Rocks, devils & reality

Our brains are pattern-making machines. Everything, ultimately, must fit our personal vision of the world. If you believe in ghosts, then you have no need to explain further why a ghostly event occurs. Gate unlocked, things missing, strange lights, weird noises? Must be a ghost. The more one assigns the unknown to the realm of ghosts, the more ghosts there seem to be. No need to do the heavy research, just collect more spooky tales.

Supernatural tales and mythology, to the historian, demonstrate how our view of the world has changed through the centuries. In the mid-1800s, journalist Charles W. Brewster complained in the Portsmouth Journal that what used to be called witchcraft was again gaining public appeal. Mesmerists, spiritualists, astrologers, and Satanic cults were trying to turn superstition into science. And why not? Much of what we call science today evolved from superstition. But at some point the party-pooper historian just has to put a foot down. Enough is enough.

Until recently, Brewster was our key source on the history of witchcraft in Portsmouth. I own a stained copy of an actual Portsmouth Journal from July 20, 1839 with his front page article headlined "Witchcraft in New Hampshire". Here Brewster listed the witch and wizard cases found in the provincial records, including the story of Goody Walford quoted above.

Brewster treasured the tale of the "Rock Throwing Devil" of New Castle in which land owner George Walton was pelted by mysterious stones from an unseen hand in 1682. This local event, precfeding the infamous Salem witch trials by a decade, has been called New Hampshire’s most documented tale of supernatural activity. Thankfully, we now have Prof. Emerson Baker’s brilliant history book The Devil of Great Island (2007) to parse the details. Baker, who is among the most knowledgeable 17^th century scholars in the region, captures the drama of the mysterious stonings without exploiting them. Then he fills in the rich details surrounding the stone throwing legend. Times, according to Baker, were wildly different in the 1600s, but, human nature remains much the same.

Although the source of the mysterious flying rocks was never discovered, Baker offers a host of reasons why George Walton was the sole target. Walton was a Quaker, for example, a religion persecuted in nearby Massachusetts that also included Maine. He was wealthy. He was powerful and controversial. He was on the wrong side of an incredible legal dispute that threatened to strip many New Hampshireites of their homes and property. And George Walton, elderly for his time, had a host of greedy grandchildren who wanted to inherit his land. In provincial New England, accusing your neighbor of witchcraft was a common ploy in property disputes.

In other words, a lot of human beings had devilish motives for getting rid of George Walton during the weeks when the stones rained down on him. Baker peels the legend like an onion to uncover, as the historian must, what was truly going on and why. The facts, as is so often the case, are so much more compelling than some dull old ghost.

More busted myths

-- Charles Brewster tells a stirring story of an 18^th century murder of a visiting French sailor on "Frenchman’s Lane" near Islington Creek in Portsmouth, and a bloody stone that, legend says, could not be washed clean. However, in a footnote in a second edition of Brewster’s Rambles, the editor notes that, further research shows, that the French fleet did not arrive in Portsmouth until four years after the famous murder. The mysterious supernatural stone later could not be found. (More on Frenchman's Lane)

-- For decades Hampton historians swore that a local rock bore the ancient inscriptions or "runes’ of the Viking Thorvald, brother of Leif Eriksson and son of Erik the Red Thorvald reportedly explored this region in 1004 AD. Vikings may certainly have passed along these shores, but the marks on the rock, it turns out, were most likely created by a steam shovel. The hoax may have been planted to boost real estate values on summer homes. (More on Thorvald)

-- There really was an Ocean Born Mary, whose family arrived at Portsmouth from England in 1720. It is uncertain whether a pirate spared the lives of passengers aboard a ship when he saw the newborn Mary Fuller. (1720-1814). Mary did not wed the pirate who did not hide his treasure in her son William’s Henniker, New Hampshire home. That fact did not stop tourists from paying 50 cents to dig for gold coins in the back yard. Research eventually proved they had been digging at the wrong house. (More on Ocean Born Mary)

-- Eunice "Goody" Cole of Hampton was not a witch, but she was convicted of witchery by local residents who wanted her land and disliked her brazen attitude toward authority. Exploited by neighbors, she was jailed, then died destitute and alone. Legend says local citizens drove a wooden stake through her heart after her death and tossed her into the sea. A group of Hampton residents officially apologized for the town’s behavior in 1938. (More on Goody Cole)