The Myths and Fables of To-Day

by Samuel Adams Drake

Dr. Samuel Johnson once asked the pertinent question, “If moral evil be consistent with the government of the Deity, why may not physical evil be consistent with it?” The solemn declaration that the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generations, sometimes recurs to us with startling force, more especially when the awful anathema is brought so near home to us as it is by the following veracious incident.[21]

There is a certain well-known locality in Essex County, Massachusetts, which has long borne the evil reputation of being haunted, owing to the tradition that a cruel murder was committed there. According to some of the old people from whom I had the story, strange sights and sounds have been both seen and heard near the spot where the crime took place. For instance, a child would be heard crying out most pitifully, though nothing could be seen. One belated horseman positively declared that when passing this accursed place he had seen a child’s coffin moving along the road, as he moved; and that the spectre followed him almost into the town of Ipswich. It is said to be a fact that many of the old folks were afraid to pass this place of dread after dark.

As to the origin of the story, with its highly dramatic features, accounts differ somewhat; but considerable pains have been taken to arrive at the truth, since it is a matter of general notoriety in the neighborhood referred to, although the actual facts may have no relation whatever to the “skeleton in the closet” disclosed by the story itself.

The story goes back to colonial times, and chiefly has to do with the two daughters of a family in good social standing. These young women had for a serving-maid a negro slave, who was treated with marked severity by her haughty mistresses.

In time, the slave woman bore a child. Angered at the coming of the luckless little waif, the cruel sisters resolved to put it out of the way. One day the mother found it hid away in a hogshead of flax, in the garret. Failing in this attempt, the sisters then took the child, stuck pins into its veins, and tried to smother it between two feather beds. When the infant was thought to be quite dead, the body was thrown into a brook, under a nearby bridge which spanned it. Life, however, was not quite extinct, so that the child’s cries were heard by a passing traveller, who rescued it, but it soon after bled to death from the wounds inflicted upon it.

Half crazed by this dastardly act, the forlorn mother then and there called down the curse of God upon the inhuman sisters and their sons to all future generations.

This is substantially the legend. Now for the sequel. It is said to be a fact that all the sons of the daughters of that family, and no others, have ever since been afflicted with a strange and incurable malady, the principal feature being a tendency to profuse bleeding from the most trifling cuts or wounds. After some days have elapsed, a mere scratch will begin to bleed copiously and so continue until the sufferer has lost so much blood that in some cases it is said he has bled to death. From this circumstance the persons so afflicted are known by the name of “bleeders.”

Mr. Felt asserts that the family in which this singular hemorrhage first appeared brought it with them from England; which, if true, would summarily dispose of the legend; but his statement does not accord with the story as told on the spot. It is here related as it was told to me.

Reference was earlier made to the old-time, respectable ghost of our fathers, who like the ghost in Hamlet, made his unwelcome appearance only to subserve the ends of justice. This practical generation hardly realizes, we think, how lately the ghost was accepted in that character, or how trustworthy his evidence was deemed by the purveyors of public intelligence. On turning over the files of the New England Weekly Journal of December 1, 1729, we came across the following ghost story, here reproduced verbatim:—

“Last week, one belonging to Ipswich came to Boston and related that some time since he was at Canso in Nova Scotia, and that on a certain day there appeared to him an apparition in blood and wounds, and told him that at such a time and place, mentioning both, he was barbarously murdered by one, who was at Rhode Island, and desired him to go to the said person and charge him with the said murder, and prosecute him therefor, naming several circumstances relating to the murder; and that since his arrival from Canso to Ipswich the said apparition had appeared to him again, and urged him immediately to prosecute the said affair. The abovesaid person having related the matter was advised and encouraged to go to Rhode Island and engage therein, and he accordingly set out for that place on Thursday last.”[22]