Gone Ghost

Departed Spirit 

 



Back in 2007 I wrote a piece about a haunted house (above) on the corner of Snell Street in Amherst near the rail trail. It had a creepy appearance and scary looking bushes like something from a Stephen King movie. .

The other day I went by the house for the first time in years and was shocked by what I saw - the menacing bushes had all been stripped away and the house itself stood restored to a gleaming whiteness by its new owner Amherst College.

Here is the front door as it appeared in the house's haunted past. 

Nothing threatening about it now.

Obviously no self-respecting ghost could reside in that house today. Where did the spirit go? Do they have homeless shelters for the undead?

I've noticed some unusual activity underway lately on King Street in Northampton. This is the Hampshire Frame and Art Shop or at least that's what it was before it went out of business and the "T" fell off.

I was intrigued by the fact that weird stuff started appearing in the window, like this William Burroughs book and a suitcase full of oddities.

Then yesterday I was walking past and the door was open. Looking inside I saw this familiar face - Nick from the avant-garde punk band CaVE BEaRs!

It turns out that he and a friend are opening a record store/music space that will be called Feeding Tube Records. It will be opening in September and I predict it will quickly become a Hamp hotspot.

A red image on a Hamp door. 

Dogs and their humans outside the Haymarket Cafe.

 

Tale of the Ludlow Witch

A Ghost Story

 



The first time I heard about the Ludlow Witch was around the campfire at Boy Scout camp. I was never much of a Boy Scout, the organization seemed too religious oriented and militaristic in style for a free spirit like me. But I did like to go camping, so whenever news reached me through the boyhood grapevine (more efficient in its own way than the Associated Press) that the Boy Scouts were preparing for their annual camping trips, I would hurry over to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church and join.

I took absolutely no interest in their merit badges, paper drives or assorted good deeds, and never participated in them. I joined the scouts strictly to go camping, fishing, swimming and to goof off with my buddies far from the dull, hot mean streets of Springfield. When the camping trips ended for the summer, I'd quit the scouts until the next year.

On many nights on those camp-outs we would participate in what may well be the oldest continuous communal activity in human history. I'm talking of course about sitting around a campfire telling stories. Besides being the most ancient, it may also be the most human of activities. An anthropologist once defined human beings as "story-telling animals."

Many of the tales told around the crackling flames were creepy ones. The scary story is believed to be the oldest of all the literary forms. The ancient cave drawings of the Stone Age show stick figures being attacked by monsters. Psychologists have theorized that the scary story persists because it fulfills a deeply essential socialization need, which is the necessity of acquiring courage. Being frightened in the safe environment of an imaginary tale, and learning to handle that abstract fear, is practice for how to handle fearful emotions in real life.

In everyone's life will come moments of physical and psychological danger. As Ayn Rand once said, "Courage is not a mere virtue, it is a purely practical necessity."

Once upon a time, in Eastern Massachusetts during the colonial era, a terrible hysteria broke out in which several innocent people were tortured and killed as witches. One of the accused, a harmless, nature worshipping Pagan who came under suspicion as a non-Christian, escaped the Boston area and resettled in the tiny town of Ludlow in Western Massachusetts. The tolerant citizens of Ludlow left the Pagan woman alone, which was easy to do since she bothered no one and kept to herself. However, one day a small child went missing and could not be located. A panic arose that focused on the superstition of witches stealing children for use in their allegedly unspeakable rituals and recipes for stews.

Panic soon led to hysteria in which a mob marched on the Pagan's home and set it afire. Fleeing the inferno she was chased screaming through the streets, until finally arriving at the area where the bridge now stands connecting Ludlow with Indian Orchard. In a last desperate attempt to escape the bloodthirsty mob, she threw herself into the river. But instead of escaping she hit her head on some rocks and drowned. Her body was never recovered.

The next day the missing child showed up alive, he had simply gotten lost in the woods. The people of Ludlow realized too late that the Pagan woman had been completely innocent all along. But the soul of the Pagan demanded vengeance. If she was driven to her death by false accusations of attacking children, then she would show them through supernatural means what real danger to their young could be! Therefore it is said that forever after she has haunted our Valley, looking for wayward children that she can snatch away to some mysterious realm where they are never seen again, each time causing the community to grieve in guilt over how their false accusations had now come true.

Of course I don't believe that any of this really happened, but I'll admit it's easier to say that now, sitting in my well lighted den surrounded by modern luxuries, than it has been on some nights alone on the Connecticut River. I'd be a liar if I said I haven't occasionally heard things that sounded strange, or thought for a moment that I saw something that was more than just a shadow. But I simply remind myself that logic dictates that it is really nothing. Of course. Really.

There is a great scene from the movie The Shining where the character played by Scatman Cruthers is telling a small boy (who is about to be left in a hotel full of ghosts) what he believes ghosts actually are. Scatman says that they are the traces of things that once happened, sort of like when you burn toast. You may throw the burnt toast in the garbage, and put the toaster away, but the smell will linger in the air as evidence of what happened for a long time afterward. He told the boy that ghosts are like that, leftover traces of what happened.

So who knows?

Hellraiser Howie

Boston media legend Howie Carr was at the Holyoke Mall signing books, as seen here with blogger Bill Dusty. 

I've read Howie's The Brothers Bulger and recommend it highly. In fact there is much about the mentality of the Bulger Brothers that is very similar to the mindset of Valley political machines such as in Springfield, where Howie's guide to political conduct definitely applies:

1) Nothing is on the level
2) Everything is a deal
3) No deal is too small

In Springfield I would've added this rule - the bigger the scoundrel, the higher the honors!

Hamp Today

The Green Bean in downtown Northampton is becoming the essential Sunday morning hotspot for Hamp hipsters to meet to discuss the night before.

I've seen this painter all over downtown Hamp, even on arctic cold days, painting Northampton landmarks.

I'd say he stroked the historic Calvin pretty damn good.
 

henning by dwight

Ghost Hunters in Springfield.

Well, like most of the Valley I watched the episode of Ghost Hunters last night that featured an investigation into whether ghosts are haunting Theodore's in downtown Springfield. Their verdict: The joint is haunted!

However, their evidence was pretty flimsy. Some totally subjective claims by the investigators is what made up most of the so-called "proof" with the exception of a shadow image of a "figure" that really could have been anything. I mean those Ghost Hunters really lay it on thick, with all their pretending to be scared in totally unconvincing ways. At least they could have hired better actors!

But don't let my hard cold reason ruin the fun. The building itself was really the star of the show. It was great to see the long abandoned upper floors, as well as the genuinely creepy downstairs. The special effects also made the building, with clouds speeding by, genuinely look like a place where ghosts might live. The show will no doubt also be great for Theodore's business, with curious tourists sure to start stopping by.

To read my personal opinion on ghosts click here.

The paparazzi are stalking teenage star Miley Cyrus in a desperate effort to get pictures of her with her new boyfriend, underwear model Justin Gaston.

 

According to Gossip Girls, Justin has earned the Cyrus family's full confidence and approval.

The underwear model/singer has almost become part of the “Cyrus Family,” spending most of his nights at Billy Ray’s house (even when Miley’s not there).

According to a source in the know, “Justin goes to church with them, takes Miley’s little sister cycling and claims to be a bible toting teetotaler.”

The insider adds, “Billy Ray apparently is completely taken in by Justin’s squeaky clean image and approves of his little girl’s crush.”

But now some photos have surfaced showing Justin at a Hollywood party going buck wild! Does this look like "a bible toting teetotaler?"

Oh my, such a rude gesture, and what must poor Miley have thought of the blonde?

But then how well behaved can you expect an underwear model to be?

Spooky Amherst House

There's an odd house on the corner of Snell Street in Amherst, near where the rail trail starts (or ends, depending on which way you're going.) The oddness of it didn't occur to me until I'd gone past it several times, in that curious way we sometimes have of not seeing something clearly until we've seen it repeatedly. Then one day it struck me how strange these bushes are.

They are just common bushes of the sort that appear in front of homes everywhere, but look how large the roots are and how they seem to almost recoil from the street, as if frightened of the sidewalk. 

"What an unusual place," I thought, and decided to check out the old house that lay hidden behind those unsightly bushes. There was a blind, badly cracked driveway leading into it, also overgrown with wild plants.

The first impression I had of the eerily abandoned house was that no one had been here for at least a few months. The new phone books typically come out in March, and someone had foolishly thought someone lived there and left one by the backdoor, where the elements had reduced it to a soggy mush. Obviously this is not a place often visited, except by clueless phone book delivery workers.

 



How strange to see this old house, in one of our Valley's most expensive real estate markets, uninhabited, not even for sale and falling into ruin. What is it about this house that keeps people away? There is not even any sign that the homeless come here looking for shelter. The front walk has been completely sealed off by plants that have grown together to form a natural wall as if to say STAY AWAY!

I'm not a superstitious person and I'm skeptical of the existence of ghosts. But there was something about this house that caused me to glance repeatedly at the dark windows. Is that a shadow I saw moving? Is someone inside? Is something there? What mysteries lie behind that dark door?

Perhaps I am merely letting my imagination run away with me. Perhaps not. We grow wise in the ways of science, but there is a realm we do not know. Perhaps we cannot know. I saw nothing supernatural. No apparition appeared to me. I have no ghost story to tell. But I felt something. Not something with characteristics that I can describe. Just something.

A presence.

There was a sign on the door. I approached to read it.

Under normal circumstances, such a sign would be merely a dare to a citizen-journalist like me. Yet somehow I didn't feel too much in an investigative mood. I decided to just obey the sign and leave the premises immediately. Very immediately, walking away at a very quick pace. In fact, when I reached the sidewalk on the other side of those creepy bushes, I realized I was sweating despite there being a cool breeze.

I'm sure there is an interesting story behind that house, but let another tell it. I shall not go there again.

Speaking of weirdness, remember this picture I took last week of odd cloud formations over Northampton?

Well, Amherst College student William Donnell took an even more compelling picture of the strange phenomenon in nearby Southampton.

There is a name that weathermen have for that kind of cloud formation (actually there is a name for every type of cloud formation.) Can anyone tell us what it is?