Strong in spirit? Try these old haunts

By CATHERINE CREEGAN

Massachusetts, the oldest settled region in New England, fairly abounds with spooky dwellings and eerie burial grounds, giving it the dubious distinction of “most haunted” state in the Northeast — and Jim McCabe, director of New England Supernatural Ghost Tours, wants to keep you wide awake at night thinking about it.

“I really love the history of this area and wanted to do something that coincided with the interest that has erupted over psychic phenomena and UFOs,” says McCabe about his new business of guiding tours through spirit-occupied houses and supernatural graveyards. McCabe offers two different tours for the stouthearted brave sightseer. “Wizards & Pirates,” a 3 ½-hour-sojourn animatedly narrated by McCabe, starts with a bus ride in a desolate stretch of Marblehead beach to listen for the lonely and abandoned Screeching Lady. Next is a search for The Wizard of the Old Burial Hill, who, it is said, has been seen darting back and forth between headstones since 1690, calling out to sea captains to safely guide them to port in rough weather.

Visitors can also meander down Auntie Crease’s Lane, if they dare. Auntie was a freed slave who collected wild rose petals and distilled her own rosewater during the time of the American Revolution. Witnesses claim her spirit is so strong, they can still smell rosewater, even in the dead of winter, says McCabe.

Just off the coast of Marblehead lurks the Beast of Baker’s Island, a 10-foot-tall, dripping wet creature that has been seen by a number of people traipsing from one end of the small island to the other searching for his lost soul. Legend has it the Beast is a sea captain who made an eternal pact with the devil in the early 1800s.

The tour continues through Salem, to the Charter Street Cemetery, where the ghost of the Rev. Higginson is still trying to find the grave plot next to his wife, says McCabe. A rich relative of Nathaniel Hawthorne purportedly had the reverend’s body removed around 1795 so the space could be sold to someone else.

McCabe says: “The last time I was out there on a tour, I was in the middle of explaining the graveyard’s history, when all of a sudden the people in the tour-group started pointing up at the tree I was standing under. I looked up to see that the branch directly over my head was bobbing up and down like crazy. It was the only branch moving. There was no wind, and not a single squirrel anywhere around. Now how do you explain a thing like that?”

The next stop is the infamous Joshua Ward house in the center of town, where even McCabe admits he gets scared. Reportedly, the body of George Corwin, the High Sheriff responsible for the deaths of countless innocent people during the heyday of the Salem witch trials, is buried in the cellar.

Floating apparitions, cold spots on the floor and candlesticks melted into odd configurations are just a few of the weird occurrences in what is now a building of empty offices.

“The house was built over another old site in 1784,” says McCabe. “Recently, while showing the house, two ladies on the tour told me they knew there was something not quite right about the place before I even started talking about it. ‘Something on the second floor,’ they told me. They must have-been psychic because most of the haunting activity in that house occurs on the second floor.”

The remainder of the tour includes a visit to the Howard Street Cemetery and Old Salem Jail, where both Harry Houdini and the Boston Strangler stayed.

The second tour, also 3½ hours long, is titled “Colonial and Native American Spirits” and covers otherworldly habitations In Concord, Littleton, Westford and Groton.

This tour includes a visit with the restless spirits of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery; the “Bearman” of Littleton, the Native American half-man, half-bear who guards a sacred burial ground; and the ghosts of the mother and child murdered in 1750 by an angry sea captain at the Old Groton Inn.

Can McCabe deliver the spine-tingling details? Well, let’s just say his storytelling talent comes from his great grandfather, Sean An’Ahig (Jack the Liar or Exaggerator) of St. Brigid’s Well in Ireland. He was a famous County Clare storyteller. Caution: Whichever tour you choose, be sure to bring somebody along who you can cling to.