New England's Haunted Route 44: An interview with author Thomas D'Agostino

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Speakers: Benjamin Morris & Thomas D’Agostino

Benjamin Morris (00:00):

Tom, welcome to Crime Capsule.

Thomas D’Agostino (00:02):

Thank you. Well, great being here. I'm really excited about this one. This is awesome.

Benjamin Morris (00:08):

Yeah, absolutely. We are too. We are too. Now you are the author of 17 books and counting, which is a number that still kind of boggles my imagination. We're going to come to those books in just a moment, but before we do so, tell us a little bit about your background.

Thomas D’Agostino (00:28):

Well, actually I grew up in a haunted house and a big family, and-

Benjamin Morris (00:37):

Nice, nice.

Thomas D’Agostino (00:37):

Really loved ghost stories and horror stories, and my brothers and sisters and it was all those old horror movies and things. Remember the back in Frankenstein and all that? It was really cool. And Edgar Allan Poe remakes with Vincent Price.

Thomas D’Agostino (00:56):

When I was in college, my friend had a house and he said, "Hey, you want to stay in this house for the winter, because I just bought it and I'm going to fix it up in the summer and sell it." So, I said, "Sure. I'm in college, stay in the house." Well, I lasted six days because it's so many things-

Benjamin Morris (01:15):

No.

Thomas D’Agostino (01:15):

Yep. So many wild things were happening. I couldn't sleep and I couldn't study. So, I mean, that's not good at all for someone in college studying law or political science.

Benjamin Morris (01:27):

Yeah.

Thomas D’Agostino (01:28):

So, I turned some of my electives to social sciences and physical sciences and esoterical sciences, even meteorology, just to see why any of this happens. And that's now 42 years ago. And lo and behold, I began to research and investigate after a while, and just found that New England is amazing and just kept on researching and investigating. Done well over 2000 investigations.

Benjamin Morris (02:01):

So, I mean, let me ask right up front, what did you learn about the house where you grew up?

Thomas D’Agostino (02:10):

It was built in the 30s or 40s, but there was just some sort of activity. One of my brothers said it was like a little boy or something, maybe that passed away in the house before we bought it. And basically, he never left, playing with the toys. A lot of times upstairs we were where the toys were and everything, so-

Benjamin Morris (02:37):

So, you would not classify this as that kind of malicious poltergeist activity, which comes up in some of the accounts in your book. This was a more benign presence, you think, in the house?

Thomas D’Agostino (02:46):

Yeah. More or less, like wanting to actually play with us.

Benjamin Morris (02:52):

I mean, who are we to refuse when the invitation is extended, right?

Thomas D’Agostino (02:58):

Yeah. Well, when you're a kid, it can get a little unnerving. You don't refuse. You just run or something.

Benjamin Morris (03:05):

Yeah. Our listeners may hear that my studio cat Snickers has just entered the chambers. She has decided to weigh in on this topic. She's a Halloween colored cat as a tortoise shell, so she loves spooky season. This is big for her. This is big for her.

Benjamin Morris (03:22):

So, Tom, I mean, when you had this early experience, you had a wonderful introduction, you could say a crash course or the kind of the thrown into the deep end education on the paranormal. How did you decide to formalize that study?

Benjamin Morris (03:42):

I mean, because we can, we can have fun going around houses and hearing things and so forth, but when it came time to actually crystallize your knowledge and turn that into a disciplinary pursuit, how did that work?

Thomas D’Agostino (03:53):

Well first, we'd go to cemeteries or some friends saying, "Hey, I think my house is haunted. Hey, I think this is haunted." And well, we'd do investigations and then I'd research very famous investigators. At that time, there wasn't too many. You had like Harry Price, Elliott O'Donnell, and the old-fashioned way of investigating.

Thomas D’Agostino (04:15):

But I approached it more like, okay, if these are disembodied people, then you should just treat them like, people, like, okay, how you doing? My name's Tom. What's yours? And just talk normally. And it worked pretty well because when you're being friendly and you're not barraging someone with a million questions, who wants to answer a thousand questions and be interrogated?

Thomas D’Agostino (04:42):

And so, that became my approach. Then as we got more scientific in the study of it with more equipment, I picked up that kind of stuff. And I'd experiment with it, seeing what's real and what might not be — just a fad or something.

Benjamin Morris (04:58):

It's interesting because we don't often talk about the kinds of hospitality that we are supposed to show to our unexpected guests. Do we? It's sort of like we are entering into their space and we kind of have to play by their rules.

Benjamin Morris (05:20):

But then there's also that sense of, I love the fact that you kind of said early on, well, I'm not going to bother the ghost if he doesn't really want to be bothered. That's just so kind of you. That's great. I love it. I love it.

Benjamin Morris (05:35):

Well, let me ask you about some of your previous work. I mean, you said 17 books is just marvelous. You've been at this for a long time. I mean, has it all been on paranormal studies, or have you worked in other domains as well?

Thomas D’Agostino (05:48):

No, it's all been paranormal studies. My wife, Arlene Nicholson, and I, we've been investigating together for 28 years. And actually, people used to come up because I'm a musician too, so I'd be playing out and people would come up and go, "Oh, I hear you're ghost hunting. Is there any cool places to go? And this stuff?" And I'm like, writing directions on napkins and everything.

Thomas D’Agostino (06:12):

So, we both decided we should write a book on this. Tell people where to go, basically.

Benjamin Morris (06:19):

Yeah, absolutely.

Thomas D’Agostino (06:20):

But in a good way, of course, and so we got the idea of Haunted Rhode Island first because that's where we lived and the publishing company was like, "Well, we're not really big on it, but we'll give it a shot." And it became the flagship of their some 700 books now.

Benjamin Morris (06:41):

Wow. Nice. That's awesome. So, how is it working with a collaborator in this case, your wife. But I mean, how do you guys do the kind of dividing up the research or dividing up the writing, are there things which you sort of segregate for just one person, and then things that you actively kind of shop back and forth on the pros level? How do you guys do that?

Thomas D’Agostino (07:07):

Well yeah, I do a lot of the research and then I kind of write down, jot everything down, and then we actually go to the places and Arlene's a professional photographer. So, we both go everywhere together, and she'll take pictures of what we need, and then we'll both do more research on it. And then I'll put it all in the writing and then she edits it because she also was an editor for GBH.

Thomas D’Agostino (07:37):

And then we go back and read it one more time, make sure it's okay, and it goes off to the publisher. So, we're both up to our next in it equally.

Benjamin Morris (07:50):

Absolutely. All hands on deck at every stage of the process. That's great. Some folks will kind of hive pieces off to one or the other in collaboration. But I love that sense of like, both of you guys are working on every aspect at all times. That's wonderful.

Thomas D’Agostino (08:05):

Actually, I would print out what we have as a manuscript, and then when we're traveling to somewhere, she'd be driving, and I'd be reading it so we could correct it. Even then while we're driving.

Benjamin Morris (08:17):

You got to find those efficiencies, right?

Thomas D’Agostino (08:19):

Oh, yeah.

Benjamin Morris (08:20):

That's when you got that deadline bearing down on you. So, New England's Haunted Route 44 is the title of your newest book, and it is a thrilling ride, pardon the pun, but it really is start to finish. Just an incredible adventure.

Benjamin Morris (08:40):

We have had here on Crime Capsule, a couple of other authors who have done Haunted Highway series. I'm thinking of Lisa Livingston Martin, who explored Missouri's haunted Route 66. We've also had Brian Clune, who looked at California's haunted Route 66 once it hits that kind of far western coast.

Benjamin Morris (09:01):

But this is the first haunted highway that we have had in New England, your neck of the woods where you were born and raised. Now, you argue pretty early on in the book, I thought this was interesting, Tom, you argue that New England and haunted Route 44 in particular is the most haunted highway in America. Now, that is quite a claim. Why do you put that out there?

Thomas D’Agostino (09:31):

Well, number one it's 237 miles, and in that 237 miles, you're pretty jam packed with a lot of places. I mean, it's a road trip that you would be ... it doesn't take one day, put it that way.

Thomas D’Agostino (09:45):

So, it's so jam packed. It's not like, okay, we got to drive a hundred miles to the next site. Within 10 miles at the most, maybe you're stop and going, "Crap, here I am. Oh boy, here's the next site, here's the next area."

Thomas D’Agostino (09:57):

And basically, New England is the most haunted region as everybody says in the country. And there are claims that people say that Route 44 is the most haunted highway just for one or two haunts alone. I don't know if they had any clue of how many are actually along that road.

Benjamin Morris (10:23):

It's funny because I live here in New Orleans, and folks love to kind of claim our little patch of soil and water as incredibly densely populated with spirits and presences and ghosts and so forth. And it is true. I love the notion that we can actually try to establish a competition. It's very American of us, isn't it?

Thomas D’Agostino (10:49):

Yeah.

Benjamin Morris (10:50):

New York, Brooklyn is the most haunted borough or New Orleans is the most haunted city. Everybody wants a piece of that particular title. But at the same time, one of the things that makes your book so unique in the presentation of that case is that you really back it up.

Benjamin Morris (11:08):

And I love the way that you structure the book. As you travel from east to west, you have these stops and they come thick and fast. I mean, you really are, as a reader, getting off every 5 to 10 miles. And you provide directions, you provide the addresses, you provide the when to go, and kind of how to catch everything. And I know exactly what I'm going to do when I get to Connecticut now.

Benjamin Morris (11:40):

I actually have my guidebook in hand, thanks to you and your wife, which is great. Let me ask you, so you have so many stops in this particular account and in this journey, did you visit every single one of them yourselves?

Thomas D’Agostino (12:04):

Yeah, actually we visited like 90% of them because in some cases, the places would be closed for the season or something. So, I'm like, "Well, we can't tour that." But yeah, we took our way through Plymouth and all the other places. I'd say about 95% of the places we were able to actually go visit.

Benjamin Morris (12:24):

That's awesome. And well, we're going to come to some specific cases here in a second, but out of all of them, was there one that just really stood out to you as sort of top spooky, took the cake, won the title, just left you feeling so thoroughly unsettled. You were like this is King of the Hill.

Thomas D’Agostino (12:49):

Yeah. In Chepachet Rhode Island, the tavern right on Maine Street. There's about six spirits or something in there. And we still get calls from people who tell us, you wouldn't believe what happened to us last night there, or last week, or things like that. It's so active that it's just, I guess the spirits that are there do not want to leave, but they do want to be noticed.

Benjamin Morris (13:16):

Well, it being a tavern, maybe the drinks are cheap enough that they're just having such a good time.

Thomas D’Agostino (13:22):

There you go.

Benjamin Morris (13:23):

Who would blame them for not wanting to get kicked out. Well, let's do this, you start your book again, it's a journey. It's a guidebook, you have this sort of really itinerary based structure to it, which is great. And you start this journey in Plymouth.

Benjamin Morris (13:46):

Now Plymouth, of course, has a very rich and storied history. But I thought we could take a look at why you chose to kick things off in Plymouth, first of all, because you say a few things about that in the book. And then we can take a little municipal tour of some of the sites in Plymouth as well. So, why did you start it there, Tom?

Thomas D’Agostino (14:11):

Basically, because number one well, it's right on the ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, so that's a good place to start. You can't go the other direction. And it's basically the birth place of America, as they call it, America's hometown. That's where the pilgrims finally settled in 1620. And from there, things just went outward and upward and southward.

Benjamin Morris (14:37):

Yeah. And one of the threads in the book, which is very visible early on, is this notion of when the settlers arrived, and they began to make contact with Native American populations, those forms of early contact began to serve as the basis for some of the incidents in your book. So, the notion of kind of disturbed spirits or presences that did not find peace, whether they were killed in violent means, I mean, that goes right back to the early 1600s.

Thomas D’Agostino (15:22):

Yeah, because they came here, they didn't have a construction company waiting to build houses for them. They didn't have a blacksmith saying, okay, I'm going to make you guys some shovels, blah, blah. Things were very, very harsh, and brutal.

Thomas D’Agostino (15:34):

And when they got here in the winter, they actually thought it was going to be as mild as England was. They didn't know the winter was being about the same latitude. They didn't know that — is that it? Yeah, latitude? On the same plane. Yeah.

Benjamin Morris (15:50):

Yeah, yeah.

Thomas D’Agostino (15:51):

They didn't know that we had very harsh winters here in New England, and so a lot of them did die, it was very tragic. And then you did have some confrontations with the original indigenous people. And on both sides, there was obviously some tragedies and the wild animals and all kinds of things. So, it was ripe for basically scarring the land for these people who came here to make a peaceful new life.

Benjamin Morris (16:22):

Yeah. And you also had just the treachery of the elements and the land form and the danger of the coast itself. And there's a fairly dramatic shipwreck which you describe that has resulted in quite a lot of activity in that area.

Benjamin Morris (16:43):

Well, let's start off with the Spooner House. So, right at the very beginning you described there's a particular residence, which has a spirit of kind of very distinctive appearance. So, tell us about the Spooner House.

Thomas D’Agostino (17:01):

Yeah, the Spooner House was basically … it was in the Spooner family. I mean, it was in the Spooner family until 1954. It was originally built in 1749, but F.M. Spooner took it over a few years later.

Thomas D’Agostino (17:16):

But in 1954, James Spooner actually gave it to the Historical Society. And all the artifacts are still there. In fact, he's one of the ghosts they believe who is seen in the house because he was a music lover, and they hear music from the period of time he would've lived as if someone was playing like old 78 records.

Thomas D’Agostino (17:38):

But Abigail Townsend is the most prominent spirit there, a little girl. I guess she was adopted by the Spooner family, and she died of abscess tooth infection. And-

Benjamin Morris (17:54):

Yeah, of course.

Thomas D’Agostino (17:55):

Yeah. And people began to see her — they do walking tours around the Spooner House as part of a big haunted tour. And in one case, this little girl comes and pulls tugs one of the tour people’s shirt and the woman on the tour turns around and says, "Hi." And she goes, "I got to go now." And she vanishes.

Thomas D’Agostino (18:17):

Another time, the little girl comes out of what they call the Spooner alley. It's just an alley between two houses. And everyone's going like, "Wow, that's so cool." You have this actor coming out, making the tour really well. And the tour guy goes, well, it's 10 o'clock at night. We don't have little children actors running around."

Thomas D’Agostino (18:40):

People have seen her looking out the windows and a construction crew, when they were doing renovations, this construction crew that had foreman and knocks on the door, because he couldn't get in. They were supposed to leave it unlocked, and I guess they forgot.

Thomas D’Agostino (18:54):

And this little girl answered the door and walks away. Now, this was like 2005, 2006. So, it's not like ... he just gets on his cell phone. He goes, "I came in, the door was locked, but the little girl let me in, " to the curator, curator goes, "We don't have a little girl in the house."

Benjamin Morris (19:12):

Ooh.

Thomas D’Agostino (19:12):

Then they went looking into the living room where she walked in, and there's only one way in and one way out, and it was empty.

Benjamin Morris (19:21):

I don't know. What do you make of it? What do you think's going on there?

Thomas D’Agostino (19:25):

Well, it's kind of cool because if she's answering doors and talking to people, that's an intelligent spirit. She may not know she's been long past, she said she still lives there.

Benjamin Morris (19:38):

Yeah. How common is it that so often the spirits that we encounter, and you write about many of these, they do not actually have the capacity or the agency to interact with the physical plane. And so, it's kind of interesting, you sort of see them as apparitions, or they kind of appear and then disappear into the wall or kind of melt away. But there's never any contact with things.

Benjamin Morris (20:06):

And in this particular case, we're suggesting there's a, I don't know, a higher gradient somehow of their corporal reality. So, how do you make sense out of that if she's able to open a door, if that's kind of the report?

Thomas D’Agostino (20:21):

Yeah. It's very interesting because it must be a very, very high density of energy in that home or in that area around the house or something. To be able to have some spirit like that or ghost actually manipulate items. It's not uncommon. We are not really absolutely sure how or why yet, until we can go to the other side and hang out with like Elvis and Jim Morrison-

Benjamin Morris (20:52):

I can't wait, man.

Thomas D’Agostino (20:55):

Remember we've heard the rumors and then come back-

Benjamin Morris (20:57):

That's true. And Jimmy Hoffa too. Right. We're going to find out where Jimmy Hoffa finally is.

Thomas D’Agostino (21:02):

Yep. And then come back and say, this is what happens, or invite a ghost to dinner and they actually sit down and tell you this is how it works. We're still grasping at straws, so-

Benjamin Morris (21:15):

Sure. It's an intriguing case because of that higher level of engagement that you see, not everybody that you write about has that sort of feature or what have you. Let's take a look at Spooner House is great. Definitely got to visit the Spooner house.

Thomas D’Agostino (21:33):

Yeah. They do tours.

Benjamin Morris (21:35):

And I hope that the folks' camera batteries are charged, if you know what I mean, because that's always the pitfall.

Benjamin Morris (21:44):

But let's take a look else where in Plymouth, you have a great discussion of the lighthouse and the sort of the Plymouth lights. And this one got me; my father was a navy man. He was a sailor. And think about the early days of coastal navigation where lighthouses were it. I mean, you didn't have GPS, you didn't have these kind of modern devices to get you safely up and down the coast. And this particular lighthouse has quite a history behind it, and quite an unusual abiding presence. So, take us there.

Thomas D’Agostino (22:27):

Yeah. Actually the Plymouth Light, which is kind of cool was donated, actually to the land was donated after it was erected in 1769. John and Hannah Thomas gave the land. And he was the light keeper, him and his wife, from 1769 when it was first erected to 1776 when actually he became a casualty of the war, the impending revolution. And then Hannah took over. She was officially the first woman light keeper in America.

Benjamin Morris (23:03):

Oh, how about that?

Thomas D’Agostino (23:04):

Yeah. A fort was erected near there. But it was kind of cool because one of the British ships fired on the fort, but I guess they missed and they hit the lighthouse.

Benjamin Morris (23:17):

Whoops. Probably a more strategic decision even if in an accident, right?

Thomas D’Agostino (23:24):

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it was kind of cool because it started out with two lights, and then they tore one down. It was just ... there was like not necessary to have two of them, so they, to them down and made one light.

Thomas D’Agostino (23:36):

And obviously it was like a lot of these lighthouses, they build them close to the water, but they come to find out erosion threatens their existence. So, this one had to be moved in 140 feet. Like several of them had to be doing that. But Hannah, being the first light keeper and very brave and very, I guess, dedicated to her job has never left the lighthouse.

Benjamin Morris (24:01):

Oh, okay.

Thomas D’Agostino (24:02):

Yeah, people can stay there. In other words, it's a lot of lighthouses in New England, you can actually stay overnight at like a bed and breakfast.

Benjamin Morris (24:11):

Nice, nice.

Thomas D’Agostino (24:13):

This basically was one of them. And Hannah shows up and when the people are sleeping, and she'll tug on the covers. She's looking over you, she'll just whatever. She just likes to make herself known. And she obviously is still there.

Benjamin Morris (24:36):

Yeah. As I was reading that particular passage where you describe, it's a little unsettling, Tom. I have to say that you've had guests at the bed and breakfast who one of them wakes up and sees the figure of a woman simply standing over the bed watching the other one sleep, and then she disappears. I don't know if I could ever go back to sleep again for the rest of my life if I were to see something quite like that.

Thomas D’Agostino (25:17):

Yeah. She was known to do that. We've actually had instances where people have told us that kind of thing happened a lot. One person will wake up and there's the next one, they look next by them, and there's somebody standing looking at their wife or their husband, or the significant other boyfriend/girlfriend. And yeah, it is kind of freaky, especially when they vanished, and the other person had no clue of it. I don't know if I'd say, "Hey ...

Benjamin Morris (25:42):

Had no clue.

Thomas D’Agostino (25:43):

"The ghost was just looking at you and hanging out with you." I don't think I'd want to tell the other person.

Benjamin Morris (25:48):

Yeah. I would wonder, I mean, is Hannah worried here that maybe these folks are going to try to take her job? Is that the concern? What do you think's going on?

Thomas D’Agostino (25:57):

I don't know because she wanders the grounds in the light. Maybe she's wondering, what the heck are these people doing here? This is a lighthouse, not a inn.

Benjamin Morris (26:06):

Yeah, no. This one is really interesting because it does tie directly back to that revolutionary war history of Plymouth and the Eastern Massachusetts.

Benjamin Morris (26:20):

Now, you have this discussion of this shipwreck, this really significant shipwreck that took place right off the waters there of the General Arnold. Now, how did that shipwreck contribute to the paranormal activity in this area?

Thomas D’Agostino (26:38):

That was amazing because there was a few ships there, but the general Arnold was docked with them, and a storm kicked up. Of course, it was in December. But what happened was and the same night, they said, the same night that Benedict Donald decided to turn traitor, this ship crashed in the bay. And it didn't completely sink. It's only sank up to the people's knees and waists in some cases.

Thomas D’Agostino (27:11):

And that's what made it so even horrible, because now Captain James Magee had a lot of liquor on the ship, is telling everyone, pour the liquor into your boots, pour the liquor into your pants, so your legs don't freeze. But a lot of them opted to drink it instead to try and stay warm. And many of them froze to death.

Benjamin Morris (27:29):

You're not supposed to do that. You are not supposed to do that. Nope, nope, nope. That's the wrong way to go.

Thomas D’Agostino (27:34):

Thins your blood. But-

Benjamin Morris (27:37):

And it brings the blood closer to the surface of the body, which radiates heat away from the core. So yeah, it's bad news, bad news.

Thomas D’Agostino (27:48):

Well, I mean, it took a while, several days that they finally were able to make an ice bridge out to the ship where most of the soldiers had frozen to death, and they brought him back to the old courthouse. And James Magee and several others lived. But these people, they were buried in the Plymouth burial ground with a monument.

Thomas D’Agostino (28:11):

Now, he never forgave himself what happened, even though it wasn't his fault but he requested to be buried with them when he died. Now, he was given a wealthy compensation and everything, he gave a lot of his money to the survivors feeling bad for them.

Thomas D’Agostino (28:28):

But because of that, that one area of the burial ground is very haunted. People see mist floating above people. You can walk over there, and you go automatically get the feeling like, wow, this is a lot of energy in this part of the burial ground. And it's not totally negative, but it's certainly not positive at all.

Benjamin Morris (28:49):

Right, right. And when you have an untimely death, or when you have a wrongful death, even if there's no one directly to blame for it, the idea is that you still have some kind of disturbance in a person's remains of their psyche or their spirit, which is hanging around and it's just unresolved. They died before their time.

Thomas D’Agostino (29:07):

Well, you've got 72 men, I mean, like 72 of them.

Benjamin Morris (29:12):

That's a lot. That's a lot. I mean, no account of paranormal history in the region, of course, would be complete without a tour of such graveyards. And you do spend a good bit of time in Plymouth burial ground, and you write that there are sort of spirits spanning multiple eras in American history, which are still found there.

Benjamin Morris (29:40):

How much time have you spent kind of traipsing around Plymouth burial ground, Tom? Is that one of your kind of favorite spots for yourself to haunt?

Thomas D’Agostino (29:50):

There you go. Yeah. It is a cool place. I mean, being from New England, Arlene and I alone have been to Plymouth, I don't know, 15 times in the last 15 years.

Thomas D’Agostino (30:02):

So, the burial ground's always a must because it spans, I mean, such a long amount of time. It's not like these burial grounds that were started in 1860 or 1880 or something like that. This thing goes back to the very first settlers being buried there, right up to there's some areas where there's newer graves.

Thomas D’Agostino (30:21):

So, the burial ground you have also there was the old fort there, and during King Phillips's war, which ended around here in 1676, they brought back King Phillip’s head, and they put it on a pole there, near the burial ground.

Benjamin Morris (30:37):

Oh.

Thomas D’Agostino (30:38):

As well as chief Annawan and Tispaquin, all three of them met the same fate. So, now you have these Indian curses in spirits. Then you have the ghosts of the General Arnold from 1770s. And then you have several others that are seen about. So, this is like, wow, this is like a big party of American history over here running around.

Benjamin Morris (31:04):

There really is, there really is. It's kind of great when you think about all those overlapping entities and eras. I was quite taken with your — it's a brief discussion in the burial ground section, but I was quite taken with your account of the descendant of the Mayflower sort of company, Mr. Thomas Howland or Howland. I wasn't quite sure how to say it, but-

Thomas D’Agostino (31:29):

Howland, yeah.

Benjamin Morris (31:31):

Howland, yeah. I mean, we love a good curse that's like the guy committed this terrible act. He got cursed for it, and he got what was his.

Thomas D’Agostino (31:48):

Yeah. He wanted this woman's land, and he was going to get it. And they called her mother crew, and they thought she was a witch. But anyway, so he took the land, and he found a way to get the land. And he want ... I'm going to have that land.

Thomas D’Agostino (32:07):

And she goes, "Well, you better make you peace because you'll not see or live to see another sunset." And he is like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." And she said, "They'll dig your grave on Burial Hill." And he's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go away, old lady." And yeah, he fell from his horse and died right after that.

Benjamin Morris (32:27):

And there it is.

Thomas D’Agostino (32:28):

And he was buried in Burial Hill. And then there's one I like of Ida Elisabeth Speer, the little girl who died in 1860.

Benjamin Morris (32:37):

Yeah. Tell us about her.

Thomas D’Agostino (32:39):

And she's buried up there, so this is cool. You got graves going from like 1660 to 1860 and further. But her parents, Thomas and Elisabeth Speer still go visit her to this day.

Benjamin Morris (32:54):

Really?

Thomas D’Agostino (32:54):

Yeah. They're seen walking up by Summer Street up the path of misty figures. Sometimes people can't make out their legs, and other times you can just see them almost like they're real. Maybe it depends on what the weather is or something. The pressure's on the energy pockets. But they just float solidly up the path right to the side of a burial where they stand there for a second and vanish.

Benjamin Morris (33:19):

Now, these accounts are very well documented. I mean, you write that you have systematically kind of investigated these, and these are not coming out of nowhere. You have multiple witnesses; you have different kinds of attestations and so forth.

Benjamin Morris (33:42):

Do we have any visual record, any photographic kind of evidence of these figures at any point? Because some of our previous authors have been able to capture some ambiguous looking things on film where it really is kind of hard to say.

Thomas D’Agostino (34:01):

Yeah, I would love to have any photographs like that. If I had them, I would've put them in the book immediately, and say, you be the judge, that type thing.

Thomas D’Agostino (34:11):

Unfortunately, very little that you can find, or sometimes if you do like, oh, there's a ghost looking out that window. No, it's the way the light's hitting the rolled glass, blah, blah, blah. But to get a photograph of misty figures wandering up a hill would be awesome. And someone might say, it's just Photoshop.

Benjamin Morris (34:36):

Right. Which is all the rage these days is to put something out there, which could go either way. And then say, let the people decide. It's pretty good for generating hype on social media. If you've seen some of the same stuff I have.

Benjamin Morris (34:51):

Let's take a look at one more. I mean, we haven't even left Plymouth, which is amazing. There's so many cases that are just in this one town. We are going to leave Plymouth next week. We're going to travel down the highway to investigate some of the most amazing cases. I'm super excited for that.

Benjamin Morris (35:13):

But let's look at one more from America's birthplace, as you call it. And it's an unusual one because it's got's sort of layered in its telling. You have what's called a true vampire story. You have what's called the vampire scare of New England, which took place, I guess about a decade or two after the Revolutionary War in the sort of turn of the century between the 1700s and 1800s.

Thomas D’Agostino (35:48):

And here we actually have an account, which is contemporaneous to the time of the incident. I mean, you actually have an account from those 200 years ago. And we should note, it's very important to note, this was before Edgar Allan Poe was pinning his tails further down south.

Benjamin Morris (36:08):

I mean, this is a good 30 to 40 years before his work began to really circulate and inspire the ghostly and the macabre in his readers. So, take us to this vampire scare in Plymouth County.

Thomas D’Agostino (36:26):

Yeah. 1784 was the first documented that we know of, of someone being exercised for vampirism in New England. And it did last over a hundred years with hundreds, if not thousands of families. It was tuberculosis, what they called consumption, which would make a person pale, gaunt. They'd be coughing up blood. They looked like they were vampires.

Thomas D’Agostino (36:50):

Well, people didn't think that the person was rising from the grave. They thought the spirit of the person was rising from the grave. And a case that took place in 1807 in Plymouth was pretty interesting because it took the whole family, the whole family died of consumption.

Thomas D’Agostino (37:15):

But a guy wrote about it in 1822 and this was really interesting because it was the first issue of the Old Colony Memorial in Plymouth County Advertiser, which was May 4th, 1822, where he said about 15 years ago, a whole family was seized by this consumption until there was only a few members left when the mother was there. And then, the son.

Thomas D’Agostino (37:43):

And what happened was, well, the girl about 16-years-old, she had died. And what they figured they had to do was an exorcism for vampirism. So, they dug up all of them, and they dug her up. And what they did, instead of, the typical thing in New England was to cut out the hot liver lungs and burn it. Because they believe that-

Benjamin Morris (38:09):

Because that's just the done thing. Okay.

Thomas D’Agostino (38:12):

Yeah, yeah. That way, if the body was in the hole, even if it's in the ground decomposing, it would still feed on the family members. In some cases, they actually fed those ashes to the sick.

Thomas D’Agostino (38:27):

But in this case, they decided to turn her upside down so she would get confused. And instead of rising up out of the grave, she'd keep digging herself deeper. And the cure didn't work because the rest of the family died. But it's cool because the writer of the article writes a wicked cool poem. This is a great poem, but in the end, his last words were, "The living was food for the dead."

Benjamin Morris (38:55):

Yeah. Yeah. That was a pretty wicked cool poem. I was really into that poem. Would you actually Tom, as we close out here for this week, would you be so kind as to read that poem to us so we can get a sense of the fear, the uncertainty, the doubt, the horror that was circulating in those days?

Thomas D’Agostino (39:24):

Yeah, sure. This was a recollection actually, too. So, it wasn't like, I'm just making this up. The guy or whoever it was a recollection.

Thomas D’Agostino (39:32):

"I saw her, the grave sheet was round her, months had passed since they laid her in the clay. Yet the damps of the tomb could not wound her. The worms had not seized on their prey. Oh fair was her cheek, as I knew it, when the rose, all its colors were brought. In that eye, did it tear then be do it gleamed like a herald of thought.

Thomas D’Agostino (40:00):

She bloomed though the shroud was around her, locks of her hair cold bosom wave as if the stern monarch had crowned her, the fair speechless queen of the grave. But what lends the grave such a luster over her cheeks, what beauty had shed, his life blood who bent there had nursed her. The living was food for the dead."

Benjamin Morris (40:31):

That is amazing. That hits on so many levels. And I got to say, I mean, as one who writes and publishes poetry, I am very impressed with the rhyme luster and nursed her. That is a champion slant rhyme right there. Emily Dickinson, eat your heart out.

Thomas D’Agostino (40:59):

Yeah, yeah. Really tough to find something to rhyme with luster.

Benjamin Morris (41:03):

Yeah, it is, it is. It's sort of like you could go muster with the kind of the troops, in a battalion, but no, that the register doesn't work there. It's a totally different domain, but the fair speechless queen of the grave. Ah, perfect. This is great stuff, man. This is great, great stuff.

Thomas D’Agostino (41:25):

Very illustrious.

Benjamin Morris (41:27):

Very indeed. Edgar Allen Poe sit and take some notes here. This is great.

Benjamin Morris (41:34):

Well, thank you for taking us to haunted Plymouth this week. This has been pretty chilling. I'm not sure I'll be sleeping very well tonight, but we're going to try. If I wake up and find any ghostly light keepers standing over my bed, you'll be the first to know.

Thomas D’Agostino (41:55):

There you go.

Benjamin Morris (41:56):

Man, that's quite a lot. We will come back next week, and we will get in the car and we are going to start driving west along. New England's Haunted Route 44. Thank you so much for joining us this week, Tom.

Thomas D’Agostino (42:11):

Oh, thank you. It was quite a pleasure.