PART I

HAUNTED PROVIDENCE

AMERICAN INDIAN GHOST STORIES

I am always in search of new stories to add to my rather weird collection. Over the years, I have heard countless stories of shadowy figures at the foot of the bed, mysterious cold spots, footsteps heard in otherwise empty rooms and probably too many anecdotes ending in: "And when I looked back, she was gone."

One area of spooky folklore that intrigues me is that of American Indian ghost stories — legends that must have been told here long before Columbus ever set sail. What little I have been able to unearth so far indicates that, for the most part, Native American tribes didn't have a particularly strong ghost story tradition in the way that the white man did. Native Americans have a very different understanding of spirits and the spirit world. Most tribes have a tradition of feeling very connected to the spirits of their ancestors — meaning both specific family members in particular and ancestors in general. This tradition is often a source of great comfort and even strength. Their spirits are there to help, not to haunt.

And I am well aware that anyone who presumes to speak of "American Indian beliefs" or "Native American culture" can easily land in trouble. There are hundreds of tribes and thousands of stories spread out across the Americas, and a Wampanoag may not have very much in common with a Cherokee or an Aztec.

In the nineteenth century, the golden age of the American magazine, noble savages were in vogue and many authors simply took familiar tales, recast them with "Indian" characters and made another sale. When I came across one story recounting the tale of Chief Stick-In-The-Mud, I began to suspect that this was probably not an authentic Algonquian folktale as the author claimed.

Still, I have discovered one story concerning spruce trees. According to legend, Narragansett Indians hold that each spruce tree marks the spot where a warrior fell fighting the white man — every spruce tree grows from Narragansett blood and is, in its way, a monument.

One day, a white settler looked out across his land and saw too many spruce trees for his liking. He took up his axe and set about chopping down every spruce tree he saw — clearing his land of any vestige of Native American presence. He didn't get too far in his project, as one of those spruce trees fell on him and killed him.

It might also be noted that American Indians began to tell more ghost stories after they made first contact with Europeans. Most of those stories, unsurprisingly, involve the spirits of the dead returning to warn fellow tribesmen to beware of white men.

BENEFIT STREET AT DUSK

Benefit Street, on Providence's East Side, is one of the oldest streets in the city. It was originally laid out in the 1750s and was called Back Street, as it ran along a pathway at the back of the house lots running up the hill from North and South Main Street, then called the Towne Street. In the early 1770s, Back Street was straightened and widened and renamed Benefit Street, as it was said at the time that it would be "a Benefit for All." With its beautifully preserved and restored Colonial and Federal houses, it remains one of the most popular and most photographed neighborhoods in the city. It is a destination for tourists, historians and architects alike. But beneath its picture-postcard perfection, Benefit has a strange history known only to a few.

Until about the time of the Revolution, Providence had no common burying ground. This was the result of having been founded by freethinkers and dissenters, the religious and philosophical refugees mentioned earlier.

While a plot of land had been set aside for a graveyard, most of Providence's early citizens chose instead to bury their dead on their own land — usually out back along that pathway that became Benefit Street. It sounds pretty ghoulish to us, but those were different times and different people.

Eventually, the remains in all those little family graveyards were removed to North Burial Ground, but there is a persistent rumor that some of those bodies were missed, left behind and remain buried along Benefit Street to this day. Perhaps the more tight-fisted residents simply moved the headstones. Something you may want to bear in mind on your next moonlit stroll.

Edgar Allan Poe visited Providence five times to court the widowed poet Sarah Helen Whitman. And although Poe died in Baltimore on January 19, 1849, many say that his visits to Providence continue. On several occasions, a man in black has been seen stalking down the street in the middle of the night, wearing a tall hat and carrying a walking stick, and many feel it is the restless author of "The Raven."

When Poe was in Providence, he sometimes stayed at the Mansion House hotel, a place that had fallen on hard times. When it opened in the eighteenth century, it was known as the Golden Ball Inn and was one of the best inns in the colonies. George Washington stayed there, the Marquis de Lafayette stayed there — both enjoyed a warm bed and the cordial hospitality of the taproom. But over the years it changed hands (and names; for a while it was known as Dagget's Tavern) a few times, and eventually it became a ramshackle place where one stayed when he could afford nothing else.

Toward the end of its days, one of the roomers — a student — was rummaging around the back of his closet and found an old, worn slipper in the back corner. The young man asked up and down the hall if anyone knew whose it was, but nobody did, and nobody even remembered who lived in the room before him. But from the day he discovered the slipper to the day he moved out (a short time later), he was kept awake night after night by the swishing sound of a woman's skirts, as though a ghostly girl was looking for something she had long ago misplaced.

The Mansion House is long gone now. Benefit Street declined over the years and was occasionally described as "a slum," and the once- fashionable Mansion House was apparently another victim of the neighborhood's changing fortunes.

A friend from college used to live in an old house just off of Benefit Street where, he told me, he and his housemate would frequently see a figure on the staircase. He said the figure wore a long white shirt and a tricorn hat, and as they thought he looked like a pirate, they called him "the Captain." They saw the Captain several times over the year...