Over winter break, I spent a few hours cozied up on the couch reading, guess what, America’s Most Haunted! It happens to be the second volume of the encyclopedic series; this one, a record of the favorite haunts of the spirits of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
It felt like a collection of short stories. Each chapter holds several subchapters and takes you to famous buildings, popular landmarks, historical sites and even some lesser-known happy, or far from happy, places of the departed. This passed-down lore, neatly organized by place, took me from Salem, Boston and Nantucket in Massachusetts to Newport, Providence, and Fall River in Rhode Island. It also transported me through some significant periods in American history: Quakerism, Puritanism, Witch Trials, and so on.
America’s Most Haunted
Volume II of America’s Most Haunted features homes and hotels, State Houses and City Halls, libraries, an artist’s studio, and execution sites. Imagine a late Mayor supervising work at a city Hall; a worker who was said to have passed on, lingering around the windmill that was once his workplace, or a figure that keeps falling down a multistory building, replaying the event where a guest jumped to his death during a historic stock market crash. Picture writer Herman Melville sitting on a rocking chair by a fire in a mansion on the island of Nantucket, or novelist HP Lovecraft haunting the house that was featured in his book ‘The Shunned House,’ or even Edgar Allan Poe making his rounds in a library in Rhode Island. You can meet them all in this edition of America’s Most Haunted, as the book goes on to narrate their backstories.
These pieces come together like a collection of short stories, each chapter ending with experiences people have had or continue to have in these places that harbor the local spirit(s). It speaks of people feeling a strange energy around them, of smells emanating from certain buildings and rooms, sometimes it’s that of smoke or burning flesh, and one place even seems to carry the scent of apples (the building sits on a site that was once an apple orchard belonging to a lady who was executed for practising witchcraft).
In America’s Most Haunted are accounts of scaring ghosts, caring ghosts, staring ghosts, and even mischievous ghosts that tousle your hair and tug at your toes. Then there are the orbs that float around homes, apparitions in period clothing, and ones that make people feel like they are being choked. Visitors at these sites report hearing things like rattling silverware, phantom footsteps, laughter and even a drowning boy’s cry for help by a River.
There’s also a whole section of the book dedicated to the Lizzie Borden House in Fall River, a home said to rank among the topmost haunted homes in the United States. This home, which is now a bed and breakfast, is believed to still be housing the most famous occupants of the address —The Bordens. Mr Borden and the second Mrs Borden, two Borden sisters, one who might even have had a hand in the double murders that happened within its walls, continue to make their presence felt, say guests who choose to stay there.
Read this edition or visit the Borden residence, and you will see that there’s a whole lot more history and mystery attached to this building. Even as it runs as a B&B, the house still holds some of the original hardware, some memorabilia and even artefacts from the murder case, says the book.
Who would think I’d actually say that I enjoyed reading the macabre tales behind eerie spots in the New England area?! Well, I’m going to get started with Volume III now!
If you’d like to spend one of these days curled up on the sofa with a coffee in one hand and one of the books from America’s Most Haunted, find a volume you’d be interested in here — Most Haunted Book Series. And if you’d actually like to shake off the winter blues by going on a jaunt to one of these places that promise a spine-tingling experience, look up a tour on US Ghost Adventures.
You might also want to check out:
Winchester Mystery House* in San Jose, CA
*(If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you can visit this haunted mansion with US Ghost Adventures.)
