Things That Go Bump in the Night in NH

In keeping with the general Halloween theme of October, we'll explore one of the country's most famous ghostie stories, Ocean-Born Mary. In the mid-18th century, as Mary's mother was crossing the Atlantic from Scotland to the New World -- a fitting subject for Columbus Day, as I suddenly realized -- her ship was overtaken by pirates. The pirates gave the ship a pirate makeover; pillaging, stealing and looting until the pirate captain, one Don Pedro, discovered one of the passengers -- Mary's mother -- had just given birth to a baby girl. His salty pirate heart thus moved, Don Pedro halted the looting and pillaging and ordered one of his men to fetch a bolt of fabric they'd swiped from someone else. He gave this bolt to Mary's mother and spared the ship, on the condition that Mary's mother name the newborn after Don Pedro's mother -- you guessed it, Mary. Hence, Ocean-born Mary.

Mary's family settled in first Boston, then moved to New Hampshire in the 1750s, where Mary grew up and eventually married and had kids of her own. Her husband soon died, however, but to the rescue came Don Pedro who had apparently kept tabs on Mary, and he built a big house in Henniker, New Hampshire to which he and Mary retired to. One evening, however, some of Don Pedro's old mates showed up for a visit, and in the midst of an apparent financial disagreement, Don Pedro was run through with a cutlass. In his last dying gasps, he told Mary where he had buried the proverbial pirate treasure on the property. (Why pirates didn't just use bank deposit boxes or Swiss bank accounts beats me. Seems much less work than digging deep holes all over the place.) Anyway, Mary had Don Pedro buried beneath the fire place, and the days turned to weeks, then years, and in the early 19th century Mary finally died herself in the house, and as all ghostie stories go, she apparently has never left. There have been stories ever since the 19th century stretching right up into the 21st century of people claiming to have seen Mary, who apparently was distinctively tall -- 6 feet high -- and severely red-headed. (Having distinctive features helps with identification of ghosts, so if you plan on haunting after your time has come, be sure to look as unusual as you can beforehand.)

The legend is jam-packed with different accounts of the ghost, although fact-checking deflates some of the story. Ocean-Born Mary did indeed exist as Mary Wallace (nee Wilson), and the whole bit about the pirate is claimed to be true in a few sources. There is a bolt of fabric in the Manchester History Association's Millyard Museum which is claimed to be the one Don Pedro gave to Mary's mother on the ship. Mary also did end up in Henniker -- her grave is still there, along with an 'Ocean Born Mary' marker -- but there are discrepancies about which house - the one we believe she lived in, and one owned by her son, Robert -- Mary's ghostie allegedly haunts. The 20th century saw a lot of famous psychics and ghost hunters like Hans Holzer and Ed and Lorraine Warren weigh in on the story, with as usual only muddier results. Ah, well, it's still a fun story, and Henniker is a beautiful town to visit with its bridge (pictured above).