Stone-Throwing Devils

The Trickster Spirits of Early New England

The early New England colonies were, in large part, intended as a utopian experiment to establish a model Christian society in preparation for Judgment Day. To guide this lofty vision the founding patriarchs cobbled together a social blueprint based on archaic Old Testament precedents and stern Calvinist church-state doctrine. The resulting “biblical commonwealths” of their design were, in stifled reality, highly regimented settlements ruled by a strict religious order and moral code. Enforced church orthodoxy dominated civic life. Neighbors regularly turned on neighbors in righteous condemnation, with even minor infractions inviting swift and often cruel punishments by authorities. And those who transgressed the established order could expect no less than to be banished, tortured or hanged.

The rigid demands of Puritan life made for a fairly bleak existence that centered around one's predestined relationship with a cold, demanding and, at times, highly erratic God. It also fostered a psychological culture of repressed volatility. For the faithful devout, it was only by the fortified sanctity and purity of their godly settlements that the dark forces of the land were kept at bay. Sacred space was safe space; a symbolic means to ward off the unknown, unpleasant and unacceptable – and when cracks appeared in this fragile edifice it triggered sudden and unpredictable outbursts, including the seemingly paranormal...

The Great Dying

New England's Coastal Plague, 1616-1619

“[How] strangely they have decreased by the Hand of God... and it hath generally been observed that where the English come to settle, a Divine Hand makes way for them.” – Daniel Denton, early American colonist

The popular Pilgrim myth involves a persecuted group of Christian reformers who fled England in order to worship freely in the New World. In a narrative that finds parallels with the Israelite exodus from Egypt, these chosen people were guided by the hand of God in a perilous journey across the Atlantic in search of what would later be described by Puritan leader John Winthrop as “a beacon of religious light, a model of spiritual promise, a city upon a hill."¹ Through heroic struggle and an unshakable commitment to their faith, they were able to conquer the vast New England wilderness, tame the hostile natives and expand the glory and dominion of the Christian God in these new lands.²

In reality, the promised land wasn't exactly a Canaan that needed to be conquered. The area that would become Plymouth Colony was essentially a ghost town by the time that the Pilgrims stepped foot off the Mayflower. Deserted villages and untended fields dotted the landscape, with caches of crops, tools and other supplies hastily left behind... along with the skeletal remains of the former inhabitants. A few years prior, the entire coastal region had been ravaged by a mysterious disease that wiped out most of the native Wampanoag and neighboring Massachusetts, Pennacook, Nauset, Permaquid and Abenaki populations.

For the English settlers, this was all part of a divine plan. Providence had taken the form of a "miraculous pestilence" that had swept the land clean so a new Christian society could be established. Thomas Morton, an early colonial merchant, praised the epidemic that had recently depopulated the land, leaving it “much the more fit for the English Nation to inhabit in, and erect in it Temples to the glory of God.”³

Haunted Trees of New England

New England is steeped in ghostly legends and folklore, with an exceptionally high number of haunted sites reported throughout the region. There are houses, bars or inns that played host to tragic events where tortured souls still reside. Desolate roads or old cemeteries where lonely spirits walk the night. And whole areas where cursed villages were abandoned or great battles were fought, charged with the residual energy of the past. There are also haunted trees.

The belief in haunted trees goes back through history and across cultural boundaries. For the ancient Celts, sacred trees were considered to be a link with the supernatural world. It's a English folk belief that carried through the ages. The various native tribes indigenous to the area had their own, remarkably similar, beliefs regarding the spirits and divinities that occupied the untamed forest spaces. And the superstitious Puritans who settled these lands lived in constant fear of the dark forces that lurked just beyond their village borders...

The land remembers.