Our friend Annie brought us this picture, taken by a friend of hers. Annie wanted us to see the figure in the window.
Right away, I saw the small – perhaps winged – figure in the left lower corner of the window. She has wavy hair, and she’s looking across the landscape, perhaps slightly down.
Nice, but… Who knows what these things really are? The figure isn’t distinctive enough to be significant, but it’s a charming photo anyway.
Then I enlarged just that portion of the window.
This is still reading into what may be simple reflections, but look at the right side of the photo. It looks like an enormous face of a cat. There’s something like a huge cat’s eye in the middle of the lower curtain area.
I’m not saying that this is the image of a ghostly girl trapped in an abandoned New Hampshire house, held captive by something with a wicked gleam in its eye.
However, it’s one possible explanation. It’s just not the happiest one, and I don’t think that’s the real story.
I’m sensing loneliness but not terror or even significant fear, but I could be wrong.
No matter what else this is, it’s an intriguing image.
There were a few more incidents of things casually flying through the kitchen. The faucets turned themselves on more frequently, and with more force. Other odd little things happened, but nothing particularly destructive or frightening. In fact, many of these things struck us funny.
One of the funniest “ghostly” events was when the paper cups would topple in the kitchen. It almost always happened when my oldest daughter was in the kitchen. She did the dishes every afternoon at about three o’clock.
With three children, we have always used paper cups for beverages. It reduces the number of dishes to wash, and the cups were safer for the children when they were small; my youngest liked to chew on the edge of whatever held his beverage. Paper was a vastly better choice than glass. As the children got older, we simply continued to use paper cups for convenience.
Paper cups come in two stacks of 40-50 per plastic-wrapped package. They stand on a level counter easily, and our kitchen counter was level; we’d checked it.
However, when my oldest daughter was in the kitchen, and usually when she was washing dishes, the cups would topple repeatedly. One of us would straighten them back up, make certain that the cups were stable, and stand back. While we watched, the stacks would begin to sag and then fall over, as if someone had accidentally leaned against them.
This didn’t happen just once or twice, but dozens of times. We finally gave up, and learned to leave them sprawled across the counter the first time this happened, each afternoon. Later, we’d prop the cups back up again when my daughter was about to leave the kitchen. Then they would stay in place until the next time she visited the room.
Although the poltergeist incidents ranged from funny to annoying, the bigger problem was the general sense of discomfort we felt in the house. We tried painting the front hall a warm, cheerful yellow with crisp white trim. I displayed quaint country quilts on the walls, and later tried sunny landscape paintings. I bought country-style bleached pine furniture. We read about feng shui and tried a variety of “remedies,” and though they made the house look better, they didn’t solve the problem.
The house still wasn’t cozy and home-like, although we’d been there over six months. Still, the house seemed like an irresistible real estate opportunity, so we stayed. But I was anxious about the fire premonitions, and kept making trips to the storage place with boxes of our belongings, ignoring the illogic and unnecessary expense of it.
More and more, I had the impression that the woman in white was kindly urging us to leave the house, while the man in brown was ordering us out in a sinister manner. I have no idea why I got this impression. The woman seemed to be trying to leave through the kitchen door. The man always seemed to pause abruptly at the door instead of trying to exit. I can’t honestly say that I ever connected their focus on the door, with the idea of leaving the house, but in retrospect it seems obvious.
Nevertheless, I rarely saw the man in brown, and he visually appeared fewer than five times during our year in that house.
Then the neighborhood took a turn for the worse. About three nights each week, I’d answer the door to the police, who were searching for reported criminals. During the day, the police were often on our street, dealing with malicious mischief. Tagging — words I didn’t want my children to see — appeared on walls a few blocks from our house.
My husband and I decided that the house might not be a smart investment, after all.
Then, one night, our next-door neighbors’ truck had been smashed with what looked like a baseball bat. They gave notice to their landlord at the same time we told our house’s owner that we would not be staying.
We prepared to move. It wasn’t much work. Many of our belongings were already in storage on the other side of town.
Author’s comment: My ex-husband wrote this before reading my notes about what happened.
“One night, at about 3AM I clearly heard someone coming up the stairs to the bedrooms. We lived in one of those old Cape Cod type houses, built around the turn of the century. The stairs had no carpet on them and the hallway was quite bare with excellent acoustics. I called out, ‘Hello?’ wondering if it was a burglar or other intruder.
“We had only lived in the house for less than a year. The previous owner had myriad tenants who rented rooms. There was a distinct possibility that one of these ex-tenants came back from a night of drinking or drugs and had mistaken our home for theirs.
“I could tell that the person on the stairs had stopped right at the top step or the one right below it. I turned on my light, got out of bed, and looked at the top of the stairs and no one was there.
“There was no possibility of someone running down the stairs before I got there. There was no place to hide. There was no possibility of there being someone making the noise outside of the house. The footfalls were definitely on the stairs. I remember hearing that slight crunch of that stuff between your shoes and the treads of the stairs. Someone had definitely been walking up the stairs. But no one was there.”
Is this a real haunted house? Those who lived there in the early 1990s would say that it is. We have tried to conceal the actual location of this private home and ask those who recognize it not to bother its current residents. They have enough problems, if the house is still haunted.
[2016 update: The current residents say that they’re not troubled by any ghosts at the house. But, if a ghost did show up, they’d be fine with any benign spirit.]
Hotel photo modified from a picture by Chip Griffin.
On the northeast side of Portsmouth, at New Castle, a grand Victorian hotel overlooks sailboats, fishing boats and yachts.
For generations, the Wentworth Hotel, also called Wentworth-by-the-Sea, or “Hotel Wentworth,” was a summer destination for wealthy families.
Built in 1874, this hotel was synonymous with ‘opulence’ through the 1960s. However, times changed and – by the late 1970s – the next generation showed less interest in their parents’ vacation choices.
As a guest during the waning days of the Wentworth’s popularity, I encountered some of the hotel’s ghosts.
An Encounter with a Wentworth Ghost
At that point, the fourth floor was dusty and abandoned.
Decades earlier, it had housed servants. Usually, they were a mix of English and Irish immigrants. They’d arrived with affluent families staying at the hotel.
But, by the late 1960s, the fourth floor was strictly off-limits to small children… which was exactly why I went there.
I’d sneak off when my parents were busy with golf lessons, formal afternoon tea, or while they were swimming laps at one of the hotel’s pools.
My first trip to the fourth floor wasn’t an idle visit. I’d seen a woman in a long dark dress, and a white apron and cap, dash up a narrow staircase from the third to the fourth floor.
After waiting until she was near the top of the dusty stairs, I followed her.
But, at the top of the stairs, she’d vanished.
I thought she’d slipped into one of the tiny servants’ rooms on that floor, but I couldn’t find her anywhere. I roamed from one room to the next, noting torn floral wallpaper, rickety wooden chairs and sagging cots.
Eventually, I realized that the only footprints in the dusty hallway were mine.
That was the first of many encounters with ghosts on the fourth floor and the turrets of the Wentworth Hotel.
Every summer, I explored the “off limits” areas of the hotel. Now and then, I’d see an odd flickering light or shadow. Sometimes, I’d see translucent apparitions, and follow them. But – always – they’d vanish.
Those ghostly encounters are among the reasons I developed a lifelong fascination with ghosts and haunted places.
A Return to the Wentworth Hotel
In February 2008, I returned to the Wentworth. I was taking pictures and double-checking my stories for Weird Encounters, the sequel to the book, Weird Hauntings. (As I did in Weird Hauntings, I’ve described some of my favorite first-person tales of real ghosts.)
Entering the front door of the Wentworth hotel was like returning home. It took me a minute to get my bearings. The hotel has been remodeled at least once since I was a guest.
But, because I’d spent so many childhood summers at the Wentworth, I had no trouble finding my way back to the fourth floor and its cozy rooms.
Today, they’re not dusty little rooms any more. The Wentworth is a Marriott hotel, so the fourth floor is as opulent as the rest of the resort.
Still Haunted… but only by the very best ghosts, of course
On the fourth floor, I could feel that familiar, homely ‘ghost feeling’, especially at the staircase landings near the hallway ends.
Twice, I saw figures appear and vanish, but perhaps that’s because I expected them. One was a man dressed in black tie formal attire… or he may have been a butler or valet.
The other figure seemed female, but I didn’t see more than a filmy outline that disappeared in a split second.
It may have been coincidence that the door to one of the most haunted rooms was unlocked and unoccupied during my visit.
To me, that suite of rooms feels happily haunted, perhaps by a man of the sea.
He’s a loner. He won’t bother anyone who doesn’t welcome his presence.
I had the idea that he was pleased that I remembered him, and left the door open.
I didn’t see anything, but I smelled the faint aroma of good pipe tobacco.
I said that I was glad to see him. But, of course, I didn’t actually see anything unusual. It just seemed the polite thing to say.
After that, I left… with a smile. The Wentworth is still a sort of “second home” for me, and my memories are happy ones.
In the future, I’ll return to the Wentworth. On this short tour, I was able to confirm that the ghosts are still there. There’s something very comforting about that.
Late yesterday (12 June 2008), I returned to Gilson Road Cemetery in Nashua, NH. Our group’s ghost hunting results were surprising. I’ll publish photos and more details, later, but here’s a summary of what we found:
We tried several kinds of dowsing rods to see what they indicated. The “hot spots” were somewhat predictable.
The Fisk graves – the oldest headstones in the cemetery – produced strong pulls on the dowsing rods. They’re the tall stones immediately after the gate, and directly in front of you. I’ve seen EMF spikes there in the past, though I can’t say that they “feel” especially haunted, most of the time.
(Note that the small Fisk gravestone is the only one in the cemetery with a death’s head on it.)
Joseph Gilson’s headstone – a low, white stone near the front center of the cemetery – is where research groups and I have noted many anomalies including paranormal cold spots. It was active last night.
Slightly northwest of the Searles’ graves (near the pink orb note on the map linked above), we found some of the most intense and unexplained activity. That’s the same area where we first confirmed that hiking compasses can work as EMF detectors.
By contrast, we noted little energy at Walter Gilson’s stone and the back left corner of the cemetery, where so many have had spectral encounters.
With two researchers using dowsing rods independently, we were able to confirm activity in several other spots around the cemetery. Most of those locations were not marked graves.
If you’re ghost hunting at Gilson, check in front of the largest tree at the back of the cemetery. (That tree is inside the walls.) Also do readings at the boulder at the back right (SE) corner of the cemetery.
The woods behind the cemetery appear to be as active as ever. If you’re looking for a full, ghostly apparition, Gilson cemetery may be one of your best chances of seeing one. The figures generally look solid and real… until they vanish into thin air.
In fact, Gilson cemetery raises so many questions about hauntings, and it is such a reliable site, I recommend it for beginners who need research experience… if you have nerves of steel, that is.
Many psychics describe Gilson as one of the most haunted places they’ve ever visited. In addition to very obvious manifestations, the more chilling aspects of Gilson are what you sense and can’t easily explain.
But, even if you aren’t especially psychic, you may be in for a scare at Gilson.
In the past month, people have reported hearing voices so loud at Gilson cemetery, they sounded as if the person was right next to them… except that no one appeared to be there.
Several people have seen the ghostly, hooded figure that chases people out of the cemetery.
And, as usual, electrical circuitry can fail… but usually just inside the walls of the cemetery. This includes cameras that seem to jam, digital voice recorders that stop working or record unearthly sounds, and cell phones that lose signal.
Over the past few years, I’ve also received hundreds of reports about new and freshly charged batteries losing their power completely. (In groups I’ve accompanied to the site, I’ve seen that several times, ourselves.)
Even talking about Gilson can be… interesting. My software usually works smoothly, but it took six tries to publishing this article. The server simply stopped. And, even when the article finally appeared, it was missing an earlier note about the uploading difficulty. It took two more tries to add this note to our post.
Gilson Road Cemetery is still one of my favorite haunted locations.
In the summer, if you visit Gilson cemetery shortly before dusk, wear bug spray. In the warm weather, the mosquitoes are aggressive as night approaches.
Portsmouth house, Portsmouth, NH October 1999, about 11 a.m.
This photo was taken outside a Portsmouth private residence. While living in that house, I saw two ghosts and experienced considerable poltergeist phenomena. I took several photos of the house in late October 1999, to illustrate my pages about this very haunted house.
When I had this film printed and examined the photos, I kept returning to the photo shown above. Something about it didn’t seem “right.” My attention was drawn to what seemed to be window reflections of the old lilac bush in front of the house.
The following day, I decided to enhance the image with my computer, simply making it larger so I could determine what was bothering me about the picture. That enlargement appears below:
Either this photo looks like a man looking to the right, with longish hair and 19th-century dark sunglasses, or it looks like a reflection of lilac leaves. Nobody seems undecided about this photo!
If you’d seen the male ghost in that house, you’d recognize the window reflection right away: That’s our ghost. He has a broken-looking nose, a scar under his right cheekbone, and his hair is thinning on top.
My sketch from memory, and from the photo.
In spectral appearance, he was about 5’5″ tall and stocky. He looked like a hastily-groomed, slightly British version of Buffalo Bill… sort of.
Among people I know in modern times, our ghost reminded me of folk singer Jaime Brockett.
When our ghost wasn’t wearing sunglasses, he had average no-particular-color eyes, somewhat tanned skin, and slightly sun-bleached brown hair. He favored brown clothing, usually wore a suit, rarely buttoned his jacket, and he always seemed in a hurry to go nowhere. When I took this photo, I had the sense that someone was at the window, but I didn’t notice the man’s face.
It seemed reasonable that the current residents of the house might have been peering out at the strange woman taking photos of their house. I don’t put any significance on my discomfort at the time.
To me, that suite of rooms feels happily haunted, perhaps by a man of the sea.
Late yesterday (12 June 2008), I returned to Gilson Road Cemetery in Nashua, NH. Our group’s ghost hunting results were surprising. I’ll publish photos and more details, later, but here’s a summary of what we found:
