Category: US – New Hampshire

Abel Blood is one of the many ghosts haunting Hollis, New Hampshire’s “Blood Cemetery” (actually Pine Hill Road Cemetery), near Nashua, NH.

According to legend and first-person stories, Abel Blood is the eerie, solitary figure that people see at the top of the cemetery… but then he vanishes as they approach.

His gravestone is also haunted, and very credible sources describe chilling, visual changes on Blood’s gravestone.

Abel Blood’s history

Abel Blood — possibly Hollis’ most famous ghost — was buried at Pine Hill Road Cemetery in Hollis, New Hampshire, in 1867. His daughter (?) Betsy Blood is buried with him.

Studying his past to find reasons for his ghost to haunt Hollis, the records aren’t as clear as I’d like.

It appears that an Abel Blood had married just seven years before his death, but I haven’t had time to see how many Abel Bloods were in that area, and which records can be attributed to him. Here’s one of them.

And I think this is his daughter’s death record.

But here is part of a New Hampshire probate record from 1867, showing that Abel Blood had no children. So, there must have been more than one Abel Blood in the Hollis area, in that same general era, or Betsy died before him… or this story is more murky than I’d expected.

In history books, there are no references that suggest the occult connections mentioned in local legends.

In fact, Abel Blood’s genealogy and the town’s history suggest that he was a very Christian man and lived a good, law-abiding life.

It’s possible that he haunts the cemetery, and his life story – unraveled – might reveal a reason.

But no matter what the reason, most local ghost hunters agree that Abel Blood haunts the cemetery nicknamed “Blood Cemetery.”

The ghost of Abel Blood

According to local legends, Mr. Blood’s headstone changes after dark. The finger on the stone that points heavenward during the daylight hours, moves.

When Abel Blood’s ghost walks at night, the finger on the stone points towards the ground.

In fact, one of our Hollow Hill investigators led us to this cemetery, to see it in the daylight.

He had been there just once before, late one Halloween night, and he’d seen the famous headstone.

Revisiting that site with me – in daylight – he was shocked. Until that moment, he’d believed that Abel’s finger always pointed downward.

Note: The finger on the headstone was actually chipped off years ago. If you visit the cemetery, the outline of where the finger was — and part of the base — remains. However, this is old vandalism. You can tell by the lichen on the chipped-off area.

A disappointing first visit

I visited the cemetery twice on 11 Oct 1999, taking a few photos for this website, not to capture anomalies.  I took 20 photos during the day and later at dusk, with a Kodak Advantix AF camera, using Fuji Advanced film, 200 ASA.

The photo below was taken at dusk. It has an orb towards the upper left corner of the photo.  The orb is faint, but it’s there.  (Click on the photo to see a larger version.)

I wasn’t using a flash with the camera, so that’s not a reflection from dust or moisture.  (It was a dry evening, anyway.) It’s too round to be an insect.

Here’s my report from 11 Oct 1999:

The photo was taken at 6:30 pm. It was dusk and the sun had just set, behind me, but it was still light enough not to need a flash camera.

The cemetery is surrounded by farmland, currently an almost fully-harvested field of pumpkins. There was nothing in the area to reflect the scant remaining light of the day, or to create a reflection or lens flare.

This photo shows the oldest gravestones in the cemetery, mostly from the late 18th century and early 19th. I saw no orbs in real life, and only took the photos as an afterthought when something “felt odd” among those gravestones.

HOWEVER…

Later visits were far more productive. See these articles:

• An odd misty photograph (10/1999)
• How it felt in the cemetery (10/1999)
• HALLOWEEN 1999
  • Blood Cemetety’s Small Grey Ghost, a true story of the paranormal.
  • Halloween night, a baffling experience
  • November 1st, a possible Otherworldly explanation?
• More eerie events at Blood Cemetery
• Blood Cemetery’s Gothic headstone inscriptions
• Yes, it is silly: “Ghosts tampered with my gas gauge?“

More about Abel Blood’s grave location is at Find-A-Grave.

More information about the town of Hollis is at the official Hollis, NH website.

And I have no idea if the band, Abel Blood, has any connection to the ghost story.

When you first see Blood Cemetery, it may seem like a quaint New England burial site.

Spend a little time there, and you’ll realize it’s downright eerie… even in broad daylight.

Weird things to look for, at Hollis’ Blood Cemetery

When you visit Blood Cemetery (aka Pine Hill Road Cemetery, Hollis, NH), watch for these things.

Are they actually ghostly…? Maybe not, but they certainly fit the term “paranormal.”

For example, watch the trees. They’ll seem to move, even when there is no breeze. Several of us have noticed this during multiple visits.

If you’re there and you’re not sure if you’re seeing something paranormal, glance outside the cemetery. Then compare the trees’ movement at Blood Cemetery with nearby wooded areas.

When I visited, and in broad daylight, the trees were still (not moving) elsewhere, but the trees inside Blood Cemetery were swaying and/or the leaves fluttering vigorously.

Watch for fog that slowly seems to engulf this cemetery and nowhere nearby, yet the cemetery is near the top of a hill. I’ve heard several independent reports of this, including one from a former policeman.

Then there’s the music people hear. Here’s one story:

A Nashua nurse was in her car with friends, and they were listening to the radio. As they approached the cemetery, static interrupted the music, followed by dirge-like organ music. Shortly after they passed the cemetery, the static returned and then their previous music was restored.

There are natural explanations for this, but it’s a common story in the vicinity of haunted cemeteries in the northeast.

Bu, in this case, the nurse is otherwise very level-headed. She’s very skeptical of paranormal reports. That’s why her tale is worth noting.

Several readers have reported sensing something angry in the cemetery. A few others have seen a lone figure standing in the cemetery after dark.

(I’ve seen this myself. By the time I got to the top of the cemetery, he’d vanished. But, with clear sight on every side, I saw no evidence that he’d walked away.)

A not-ghostly warning

This is frustrating for serious ghost hunters: The Hollis police are rumored to play pranks on people near Blood Cemetery at night, to discourage visitors and vandals.

According to one police officer, they cover themselves with ghostly sheets, and hide behind the headstones.  When someone enters the cemetery, the police leap up, shouting, and chase the trespassers out.

Nevertheless, we doubt that anyone’s out there with a fog machine, a wind machine, or broadcasting dirges on the radio.

“Blood Cemetery,” aka Pine Hill Cemetery in Hollis, New Hampshire, is one of New England’s most interesting haunted cemeteries.

You should visit it first during the day, especially late afternoon. Observe everything carefully.

Be prepared to be surprised. Or even terrified.

Despite many years of ghost hunting, I still enjoy visiting Blood Cemetery (aka Pine Hill Cemetery) in Hollis, NH.

It’s an isolated spot with more than its share of ghost stories, and I like it there.

Well, I used to like it there…

Here’s a true ghost story from Blood Cemetery

The evening before Halloween night in 1999, the sunset was magnificent. It was a warm evening, and a fine time for some photos at Blood Cemetery.

Since this ancient New England cemetery is on a hill, its headstones can look magnificent — or eerie — against a colorful sky.

Everything was fine until I was about halfway through my roll of film. (Remember, this was 1999, before digital cameras were reliable, and long before phones included cameras.)

The light was starting to fade, and my attention was drawn to an area just east of the Farley family graves.

Looking through my camera’s viewfinder, I was dismayed to see something grey-ish move between me and one of the headstones. It had very fuzzy edges, and it was the same color as the headstone.

“Oh. Great,” I sighed. “It’s a cat.”

I waited for it to move out of the way so that I could take more photographs.

Then, as I watched, the “cat” vanished into the headstone.

I nearly dropped my camera.

Really. It vanished. It took about half a second for the image to completely disappear.

It went into one of those half-tall headstones at Blood Cemetery. (It was not a child’s marker, as I discovered when I returned on November 1st.)

The grave is near the center of the cemetery. There is no way an animal could leave that graveyard without being seen, even at dusk.

The cemetery isn’t that large, and a wide grassy area surrounds the headstones.

Plus that, the stone that it vanished into is one of the smaller stones in Blood Cemetery. There wasn’t any place for an animal to hide.

(I looked, just in case. I really wanted a reasonable, logical, normal explanation.)

I saw the remains of a faerie ring a few feet away, but that’s all.

Over 15 years later, I still ask myself: Why did I think it was a cat?

Why it wasn’t an actual, living cat

Sure, Blood Cemetery seems to have more than its fair share of cats.

But what I saw would have been a small ghost, but a very large cat. The furry shape was about 2 1/2 feet tall, and I’m not certain how wide.

It was big. It was very fuzzy around the edges, which — from a logical (perhaps skeptical) viewpoint — suggested a massive Angora-type cat that had just been rolling in the dust so his fur was standing up.

• It was too “fluffy” (fuzzy-edged) to be a dog.
• And, it was far too large for any other kind of grey-colored field or domestic animal.

Too late, I realized that I’d seen… a ghost?

I don’t know. Maybe.

What else could it have been?

But I took a few photos anyway, just in case. (They didn’t reveal anything startling.)

Since then, I’ve promised myself that I will never not take a photo, when something unexpected shows up at a cemetery or any haunted site.

But, about 24 hours later, at that same Blood Cemetery location, my Halloween night experience was even stranger.  If it was a ghost, it was a quirky one.

Read about it in the next article:  Ghostly Mischief on Halloween Night