Ghosts of the SouthCoast (8 page)

The gothic detail of Fairhaven High School, home of the Blue Devils.

One of the items that draws claims of paranormal activity in the Millicent Library is the samurai sword in the Rogers Room, but it's more likely the stories have grown over the fact that it seems very out of place for Fairhaven—unless you understand the history of how it got there. Even if the ghost story is mostly hogwash, the tale is interesting enough to tell here.

In 1841, a fourteen-year-old peasant boy named Manjiro Nakahama and four friends were shipwrecked off the southern coast of Japan while on a fishing trip. They were rescued by Captain William H. Whitfield of Fairhaven and his crew. They brought them to safety on the Hawaiian island of Oahu (where Benjamin Dillingham's descendents would soon settle) while Whitfield brought Manjiro back to Fairhaven, where he became known as John Manjiro, the first Japanese person to live in America. With the Whitfield family, Manjiro received an education and became a top-notch sailor, eventually setting out to sea once again.

Manjiro eventually arrived in San Francisco just at the dawn of the gold rush and became a wealthy man. He went back and found his friends who were left in Hawaii and they all returned to Japan. Although the policy of the isolationist Japanese people was to execute anyone who left the country, Manjiro and his friends were spared and he provided the Japanese government with tales of the wondrous life in America. He played a key role in Japan, eventually opening up to relations with the West, and he often returned to the United States as a
hatamoto
—a representative samurai—in his later years.

On July 4, 1918, his son, Dr. Toichiro Nakahama, and Japanese ambassador Kikujiro Ishii presented the town of Fairhaven with the samurai sword that now rests in the Millicent Library, part of an ongoing friendship between the town and the Land of the Rising Sun. It is a relationship that still remains in modern times as well. In October of 1987, Japanese crown prince Akihito and his wife, Princess Michiko, visited Fairhaven, and the town has a sister city in Tosashimizu, Japan.

When Japanese tourists visit the SouthCoast, one of their destination points is the grave of Captain Whitfield in Riverside Cemetery, often to leave gifts and give thanks to him for his kindness to Manjiro. Do the Japanese, though, know something about his grave that we do not? The Japanese, after all, are a culture in which ghosts play a very large role. They openly believe in the spirits of the deceased and revere and honor them with special ceremonies. Perhaps they are there to communicate with the captain, just as their fellow countryman did more than 150 years ago.

The following story has become more than just a great ghost story; it's also spread to the status of urban legend. Whether it originated on the SouthCoast is unknown, but similar tales have popped up elsewhere.

Nichols House is a nursing home in Fairhaven on Main Street, near the Riverside Cemetery where Millicent Rogers lies and just down the road from Fairhaven High School. As the story goes, an elderly woman was a resident of Nichols House and her favorite time of the day was the late afternoon, when she could sit in the front parlor of the house and listen to her beloved classical music station. Yet a certain orderly who had no love for this woman would often come in and change the station to blaring rock music, perhaps
to intentionally annoy her. One day, she reached her boiling point and had enough of his constant rock and roll torture, and she ran out the front door of the nursing home and into the street, where she was immediately struck and killed by a passing car.

The legend goes that as you drive past the nursing home, if you tune your car's radio station to 102.9 FM—the signal of the rock station the orderly changed the radio to each time—the signal will fade out and be replaced by classical music, as the old woman gets her way from the great beyond.

From the moment I first heard this story, I knew what had sparked it; 102.9 FM, the dial setting for rock station WPXC is one step up on the FM dial from 102.5, which for about fifty-five years was home to classic rock station WCRB until that station moved down the dial in 2009. WPXC originates on Cape Cod, while WCRB broadcast out of Boston, and Fairhaven seemed like the perfect spot for the signals to become crossed somehow to allow one station to bleed into the other.

When I went out to try it, that's exactly what happened, and still does to this day—although 102.5 is now country station WKLB, and Nichols House has been renamed the Royal at Fairhaven. The names and station formats may have changed, but the legend lives on.

Acushnet comes from the Wampanoag
acushnea,
which has been translated by some to mean “at the head of the river” or “resting place along the river.” One interesting translation, which comes from Maurice DesJardins, suggests that Acushnet in the Wampanoag means “a place where we get to the other side.”

Now, if that doesn't sound like a paranormal hot spot, I don't know what does.

If Acushnet is a place to get to the Other Side, it's also a place that the Other Side likes to get to. Take, for example, the spectral woman who is often seen taking in the view around the Hamlin Road Dam. She is said to be seen in the early morning hours, just as the sun rises, and described as a peaceful and benign spirit.

The same can't be said for another ghostly woman seen farther up the Acushnet River. This spirit often frightens away those who see her, with her animalistic behavior along the shores of the river and a name that is crudely carved into her back, yet no one has been able to get close enough to read what it says.

At a time when many men of God in Massachusetts were all about hellfire and brimstone, the Reverend Dr. Samuel West was of a different breed. Viewed as a liberal who was more akin to the later Unitarian movement, West would have made an imposing figure on the pulpit had he stuck to the Puritan preaching style. He was a large man—over six feet tall and weighed more than two hundred pounds, but often appeared disheveled and dirty. He was a man of little means, making a meager salary with the First Congregational Society in Dartmouth (in present-day New Bedford) after being ordained in 1761.

The property that would come to bear his name passed hands quite a bit beginning in 1742, with the oldest part of the current building being built sometime prior to 1775. West came to own it in 1785, as he recovered judgment from a Thomas Crandon and took control of the property as part of that judgment—but whether he actually resided there is unknown. West had actually taken his congregation to court over his pay, and his ownership of the Acushnet property may have been related to that. It is believed that at one time, there was a church and a graveyard on the property, so he may have actually just been granted the property on which he was already serving in the church.

The staircase at the Samuel West House leads to the haunted third floor.
Courtesy of Christopher Balzano.

In the 1920s, the house was used as a funeral home but fell into disrepair when it became a private residence again years later.

Katie and Johnny now live in the home with their three children. The upstairs is occupied by another couple, while the third floor—the attic space—is reserved for the ghosts. But that doesn't stop them from coming down and interacting with the living residents.

Since Katie moved in, she's tried to make improvements about the house, and each time it seems as though more spirits awake. It's not uncommon in the paranormal to see activity spike as repairs are being done to a location; ghosts become accustomed to their surroundings or have an attachment to the way it was when they were alive, and changes to it often invoke their ire.

Even when they're not renovating, however, the family has endured amazing levels of paranormal activity. From phantom footsteps to full-fledged apparitions, the phenomena in the Samuel West House run the complete gamut. Voices are often heard in unoccupied rooms, bells will ring on their own and balls of light have materialized out of thin air and then dissipated just as quickly. Unattached voices will call out residents of the house by name. Horrible smells, like something out a sewer or a garbage can, will permeate the house with no known source. And, above all,
nobody
wants to go in the attic because of how strong the activity is up there.

Katie contacted author and analytical folklorist Christopher Balzano when he put out word through his website, the Massachusetts Paranormal Crossroads (
www.masscrossroads.com
), that he was looking for stories of paranormal activity in the area. Balzano and a group of paranormal investigators, including
Spooky Southcoast
cohost and science advisor Matt Moniz, have since spent the past several years documenting what haunts the West house.

What they've found is some of the most intriguing evidence of the existence of ghosts. As documented in Balzano's book
Picture Yourself Ghost Hunting
and the accompanying DVD, EVPs are captured with relative ease in the house. The spirits actually speak to the investigators by name, both aloud and through EVPs, and ask about them when they haven't been there
in a while. Talcum powder sprinkled on the floor or bookshelf is soon littered with handprints, footprints and written messages even when nobody is in the room to make them.

Even Balzano's DVD was affected by the ghosts of the Samuel West House, with EVPs appearing in the footage captured during the editing process. In one particular scene, Balzano's camera is being drained of all its battery power as a disembodied voice imprints itself on the camera's audio, which sounds like an upset male saying something about a death in a plane crash. Andrew Lake of Greenville Paranormal Research in Rhode Island, who was present on the investigation and edited the film, confirmed through newspaper research that a plane crash occurred very close to the home in 1957.

Over time, Katie and Johnny have learned to live with the ghosts, and the ghosts have learned to live with them. While it can still become unnerving on occasion, the spirits of the Samuel West House have become a part of their family.

New Bedford is known as the Whaling City because of its deep heritage in the whaling industry. Made famous by Herman Melville's 1851 classic
Moby Dick,
it still remains today as the number one fishing port in the world.

Originally part of the Dartmouth settlement, New Bedford seceded and incorporated under its new name in 1787. As the whaling industry helped it grow, it officially became a city in 1847. Around that time, New Bedford experienced an immigration boom, mostly from Portugal. The influence of Portuguese culture is still strong within the city today.

New Bedford was also a significant location in African American history. The famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass, a former slave, settled in New Bedford in 1838. It was here that the seeds were planted for the crusader against racial injustice that Douglass would eventually become.

In paranormal circles, New Bedford is probably best known for the National Guard Armory on Sycamore Street, because it was featured in an early but memorable episode of the SyFy Channel show
Ghost Hunters,
which starred, among others, New Bedford native Steve Gonsalves. In the episode, Pilgrim Films sound man Frank deAngelis is knocked to the ground when an unseen spirit passes through him. According to members of the Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS, the featured team on
Ghost Hunters
) that I've spoken with, deAngelis was not a believer in the paranormal prior to that experience. It disturbed him so badly that he left the crew of the program shortly thereafter.

The haunted armory in New Bedford, as seen on the SyFy Channel's
Ghost Hunters
.

The castlelike armory was built in 1903 but was used less and less through the 1990s as it fell into disrepair. It was eventually shut down and put on the auction block, but nobody has yet come up with the funds necessary to take ownership of the property and then make the necessary repairs to get it up to code.