Schoolhouse Cemetery, Nashua, NH 31 October 1999, about 8 p.m.
Fiona’s comments: After my camera refused to work on Halloween night at Blood Cemetery in Hollis, I visited Schoolhouse Cemetery in Nashua, NH, to prove to myself that there was nothing wrong with my camera or the film.
Schoolhouse Cemetery never felt very haunted. I’ve heard no local tales about it. Frankly, it’s on busy Daniel Webster highway, across the street from Bickford’s, with a large apartment complex in back of it.
Generally, I stay out of it to because I’m concerned about the living, not the dead who might be there. The cemetery has no light in it at all. The deeper you go into it, the creepier it gets. But I can’t say that it’s a really “haunted” feeling–just creepy.
On Halloween night, the highway was nearly deserted. I knew I could take photos at the entrance to the cemetery, without risking intrusion, flares, or reflections from apartment or shopping center lights. As you can see, it was very dark that night.
The orb surprised me when I picked up my prints. When I show my “ghost photos” and negatives, this is the one that impresses most professional photographers.
At right is the second photo I’d taken. (It’s my habit to take two photos in a row, as quickly as possible, without moving or even breathing between the pictures.)
As usual, these two photos were taken within seconds of each other from the same location.
The schoolhouse is boarded up. There are many headstones in the cemetery, but only one shows in the photo.
Camera: Olympus AF-1, point-and-shoot
Film type: Kodak Gold ASA 800 color film, 35mm
Negative shows: Same image. No splash of chemicals, no marks on the negative.
Developed and printed by: Shaw’s Supermarket overnight photo service
Our last night in the house, the footsteps returned, louder than ever. It was late in June, and about three o’clock in the morning. I remember hearing the footsteps, pounding up the varnished pine stairs as my family slept. Hard, leather-soled shoes.
For some reason, I thought that I was the only one who heard them.
Then the noise woke up my husband, and he leaped from the bed and turned on the lights. He shouted into the hall, and the steps paused.
My husband returned to bed, but sat up, prepared to go out to see who it was if the noise resumed.
It did. The footsteps suddenly continued, like someone was now running up the final few steps to the second floor where we slept.
Then the noise stopped, as if the person waited one or two steps from the top. My husband and I both went out to the stairway, turned on the lights, and saw nothing unusual. After checking the locks on the front and back doors, we left the lights on and nervously returned to bed.
Adrenaline pumping, I checked the stairs and hallway many times that night, but it remained silent. Something felt malicious to me, but that was probably my imagination after too little sleep, and the accumulated stress.
We moved out the next day. (My now ex-husband’s independent summary of the footsteps that night, are on the …Other notes page.)
THE FIRE WARNING WAS REAL
The night after we moved out, a huge Victorian house in back of ours burned to the ground. The distance between that house and ours was about 100 yards, at the most.
Our house would have been filled with smoke. The fire would have been seen from the window where — in my dreams — I’d seen fire reflected.
We were miles away, sleeping peacefully under the stars on the first night of a well-deserved camping vacation. When I saw the newspaper the next day, I was both stunned and relieved.
Someone else lives in “our” house now. It’s been fixed up, and the neighborhood may be improving after all. Perhaps we made a poor financial decision, but I don’t regret leaving that house after all we witnessed there.
1999 UPDATE
I took photos of the house on Sunday morning, Oct. 17th, but I felt as if someone was watching me from the house. Perhaps someone was; it’s certainly odd for a woman to stand in front of your house with two cameras, taking pictures. Nevertheless, when I picked up the prints, something about one photo nagged at me. It didn’t look right. One of the windows had a reflection that didn’t seem right to me.
Below, I scanned the section exactly as it appeared in the print, and an enlargement of it on the right. To me, it’s the man’s face, looking to the right, with an indented scar beneath his right cheekbone. He’s wearing round, dark sunglasses from either the 19th century or the hippie era. He has long-ish, light colored hair, and he’s slightly balding at the top.
From a 19th-century Portsmouth city directory, I know that the first inhabitants of the house were probably a man from England, his brother, and his son. All of them worked with leather, making shoes at a local factory, I think.
He’s the man in brown that I’d seen in the house. I’m certain of it.
But, maybe I’m just jumping at shadows, and perhaps you see something different in the image… even just the reflection of the lilac bush in front of it.
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.]
This article is from June 2002, and it was a simple update about what was happening at Gilson Road Cemetery, as the surrounding landscape changed and a subdivision moved in.
The old Gilson Road Cemetery sign.
We visited Gilson Road Cemetery in June 2002, to check the cemetery and update the rest of the team.
This was when Tanglewood Estates was just starting to move in, across the street from Gilson Road Cemetery.
Three of us visited the cemetery at dusk. The Gilson Road Cemetery sign had been cut off with a saw. A new iron gate was on the uprights at the entrance.
New gate at Gilson Road Cemetery, already vandalized.
What else has changed:
Cold spot observed slightly above Joseph Gilson stone, with compass anomalies moving from the headstone towards the NW (to the next headstone).
More slightly visible anomalies. We’d worried that the subdivision was going to drive away the ghostly anomalies. So far, it hasn’t.
The “movie” was playing again, with some changes, if you’re psychic. (See our pages about Gilson Road Cemetery – November 1999 for more about the battle, or “the movie” as we later called it.)
Woodland animals were chattering and noisy in the surrounding area. We didn’t hear them that much before the subdivision moved in. I got the idea that they weren’t happy about being displaced from their previous homes and hunting grounds.
Don’t take my word for it: See the October 2000 (Halloween week) article in the Nashua Telegraph for this phenomenon, as reported by a skeptic.
Tanglewood Estates, a shiny new subdivision built across the street from Gilson Rd. cemetery.
We recommend arriving shortly after sunset, and using a fairly slow film (200 ISO) without a flash. Linger awhile and you may photograph some orbs as well!
To capture the best orbs in photographs, point your camera towards the back left corner of the cemetery (if you’re standing at the gate, looking in), or in the vicinity of Helen & Rufus Lawrence’s headstones.
Recently, I researched additional ghost stories from Colby-Sawyer College, New London, and vicinity. Most of these stories were reported to me by people who actually encountered the ghosts. In other words, these aren’t second-hand tales.
This is not a complete list. If you have stories to add, please leave a comment below this post.
Additional ghosts at Colby-Sawyer College
Austin Hall – Something haunts the third floor at Austin, according to reports. So far, we have no additional details.
Best Hall – Best has at least one and perhaps two ghosts.
One is a young woman. She appears to be older than a student, and dressed in a grey, diaphanous gown, perhaps from the Victorian era. Her sleeves and skirt seem to billow slightly, as if there’s a breeze, even when all of the doors and windows are closed and no air is stirring.
She seems to float through the corridors, and then turn to look at the viewer, smile slightly, and fade until she’s invisible. The entire manifestation takes just a few seconds.
According to one former CSC student, the ghost’s name is Mara or Maura. A second ghost–or perhaps the same one, manifesting differently–creates breezes when no doors or windows are open. Some have reported this as a wind that seems to hum slightly through the hallways.
Burpee Hall – A ghost of a field hockey player roams the halls, especially upstairs. She’s usually seen as just a shadow, and when you take a second look, all you see are her lower legs, but even they fade quickly.
She’s more often heard than seen.
Colby Hall – Colby is reported to have a phantom cat. Sometimes you’ll see it, but often you’ll only hear it meow a few times.
Don’t bother trying to chase it; it will disappear around a corner, or seem to walk right through a wall or closed door. I’ve heard that demonologist John Zaffis confirmed this spectre, but I haven’t checked with him to be certain.
Colgate Hall – In addition to my earlier report, I’ve heard that Governor Anthony Colby is one figure seen gazing over the campus from Colgate’s tower. He has grey hair and a stern look, like a sea captain.1 He’s usually translucent, and a very faint image, and then he vanishes.
McKean Hall – There are stories about the ghost of Gilbert Ross, supposedly an 18th-century witch who was burned at the stake on the land where McKean is now.
Gilbert Ross is rumored to look similar to Snape, as played by Alan Rickman, in the Harry Potter movies. He’s pale and dressed in black, and you’ll see him out of the corner of your eye, or reflected in a window pane.
Like most ghosts, when you turn to look straight at him, he’s gone.
Our research suggests that no witches were burned at the stake in America. Even during the Salem Witch Trials, all of the victims were hung, pressed, or died in prison. Mr. Ross may have been hung on the McKean site, but he probably wasn’t burned at the stake.2
Page Hall – Page has almost always had a reputation for “something” in the basement. It’s not clear what that is. There are also tales of the residual energy of a student from the late 1960s, who used to walk through the second floor corridors, wearing only a loosely-draped noose and a heavy dose of Jean Nate cologne. She wasn’t a suicide, just an eccentric student.
The Quad – This tale is reported about the Quad, as well as the fields in back of Colby-Sawyer College.
According to legend, you can still hear the marching steps of students on foggy mornings, especially very early in the morning.
Around World War I, students practiced daily military drills immediately after breakfast. Some later went to war and didn’t return… except as ghosts.
Sawyer Fine Arts Center – In addition to a typical theater ghost that lingers at the back of the auditorium, a former teacher may haunt the building. He used to tap nervously on the wall or desk when he talked, and the rhythmic sound of his tapping fingers can be heard softly, especially near his old office.
Shepard Hall – Like Page Hall, Shepard has reports of “something” uncomfortable in the basement.
The old Colby Academy building is now the property of New London, New Hampshire, after the college donated it for use as the Town Office Building. However, it was rumored to be haunted by something very dark when it was used as temporary housing for professors who were snowed in at the college, overnight.
When the building was donated to the town, important papers were transferred to the Colby-Sawyer Library. This may be why the college library is haunted. Stories include the spirit of a boy in a loft area, and a ghost that rearranges history books overnight. (Yes, just the history books. It’s a unique and quirky story.)
At right is the second photo I’d taken. (It’s my habit to take two photos in a row, as quickly as possible, without moving or even breathing between the pictures.)
Wildflowers in front of 