Ocean-Born Mary.........
Here be told a classic ghost
tale of Old New England...it happened even before the Brits and the
Patriots had their spat, back in the golden age of pirates!
There's a place in Ireland
called Londonberry, and the year is 1720....the sailing vessel "Wolf"
departs from port on its way to
the New World. These Irish immigrants were looking forward to
reuniting with their former friends and family in Londonberry, New
Hampshire.
Now,
this was in the hey-day of pirating on these seas and fate would have
it that the "Wolf"
was overtaken and boarded by Spanish pirates as it came near to the
New Hampshire shore. These pirates, under their leader, Don Pedro,
helped themselves to all the valuables and jewelry on board. They
raised their cutlasses and prepared to butcher everyone on board when
suddenly the pirate captain ordered his men to stand down.
All
were astonished, but no one could mistake the sounds of an infant
crying from somwhere down below. Don Pedro ordered the infant to be
brought on deck, so he could see it. (In sealore, if a pirate kills a
baby he will have bad luck for the rest of his days and Don Pedro was
a superstitious sort of pirate, as most of them are.) As he gazed
into the innocent's face he sheathed his sword and made a promise to
the infants mother that if she would name the infant girl after his
own mother, Maria, or Mary, he would spare the lives of all aboard.
The bargain was quickly settled, for who would not do such a simple
thing to spare so many lives? The pirates gave back all the valuables
they had taken and Don Pedro quickly went over to his own ship and
came back carrying a bolt of beautiful blue- green silken cloth. He
presented it to the infant's mother and told her to use the cloth to
make the infant Mary's wedding dress with, when the time came.
Mary,
'Ocean-born' Wilson grew up to be an Irish beauty, with flaming red
hair and lovely green eyes. At the age of twenty-two, she married her
childhood sweetheart, Thomas Wallace, and her mother had saved the
bolt of beautiful silken cloth all those years and made her a wedding
dress out of it that any bride would be proud of.
The
happy couple lived a good life for 18 years, then Thomas died. Mary
was left lone with four sons to raise and care for. About this same
time, the hey-day of piracy was coming to an end, and the pirate
captain, Don Pedro, was no longer the spry young pirate he used to
be. He decided to retire and took his ill-gotten gains and purchased
some land, where he built himself an awesome mansion with ten rooms
and six fireplaces. It was one of the biggest houses in the area.
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| The Pirate Mansion |
It
turns out, that over the years, Don Pedro had kept an eye on
Ocean-born Mary, and when he found out about her being widowed with
four sons to care for he invited her to live with him. He promised
her the house was hers, if she would look after him in his old age.
Mary accepted and moved in with her boys. She was showered with gifts
from her pirate benefactor, and they all lived happily for the next
ten years. Mary had a fancy black and gold coach, drawn by four
horses, to get around in and there was much entertaining done at the
mansion.
One
night Don Pedro did not return home until much later than his usual
time, Mary looked out the window and saw and heard him talking to a
big burly man out in the back yard. They were burying a large trunk
out in the orchard under a tree! When Mary asked Don Pedro about it,
he refused to answer her.
One
year later, when Mary returned from town, no stable-boy came out to
meet her and take the four horses that pulled the coach away to their
barn. Mary found the servants scared to death, all huddled up
together in the tack room. In the yard she found Don Pedro, dead with
a cutlass through his back. The bloody instrument had gone right
through, pinning his body to the blood defiled ground! The old pirate
Don Pedro was buried him under the fireplace hearthstone, as he had
requested of her years before.
Occasionally
there would be trespassers at the house digging holes in the yard, as
rumors of buried pirate treasure were sure to abound. Mary never
stopped them and she spent the rest of her days there at the pirate
mansion. Her sons grew up, left home, had families of their own and
fought in the war for independence. Mary passed away in 1814, at the
ripe old age of 94.
The
house stayed in the hands of the Wallace family for the next 100
years. It was rented out, but never sold. Tenants came and went, but
they often went quite hastily and never lived there very long. Soon
tales arose that the place was haunted. For many years it fittingly
looked like a haunted house, as it was deserted and became run down.
The windows were broken and the front steps sagged. Neighborhood boys
crept around the place and claimed to see ghostly images in the
windows, they heard strange sounds emanating from the place, and
lights in the rooms at midnight. They said they saw a shadowy tall
lady floating down the staircase.
One
hundred and four years later, old Mrs. Roy and her bachelor son, Gus,
moved into the place. They had previously purchased it and were in
the process of cleaning it up and restoring the house so they could
make their home there. As they cleaned and restored, many interesting
things happened to them. On day while burning rubbish, the son was
about to throw a bag of trash that had been in the attic into the
fire, an unseen hand physically stopped him from doing it. As he
checked the trash afterwards, he found out there was unused gunpowder
in the sack, and he had almost thrown it into the fire!
In
1938 a strong hurricane devastated the eastern seaboard. It was all
rain, wind and mud around the place. Gus had been building a garage
and it was threatening to fall down after the storm. He did not want
to put his new car inside it until he fixed it up. He went out in the
rain and proceeded to prop the garage up and steady it so it would
not collapse. When he came inside, his mother asked him who was
helping him fix the garage. He said 'no one', then she asked him who
the tall woman was who was out there helping him steady up the
garage. She had vanished when he started back towards the house!
Soon
the family began to see the apparition of a tall woman inside the
house. They heard strange sounds in the basement. They must not have
minded it because Gus said that he suffered 17 near-fatal accidents
while living in the house and he always received help from, Mary.
Soon the stories of Ocean-born Mary's ghost were common in that area
and folks started coming from all around, especially on Halloween, to
catch a glimpse of old Mary's ghost. Gus made a business enterprise
out of it and charged admission to gives tours of the place, people
flocked in like there was no tomorrow.
The
story of the house was popular, it was featured in a publication
called "Yankee Ghosts" and a couple named Russell,
purchased the house. Gus had become ill and when the Russells bought
the place he was allowed to live out his final days there. A ghost
investigator visited the house with a medium in the 60's because the
Russells had complained about strange goings on in the house. The
medium did indeed sense ghostly presences in the house, most notably,
Ocean-born Mary, herself was said to be looking after the place.
Once there was a mysterious fire on the stairway and Mrs. Russell said it went out by itself, as if someone was damping it down with a blanket. Years later the Russells denied stories of the place being haunted
and refused to talk to anyone about it.
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| Ocean-Born Mary's grave in Henniker New Hampshire |
Some
even say that Mary never really did live there after all....it was
just an old folk tale that had gotten overblown and out of hand. The
home is a private residence today. But, who can explain the eerie
images the town boys saw there many years ago, who was talking to the
ghost hunter through the medium, what about the trespassers who
periodically came to dig for pirate treasure in the orchard? Who
saved Gus from 17 near-fatal accidents and pulled his hand away when
he was about to throw the bag of trash containing gun powder into the
fire? Who helped him shore up the garage after the hurricane of '38?
Why did Gus insist on remaining in the house even when new owners
purchased the place and started living there? Ocean-born Mary's grave
is nearby in the Central Cemetery in Henniker, so we know she really
did exist. And, who can answer this question now....how come state
troopers saw the image of a tall, red-haired lady floating along the
highway to the house a few years ago?? Was it just coincidence or
was it Mary..............................?
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