Haunted Heritage: A Definitive Collection of North American Ghost Stories (Haunted America) - Softcover

Buch 3 von 4: Haunted America

Norman, Michael; Scott, Beth

 
9780765341068: Haunted Heritage: A Definitive Collection of North American Ghost Stories (Haunted America)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0765341069 ISBN 13: 9780765341068
Verlag: Macmillan US, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

The latest in the bestselling series of Americana occult folklore collections that have included Haunted America and Historic Haunted America, Haunted Heritage brings together yet another amazing collection of spectral tales from all across the United States and Canada.
The tales-based on interviews, public records, and family histories-reach from coast-to-coast in the United States and Canada. Some involve famous families (such as that of American patriot Nathan Hale), and some, famous events (such as the Battle of Little Big Horn). Some are gentle and benevolent (a family member watching over his/her descendants), other vengeful and disruptive (the unresting souls of the wrongfully dead).

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Michael Norman has taught at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls for more than twenty-five years. Beth Scott, who died in early 1994, was full-time freelance writer for more than thirty-five years.


MICHAEL NORMAN is a writer and retired journalism professor who lives in an absolutely unhaunted house near the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St.Paul. Beth Scott, who died in early 1994, was full-time freelance writer for more than thirty-five years.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

A Revolutionary Haunting
 
Monuments to America’s Revolutionary War heroes adorn the landscape in countless New England villages and counties. From Boston Harbor to Fort William Henry on Maine’s rugged seacoast, inland to historic old Fort Ticonderoga and Saratoga, patriot homes, battlefields and birthplaces mark the intense interest Americans have in that bloody fight for independence.
One of the emerging nation’s first martyrs, Nathan Hale of Connecticut, is just such a Revolutionary hero, a soldier-spy whose exploits are known to countless schoolchildren. Though his life was short, his valiant efforts on behalf of the patriot cause are still held as a model of unselfish bravery. Several monuments commemorate his life.

A boulder marks Halesite, near Huntington, New York, the place where it is believed the British captured him.

In South Coventry, Connecticut, is the remarkable Hale Homestead, where Nathan was born in 1755, the sixth of twelve children of Deacon Richard and Elizabeth Strong Hale.

The Homestead today is open to the public, administered by the Coventry Historical Society for the Antiquarian and Landmarks Society of Connecticut. The home and grounds are evocative reminders of the colonial era as costumed docents guide visitors through the intricacies of eighteenth-century life. Nathan Hale’s Bible and fowling gun are on display.

Tourists may not know, however, that the colonial Hale family must have been fonder of their home than even the family could have anticipated. The Homestead is reputedly haunted by the ghostly visages of Nathan Hale’s own family.

* * *

The story of the Hale Homestead must begin with the Revolutionary hero himself. Ironically, Nathan Hale could have avoided the great conflict. A graduate of Yale College at the age of eighteen, the calm, pious young man with remarkable athletic skills accepted a teaching job in East Haddam, Connecticut, in 1773. By all accounts, Hale was quite a good teacher during his year in East Haddam. He moved to New London the next year and began what he probably assumed was going to be a life of teaching and scholarship.

It was not to be.

Hale was excited by the ideals embodied in the American Revolution and volunteered to fight in July 1775, one month after his twentieth birthday. He was commissioned a lieutenant by the Connecticut assembly and joined colonial troops in driving the British from Boston.

When His Majesty’s forces invaded the New York area, Hale, by now a captain, marched with colonial troops to drive the Redcoats from their new encampment. Captain Hale was a daring and resourceful soldier, commended by his superiors for many acts of bravery. On one occasion, his men captured a British supply ship from under the cannons of a British war vessel.

The ragtag American soldiers, however, were growing dispirited. General Washington’s troops were facing disintegration in New York. Soldiers began to desert, slipping away from their posts, headed for home. The commander-in-chief needed information about British troop movements in order to prepare his tactics, and he needed it badly. He turned to an elite fighting force, the Rangers, for help. Washington asked their commander to find a volunteer who would penetrate the British lines to collect intelligence on enemy positions, tactics, and troop strength.
Captain Nathan Hale had been awarded a place in the small Rangers outfit after he captured the British supply ship. On the Rangers commander’s second call, Captain Hale stepped forward. He would take the assignment.

Disguised as a Dutch schoolmaster, a role ideally suited to his background, Hale successfully crossed British lines and gathered the vital information. But, as every American knows, the young patriot-spy was captured by British troops on September 21, 1776, as he attempted to make his way back to the American side. A British loyalist cousin may have betrayed him.

Hale was tried as a spy before General William Howe, the British commander, and sentenced to hang on the following day. Calm and courageous even as the noose was dropped over his neck, Captain Hale asked for a Bible and gave the executioner, Major Cunningham, a letter to his family. The British officer denied him the Bible and ripped up Hale’s last letter.

So, just three months after his twenty-first birthday, Nathan Hale met his death. His reputed final words have been included in history books for decades: “I regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

Contrary to generations of history books, however, he probably didn’t say that. According to a recently found war diary penned by British Captain Frederick Mackenzie, who witnessed Hale’s execution, the young soldier’s final words were: “It is the duty of every good officer to obey any orders given him by his commander-in-chief.” Mackenzie’s record of what Nathan Hale actually said is not as stirring as the oft-quoted passage cited above, but certainly still befitting the man’s stoic nature.

* * *

In the same year Nathan Hale lost his life, 1776, his father, Deacon Richard Hale faced a daunting challenge: How could he provide room for his own twelve children and a cluster of pretty teenage girls brought into his life by the widow he had married in 1769?

Born at Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1717, Deacon Hale had moved to Coventry in the 1740s. He bought a large farm and married a local girl, Elizabeth Strong, in 1746. To that union were born twelve children, eight boys and four girls. Not surprisingly, Mrs. Hale died in 1767 following the birth of her twelfth child. Little Nathan was twelve.

Two years later, in 1769, Deacon Hale married Abigail Cobb Adams, the widow of Captain Samuel Adams. She brought to the marriage several teenage girls. One of them, Sarah Adams, married John Hale, one of Nathan’s older brothers.
The precise date of Deacon Hale’s house remodeling isn’t known, nor do records indicate if it occurred before or after Captain Nathan Hale’s execution. He rebuilt the mansion as a two-family house shared by father and son, and their wives who were also mother and daughter. As the children of this blended family grew to adulthood they moved away, although several members of the family lived at the Homestead over the years.

* * *

The haunting of Hale Homestead has been documented since at least 1914. In that year, the great American antiquarian, George Dudley Seymour (1859-1945), purchased the vacant Hale Homestead and spent the rest of his life making it a centerpiece in his quest to immortalize his favorite American hero, Captain Nathan Hale.

He also came to believe the Homestead was haunted.

Indeed, one of the first documented ghost sightings involved Seymour himself. He had completed the acquisition of Hale Homestead in the spring of 1914 and embarked on a journey to visit it. He had gone by train from New Haven to Willimantic where he then rented a buggy to take him and an unnamed friend to South Coventry. Heavy rains had turned the roads to muddy ruts. Both men were tired from the long trip.

Seymour recorded his impressions of the Homestead in his diary:

“Isolated, dilapidated, unpainted, and vacant, the (Hale) house presented a forlorn picture, heightened on the inside by streamers of paper falling from dampened walls.…[Seymour’s friend] jumped out of the buggy and ran to the window, and what should he see but Deacon Hale’s ghost looking out of the [school room] window to see who had arrived. As my friend put his face...

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Verlag
Macmillan US
Erscheinungsdatum
2003
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0765341069
ISBN 13 
9780765341068
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
608
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Procter & Gamble Service GmbH, Braun
https://in.pg.com/contact-us/

Sulzbacher Str. 40-50
Schwalbach/Ts.
65824
Deutschland

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