As the shadows lengthen, and night winds sigh in the boughs overhead, floorboards creak and doors have a mind of their own. It is all too easy to imagine that we are not alone in our homes, or on our walks, in Harvard. The town’s iconic countryside and cemeteries aren’t the only locales for sightings. Think about your neighbors’ homes. Think about the town beach. Ask any natives who will share stories of their childhoods and you’ll learn that spirits have always been afoot, all the way back to the Revolutionary era.
Last September, Kara LeTreize was working at Friendly Crossways Hostel on Littleton County Road. She was very busy preparing for a wedding dinner. “We needed paper towels kept in a cabinet underneath a stairway,” she says. “The cabinet door has always been hard to open because the floor is uneven. I bent down to touch the handle, and the door opened—by itself. It could not have fallen open.”
Was she frightened? “I was delighted and grateful. Whoever or whatever was helping me, it was a benevolent spirit.” Has she tried to repeat the experience? “My point of view is the world we live in is for us. If we get occasional help, that’s nice. We’re not here to pester [the spirits].”
Could this have been the ghostly hand of a mysterious figure seen some time ago, which appeared again at Friendly Crossways? In LeTreize’s words, “I was working in the kitchen, and turned, and I saw a person in the doorway. Then he vanished!” Was he a modern ghost? No, she says, “He was a man from an older time.”
Ask Judy Warner of the Harvard Historical Society, and she remembers hearing 25 years ago of a skeleton that would appear in the window of a house on South Shaker Road. So known was the thing that young people would drive by at all hours to see it.
Whirling and trembling
Shaker Village’s cemetery also saw many youths over the years hanging out and hoping to “get lucky.” Frank Carlson, Den Harrod, and Paul Willard like to remember the nights at Bellevue Cemetery, and the tricks of light there. Carlson recalls the silhouettes of tree branches that looked ghostly. His friends Harrod and Willard remember a strangely tall tombstone that, in a car’s headlights, appeared to be an apparition skittering across its polished surface. Don’t try to find the ghost now, though. The chain that goes up each evening at the entrance is meant to keep out visitors.
The book Weird Massachusetts by Daniel Boudillion devotes a section to the Harvard Shakers of Holy Hill, known for their meetings during which they “whirled and trembled.” These meetings were attended “by upward of 40,000 spirits,” he writes, including the Angel of Victory, Noah, the Virgin Mary, and “throngs of Indian spirits anxious to become Shakers.” Shaker founder Mother Ann Lee reported visions of talking with angels and Old Testament prophets. After her death, followers also experienced visions and engaged in the channeling of spirits.
A certain house built in 1725 achieved fame based on Clara Endicott Sears’ description of it in her book Days of Delusion. “The craziest spot in Massachusetts,” she called it, because a group called the Millerites were living there in 1844. The religious sect was unfortunate to believe a prophecy that the end of the world was fast approaching. Dreadful shrieking could be heard emanating from the house. Does it continue to this day? You won’t find the answer in the newspaper or a property listing.
What do we make of the house on Bare Hill Road that realtors might find difficult to market because of the man who reportedly hung himself there many years ago?
Rhonda Sprague of Harvard Realty tells a story of her early days in real estate, about 14 years ago. She says, “I went on a listing for an antique house on Still River Road. I took the pictures, and had them developed. When the pictures came out, a little girl appeared in the upstairs window … and it was a vacant house! I was pretty creeped out. A realtor friend around this time happened to ask me if I’d seen the ghost. I said, ‘better than that! I have a picture!’”
Movers and shakers
Go to the Ghosts of America website and you’ll find three reports about Harvard. “Dave R” reports visits to “Lollipop Graveyard,” the Shaker cemetery so nicknamed for the shape of the tombstones. “If you grew up around here you know it. The Shakers have been sighted in fields, woods and [the] cemetery.”
“Hillary” writes of her father who lives on Tahanto Trail and whose house is haunted by at least two ghosts. “I can hear them and feel their presence. My three children began to tell me stories about their experiences (and knew NOTHING of what I was feeling and hearing.) They were feeling, hearing and seeing things in the exact same spots of the house and yard where I had experiences. They claim that there is an older man with a handlebar mustache. They say he looks like a cowboy and seems nice enough. There is also a woman who has a scary looking face and doesn’t seem nice. I, myself, sense an angry male spirit in the house … [W]e are at the point of asking my Dad to have an exorcism done.”
Do you think you’re safe at the town beach? Ghosts of America posts the following: “The phantom of a copper-miner was made out pointing at the watcher down beside the water at Harvard Town Beach. When the spirit was distinguished [sic] it vanished into the air. Folks here claim that his ghost is that of a local resident who had a home here in Harvard some decades ago. No matter what folks state, it undoubtedly is a bloodcurdling ghost that is better not messed with.”
“Megacrazy” posted this vaguely menacing statement on history.com’s section on “Most Haunted Places in America”: “As far as small towns [go], I put my vote in for Harvard, Massachusetts. If you go down Shaker Lane [sic] late at night you will understand.”
Even today, of course, Harvard has a great Halloween tradition, especially in the town center. There, residents will once again play host to hoards of real-life, little ghosts and goblins. As hundreds of trick-or-treaters descend on these generous souls, the homeowners always appreciate contributions in the form of candy each year.
However, Halloween is more than a town center ritual. One resident of Candleberry Lane rues the fact that “neighbors jump ship” on Halloween, leaving their neighborhoods for the efficiency and abundance of the trick-or-treating on the Common. She proudly “holds down the fort,” and says that her son last year came home with 10 pounds of candy—and all from his own neighborhood. A resident of Park Lane laments the ever-decreasing numbers of trick-or-treaters who make it to his door.
