Over the last several years, I have investigated haunted locations across the country and with each new site, I found myself becoming more fascinated with ghosts. What are they? How do they manifest themselves? Why are they here? These are just a few of the questions I have been asking. No doubt, you have been asking the same questions.
The books in the America’s Haunted Road Trip series can help you find the answers to your questions about ghosts. We’ve gathered together some of America’s top ghost writers (no pun intended) and researchers and asked them to write about their states’ favorite haunts. Each location that they write about is open to the public so that you can visit it for yourself and try out your ghosthunting skills. In addition to telling you about their often hair-raising adventures, the writers have included maps and travel directions so that you can take your own haunted roadtrip.
People may think that southern New England is nothing more than rolling green hills, quaint little village greens, and miles of rocky beaches, but Andrew Lake’s Ghosthunting Southern New England proves that the hills are home to shadowy entities that are seen only for an instant before disappearing among the trees and spirits that frequent old weathered cemeteries on the village greens. The book is a spine-tingling trip through Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island with stops at inns, old mills, historic sites, and cemeteries—all of them haunted.
Ride shotgun with Andrew as he seeks out the ghosts of witches, suicides, and murder victims at Rhode Island’s Hopkins Mills. Travel with him to North Adams, Massachusetts, where the sorrowful ghost of John Widders can be seen standing in a window of the Houghton Mansion, the place in which he worked as a servant and where he was responsible for the accidental death of two women, or sit for a spell in the steamboat-styled home of Mark Twain in Hartford, Connecticut, and see if you can spot the playful ghosts of the famous writer’s daughters as they flit through the house. And can that ghostly voice that called I will be right down at the Nathan Hale Homestead in Connecticut be the ghost of Richard Hale, the father of the American spy Nathan Hale? Hang on tight; Ghosthunting Southern New England is a scary ride.
But once you’ve finished reading this book, don’t unbuckle your seatbelt. There are still forty-nine states left for your haunted road trip! See you on the road!
John Kachuba
Editor, America’s Haunted Road Trip
Massachusetts
Ashland
Stone’s Public House
Charlemont
The Charlemont Inn
Fall River
Lizzie Borden Bed-and-Breakfast/Museum
Freetown
The Freetown State Forest
Gardner
The Victorian
Groton
The Groton Inn
Lenox
Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum
North Adams
The Houghton Mansion
Quincy
USS Salem
Rehoboth
Anawan Rock
Wareham
The Fearing Tavern
Wellfleet
The Inn at Duck Creeke
CHAPTER 1
Inn at Duck Creeke
WELLFLEET, MASSACHUSETTS
The Saltworks House
CAPE COD IS CONSIDERED BY MANY to be one of the most haunted locations in all of New England. The history of the Cape and the people who have lived there is older than America itself. It is a history full of hardships and tales of survival from the unforgiving elements, disease, and men with hostile intentions. The older generation on Cape Cod feels strongly that their ghosts are human souls who have chosen to stay within a place they had a strong connection to in life. These Yankees also believe the “old wood,” as they call it, is imprinted with spiritual energy from Cape Cod’s past. For many years in New England it was common practice to disassemble old buildings and use the wood to build additions onto existing structures. People on Cape Cod have been recycling their wood for hundreds of years. Because of this frugal practice, the old-timers say there are buildings throughout the Cape that have inherited ghosts along with the “old wood” taken from the spirit’s original residence.
Wellfleet was established in 1763, although the first permanent settlement there was founded in 1650. What brought the early settlers to this part of the outer Cape was the abundance of fish in Cape Cod Bay. Today, Wellfleet Harbor is still a busy port for fisherman and is well known for its oysters. In 1961, Wellfleet became part of the Cape Cod National Seashore Park. More than 60 percent of the town is within this preserve, thus protecting it from over-development and allowing the town to keep its identity with the past.
The Inn at Duck Creeke is one of the town’s unspoiled landmarks. Located on Main Street, the inn was originally built in 1810 as a home for a sea captain and his family. An inlet from Cape Cod Bay once existed that allowed the sea captain to steer his ship inland and dock close to his home. A causeway built in the early twentieth century for the railroad has since turned the inlet into a salt-water marsh. A tidal creek now runs through the marsh, creating a duck pond on the back side of the property. In the first part of the twentieth century, a gentleman named Joe Price made many renovations to the inn and its adjacent buildings. Price made good use of buildings that were left abandoned around the Wellfleet area. Every piece that could be salvaged from those structures was used to make repairs and additions to the inn. He didn’t let any of that “old wood” go to waste.
The Inn at Duck Creeke is actually made up of four separate buildings. Along with the Captain’s House, there are three other buildings that occupy the five wooded acres. They are named The Saltworks House, The Tavern, and Carriage House. The tavern building is referred to as “The Hodge Podge” because it is made up of sections of homes from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This uniquely styled building houses both the Sweet Seasons and The Duck Creeke Tavern restaurants.
The Duck Creeke Tavern is the oldest existing tavern in Wellfleet. The current owners of the inn are Bob Morrill and Judy Pihl. Bob and Judy first became associated with the inn in the mid-1970s when they were leasing the Sweet Seasons restaurant. In 1980, they bought the inn. Shortly after Bob and Judy had settled into the property, the ghosts made their presence known to them.
It was December 1980—the couple’s first winter on the property. They were living in The Saltworks House, which is located about one hundred feet from the back of the Captain’s House. Bob and Judy were getting ready to prepare their first lobster dinner in their “new” home. Judy needed a large pot to cook the lobsters in so she sent Bob to retrieve one from the kitchen of the Sweet Seasons restaurant. It was a cold, dark night as he walked up the lane, flashlight in hand, and entered the kitchen from the back of the restaurant. Bob recalls, “I was walking through the kitchen and a large, metal, one-gallon measuring can flew off the shelf. It didn’t fall on the floor; it flew all the way across the kitchen in front of me and then rolled another twenty feet. I grabbed the pot and went back home to Judy and said, ‘That’s the last time I’ll go in there after dark, alone!’”
The ghost of Eulalia Price, Joe’s wife, may have been responsible for that flying piece of kitchenware. People who remember Eulalia say she was a serious, hardworking woman. She managed the hospitality side of the inn’s business