Category: US – New Hampshire

New Hampshire’s ghosts are among our specialties at Hollow Hill, but this is one ghost story that we removed from our website for several years. Now, we’ve decided to reveal everything that we know about the ghosts — and possibly demons — at Wilton’s beautiful Vale End Cemetery.

The ‘Blue Lady’ is one of Vale End’s most famous ghosts. We’ve never seen her, but we’ve sensed her many times. Her headstone, shown in the photo at the top of this article, is broken but still majestic. It bears her maiden name — Mary Ritter — as well as the married name of her widower’s second wife, Mary Spaulding. (The second Mary Spaulding was Mrs. Mary Flynn Colburn before her marriage to Isaac Spaulding.)

Mary Ritter Spaulding was the mother of seven children between her April 1795 marriage, and her April 1808 death. Her husband, Isaac Spaulding, was a tanner and a descendant of an early Jamestown settler.

According to folklore, Mary Ritter Spaulding was a good, church-going woman who healed with herbs and prayer. No one is certain why she haunts Vale End Cemetery (and possibly Langdell House, where she may have lived), but her appearance is dramatic.

Many Wilton, NH, residents have seen Mary Ritter Spaulding as ‘the Blue Lady’ over her grave. She appears on warm, foggy nights, especially in the spring and fall, especially around Halloween.

According to one witness, she manifests as a bright, pale blue column of light, similar to a transporter beam in the TV show, Star Trek.

The column of light is about three feet wide, and starts a foot or two over her grave. It is about six feet tall. It seems to vibrate with energy.

(However, when I asked the witness whether the light vanished abruptly or faded away, he looked at me with amusement and replied, “I don’t know. We were having an egg fight.”)

We’ve checked nearby roads, houses, and outbuildings, and there is no logical reason for this column of light to appear at all, much less as often as reported.

Real ghosts’ stories – Notes from the other side

Mary Ritter Spaulding remembers her life as a series of pregnancies, during which she was uneasy about something that she never defined. When her last child was born, it was a turning point for her. However, while genealogical records show Lyman (born 1806) as her youngest child, she insists that James was her last.

We have found no records of a son named James, and perhaps that has something to do with her haunting.

Since her death, there has been something — perhaps a lie — that she has not resolved. I’m not sure if it was her own deceit, or a lie that someone told to (or about) her. She seems to be more troubled than angry or upset.

However, Mary Ritter Spaulding is not alone at Vale End Cemetery, and she may remain there to defend her family — or perhaps the living — from less pleasant spirits at Vale End and nearby Wilton, NH.

One more note about the grave of ‘the Blue Lady’ is important to note: From time to time, people perform Vodun-style rituals at her headstone. Near it, you may see shiny coins or other evidence of this. Please do not remove anything from her grave; that would be disrespectful and… well, it’s inviting trouble.

Next, real-life ghost encounters, and a list of the other spirits at Vale End Cemetery: More ghosts at NH’s Vale End Cemetery.

Haunted Vale End Cemetery sits, somewhat troubled, at the top of a hill in Wilton, New Hampshire. (For a map to visit Vale End, see this link.) The location is deceptively quiet. Few people visit this historic cemetery, often out of fear.

Wilton seems like a charming old New England town. Visitors may not realize that Wilton’s history has been scarred with tragedy from its earliest days.

The mysterious, repeating meetinghouse disasters

Charles E. Clark’s book, The Meetinghouse Tragedy, describes the 1773 tragedy when, during construction, the roof beam of Wilton’s new meetinghouse — and 53 workers — fell three stories in a tangle of bodies and tons of construction materials.

According to folklore, the meetinghouse was rebuilt, but collapsed again, perhaps two more times. Each time, more people died.

In one version of the story, a new meetinghouse was constructed, but fire broke out during a dance in the hall, trapping many people within its flame-engulfed walls.

Whether to avoid bad luck or for more ‘sensible’ reasons, the townspeople chose a new spot for their next meetinghouse, and moved the middle of town to where Wilton center is today.

Wilton’s quartz foundation may be the source of many hauntings. Quartz can be a magnet for paranormal forces. We’ve had a steady stream of reports from Wilton about haunted basements (hewn out of the quartz underneath each house) and possible ghost ‘portals’ throughout the town.

We know that there are many ghosts at Vale End Cemetery, and some entities that aren’t ghosts and were never human.

Vandalism — including the theft of headstones and markers such as the lovely Mary Magdalene statue shown at right — have compounded the disturbing psychic energy at Vale End.

Ghosts at Vale End Cemetery

In addition to The Blue Lady that haunts Vale End Cemetery in Wilton, NH, there are several other known ghosts.  The following energies have been reported by multiple readers.

A Native American ghost — perhaps several of them — lingers around the northeast side of the cemetery. When you’re in the middle of the cemetery with your back to the entrance, look to the far left wall. You’ll see a wide opening where maintenance trucks can come and go. If you walk just outside the wall, at that path, you’ll start to sense some slightly territorial spirits. There are also some who are simply curious about visitors.

A little boy, perhaps one who’d been abused, haunts the very back of the cemetery where the ground begins to slope. He’s timid and is looking for reassurances. He’s the ghost most likely to ‘cross over’ if the right person can reach him.

The ghost of a military man and perhaps his daughter have been sensed in many parts of the cemetery. They seem fairly nice most of the time, and appear to be ‘just visiting’ their own graves.

Spirits just outside the cemetery walls are represented by gravestones several feet in back of Mary Ritter’s headstone. These graves are generally outside the walls because the deceased could not be buried in hallowed ground. They may have been accused of a serious crime such as murder, or they may have committed suicide.

Vale End features a surprising number of these outside-the-walls graves, and we suspect that many of them are haunted by the ostracized people buried there.

I will not go there again for any reason.  Whatever else is there… it’s not a ghost.

Real ghosts’ stories – Notes from the other side

One of the ghosts is a young man from Colonial times. He was embarrassed by his friends, and felt that he could never recover from it. The shame was too much, though he accepts that he brought the charges — and some ridicule — upon himself. He talks about giving up too soon. I believe that he committed suicide, or at least deliberately put himself in harm’s way. He did his best to stage it so it would look like an accident. He was genuinely remorseful, and didn’t want his family to suffer further embarrassment because of him.

However, there’s also a bitter edge to his grief, and he wanted his accusers to know that they caused his death. (His logic seems a bit murky in this area. He wants his death to look like an accident to most people, but he wants his former friends and acquaintances to feel guilty for embarrassing him. He wants them to wonder, for the rest of their lives, if they caused his death.)

Until he is able to accept that there were — and still can be — good things in his existence, and even true friends, he is not likely to cross over. When this reading was completed, he was far from being able to move forward. If his grave is outside the stone wall, he may be upset that his death wasn’t determined as ‘accidental.’

Demons…? At Vale End Cemetery…?

I used to laugh at this idea.

In November 1999, our research focused on haunted Gilson Road Cemetery.

I wrote the following report in 2000:

One night when our team was at Gilson Road Cemetery for an investigation, one of our photographers – Noreen, my closest personal friend – brought her teenaged daughter, Alice, with her.

(Note: Names have been changed for privacy.)

We had a mixed group that night, including believers and skeptics, new researchers and experienced ghost hunters. A few teens were with us.

The investigation went fairly well, with many manifestations and psychic experiences. It wasn’t especially scary. However, some people became frightened, including my friend’s daughter.

A side trip to ‘safe’ Vale End Cemetery

On their way home, Noreen and Alice stopped at Vale End Cemetery in Wilton, NH. According to Noreen, her plan was to take Alice to a comfortable, familiar cemetery near their home, so she’d feel better about the evening. Besides, Noreen wanted more photos.

They parked the car near the middle of the cemetery, as most of us do when we’re at Vale End. (Remember, this was 1999. From what I’ve heard, the parking area has been moved — or perhaps filled-in, for graves — in the past 10+ years.  I won’t be returning there to check it out.)

And, they strolled towards The Blue Lady‘s headstone. (That’s it, on the right.)

Noreen mentioned being near an attorney’s headstone (identified by the ‘Esq.’ notation on the marker), when something dark seemed to come up out of the ground. She couldn’t tell what it was.

Alice ran in terror back to the car. As Noreen described the scene, she said that something screamed through Alice.

They drove away in such haste, a branch took their outside mirror right off the car.

Some time later that night, Alice called me at home. Fortunately, I was still awake.

She was terrified, and asked if anything follows people home from cemeteries.

I assured her that no, nothing follows you home. If ghosts could leave where they were, they probably wouldn’t be haunting.

A victim of haunted Vale End?

Five days later, Noreen – Hollow Hill’s lead photographer – was found dead as she sat in her car in a busy parking lot in Wilton. Her death must have been sudden, or she’d have hit the horn on the car to get attention. Noreen was the epitome of common sense.  She was also a very physically fit woman, and younger than me.

The hospital declared it a heart attack, and I thought nothing more about the odd circumstances. Mostly, I missed my good friend.

Looking back, if I could have prevented them from visiting Vale End that night… I would have.  And, I wouldn’t have treated Alice’s concerns so lightly.

However, for several months after my friend Noreen’s death, I refused to believe that tragedy had anything to do with ghost hunting.

A terrifying ghost vigil

The following spring, some of us began keeping vigil at Vale End Cemetery, hoping to see the Blue Lady.

One night, four of us were at the cemetery, chatting. Nothing dramatic was going on, although I’d measured some significant EMF levels near the large evergreen just north of the Blue Lady grave.

We were about to call it a night as darkness fell, when I decided to stroll over to the Blue Lady’s headstone for some last-minute photos… just in case.

I was feet away from the attorney’s stone that Noreen had mentioned, when I spotted what I’ve since called ‘a little Grover guy’ about two or three feet from me. (Today, I might call him a little Elmo guy.)

He was short, between two and three feet tall. He looked like he was covered with fur, and disproportionately skinny like Grover.

I paused, startled, but decided to keep walking. After all, if the Grover guy – who was a vivid shade of red* – hadn’t bothered me yet, he probably wouldn’t. And, the figure seemed more amusing than anything to inspire fear.

Then, I walked into something like a force field from Star Trek.  It felt as if I’d hit a glass wall, but there wasn’t anything there.

My story continues at Fear at Vale End Cemetery.

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*People have asked why I don’t describe him as “Elmo.” Well, Elmo wasn’t a popular Sesame Street character at that point. Also, Elmo doesn’t have the same distinctively long, skinny arms that Grover has. So, I describe the figure as a “red Grover guy.”