Читать книгу Ghosthunting Southern New England - Andrew Lake - Страница 15

Stone’s Public House is a splendid place for good food, live music, and ghost stories.

IN 1831 CAPTAIN JOHN STONE obtained insider information that the Boston and Worcester Railroad would be running a line right through his property in the town of Ashland (then, Hopkinton), Massachusetts. John Stone was no fool; he knew there was a profit to be made from the many travelers who would soon be arriving in the town. He began construction of a hotel in 1832 and positioned the building close to where he was told the new train station would stand. The hotel was named the Railroad House, and it was completed just in time for the opening of the railway line on September 20, 1834. More than three hundred people turned out that day for the fanfare. Governor John Davis and former Governor Levi Lincoln, both addressed the crowd. Some accounts say Daniel Webster was also in attendance.

One of the local papers at the time, the Farmers Gazette, reported that there were stagecoaches running from the Railroad House to Worcester and Unionville. The paper also noted that conveyances could be obtained at Stone’s hotel for visitors wanting to travel locally. It seemed that Captain Stone had all his moneymaking angles well thought out. One thing he didn’t plan correctly, however, was the proximity of the Railroad House to the train tracks. Stone started building the hotel without a clear understanding of where the railroad company was going to lay the tracks. This miscalculation on his part placed the hotel so close to the railway line that passing locomotives would nearly rattle the guests out of their beds.

John Stone turned management of the hotel over to his son, Napoleon Bonaparte Stone, only a year after the business opened. There is a legend about why Stone had his son take over the daily operations of the business. The tale claims that Captain Stone had a heated argument with a traveling salesman from New York over a game of cards. Angry words grew into violence, and supposedly Stone killed the man by striking a blow to the head with the butt of a pistol. Stone supposedly buried the salesman’s body in the dirt-floor cellar. Some believe Stone stayed away from the hotel because he was afraid of the murdered man’s ghost. However, no one really knows if the salesman ever did haunt the place.

A man named William A. Scott bought the hotel in 1859 and renamed it W. A. Scott and Sons Livery and Hotel. He owned the hotel and stables until 1904. During Scott’s time as the proprietor, he and his family went through a lot of pain and sorrow. This heartache could be relevant to the haunting at Stone’s Public House, but more on that later.

The ghost stories didn’t become public knowledge until about 1976 when a man named Leonard “Cappy” Fournier bought the property. The building was in a bad state by then and needed much repair and restoration. Anyone familiar with tales of haunted places knows that ghostly activity seems to pick up when an old building undergoes reconstruction. Strange things began to happen shortly after Fournier started the restoration work. He and the contractors would lock the place up at the end of the day and return the next morning to find the doors unlocked and wide open. They would hear footsteps, doors slamming, and faucets would turn on by themselves. A psychic named Raffaele Bibbo visited the restaurant in the mid-1980s and felt the chief spirit haunting the building was John Stone himself, racked with guilt over the murder he had committed those many years before. The ghost most associated with Stone’s is that of a little girl who has been seen and heard many times throughout the building by guests and employees.

There have been a few sightings of this sad little girl in the downstairs dining room, but most witnesses have reported seeing her looking out at them from the second floor and attic windows. In October of 2010, I spoke to the general manager of Stone’s Public House, Ben Stoetzel. Ben started working at Stone’s as a bartender in 2006 and had not heard anything about the ghost until his first night working at the bar.

Appropriately enough, it was Halloween night. Nothing strange occurred that evening, but one afternoon in the winter of 2008 left Ben with little doubt that there was something to the stories he had been told by his fellow employees and regular customers. Stoetzel came in on a Monday to take inventory of the bar’s stock. The business was closed and he had brought along his one-and-a-half year old daughter for company. They were the only two people in the building; all the doors were locked and the place was very still. As Ben stood behind the bar with his clipboard, checking off what was in stock, he kept a close eye on his little girl, who was standing at the front of the bar. Ben said, “She let out a little, high-pitched giggle for no reason and almost instantly I heard a very similar giggle that to my hearing came from the complete opposite side of the room. My head jerked around, I looked back at my daughter and she was as happy as a clam. So I just went check, check, check, check on my clipboard and thought, ‘OK, work’s done for the day,’ and we left.”

This young girl’s apron was found in the attic. Some believe there is a connection between this article of clothing and the ghost of Mary Jane Smith.

Ghost stories at Stone’s are not the topic of conversation in the Stoetzel’s home. When Ben is home he likes to concentrate on his family and leave the job behind. It is because of this that Ben is sure he has never put the notion of phantoms from his workplace in his young daughter’s impressionable mind. But one year after hearing the unexplainable giggle in the bar, his daughter brought up another afternoon she had visited Stone’s with her dad. The business had three big repair jobs being taken care of on a Monday while the place was closed. Ben and an assistant manager, Gregg, had stopped by to make sure that the three work crews were on schedule and everything was going as planned. Both men had brought along their daughters and had left them in the care of one of the employees, Erica. The three of them remained in the bar and out of the way while Ben and the Gregg checked on the progress of the work crews.

A few weeks later, Ben’s daughter brought up that afternoon and when he was sure that they were both referring to the same day, she told him all about “playing with Bella (Gregg’s daughter) and her friends.” When Ben reminded her that it was only Erica and Bella with her that day, she insisted that there were several other children with them in the bar. He asked her to describe the children, but she could only remember one of them in detail. His daughter said there was a girl, a little taller than her, in a black dress with black hair. “It creeped me right out and gave me gooseflesh,” said Ben. A few months later, Stoetzel overheard a ghosthunter give a group of guests the accepted description of the little girl’s ghost. It exactly matched what Ben’s daughter had told him.

On one of my visits to Stone’s Public House, I met with a local researcher, David Francis. David has been investigating the bar and restaurant for more than four years and has done a terrific job piecing together the building’s past. A colleague of his, David Retalic, along with Cliff Wilson of the Ashland Historic Commission, found a death register from 1862 which records the death of a Mary Jane Smith. A report from the Boston and Worcester Railroad states, “June 11—Mary Jane Smith, eleven years old, disregarded the warning of the flagman at Ashland, attempted to cross the track directly in front of a passing train, was run over and instantly killed.” Since the days of Cappy Fournier, people have been saying that the little girl who haunts the building was struck by a train and her body was brought inside the hotel. A young girl’s apron, matching the same time period, was found in the attic several years ago. Some believe it may have belonged to Mary Jane Smith, though there is no evidence of this. The apron has since been framed under glass and is displayed on the second floor.

The death of Mary Jane Smith could explain the identity of the restaurant’s best-known ghost, but what of the “other” children? David Francis told me that on two separate occasions, children were seen at the windows on the second floor by customers eating outside on the patio. A concerned lady reported to one of the waitresses that she had seen a little girl hanging out of one of the upstairs windows. When the waitress went out on the patio to see for herself, there was no girl at the window. The waitress then explained that those rooms are used for storage only and no one could have been up there. She also pointed out to the customer that the window the child was hanging out of was in fact closed. Not too long after that sighting, another customer complained about seeing children, looking very distressed, standing at the windows above the patio. David Francis has no theories as to who these little ghosts are or why they would be haunting an old railway inn.

David Francis has compiled an extensive timeline of the building’s long history. It was his research that uncovered the tragic events that plagued the former owner, William A. Scott. In the forty-five years Scott owned the hotel he lost two of his sons, Lawrence and Edward, to cirrhosis of the liver and a third, George, to madness. Before George was committed to the Worcester Lunatic Asylum, he attacked two people in the hotel. His father beat him with a cane in order to stop the assault.

In 1889, a fire in the stables killed nine horses and damaged the hotel. It is said the fire devastated Scott emotionally. In 1899, W. A. Scott attempted suicide with a revolver. He lost his wife, Caroline, two years later. She had suffered for many months from kidney disease before finally passing away. It is possible that the pain and torment of the Scott family has tainted the building psychically.

I was given a compact disc containing eighteen very impressive examples of EVP that were recorded by David Francis and his fellow investigators at Stone’s over a four-year period. Three of the EVPs suggest that members of the Scott family may still linger within the walls of the old building. A woman’s voice was captured twice on the third floor. Her first comment was, “You’re all drunk.” The second time she is heard saying, “I see that you’re all drunk.” This could be Mrs. Scott addressing her sons Lawrence and Edward. The third EVP was recorded on the second floor as an electromagnetic field meter sounded a reaction. It is a male voice saying the name, “Lawrence.”