Ghosts of the SouthCoast (6 page)

The other thing that amazes me about Rochester, though, is that these same people who are so reluctant to share their ghost tales are more than willing to describe the mysterious lights they may have seen in the sky one night. With all its open space, Rochester is a prime spot for catching a glimpse of a UFO. So if you're ever in the area, keep your eyes to the skies!

Even though the Hell's Blazes Tavern is technically in Middleboro, it is right along the edge of Rochester, and since Middleboro isn't part of the SouthCoast as we're defining it, we'll allow Rochester to adopt it for a few moments while we discuss another of the area's longest-standing haunts.

Originally built in 1690 (the same year as Wareham's Fearing Tavern), Hell's Blazes was at one point the oldest continuously operating tavern in the United States. However, a 1971 fire and subsequent rebuild may have altered the original tavern—but not its ghosts.

Like the Fearing Tavern, Hell's Blazes has the perfect name for a haunted spot. According to legend, it got its name from the glow cast on the tavern from a nearby smelting furnace back in the colonial era. As stagecoach riders would pull up and see the orange glow cast on the tavern, they'd remark how the place looked “hotter than Hell's blazes.” But some believe the name may have something to do with all the restless spirits that roamed the property.

Those who frequented the tavern in its original incarnation have had the most profound experiences, directly connected to nearly three hundred years' worth of history while bellying up to the bar. In the 1960s, the
Standard-Times
newspaper ran a series of articles about an alleged haunting at Hell's Blazes that included slamming doors, rapping and knocking sounds. Workers reported feeling a presence around them, like something was always standing right behind them but when they would turn around, there was nothing there.

Once the oldest operating tavern in the United States, Hell's Blazes is yet another SouthCoast spot with an appropriately spooky name.

After the fire, only the original carriage house remained. The tavern was rebuilt to look like it was from the 1600s and had much of the rustic charm of the original, but apparently the spirits didn't feel the same way. Reports of ghostly activity waned over the building's last thirty or so years, both among the patrons and the employees. Two former chefs, who each had spent considerable time as the only person in the building during their tenure, both refuted the idea that Hell's Blazes is haunted.

That doesn't sway the belief of another gentleman who told me of his lone paranormal experience coming on the Hell's Blazes property. A serviceman, he was called for an emergency at the tavern late on a spring night in the early 1980s. It was a misty night, and the air was thick and heavy. He knew of the tavern's haunted reputation—his mother had worked there in the 1960s and told tales about stacking dishes neatly at night and coming in to find them in disarray the next morning—but he didn't consider himself a believer until this particular night.

After he was finishing up his repair work, he and his brother got into their truck, started it and prepared to drive down the driveway that led from
behind the tavern back to the main road. As they entered the cab of the truck, they saw a woman come from around the end of the building, wearing what he described as a “dark, old-fashioned-looking cloak.” He thought she looked as if she was from another time, as she crossed the driveway and entered the double-gated animal pen across the way. But as they drove past, they could see no trace of her—she had vanished in a matter of seconds. That's when he knew he had seen a ghost.

In 2004, Hell's Blazes closed and was sold to the owner of a dismantling company who wanted the site for its land and was rumored to be demolishing the buildings to make room for his salvage yard. The tavern and carriage house still stand, perhaps because the restless spirits within them won't have it any other way.

Mattapoisett's Kinsale Inn is the quintessential New England seafront inn—and for good reason. It is, according to its website, “the oldest seaside Inn in the nation still operating as an Inn in its original structure.”

Built in 1799, the property has also seen a blacksmith shop, general store, a tavern, two separate dwellings and numerous other incarnations in the past two hundred-plus years. Joseph Meigs, the original owner of the property, wanted to build himself a home and provide a spot for weary seafarers to have a drink and enjoy themselves. Two centuries later, that vision is still going strong.

Formerly known as the Mattapoisett Inn, it had established a reputation for excellence even before the Irish Restaurant Company purchased it in 2004 and renamed it the Kinsale Inn. With an emphasis on creating a traditional Irish pub atmosphere, the latest stewards of the historic property are living up to, if not exceeding, the standards set by those before them.

But when they purchased the inn, they got more than just the restaurant, function facilities and guest rooms that were on the deed. They also became stewards of at least two ghosts as well.

The most commonly sighted is that of a sea captain seen in one of the bedroom windows, looking out toward the sea. He also is reported to roam the halls with his heavy boots, making a thunderous sound. According to the inn's website, “the most famous person to live in the Inn was Captain Bryant, a Mattapoisett whaling captain and first Governor of Alaska.” According
to the site, Bryant would sit on the upper porch of the inn and write his memoirs, which were never found.

This ghost could indeed be that of this Captain Bryant, who is believed to be Charles R. Bryant. Despite numerous Mattapoisett histories listing him as the first governor of Alaska, no official Alaskan histories I could find list him as ever being the head of the territory-turned-state. Instead, Charles R. Bryant served as a special agent of the Treasury in the early days of Alaska, immediately following its purchase from Russia in October of 1867.

The other reported spirit is that of a young girl called Sarah by the locals. For whatever reason, she wanders the hallways of the inn searching for her father. In her never-ending quest, Sarah is known to knock over items, open doors and rattle the bottles at the bar. One medium I spoke with told me of how she went to the Kinsale Inn to dine with her husband, only to have Sarah sit next to her the entire time and look at her forlornly.

In 1652, the English settlers continued to expand westward from Plymouth and Rochester when they purchased the lands that would eventually become known as Fairhaven and Acushnet. Although it would be another seven years before the two towns would actually be settled, Fairhaven eventually became the home port to many sea captains and their crewmen while Acushnet was more agricultural.

Both Fairhaven and Acushnet were originally part of the Dartmouth settlement, before breaking off and falling under the settlement of New Bedford when the eastern portion of Dartmouth seceded in 1787. Fairhaven and Acushnet later seceded from New Bedford in 1812.

In the late 1700s, Fairhaven was thrust into prominence as the colony prepared for revolution. Just off its shores was the site of the first naval action of the Revolutionary War, when on May 13, 1775, Nathaniel Pope and Daniel Egery, sailing on the sloop
Success
with a crew of twenty-five men, captured two British ships.

Fairhaven's Fort Phoenix has not only the spirits of soldiers past but also some more current ghosts out for a jog along its beaches.

Realizing that Fairhaven's harbor would need protection, construction of Fort Phoenix on Nolscott Point began in June of 1775 under the guidance of Captain Benjamin Dillingham and Eleazer Hathaway, his brother-in-law.

An interesting note about Dillingham—he was a descendent of Edward Dillingham, one of the founders of the Cape Cod town of Sandwich. The original Dillingham House near the center of that town is rumored to be haunted by the spirits of Edward and Branch Dillingham, a later descendent of Edward who hanged himself on the property in 1813. It was formerly a bed and breakfast until it closed to the public in recent years.

A descendent of Benjamin Dillingham bearing the same name later became a prominent businessman on the islands of Hawaii in the late 1800s. There are still stories on the islands about the Dillinghams who haunt them—including Gaylord Dillingham, who was shot down in World War II and whose spirit is legendary among the students at an all-girls' school on the island of Oahu.

Returning to the subject of Fort Phoenix, it was completed in 1777, and on September 5, 1778, the British landed four thousand troops not far from the fort and laid siege to the entire area. Fort Phoenix was abandoned and destroyed by the Redcoats, who also burned down many homes in the village of Fairhaven. Major Israel Fearing marched his company of more than one hundred men from Wareham in order to assist Fairhaven in driving out the British and is recognized for his efforts with a plaque at Fort Phoenix. Of course, he did so by leading his men not from the front of the company but from the rear, threatening to shoot any man who attempted to flee the battle.

Fearing was also the owner of the Fearing Tavern in Wareham and helped defend its shores from the British in the War of 1812, a key figure in SouthCoast paranormal lore.

Fearing's spirit is one of the many associated with Fort Phoenix. The most prominent activity reported is the sound of cannon fire, possibly coming from one of the eleven cannons that were placed strategically around the fort.

There are eleven cannons around Fort Phoenix, including one that John Paul Jones captured from a British ship in the Bahamas.

Although the fort saw action in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812—it was also commissioned for the Civil War, but never engaged in battle—not all the ghosts reported there are of a military nature. Since the fort area was bequeathed to the town in 1926, it has been a recreational area. One spirit who has been sighted numerous times is that of a jogger who will approach people at the fort and ask the time. The person looks down at their watch or takes out their cellphone in order to check, and when they look up, the jogger has vanished.

The Millicent Library was funded by the great benefactor for much of Fairhaven's beautiful structures, Henry Huttleston Rogers. Rogers was a self-made millionaire in the latter half of the nineteenth century and counted among his friends the likes of Mark Twain, Booker T. Washington and Helen Keller, whose college education he financed personally.