W. Morgan and the Buckingham House, Mystic Seaport
• The Whitehall Mansion, Mystic
• Elizabeth Shaw and the Windham Inn, Windham
• The White Horse Inn at Vernon Stiles Restaurant, Thompson
• The Bloody Orchard, Franklin
• The Lighthouse Inn, New London
• Eugene O’Neill’s Monte Cristo Cottage, New London
• Route 138—A Cruise Down the Vampire Highway, Jewett City
• Harvest Restaurant, Pomfret
• Endnotes
• About the Author