Connecticut River Town Destroyed By An Indian Curse - More Tales From The Hellmouth
Way of the Ray
This is supposedly a true story about a settlement in New England that was
> destroyed by an Indian curse. The exact area of the now deserted
> ghost town is not provided, but it appears to be in the general vicinity of the
> White Mountains of New Hampshire near the Connecticut River. There are clues
> given about its location: Rising out of the river's edge, a few miles from the
> place of abandonment, is a mountain, sixteen hundred feet in altitude. The
> pinnacle of which, contains an strange agglomeration of rocks, forming the shape
> of an "Indian's profile." Close by, a "corduroy" path, so-called, because
> without the benefit of some strong pants, the cat briars and nettles will shred
> your skin. The path follows the rambling remains of an old lumber trail, out of
> commission for the last seventy-five years or so. Even closer, one finds the
> refuse of some railroad tracks. At one time, ore was hauled on these tracks,
> now a jumble of weeds and rust. But go down those tracks, that you must, and
> you will arrive by the shores of a lake no longer existing, just a big
> vegetation patch. Here is where the establishment once stood. On your way
> back, you can return via the remnants of the railroad or take another way out
> using mule trails now extinct, where you'll pass pockmarked earth and a big pile
> of slag, waste material from a once flourishing enterprise.
>
> Today, I wonder if there's anything left of the village. I've never visited the
> community, so I can't say, but I've seen remnants of other New England ghost
> corroded cast iron tools lying about. There's fallen shingles and loose
> boards,some with square-headed nails sticking out. There's puddles of homemade
> bricks,the end product of the collapse of chimneys. Oh yeah, there's a bottle
> dump. Heavy green glass bottles in a whisky flask style, naturally chipped and
> cracked. Definitely plenty of whisky bottles, as those old Yankees were a hard
> drinking lot. They loved their hard cider and whisky, and had special place in
> their heart for that "demon rum." Lots of trees and undergrowth too, the
> foliage is sylvan green with White Pines, Sugar Maples, Highbush Blueberries,
> some White Birches, probably all ringed with Norway Spruces and Firs. In the
> dank, dark spots, where the waters of the earth didn't descend, there be ferns
> and mottled sunshine, and a sluggish smell of nature's offerings. Walking
> about the decay, each footstep would descend on pine needles and leaves, a whole
> gigantic layer of crackling humus that's been built-up over the years. That's
> what I imagine the town looks like these days, but if you go back in time to
> just before the Civil War...
>
> It was a mining community of some fifty homes, a church, and a functional, well
> stocked store. A municipality that cost the mining company a considerable
> fortune. Surveyors were brought in to lay out the town. Engineers constructed
> a tram,a conveyance to both transport the copper ore that was carved out of the
> hills down to the Connecticut, and to bring the people to the village from the
> river ferries. Some two hundred men, women, and children rode that tram to
> their new life by the lake surrounded by rugged hills and glens.
>
> Typically of New England, those hills and glens held secrets to behold. Dark
> secrets, best left undisturbed and undiscovered. The land, once belonged to
> Native Americans. At one time, it was the Abnaki or the Penacook who were the
> dominant force in the area. These were their camp and hunting grounds. But the
> location also held a deeper significance. The hills and gloomy recesses were
> said to be the gathering place of the Native American medicine men ~ the
> Powwows.
>
> Whether the Powwows practiced the Devil's Work or just simply understood the
> deeper meanings of Mother Earth, by the time the new villagers had arrived, the
> entire Indian population had been greatly depleted. It wasn't because of any
> wars or skirmishes with the white man in the region, or the proliferation of
> alcohol and strong spirits, although they may have contributed to the effect.
> Nope, it was one tiny, unseen microorganism ~ Variola Major, the smallpox. Even
> those groups like the white settlers, who had developed some immunity against
> the parasitical virus, had a mortality rate approaching thirty-three percent.
> So one can imagine the slaughter that occurred during each smallpox outbreak
> amongst the Indians. Well over fifty percent of those infected died horribly,
> their bodies a mass of lesions and pus, their skin sloughing off, not being able
> to drink or eat anything, before one's soul alighted for the great maker.
>
> Thus, the hills and glens were alive with the sonorous sounds of fallen
> warriors. What once was their hunting grounds, became the final resting place
> thousands. In fact, the whole area -- whether a multitude of mounds or just
> simple graves -- was one large burial site, and the well planned-out village was
> smack dab right in the middle of it.
>
> The warning signs were there right from the start of the settlement. It began,
> when the foundations for the house lots were being excavated. During that time,
> an Indian was seen hauntingly skulking about the site at night, and by the next
> morning, the excavated lots were found to have been refilled. Since this went
> on for several days, the mining company stationed night watchmen to guard the
> premises, but they didn't offer much resistance to the persistent Native
> American.
>
> Later in the town's construction, a group of Abnaki started visiting the area
> during the day. Their appearances, coincided with a wave of sabotage affecting
> the tools and supplies used in erecting the settlement. Equipment simply
> vanished or was broken. Kegs of nails disappeared; bags of supplies ripped
> open. Lumber, timber; mysteriously going up in flames. The building of the
> village, which should have been completed in three months, actually required
> nearly a year's effort.
>
> Then the weirdness turned pro. Even before the settlers had a chance to move
> into their new homesteads, strange things were occurring with their homes. The
> roofs of the houses were literally escaping without a trace. They were being
> ripped off and torn from the buildings ~ shredded ~ but nothing left behind.
> No cracked slate shingles, no broken boards, no twisted nails; it was a clean
> break into oblivion.
>
> However, there was a witness to the events, and the story he told was most
> unusual. He claimed, that on two separate occasions, he saw a large black
> cloud, in stark contrast to the deep blue sky, gather itself on the horizon,
> and move toward the village. So what's unusual about that, you say? It was
> the shape the angry cloud assumed. Not amorphous, but formed into a gigantic
> hand, that swooped down at the town, and enveloped one of the buildings. When
> the cloud dispersed, the roof had been removed from that house.
>
Finally, despite all the setbacks and oddities, the new inhabitants moved in.
So did the Native Americans, as their stealthy appearances within the community
increased prodigiously, becoming a day and night affair. The only spot, they
weren't seen congregating at was the church. This happenstance, greatly piqued
the curiosity of the town's minister, and he desired an audience with one of the
troublesome natives, to seek some understanding of the events that had
transpired.
The Reverend knew, that the Indians were frequently seen raiding a particular
home that belonged to a member of his congregation, so the minister went there
and waited for the next Native visitation. It took two days, but finally an
Indian appeared, and the Reverend confronted him, wanting to know what was going
on? The Abnaki explained the situation to him, and the next day, the man of the
cloth, called for an assemblage of the villagers. As the church bells rang out,
and the crowd grew quiet, the Reverend told his flock the following
story: The mining company had committed an egregious sin by building their town
on top of a old Native American burial ground. A very special place, as it held
the bodies of several chiefs and Sachems of the tribe. The spirits of these
dead warriors had told the Indians to warn the white man against building on the
site. By constructing their "'cave-of-many-rooms'" in the area, they were
violating a sacred trust. The Natives warned the people to move their little
hamlet elsewhere, or the "Great Hand of the Evil Spirit" would "descend from
the mountain where the sun rises and remove all who remained..."
The Minister also explained why the Indians hadn't violated the sanctity of the
church. As the Native American told him, it was a bond between the Great Spirit
and them. They would respect the white man's house of worship, expecting the
settlers to exhibit the same type of understanding for their grave sites...
therefor, the village had to be moved.
Well, being a hardy and non-superstitious type of people, the citizens of the
town rejected the minister's pleas. They thought the Reverend's tale of the
Evil Spirit and the Hand of Death to be a bunch of hokum. They went back to
their homes and to mining the copper out in the hills. Oh sure, a few of them
might have taken out their family Bibles, and placed them in a more prominent
location in their houses, but for the most part it was the status quo.
Everything was pretty mellow in the village, until one of the last days of
August. It was late afternoon, and the miners were out quarrying in the hills,
just on the verge of gathering enough copper ore to finally make a profit. It
was a warm, sunny, slightly breezy day around four o'clock in the afternoon,
when the sky began to get freaky. It first grew overcast, and then the sun's
rays took on a perplexing shade of orange. A color which deepened and darkened
into a blood-red hue that seemed to come pouring down, as the air grew still.
The miners became very panicky, as they were bathed in the blood-light. They
quickly gathered their picks and shovels, and were hurriedly vacating the
premises, but it was too late. Adjacent to the "copper pits" was a massive
sand bank, which chose that time to flow down onto the quarry, burying those
poor unfortunate miners under tons of sand and gravel. Supposedly, 61 miners
were killed in this accident.
And the supernatural fun was just starting. While the miners were taking a sand
nap, what should appear on the eastern horizon, but a maleficent black smudge.
A tiny, obtuse speck of the sky, that grew in size and form as it made it's way
past the Connecticut toward the settlement. Increasing in size, and coming
closer and closer, the ebony cloud gradually took shape. It was a hand, a
long-fingered, perpetually black hand, that descended on the town and its people
in a smothering embrace. All went dark..........
Out of the void came the light, as the cloud was dispersed in an instant, and
the air was still no longer. But as George Albert Waldo notes in Mysterious
New England, the bell had tolled for the residents of that tiny town. Not a
single one of them remained, as they were all scooped up into oblivion. Men,
women, children, presto gone. And of all the buildings in the town, the only
one undamaged by the "searing hand" of the Evil Cloud was the church.
Of all the Hellmouth Tales. this one is the most amazing if it's true.........
Argyle me
>This is supposedly a true story about a settlement in New England that was
>>
>> destroyed by an Indian curse.
<snip of a great story>
that was great Ray. Keep them stories coming. : ))
angle
J. Anthony McDonald
Hi.... while I can not vouch for the truthfulness of the story, having read it in
Yankee magazine years ago, I can say that I have visited the spot and it does exist.
It is little more than a depression and a few cellar holes at this point, mostly
overgrown and wild, but the profile of the Indian and the abandoned mine shaft are
still recognizable. It gave me a haunting feeling to be there, but at the same time
it was exhilerating to actually have found a place like that. I know I won't forget
it for some time to come!