Ghost Stories

American Incognitum

Irish Elk

A house ghost in a powdered wig is as revered a tradition as Indian pudding at the old inns and taverns in this history-laden corner of New England.

For a Halloween piece for the newspaper some years back, I visited several places said to be haunted. Here are some of the stories I was told.

In Groton, the Stagecoach Inn and Tavern dates to 1678. Its guests over the years have included Paul Revere, presidents Ulysses S. Grant, Grover Cleveland, and William H. Taft, and, if you believe the stories, a full complement of ghosts.

"Many people have seen many things," said owner George Pergantis. "The lights go off. A waitress said she heard her name called over and over. I'm from the old country - I don't believe these things."

The ghost of a Colonial soldier had been seen at least twice, according to the longtime resident manager, Gloria Lammi. In one sighting, a workman staying at the inn during a remodeling project awoke during the night to see the phantom patriot sitting at the foot of his bed: "When asked who he was, the soldier didn't say anything, but just tipped his hat."

She said the resident spirits could be quite boisterous in making their presence felt. Beds had been found unmade and toilets had been heard to flush in rooms in which no one had been staying; paper towels and potpourri had been found strewn all over the floor of a restroom near the front desk, and water glasses from set tables in the dining room had turned up on the floor or even stacked in a pyramid.

One cook reportedly was scared off by a kitchen poltergeist that turned off the lights and the oven, turned on a water tap, and left the floor strewn with plastic wrap. "She went running out, hysterical," the manager said. "She phoned to say she wouldn't come back in the building."

Tales vary over the circumstances that led the Groton inn to be haunted. According to one story, a Colonial soldier was killed in the war; his widow, overcome with grief, dropped her child to its death, and then took her own life. Waitresses reportedly have seen a woman and a small girl in the dining room shadows.

In Lexington, George Comtois, executive director of the Lexington Historical Society, headquartered in the circa-1690s Munroe Tavern, said: "With these old houses, there are always those stories, especially if there's a history of violence in the place."

During the fighting in Lexington on April 19, 1775, a servant at the Munroe Tavern was shot to death by British Redcoats outside the building. In recent years, a caretaker who stayed overnight at the tavern reported door latches mysteriously unlocked in the night, and the sound of footsteps on the stairs when no one else was in the house. Comtois said: "I had a secretary...who swore she saw the outline of a figure in a frock coat and a tricorn hat - all pale and gray and 'see-throughable' - looking through the door at her."

In Lowell, lights flicked on by unseen hands, disembodied voices and even specters in the dining room were among the eerie occurrences reported at Smithwicks Tavern and Restaurant, a 19th-century landmark on Middle Street that once housed an annex to the old Pollard's Department Store.

A bartender recalled being alone on closing detail late one night when the large-screen TV in the bar inexplicably turned on by itself. "I put the key in the lock and sprinted out of there," said Peter Jamros. "I've been here by myself Sunday nights and gone running out of here."

Said tavern owner Tim Stone: "When we work by ourselves, we get out of here pretty quick: When you're here by yourself, the building talks. Your mind runs wild, and you see things over your shoulder."

According to one story, a worker at the old dry-goods emporium fell to his death down an elevator shaft in the four-story building. Another undocumented story tells of a long-ago love triangle that resulted in a murder-suicide on the premises.

The tavern owner said: "A lot of strange things have been reported over the years, along the five levels of what used to be the elevator shaft – mostly power surges, things going on and off." A vestige of the shaft served as an enclosure for a barroom pinball machine, illuminated by a hanging light that had been known to go on without anyone touching it. The bartender said a cleaning man who worked at the tavern reported feeling an icy cold breath on his shoulder whenever he entered the old shaft.

A psychic who investigated the premises in the late 1970s claimed to have captured ghostly voices on tape. Owners and staff at the A.G. Pollard & Sons Restaurant, which preceded the current tavern in the 1980s, reported radios blaring after having been turned off, dishes moved from one place to another, and disembodied voices calling the names of waitresses from what came to be nicknamed the "whispering hutch" in the main dining room. Four out-of-town businessmen dining at Pollard's reported seeing the transparent figure of a man glide the length of the dining room and disappear.

The ancient workings of the fateful elevator could still be seen in the basement. So could the dark and closed-off entrance to a subterranean network of tunnels, dubbed by Smithwicks staffers "the catacombs," long ago used for the delivery of dry goods to mills and offices throughout downtown Lowell. In the manager's office in the cellar, it had been reported that unplugged electrical appliances had sprung to life and papers in a desk had been rifled behind locked doors.

Late one night, a partner in the business was alone in the basement office counting receipts when he heard the sound of a man and woman arguing upstairs in the kitchen. As he climbed the stairs to the kitchen to investigate, the noise stopped. "He found no one there," bartender Jamros said. "But when he went back downstairs, the noise of the argument picked up again. And there was no one in the place."

The last story was told by tavern owner Stone.

Arriving to open the tavern one morning, he said, he found on a table an open bottle of Courvoisier, two snifters filled almost to overflowing with the imported cognac, and an ashtray with two cigarettes that had burned, unsmoked, down to the filter.

A query of the manager on duty the evening before revealed no late-night patrons had visited the tavern after closing.

A rendezvous between doomed lovers from the spirit world?

"It's just one of those things you can't explain," the tavern owner said.

You can read more from Irish Elk at his own blog

Comments

[Old Dominion Tory]

As I recall, there are tales of the Sudbury's Old Wayside Inn--made famous by Longfellow's "Tales of a Wayside Inn"--being haunted by the ghost of a woman.
The village in which I grew up allegedly boasts (if that's the right word) two haunted houses--the Old Yarmouth Inn and the Colonial Inn. Both of them are on Route 6A, a.k.a., Old King's Highway. In the village of Barnstable, there were two old taverns that were allegedly haunted as well.

[Mrs. Peperium]

I once got lost in Salem's huge cemetary on Halloween. Never saw a ghost but was perfectly convinced I was going to see about 3 trillion....

[Old Dominion Tory]

On foggy nights, the area around the Cape's Great North Marsh are redolent of the moors in The Hound of the Baskervilles. Quite atomspheric in a Victorian-Gothic way.

[Old Dominion Tory]

Sing it, Bing!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHV_4DKHE0E