North Texas Haunted Research

Brooklyn, CT: Trinity Church: Have heard of many
happenings as far as the "lady in white", which is supposed
to be the spirit of the slain women that serial
killer Micheal Ross had dumped behind the church. She
has been seen in all three top windows at once,
giving some people the idea that there are three ladys'
in white. A priest has also been seen walk through
the front doors, stand on the steps and watched the
people that had went into the cemetery, just to
disappear a few moments later. You also have the spirits of
the deceased animals that the practicing Pagans have
sacrificed, these usually have red glowing eyes

 

Voluntown, CT; Maud's Grave & Witches Pond: Hell
Hollow Rd. People report that if you say Maud's name as
you pass by her grave site your car will crash or
stall.... hasn't happened yet. Also during the day driving
by you can sometimes see a man running through the
woods at the same pace as the car. This coincides with
reports at night with a man walking down the street from
the direction of Maud's grave with red eyes. Another
person told me about a time they were there during the
day and a man on a white horse had appeared after
some noises in the woods nearby, came up and asked
them if they had seen a person (by specific name) then
rode away. This man was reportedly dressed in older
times' clothes. Fog has been seen rising from the pond
at night in unusual patterns, along with a man in
black/ shadow figures. Also, Hell Hollow got its name, in part, from another local legend about the ghost of an Indian woman said to have been killed by British soldiers in the area in the 1600s. Her ghost, the story goes, haunts Hell Hollow and her plaintive wailing can be heard there sometimes. Local hunters have long told of hearing strange noises there.

Exeter, RI; Mercy Brown:  First seen on "Sighting" I went to find it.
 in 1892, is one of the best documented cases of the exhumation of a corpse in order to perform rituals to banish an undead manifestation.

The family of George and Mary Brown suffered a sequence of tuberculosis infections in the final two decades of the 19th century. Tuberculosis was called "consumption" at the time and was a devastating and much-feared disease.

The mother, Mary, was the first to die of the disease, followed in 1888 by their eldest daughter, Mary Olive. Two years later, in 1890, their son Edwin also became sick.

In 1891, another daughter, Mercy, contracted the disease and died in January 1892. She was buried in the cemetery of the Baptist Church in Exeter.

Friends and neighbors of the family believed that one of the dead family members was a vampire (although they did not use that name) and caused Edwin's illness. This was in accordance with threads of contemporary folklore linking multiple deaths in one family to undead activity. Consumption was a poorly understood condition at the time and the subject of much urban mythology.

George Brown was persuaded to exhume the bodies, which he did with the help of several villagers on March 17, 1892. While the bodies of both Mary and Mary Olive had undergone significant decomposition over the intervening years, the more recently buried body of Mercy was still relatively unchanged and had blood in the heart. This was taken as a sign that the young woman was undead and the agent of young Edwin's condition. The cold New England weather made the soil virtually impenetrable, essentially guaranteeing that Mercy's body was kept in freezer-like conditions in an above-ground crypt during the 2 months following her death.

Mercy's heart was removed from her body, burnt, and the remnants mixed with water and given to the sick Edwin to drink. He died two months later.

We have gathered many photos from here as well as what sounded like someone riding an older 1800 circa. bicycle around the graveyard paths. In one visit we had noticed the crypt door about halfway open. The co-founder of NEHR and myself took some pictures around and inside the crypt. In which we caught a red streak slightly above the crypt.(Found this after the pictures were developed.) A few minutes later the wind had picked up only to the left of the crypt, about 20 yards away. We had witnessed(myself and 3 others) two balls of light, acting as if it were animal eyes jumping either from the tree or over the stone wall into the cemetery. It's "eyes" transfixed on us about 1 1/2 feet off the ground as it(the balls of light) travelled about 30 yards behind some grave stones. At which point one ball of light reappeared and shot straight up towards us. Making a turn to it's right, hovering over two grave stones 2 yards in front of me before disappearing. Later that night we did a little more research on Mercy and found out that day and the days we went just prior, was the time she was being kept inside the crypt until the ground thawed for proper burial.

North Adams, MA; Hoosac Tunnel:

193 lives were lost during construction, leading to the nickname "The Bloody Pit." The Hoosac Tunnel was the first commercial use of nitroglycerin in the United States. Some lives were lost due to the unstable nature of nitroglycerin, but many more were lost to the even more unstable black powder, which was used before nitroglycerin was introduced. A number of others were killed by the horrendous Central Shaft accident.

The accident was one of the most fatal; it occurred while digging the tunnel's 1,028-foot (313 m) vertical exhaust shaft, called 'Central Shaft.' On October 17, 1867, a lighted candle in the hoist building ignited naphtha fumes which had leaked from a 'Gasometer' lamp, triggering an explosion. The hoist caught fire and collapsed into the shaft. Four men near the top of the shaft escaped, but thirteen men working 538 feet (164 m) below were trapped, killed by falling flaming naphtha and pieces of iron. The pumps were also destroyed, and the shaft began to fill with water. A worker named Mallory was lowered into the shaft by rope the next day; he was overcome by fumes and reported no survivors.

Workers assumed that nobody at the bottom survived, so no further rescue attempts were made. However, when the first workers got to the bottom several months later, they found that workers had, indeed, survived and had built a makeshift raft, but had died, suffocated by the fire.

On our first visit to the tunnel I was elected to walk the top of the tunnel to try and find the old miners camp. Myself and one other investigator both saw someone in an orange miners type suit walking up a hill just off the path. The next visit we had walked about 1/2 mile into the tunnel where we had caught vortex and gray matter photos.