Vineyard Supernatural

by Holly Nadler

  17 Spirits Of Sinners And Saints

  Is there a diabolical presence waiting to pounce outside the Federated Church in Edgartown? And can the countervailing benign forces inside the lovely old hall continue to keep the perimeter secure?

  Good versus Evil is at the crux of every horror movie, and of the human condition as well. The battle is pronounced in the case of haunted churches.

  I’ve never visited a church interior that felt maleficent in any way (and I’ve toured countless numbers of them, being the opposite of the traveler who says, “We’ve seen enough ancient cathedrals for ten trips—let’s go get lunch.”).

  In the event that a church has attracted spirits, it’s impossible for negativity to flourish (sorrow, maybe, or despair, but not for long) where all thoughts, all the time, are on God. To be sure, some churches over the ages have had their sanctity shattered by wrathful preachers. When Spanish and Italian priests used the pulpit to fire up the Inquisition, and English clerics damned Catholic heretics one year and Protestant heretics the next, those ancient cathedrals may not have imparted the very best of vibes. But milder periods prevailed, and, like a river protected from toxic dumping, a church can easily recover its healthy pH.

  In Edgartown in the early nineteenth century, a church was built on South Summer Street, a block up from the harbor. Its lofty spire can still be seen from every part of town. From the start, the new house of worship was the focus of the age-old struggle between a controlling, spiteful preacher and a congregation keen to find the path to a merciful God and make their church a loving refuge.

  Only one Vineyard historian, Henry Franklin Norton, wrote about Parson Thaxter’s darker qualities (in Martha’s Vineyard History—Legends—Stories, published in 1923 and still in print). Born in Hingham, Massachusetts, Thaxter graduated from Harvard in 1768 and rushed to Boston at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. He served as chaplain in Colonel Prescott’s regiment at the Battle of Bunker Hill, and that hero status anointed him for the rest of his life, stifling all criticism—or all written criticism—until Mr. Norton’s book appeared.

  Thaxter’s Puritan meetinghouse in Edgartown was known as Parson Thaxter’s Church because he had such tyrannical control of its members. Mr. Norton writes, “Parson Thaxter was esteemed and reverenced but feared by the congregation.” The historian provides anecdotes. Once, when the parson’s serving girl broke a cup, he caned her. Another time he told a congregant who’d received prints of the gay life in Paris (gay in the original meaning), he hollered at her, “Hellish pictures, you old fool. Let us pray!” On another occasion when, astride his horse, he passed a parishioner lying sick beside the road, Thaxter sneered, “Trying to die, are you? Well, don’t be frightened, for God don’t want you, and the Devil won’t have you.” He ordered the man to get up and finish harvesting his grain field because the minister expected his cut of the ground meal. He even threatened the man with damnation if he didn’t hand over the grain by sundown. The minister got his meal that night.

  When at last Parson Thaxter’s followers quietly revolted to follow the teachings of the Baptist and Methodist faiths, combining both disciplines in the newly erected Congregational (now the Federalist) Church, the parson felt betrayed for the rest of his life. The story has it that on random Sunday mornings the embittered preacher would stand on the sidelines and excoriate the worshippers filing into the chapel, doing what he did best: damning them all to Hell.

  Who can say what caused the following apparition to appear—only once that we know of—nearly a century later in the brick courtyard outside the church? Was it a figure from the past? A mythological version of the larger-than-life Parson Thaxter? Or was it something wholly evil, sent from a place unconnected to this particular plot of consecrated ground? Perhaps someday we’ll be able to pinpoint the supernatural as precisely as a GPS device can track an address three thousand miles away. For now we can only speculate.

  In an evening in late November 1896, a woman born on the island but of Azorean descent, was finishing up her cleaning duties with a last dusting of the marble-topped table in the foyer. Fading light colonnaded in a golden shaft through the open door. The woman took a brass candlestick in her hand, wiped it with her cloth, set it down gently, then performed the same chore on its twin. When she turned to go, she noticed that the last of the daylight had died away outside.

  From the top of the three-tiered stone steps, the woman faced a dark piazza of bricks. Next door, at the parish house, the windows were dark. She pulled the heavy mahogany door closed behind her. It connected with a soft thud and a click.

  She turned, then froze in the doorway.

  From beyond the expanse of bricks, an enormous black dog, the size of a calf, launched itself over a hedge, landing twenty feet away from her. He stared at her with eyes that glowed with red and yellow flickers like the core of a flame. No teeth were bared in the coal black face, but a rumbling growl emanated from its throat.

  With just one more bound the beast could clear the distance between them and sink his fangs into her throat. The woman braced herself so hard against the door that she could feel the panels pressing against her spine. The dog lowered its head and crouched, then leaped toward her in a long, silent arc. And then it vanished midair.

  The woman never told a soul in the congregation or in the town, but the story became her family’s legend. She confided in her oldest daughter, who told her only daughter, who told all three of her children, one of whose daughters told me, at a Fourth of July party in the late seventies, at the home of my friend Nan Rheault, who lived on the eastern shore of the Lagoon.

  Something about the story seemed to carry with it an oath of secrecy. All these years I’ve been waiting for another person to come forward with a corroborating sighting, but it seems to have been a one-time apparition—not at all unusual in the field of paranormal phenomena. As I’ve collected other stories of more gentle hauntings at the Federated Church, I’ve interpreted the element of the enormous black dog—the classic Hell hound—as a small but meaningful part of the picture. This is, of course, pure conjecture, but I have to think this unnatural canine has everything to do with the passions of Parson Thaxter.

  In a kinder universe than the one to which that old Calvinist would assign us sinners, at least part of his psyche and soul may have been enveloped in the Light. But the other, uncontrollable part of him that dealt vengeance at every turn might have morphed into a beast to express his fury. Perhaps it is a beast that appears only once a century … if so, we’re overdue for another occurrence.

  One fairly recent story related to the church plays itself out like an occult video of a scene from the bad old Parson Thaxter days. A couple of years ago, as Vineyard psychic Sarah Nevin left a nighttime meeting of the parish committee and she stepped out onto the brick piazza, she heard the sound of a woman weeping in the narrow space between the church and the parish house. Moving closer, she came upon a heart-wrenching scene: a young woman, hunched down on her knees, face in her hands, appearing to sob as an older man lectured her. The woman wore a long, drab gown. The man was dressed in black with shiny buckles adorning his belt and boots.

  Sarah had trouble distinguishing the words he spoke, but it was clear he was excoriating the girl, and she was duly humiliated. The drama, according to the psychic, was one of extreme cruelty. Unable to endure it any longer, she fled the scene.

  As I mentioned before, the interior of the church contains an infinitely holier presence. “The sanctuary of the Federated Church is a portal to the spirit world,” asserts Susan Klein, nationally known storyteller from Oak Bluffs. Here is her personal account (transcribed from a tape recording of her gorgeous, throaty voice):

  It was the Christmas season of 1999, and we were recording a special Christmas CD at the Federated Church. Peter Boak was conducting the Community Chorus, and I was telling the stories. We needed the spacious acoustics of the church because we were doing a wonderful old version of “Silent Night.” I was s
eated on the altar, behind Peter, staring at the faces of the choir for the next take.

  So the choir sang “Stille Nacht” in the original German, and somebody’s pronunciation was slightly off. After a couple of unsatisfactory takes, I was instructing them on the pronunciation when I was stunned to hear, all of a sudden, my mother’s voice. She had a very distinctive, rich voice, and “Stille Nacht” had been her very favorite Christmas carol. (Sometimes, in fact, she used to play records of Christmas carols during July and August, blaring them out the windows on Wing Road for the tourists to hear, thinking they would enjoy this brand of entertainment.)

  Well, there in the church, I followed the sound of her voice up to the balcony to the right of the altar. That’s where I saw her. She was standing in a plaid shirtdress and a flowered apron, singing her heart out. It was amazing to me.

  I knew I was the only one having the experience, so later when Charlie Esposito and I took the recordings back to his studio to decide which one to meld with my narration, we listened to all the takes and, sure enough, on the last one, my mother’s voice was recorded. Charlie said, “This last one really sounds the best.” and I said, “Yes it does!”

  We used that last take for the CD. I gave copies to my family members before it went out on the market. After playing it, my sister called me and said, “I don’t think I can ever listen to the CD again.” I asked her why not, and she said, “Because I can hear Ma singing.”

  Susan’s mother, Use Henrietta Uienz Klein, born in 1911, had died two weeks before Christmas in 1995. Her voice can be heard on the Silent Night CD released by Ruby Window Productions, the title song recorded in the Federated Church in December 1999.

  18 The Leper Ghosts Of Penikese

  Abeautiful young ghost, once a leper, crawling into bed with you? Such an experience is not for the faint of heart. But this occurrence and many others, were taken in stride by Vineyarder Alex Friedman during his time at a high-risk job on the brooding and doomed island known as Penikese …

  We might as well turn to Wampanoag legend to find out how Penikese and its sibling islands off the northwest coast of Martha’s Vineyard were created:

  One day the Indians on Cape Cod called on their giant protector, Moshup, to help them out. They were being assaulted by Pukwudgees, little ten-inch-tall demons who made the Indians’ lives miserable by breaking their arrows, jabbing holes in their canoes, and scattering sharp objects on the hunting paths. Moshup gathered up a posse of his five sons and tracked the mean little critters through the wetlands. But the malicious and clever ‘wudgees crept up on the avengers, blinding and then killing the five young giants. Devastated, Moshop carried his dead boys to Buzzard’s Bay, built up mounds of rocks and soil over them, and slunk away, his years of playing the Lone Ranger to humans abruptly ended. Meanwhile the ocean rose, carrying the burial mounds way offshore, where they became what are now known as the Elizabeth Islands—Naushon, Pasque, Nashawena, Cuttyhunk, and Penikese

  Of course scientists have advanced alternative theories involving glaciers and something called the Laurentide Ice Sheet and, later, the Wisconsin Glacial Stage to explain the formation of the New England landscape we know today, but the Moshup story sounds every bit as plausible, so let’s go with that one.

  As early as 1003, Vikings may or may not have landed on Penikese. In 1524, explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano may have rowed ashore there; ditto French navigator Jehan Alfonce in 1542, according to one published history of the Vineyard. Definitely, English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold and a few of his crew checked out the island in 1602, but he got Penikese history off to a bad start when he frightened off four visiting natives and swiped their canoe, leaving them stranded.

  Clearly no one took the tiny, ladybug-shaped island seriously until 1873, when the Anderson School of Natural History was established there. This noble institution’s sprawling and grand Victorian buildings—a laboratory, a dorm, a dining hall, and the Anderson mansion—resembled a mini Harvard overlooking the sea from Penikese’s southern bluffs.

  Philanthropist John Anderson hired brilliant and internationally known scientist Alexander Agassiz to spearhead the new school. Unfortunately, Agassiz became deathly ill during his first summer on Penikese. He was shipped off island to recover, but died instead. The school lasted only one more year, and a sense of Penikese being jinxed has prevailed ever since.

  So, where better to establish a leprosarium than on this sad and lonely little rock?

  Humankind has had a shuddering dread of leprosy (now known as Hansen’s Disease) for millennia, mainly because the disfiguring illness was incurable and untreatable. Nowadays it’s still incurable, but it can be arrested with medications. It was also presumed to be contagious, but what folks never knew until modern medicine came along to educate them, was that ninety-five percent of people are naturally immune to it.

  And, back in the day, its unfortunate victims looked phantasmagorically scary as their extremities were ravaged with lesions and eroded away by secondary infections.

  In the United States, cases of leprosy began to show up during out great immigration waves of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The only prescribed measure was to banish these victims to remote outposts where they would spend the rest of their days removed forever from family, friends, the world. The rare affluent patient would be provided for in comfortable, albeit segregated retreats. The poor—most of them immigrants—were shipped off to facilities such as the newly inaugurated Penikese Island Hospital, opened in 1905.

  The colony created controversy from start to finish. Newspaper editorials railed against the proposed facility with rants such as this one in a Buzzard’s Bay journal: “A national leper colony on Penikese Island will be a standing invitation for other states to dump their lepers. No laws can keep them out!”

  Nonetheless, the plan moved forward. The old Anderson mansion was refurbished for head doctor Louis Edmunds and his staff, and small cottages were constructed to house the afflicted residents. Each building measured thirty-six feet by twenty-seven feet, with a kitchen, living room, bath, and two single bedrooms. The Massachusetts Board of Charity found five people who were willing to work on the island. At the outset, there were also only five patients.

  Circumstances could not have been more miserable for those first inhabitants of the leper colony.

  Frank Pina, thirty-eight, originally hailed from the Cape Verde Islands. After his diagnosis by Dr. Edmonds, Pina was removed to Penikese and his wife and eight children were forced to leave their rented cottage in Harwich and move to the far side of town. Town officials destroyed the cottage and reimbursed the owner with taxpayers’ money.

  John Roderick, thirty-four, a single man of Portuguese descent, arrived on Penikese, according to Dr. Edmunds, “Very sick, and slowly dying.”

  Isabelle Barros, another Cape Verde immigrant, was, for the first several years, the sole female patient. Back in her Wareham home, she had been nursed by her husband, but the couple had been obliged to give up their two children, a boy and girl, to become wards of the state. Isabelle arrived on Penikese, “Weak, anemic, and debilitated”—and, it turned out, four months pregnant.

  Two Chinese men, Goon Lee Dip (twenty-three) and Yee Toy (twenty-five) were described as cheerful and courageous in spite of their obvious suffering.

  In the beginning the frightened and lonely patients were skittish. They reacted to the sight of their caregivers by running away and hiding, refusing food, and generally behaving like feral children. In time, however, they grew close to one another and formed lifelong friendships. They grew flower gardens and worked on new buildings, and these outdoor activities gave them a sense of purpose, improved their spirits, and no doubt extended their lives.

  Mrs. Barros gave birth to a healthy baby, though she was forced to give him up to become a ward of the state. Sometime thereafter, Dr. Edmunds pronounced the woman one hundred percent cured, but examiners for the Board of Charity arrived and refuted his diagn
osis. In a fit of pique, the doctor resigned.

  Dr. Frank Parker, with his wife, Marion, arrived to take his place. The kind-hearted couple would care for the sick on Penikese for the next fifteen years until the facility closed.

  But, of course, the tiny island continued with its out-sized woes for as long as the hospital operated there. Boatmen demanded higher fees to deliver supplies. Penikese workers were shunned by mainlanders during trips off-island. Voyagers sailing past would hold handkerchiefs to their noses, as if an aerosol leper germ could float to them on the breeze. Stateside parents threatened naughty children with stories of phantom lepers who would come to get them in the night.

  In time, more patients arrived. As the illness took its toll, deceased patients were buried in a small cemetery over the hill (and, mercifully, out of sight of the cottages), bordered by a green picket fence and looking north to the sea. Most of the wooden markers have rotted away, although the Cuttyhunk Historical Society has made an effort to identify where the bodies are buried. Only four granite gravestones were ever put in place, and these have survived.

  One of them marks the remains of Lucy Peterson. An immigrant from Russia employed as a maid in Brookline, the twenty-seven-year-old Lucy was shipped to Penikese two days after her early diagnosis. She was described as “pretty and well-formed” which was the condition her spirit assumed when it turned up in the bedroom of a young man some eight decades later.

  The hospital closed in 1921 when all the patients were transferred to the new national Louisiana Leper Home in Carville, Louisiana (though not before outraged Carville residents launched their own NIMBY campaign against that new establishment).