Many people feel their relationships are haunted by a significant other’s former lover. This was quite literally the claim in the first documented paranormal investigation of a haunting in the United States. An alleged spirit reportedly commands a young woman to marry the ghost’s widower, a man who harbors dangerous secrets.
BOSTON: AUTUMN, 1799
Lydia Blaisdell, 15, looked at the mysterious clairvoyant across the small round table. The young woman had traveled to Boston to see Moll Pitcher, who was said to be able to read the future. Moll, 63, would later be depicted by poet John Greenleaf Whittier as a “wasted, gray, and meager hag.” Still, a less sensational observer described her as “thoughtful, pensive, and sometimes down-cast… almost approaching to melancholy—an eye, when it looked at you, of calm and keen penetration.”
Moll slowly steeped tea, then overturned the cup, looking for spiritual significance in the patterns of the scattered leaves. The tradition of reading tea leaves had spread across Eu rope starting in the seventeenth century, likely originating with the Scottish peasantry.
Occultism ran in Moll’s family. Her grandfather was said to commune with ghosts in the cemetery, helping him direct vessels out at sea to avoid storms and deadly accidents. Similarly, Moll’s most frequent visitors were sea captains and sailors hoping to hedge their risky futures.
The teenage visitor who had come from Maine that day braced herself as she waited for Moll to see what the universe held in store. Moll’s predictions had real-world impacts. Once, when Moll prophesied that a particular vessel would wreck at sea, most of its crew deserted before it left Boston.
What Lydia hoped for most, like many young romantics who visited the clairvoyant on Essex Street, was some sign of hope when it came to the man she loved, a widowed sailor named George Butler. Moll could be enigmatic in spelling out the future she saw for people, but the gist in the tea leaves became clear: Lydia would end up married to George. This prediction was shocking and exhilarating for Lydia, considering George had made it clear that he was not interested in her.
In her revelry, Lydia could not have foreseen how many lives would be turned upside down by what might have otherwise seemed an ordinary small-town court ship. While young Lydia fluttered with joy at the prospect of finding love, she was unknowingly walking into the middle of the first documented paranormal investigation of a ghost sighting in American history, one that would end up with a fractured community and tragic death.
SULLIVAN, MAINE: WINTER, 1800
Misfortune seemed to follow Lydia after she visited the clairvoyant. She fell sick shortly after returning from Boston to the family home in Sullivan, Maine, a hard scrabble seaport area. As she lay bedridden, she was considered by some to be at “the point of death.” In the throes of her illness, she shivered uncontrollably, and at one point, the whole room seemed to shake.
She realized that the room seemed to be moving even when her shiv ering stopped. The walls, as she would describe later, were vibrating. A voice floated into the room. Was she hallucinating? The voice was impossible to ignore but difficult to describe. One observer—one of more than 50 people who, in the coming months, would insist they heard the same voice— described it as “shrill, but very mild and pleasant,” a paradoxical description that seemed to reinforce its otherworldly nature.
The frail Lydia traced the voice as coming from beneath the floor, following it until she could tell it was coming from the cellar. The voice was that of a woman whom Lydia came to recognize as Nelly Butler, the young woman who had been married to George Butler. Nelly had died two and a half years earlier at age 21, days after the death of their only child.
“I was once N.H.,” the alleged spirit was reported to identify herself, referring to her maiden name, Nelly Hooper. “And after I was married, I was N.B.” The alleged apparition was described as some times showing herself as “a mere mass of light” with a glow in “a constant tremulous motion” that could become “shapeless” before she “vanished in a moment.”
Witnesses later described how Nelly’s voice affirmed that Lydia should carry out Moll Pitcher’s earlier prediction by marrying George Butler, Nelly’s widower and now Lydia’s crush.
Lydia and her parents, who also encountered the apparent apparition, were confused and distraught. They searched the house and found no sign of anyone or anything that suggested fraud. They prayed together, asking God for guidance, for the revelation of a hoax, if that was the case, or for the ability to persevere if the voice came from the spiritual world.
According to the Blaisdells, within weeks, the voice of Nelly returned, infused with impatience. This time, the spirit of Nelly reportedly ordered Lydia to go to George Butler, a man who hailed from one of the founding families of Sullivan, and deliver Nelly’s directive in person. It would not be an easy journey, particularly with Lydia on the mend after her illness. Still, the voice of Nelly reportedly warned that “lives were in danger” if the Blaisdells refused or delayed, without specifying whose lives.
Dealing with harsh winter weather and Lydia’s weakened state, she and her father, Abner, trekked for miles to fulfill the spiritual command. They walked alongside creaky ice floes in the bay. One false step could send them plummeting into the freezing water. Lydia, overwhelmed and worried, spent the journey “crying and wringing her hands.” The Blaisdells later described Nelly Butler appearing to them during the walk as a spectral figure, a woman in white “uttering expressions full of love and tenderness.”
The bizarre reality dawned on them: the young woman was on an odyssey to try to convince a man that his deceased wife ordered him to marry Lydia. Though the purported specter so far seemed nurturing, Lydia could not help but fear what would happen if she failed. A woman daring to ask for a man’s hand in marriage was unconventional enough in 1800 without claiming a supernatural injunction.
LYDIA had to muster her fortitude as she knocked on George Butler’s door. She could only guess how he might react. When George answered the door, Lydia and her father detailed the events they knew sounded outlandish: the shaking walls, the bright light, the voice of Nelly, the instructions to seek out and marry George, and the appearance of the specter of Nelly on their journey.
George, 29, was guarded. He had memorialized his late wife Nelly as “greatly beloved and lamented,” choosing to bury her on a family plot instead of the property of Nelly’s parents. He was strong and handsome, with a tendency to do what he wanted no matter whom it might inconvenience or hurt. Faced with Lydia’s claims, he remained as aloof as he had been when responding to Lydia’s earlier affections. He and his father Moses accused the Blaisdells of trying to trick them.
Death notice for Nelly
Lydia could hardly blame the Butlers but swore they were telling the truth. According to a contemporary account, she “solemnly protested that if there was mischief in hand, she was as ignorant of it as they were.”
The Butlers agreed there was one way to test their visitors’ tale: George would go to the Blaisdell home himself to see if the purported spirit appeared.
The rendezvous at the Blaisdells’ home occurred on January 2, 1800. Even in the already frigid night, George felt a chill anew as he entered the candlelit cellar. His life on the sea had brought him much stress and more than a few tall tales, but this was like nothing he had ever experienced. He heard a voice.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I was once your wife,” the voice responded, as documented later in witness statements. “Do you not remember what I told you when I was alive?”
“I do not know what you mean.”
The voice said, “I told you I did not think I should live long with you. I told you that if you were to leave me, I should never wish to change my condition, but that if I was to leave you, I could not blame you, if you did.” In other words, if he had passed away first, she would remain unmarried, but if she died, he should find another wife.
George was rendered speechless. He had heard those exact words years before in private, spoken by Nelly.
David Hooper, Nelly’s father, also came to the Blaisdell residence and affirmed that the voice was that of his daughter. At first, it seemed to be some kind of miracle. Another witness described the ghost’s voice as “the most delightful that ever I heard in my life.” Abner Blaisdell, meanwhile, marveled at the impossible ubiquity of the purported specter’s voice: “Sometimes the inimitable voice would sound ten or twelve feet from us, then close to our face, then again at a distance: and these changes were instantaneous.”
Some witnesses spotted the presence as a blur of light from a distance. Others felt her so close to them that they could reach out and grab her amorphous form. Another thought the brightness made the figure appear “dressed all in white… as bright a white as ever I saw.”
The spirit was said to have “slowly passed and repassed” between people present. One witness testified that the ghost’s form “was all light, the particles of which had constant motion,” making the witness “afraid to put my hand upon her.” The spirit was said to appear in some manner if someone desired to see her; if they feared her, she would conceal herself. To one observer who had also known Nelly, the specter reportedly revealed a physical form with “the same countenance and features [that Nelly Butler] had when she was alive and in health, so that I knew her immediately.”
Nelly’s sister, Sally Wentworth, represented a significant test case. When she heard what was happening from neighbors, Sally balked. “I do not believe you,” she said.
Finally, she agreed to go and see for herself along with a sea captain named Paul Simson.
Feeling afraid and confused, Sally held on to Lydia’s arm in the dark, cramped, stone-walled space.
As they reported later, everyone heard the sound of knocking. Lydia broke the silence: “Is it you?”
Sally gasped when a voice answered, later describing how “the sound of which brought fresh to my mind that of my sister’s voice, in an instant; but I could not understand it at all.” The voice boomed: “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight. Seek ye the Lord, while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near.” This was a variation on Isaiah 40:3, the Old Testament prophet, evoking Nelly Butler’s religious upbringing.
Captain Simson called out for peace. The voice responded enigmatically: “I am not to be trifled with. I am not to be trifled with. I am not to be trifled with. Peace, peace, peace.” It was the first time the voice responded with a hint of harshness and the first time (of many) that it spoke in triplicate.
During one incident, the underground cellar of the Blaisdell home was fully illuminated while the ghost spoke, concluding with the pronouncement: “Though my body is consumed, and all turned to dust, my soul is as much alive, as before I left the body.”
Pilgrims flocked to Sullivan to witness the apparition, and sightings around the community became frequent. Captain Paul Blaisdell, the second eldest of Lydia’s siblings, encountered the ghost in several locations. Once, he saw her in an open field “at a far distance.” Then, Captain Blaisdell testified, “She came to me, and [I] particularly observed that she never touched the ground. Her raiment appeared as white as possible.” Captain Blaisdell, like Sally, had once vocally doubted the ghost’s existence and identity. The following morning, the ghost “reproved” him “because I had not spoken to her, and because I had spoken against her.”
“I have come on God’s errand,” he reported the specter chastising him. “If you oppose me, then you oppose Him who sent me.” The next words were ominous: “Do you live in such a manner as you would wish to die?”
One witness, also sensing a troubling tone from the apparent spirit, diplomatically asked her intentions: “Are you from happiness or misery?”
The reply was documented as: “I am from above, I am not from beneath. I have come on God’s errand.”
Despite the minor key increasingly detected in the words of the purported ghost, the families and community felt a thrill in apparently making contact with the supernatural and embraced the clear directive to follow from the spirit world: Lydia and George had to marry.
GEORGE, too, was convinced. He acknowledged “that the spirit was that of his deceased wife, and declared that her will was his.” George proposed marriage to Lydia, who accepted, but not without reservations.
In a role reversal, Lydia felt cold feet about the relationship that she and the others considered mandated from the afterlife. She was feeling pressure from all sides. Some in town thought she was perpetrating a hoax to trap George into marriage. However, no one could begin to conjecture how she could accomplish it with so many witnesses encountering the spirit’s voice and form in various circumstances. This “storm of accusation,” as a contemporary characterized it, toward Lydia accompanied opposition to the marriage from Lydia’s father, Abner. He believed that there was a ghost and that it was Nelly Butler, but he still had bad feelings about the marriage and George, and this hostility further degraded Lydia’s attitude.
Their wedding date was set for May, and a month beforehand, Lydia told George that she loved him, but she “could bear these miseries no longer.” She felt they had to separate.
George remained steadfast, insisting the ghost’s plan was divine will and that failing to marry would amount to rejecting God, a dangerous transgression.
Lydia had to take action, willing to defy not only the man she loved but the power of the spirits. She collected her belongings and prepared to board a shipbound two hundred miles away for York, Maine, where she planned to stay with relatives. But she would soon report that the ghost intervened when Nelly’s voice told Lydia “her efforts were in vain, and that her affliction [that is, the requirement to marry] would sail with her.” There seemed to be no escape. George and Lydia “must and would be joined,” echoing Psalm 84’s warning, “What God hath joined together let not man put asunder.”
Many people in relationships end up feeling metaphorically haunted by significant others’ past lovers. Still, according to the community surrounding the Blaisdells and Butlers, in this instance, that dynamic was literal, with the spirit a constant third wheel. The courtship like no other in the 25-year history of the United States, became a wedding like no other. The ghost was said by witnesses to appear during the May 28th ceremony, a gothic scenario come to life.
“The spirit is come,” said one onlooker.
Lydia had not shaken her trepidation. “I cannot help being afraid.”
“You need not be,” the voice reportedly replied. “You need not be. I never did hurt you, did I?”
“No.”
“And I shall not hurt you. Put your things in place. Conduct as formerly, for nothing will hurt you.”
But the specter, according to witnesses, was about to drop a bombshell. On May 29, the day after the wedding, the ghost was documented as speaking again, this time to George Butler: “Be kind to your wife: for she will not be with you long. She will have but one child, and then die.”
Lydia was not even pregnant when they heard the prophecy. Was the spirit making a prediction or a threat? Had Lydia’s hubris in desiring to know her future–which had started with her visit to the clairvoyant Moll Pitcher in the first place–unleashed a spiritual backlash, prying open a Pandora’s box sequence of events that was reaching its dangerous climax? Though Sullivan now contained dozens of people who could confidently swear to their own experiences with the ghost of Nelly, none of them knew how to protect Lydia. They needed expert help.
REVEREND Abraham Cummings, 45, sailed along the craggy coastline of Maine toward Sullivan. Standing in his catboat (a small sailboat), christened simply “Cummings,” he struck an imposing figure as the steady wind lifted his long blue cloak crafted of English broadcloth. In contrast to many self-taught ministers of the era, Abraham was a scholar-preacher, educated at Rhode Island College (later, Brown University). His eccentricity accentuated his erudition; he would sometimes put both of his socks on the same foot and scurry about his house, seeking the other, recruiting the assistance of his wife and children.
As part of the Massachusetts Missionary Society, Abraham would dock his catboat to preach to a community that did not have a permanent minister, then be off to the next one. As he drifted between stops, he would bait his fishing hook with an errant grasshopper to catch dinner. He would fall asleep at the bottom of his boat as it tumbled on the waves. His friends warned him that he would end up at the bottom of the ocean one day, to which Abraham responded, “It is as cheap going to heaven by water as it is by land.”
When he arrived in Sullivan, Abraham heard the tales of a ghost and spiritual threats. The Baptist minister was always open to hearing strange and unusual spiritual accounts and signs of the afterlife. He had studied the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish scientist turned mystic who claimed to speak with angels and demons.
Still, Abraham was unmoved by the stories of Lydia and other witnesses, which seemed unprecedentedly outlandish. Despite his open-mindedness, he was part of an era that prided itself on rationalism, with one newspaper pointing out that accusations of witchcraft, fairly common not long before, had disappeared, replaced by scientific and medical explanations. He wanted to ignore the hubbub, leave Sullivan behind as scheduled, and continue his sailing and preaching routine. ther had indeed died a few days earlier.
Ultimately, Abraham decided to humor the locals and investigate. He collected accounts of witnesses to the purported ghost of Nelly Butler and compiled detailed documents related to the supposed phenomena. The more he did, the more startled he became. He could find no rational explanations for what he was hearing from one witness after another. He could not account for how the alleged ghost had been seen and heard in different locales by different people and how the ghost knew things that only Nelly–or an omniscient being–could know.
At one point, comments reportedly made by the ghost implied that Lydia’s grandfather was dead, reportedly announcing: “He is in heaven, praising God with the angels.”
Abner, Lydia’s father, was confused by this. But he later found out that his father had indeed died a few days earlier.
At another point, Abraham Cummings heard the ghost’s voice warning that she was not to be doubted. He soon found that several people elsewhere in Sullivan publicly questioned whether she was real around the same time he heard the ghost’s admonition. Those doubters soon had their own experiences with the phenomena and quickly became ardent believers.
Among those who claimed to have encountered the ghost, a vocal minority was sure she was no mere spirit but a manifestation of the devil or at least of demonic forces. Sally, Nelly’s sister, noted that the ghost’s voice was “hoarse and thick, like that of my sister on her deathbed, but more hollow.” Sally came to believe that the devil had mingled with Nelly’s spirit.
For his part, Abraham had felt grievous spiritual portents for some time as they faced a new century. In fact, on a visit to Sullivan the year before, Abraham had preached about the topic to those who attended his sermon, the language of which has been lost to history until now: “In the last day, perilous time shall come.” He then connected the warning to their present era. “How perilous are the present times, with regard to the spiritual welfare of mankind!” He described a chilling, grotesque scene in Lyon, France, from six years prior, when a donkey “was dressed in the vestments of priests, with the Old and New Testament tied to his tail, and made to drink out of the sacramental cup: and, when the procession had arrived to a certain spot of ground prepared for the purpose, the Bible was publicly burnt amid the shouts and rejoicings of the blasphemous assistants.”
Death on a Pale Horse, Benjamin West, 1796
He also noted a litany of killings across Europe that featured families torn apart: children killing parents, parents killing children. A nightmare closer to home also attracted his attention when a merchant from Wethersfield, Connecticut, murdered his entire family—his wife (also named Lydia) and their three young daughters—before taking his own life. For Abraham, something genuinely evil was afoot, and Sullivan seemed to be center stage for a spiritual reckoning.
Sally Wentworth was not the only witness who, on the one hand, believed Nelly had returned but, on the other hand, feared her spirit’s true intent. Lydia’s younger brothers, Samuel and Ebenezer, moved their beds into their parents’ room out of fright. Like Sally, other locals who encountered the purported spirit believed the devil channeled evil through Nelly and that the specter of Nelly was inviting this, although none could explain why.
By the autumn, Lydia discovered she was pregnant, a revelation fraught with terror considering the prophecy of her death that still loomed large. Another twist came in the form of a question hidden in plain sight: how did Nelly Butler really die?
LYDIA and her allies were in a race against time to save her and her unborn child from the fate reportedly declared by Nelly. Lydia had to draw on all her inner resources in her evolution from a lovestruck teen to a strong young woman. She and Abraham Cummings had to pore over the minister’s notes of eyewitness accounts, searching for clues to Nelly’s intentions, vulnerabilities, abilities, and weaknesses.
Meanwhile, the ghost reportedly predicted that clues and suspicions would develop against George that pointed toward Nelly’s death being a result of foul play. Records indicate that the legal system, indeed, quietly initiated an investigation at this time. In light of the insinuation that George murdered Nelly, other details took on renewed significance. Nelly’s comment to George before her death–that if he were to die, she would remain a widow but that if she were to die, he should remarry suddenly seemed likely to be a result of a husband manipulating his very young wife into saying what he wanted to hear. In hindsight, he had already been thinking about her death during those eerie conversations. After Nelly died, George’s choice to bury her on his property instead of at the cemetery of Nelly’s family may have been an attempt to keep away any evidence related to her death. George’s lack of interest in Lydia may have also stemmed from a desire not to have anyone become close enough to him to discover secrets. His manners could now be seen not as stoic but as secretive and plotting. According to one nineteenth-century source, the unresolved violence against Nelly was the real reason for Nelly’s “pertinacious visitations to the scene of her earthly wrongs.”
Lydia was already fully occupied, trying to overturn the ghost’s dire predictions toward her. At one point, with half a dozen people in the house trying to lend aid, Lydia demanded that the spirit explain what she did to deserve what was happening to her.
“Nothing, dear,” the voice was said to respond. “You have done nothing.”
Lydia longed for consolation. She wrapped her left arm around George’s waist and held the front of his waistcoat with her right hand while leaning her head against his chest. She remained in the dark about the allegations against George, whom she still counted on as a protector.
At that moment, witnesses described, Nelly’s ghost appeared, a figure of radiance, holding “a very small child” in her folded arms.
George and others recognized that it was George and Nelly’s baby, whom some sources identified as a boy named Ambrose. It was a heartbreaking tableau for all, and to those who believed George was involved in Nelly’s murder, it was an unspoken allegation by the spirit world.
George reached out with his left hand. He could see his hand in the middle of the form of his child “but could feel nothing.” One of six eyewitnesses later described seeing “[George’s] hand in the midst of the apparent body of the apparition.”
According to accounts, the specter of Ambrose appeared and disappeared three times that night.
At another point, Nelly’s ghost was reported to say that her dead child “would rise at her right hand at the last day.” Abraham Cummings interpreted the reference to the last day as biblical Judgement Day.
In consultation with Abraham and other allies, Lydia settled on a plan to try to give peace to Nelly. They would exhume the body of little Ambrose to re-inter him with Nelly, which would place him at arm’s length for Nelly on the day of judgment, potentially easing her unrest and liberating Lydia from her apparent wrath. For this process to be properly blessed and to make a show of strength for potentially unseen spiritual adversaries, they needed the power of community.
Using Abraham’s experiences preaching to roving congregations along the coastline of northern New England, he sent messages to other locations informing them of a gathering at the cemetery in Sullivan on the appointed day. On the day of the exhumation, Abraham waited, bracing himself for the possibility that their small group would be fending for themselves without the support of collective prayer.
They watched as one person after another appeared until 80 people stood with them in the cemetery. They had come from four different towns, united by a desire to help Lydia and to push against whatever forces threatened her.
Led by Abraham, they began exhuming Ambrose’s little coffin, a process that took a physical and emotional toll. Then, they dug up Nelly’s grave. To adhere to Abraham’s interpretation of what he called “the order of the specter” and reunite Nelly with her child, they would have to open Nelly’s coffin and place Ambrose’s remains next to hers.
Once Nelly and Ambrose were buried together, Lydia had to hope those vengeful forces that seemed intertwined with the spirit were satiated. But Abraham admitted that even he could not quite “conjecture the design” or the exact reasons for the supernatural directives. Witness reports suggested that the specter’s strength increased over time, enhanced by the reunion with her child.
At one point, Lydia was seen by witnesses walking beside Nelly’s ghost in a field, during which exchange Lydia exhibited “great fear.” In speaking with the purported specter, Lydia spoke in what witnesses described as “so low a voice we could not understand them.” Lydia was described as “very weary and exhausted” while conferring with the apparition, and in one instance, Lydia was seen fainting in its presence, perhaps hearing from the spirit about George’s role in Nelly’s death. Lydia also used cryptic language when trying to calm another witness who was frightened to encounter Nelly. “Do not be scared,” Lydia said. “She has not come to hurt you.” The implication was Nelly was there to hurt someone else.
Lydia remained in distress about what she learned and experienced in the wake of the re-interment. For those who believed George had been responsible for Nelly and Ambrose’s deaths, reuniting Ambrose with Nelly may have emboldened the specter but did not mollify her rage against George Butler and anyone he cared about.
Lydia, displaying her courage and inner strength, had a chance to become an investigator herself, trying to piece together clues about what George may have done to Nelly.
Lydia now had to withstand risk from two sides–from the unknowable intentions of the spirit, as well as the potential violence of George if he knew that she discovered any role he played in Nelly’s demise. As her pregnancy progressed, her condition prevented her from trying to flee from George until after she gave birth.
She would never have the chance. Lydia Butler died in childbirth, just as Nelly Butler had prophesied.
AFTER Lydia died, George Butler distanced himself from anything related to Lydia and anything that had seemed to attract the spirit. He filled a boat with his second deceased wife’s belongings and set it on fire, pushing it out to sea. The vessel drifted into Taunton Bay. Whether by plan, chance, or some unknown power, the craft passed near the Blaisdell home, where Lydia’s family mourned for her. Abner Blaisdell viewed the vessel as a last taunt by George Butler. The flames lit the surrounding water before drifting into darkness.
Skeptics of the entire phenomena could point to potential motives for either Lydia or George to pull a hoax to force the other one into a marriage (Lydia for love, and George to gain access to the resources of the Blaisdell family, who otherwise disapproved of him). They could attribute Lydia’s predicted death to nothing more singular than high mortality rates during childbirth. However, childbirth mortality rates at the turn of the nineteenth century were much lower than might be imagined, between 2% and 4% of births; such theories in favor of George’s plotting also would have to account for the fact that George had earlier rejected Lydia, and if accusing Lydia of machinations, would have to incorporate the fact that Lydia’s life was threatened by the experiences, ultimately ending with her death. Those explaining away the specter sightings would also have to account for a cabal of conspirators needed to pull off a sophisticated ruse using only turn of nineteenth-century technology or posit an instance of mass hysteria and delusion. True believers in an unexplained phenomenon could point to the fact that the reported spectral exchanges included information that was unlikely or impossible to know about the witnesses. Hybrid theories incorporating supernatural elements could posit Lydia or George initiating a hoax, which in turn attracted the actual specter of Nelly.
To those who believed in Nelly’s ghost, Nelly–or the demonic forces that empowered her–had tragically punished Lydia for falling in love with George. The aftershocks for Lydia’s family lasted long after the events ended. Her younger brother Ebenezer, who had moved into his parents’ bedroom from fear of the ghost, was later listed in records as “insane,” one indication of that ordeal on the family.
As for George Butler, records and accounts suggest that the justice system stalled at the grand jury stage in investigating his part in the death of Nelly. Undoubtedly, the Butlers, one of the most influential families in Sullivan, swayed the outcome. Abner Blaisdell never forgave George. Their mutual hatred tore apart Sullivan’s Baptist congregation, which eventually splintered.
According to one historical source, Lydia and her baby were buried “alongside [George’s] first wife and baby on the back of his property on Butlers Point in an unmarked grave.” Years later, after George died, in stark contrast to those unmarked graves, a large headstone was erected for him, but at a cemetery where he was not buried; in a somewhat strange and unexplained twist, George was buried next to the unmarked graves of Lydia and Nelly.
Records suggest that the descriptions of Nelly by witnesses as a human figure cloaked in a thin layer of white or bright light or whiteness may have established an early prototype of a ghost that later became a Halloween cliche, represented in its simplest form by a person with a sheet thrown over them.
As for Moll Pitcher, who began Lydia on her paranormal experience, her mysterious career would end up being documented by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau.
In what may be considered the first mass paranormal experience and ghost sighting in the United States, Abraham Cummings has a strong case for being the country’s first parapsychologist and paranormal investigator. His meticulous interviewing methods and techniques and documentation of witnesses became a template for similar investigations of unexplained phenomena.
Abraham would record another indelible experience he could not quite explain. He had come to consider the Lydia Blaisdell saga as an example of forces at work that transcended human understanding. One summer, five years later, he was in Sorrento, Maine, to find time for rest and reflection.
He stayed in the area of Waukeag Neck when two locals fetched him to see something strange.
Abraham went outside and saw a white rock at a distance of “twelve rods,” or within 200 feet. Minutes afterward, he saw that “the white rock was in the air; its form a complete globe, white with a tincture of red, like the damask rose, and its diameter about two feet.”
He slowly walked forward, and the levitating rock shot toward him “as quick as lightning” and “instantly assumed a personal form with a female dress.” The ghostly body was no taller “than a girl seven years old.”
The apparition of a girl then grew in size. She became illuminated and “glorious.” Rays diffused from her head toward the ground.
Could it be Lydia Butler’s spirit, there to finally reveal why Nelly had sought her death, though she was guilty of nothing more than love? Or perhaps a vision of Lydia’s daughter growing and finding peace in the afterlife?
Abraham rushed inside the house to retrieve his family as witnesses, but when they returned outside, the sight “had vanished.”
It was hard to ignore thoughts of another scenario that would make him shudder. Could it have been Nelly’s specter, signifying that her vengeance remained incomplete and that she would be back to haunt the living, if not right away, then in the future? Looking back, Abraham would say it was “one of the great errors of my life” that he did not try to speak to the apparent spirit to learn what she might do next.