In New York City there lived a young man by the name of Paul Dickens. Paul was thirty-two and worked for an advertising agency named Smith, Collins, and Rosoff. He was, in fact, one of the top executives at the agency, making an excellent salary and considered one of the bright minds of the agency business. But despite his commercial success, Paul’s heart really wasn’t with the agency. I must hasten to add that the did not tell that to his bosses, the owners of the agency, nor to the clients whose accounts he handled, but confided such matters only to his inner thoughts and to his fiancée, whose name was Sybil Connor. Sybil, aged, twenty-seven, was an understanding woman, who would never betray her future husband in such matters as his true vocation.
What then was this true vocation that Paul so jealously guarded from outsiders? Ever since, at the age of twelve or thirteen, he had got hold of some fascinating books dealing with the subject, Paul had been a confirmed treasure hunter. To be sure, he had yet to find his first treasure trove, but he always visited places where treasure might be found, such as the spot on Long Island where Captain Kidd allegedly buried his, or the area off the shore of Miami Beach where sunken treasure lay unclaimed, waiting to be discovered. Unfortunately, Paul was not a deep-sea diver, so the treasure of Florida was in no danger of being discovered by him. Nor was pirate treasure still to be found in the waters of Bermuda, where Paul liked to vacation with Sybil. In fact, Paul’s desire to find treasure was confined strictly to land, where he seemed to be on steadier footing and where he could possibly be successful in the long run.
To Paul Dickens, pirates were not simply wrongdoers who should be punished for their terrible deeds. Pirates were his heroes and, since he had never met one in the flesh, he had no first-hand experience of how it felt to be a passenger on a boat about to be sunk or just having been boarded by the pirate’s crew. Oh, Paul knew about all the terrible things that the pirates used to do in the old days, and he did not condone them. On the other hand he did admire the swashbuckling heroism of some of these men, apart from their wrongdoings and the resultant bloodshed. All things considered, he saw certain parallels between modern businessmen and some of the doings of eighteenth-century pirates. Of course in the advertising game people weren’t exactly put to the sword or made to walk the plank, but they were put out of business just as ruthlessly as they were put out of life by the ancient pirates.
Since Paul had no qualms about pursuing his work at the advertising agency and doing what was best for his company, even if it meant putting someone else out of business, he didn’t have any qualms about cheering for the pirates of old for doing their thing in their way. Sybil, on the other hand, being a sensitive woman, felt that some aspects of the piracy business were certainly not to be condoned and she frequently discussed this with her fiancé. The discussions never led anywhere, because in the end they simply kissed and made love. But there was one thing to be said about all this: the excitement of finding buried treasure would in no way be hindered by the fact that it had been acquired illegally or through bloodshed. After all, so many years had passed and nothing could resuscitate the victims, the former owners of such treasures. Consequently, Sybil heartily agreed with Paul that looking for buried treasure was an innocent pursuit and did not necessitate her condoning the cruelty of pirates and those who had assembled the treasure in the first place.
As he grew more affluent, Paul acquired a summer home. It was really a weekend house primarily, but one could live there all year round if one wanted to. At first he had looked for such a house in nearby Connecticut, but, finding nothing to his liking, he had then spent weekend after weekend driving farther and farther afield with Sybil, looking for a house that would suit his fancy. That fancy was in the direction of something very romantic, perhaps an old house, a colonial house, something at least 150 or 200 years old. But it also had to be convenient and, of course, the price had to be right.
Eventually their search for a summer home took them to the state of New Hampshire. There, not far from Nashua, they found what they had been looking for: a pleasant late eighteenth century house in excellent condition with all the trimmings, two acres of land and easily accessible from either Boston or New York.
After they had settled into their new summer home they took an additional interest in the state of New Hampshire, where they were now part-time residents. Paul went to the local library in Nashua, which was one of the best libraries in that part of the country. He started to rummage through books about New Hampshire and, of course, its history. One day his eyes fell upon a volume that attracted his interest immediately. It was a book called Yankee Ghosts, written many years before about New England’s hauntings and legends. Something within himself, perhaps a kind of hunch or psychic intuition, made him take the book down from the shelf and ask permission to borrow it. Hastily returning to their home in the hills he started to read. Picture his surprise when he discovered that one of the stories in this book dealt with his favorite subject, a pirate and buried treasure!
It would appear that at Henniker, New Hampshire, farther upstate, there was a house known as the Ocean-Born Mary House which had been built by a retired pirate. The author had visited it because of ongoing reports of hauntings and had extensively delineated the events in his book. Excitedly Paul brought the book to Sybil and asked her to share his enthusiasm for its contents.
“What is it?” Sybil asked and looked at the timeworn cover.
“It’s about that house at Henniker, the pirate house,” Paul replied excitedly. “Do you want to hear about it?”
Now Sybil knew that when the subject of pirates and pirate treasure came up there was nothing to be done but listen. The evening was still young, there wasn’t much on television that night, so she decided they might as well go into the matter at length. Having made themselves comfortable by the fireplace, with a fire burning in it, setting the mood for what was to follow, she turned to her fiancé and asked him to read to her from the book.
“Ocean-Born Mary died in eighteen fourteen,” Paul said, “but the house has changed hands many times since her death. This is what the book says:
“During the nineteen thirties, it belonged to one Louis Roy, now totally disabled and until recently a permanent guest in what used to be his home. The house was sold by him to the Russells not long ago.
“During the great hurricane of nineteen thirty-eight, Roy claims that Mary Wallace’s ghost saved his life nineteen times. Trapped outside the house by falling trees, he somehow was able to get back into the house. His mother, Mrs. Roy, informed him that, being very psychic, she had actually seen the tall, stately figure of Ocean-Born Mary moving behind him, as if to help him get through. About ten years ago, Life told this story in an illustrated article on famous haunted houses in America. Mrs. Roy claimed she had seen the ghost of Mary time and again, but since she herself passed on in nineteen forty-eight, I could not get any details from her.
“Then there were two state troopers who saw the ghost, but again I could not interview them, as they, too, are now on the other side of the Veil.
“A number of visitors claim to have felt ‘special vibrations’ when touching the hearthstone, where Don Pedro allegedly is buried. There is, for instance, Mrs. James Nisula, of Londonderry, who has visited the house several times. She and her group of ghost buffs have ‘felt the vibrations’ around the kitchen, she says. Mrs. David Russell, the present owner, felt nothing.
“I promised to look into the Ocean-Born Mary haunting the first chance I’d get. Hallowe’en or about that time would be all right with me, and I wouldn’t wait around for any ghost coach, either.
“‘There is a lady medium I think you should know,’ Mrs. Russell said when I spoke of bringing a psychic with me. ‘She saw Mary the very first time she came here.’
“My curiosity aroused, I communicated with the lady. She asked that I not use her married name, although she was not so shy several months after our visit to the house, when she gave a two-part interview to a Boston newspaper columnist. Needless to say, the interview was not authorized by me, as I never allow mediums I work with to talk about their cases for publication. Thus, Lorrie shall remain without a family name and anyone wishing to reach this medium will have to do so without my help.
“Lorrie wrote me she would be happy to serve the cause of truth, and I could count on her. There was nothing she wanted in return.
“Somehow, we did not get up to New Hampshire that Hallowe’en weekend. Mr. Russell had to have an operation, and the house was unheated in the winter except for Mr. Roy’s room, and New England winters are cold enough to freeze a ghost.
“Although there was a caretaker at the time to look after the house and Mr. Roy upstairs, the Russells did not stay in the house in the winter, but made their home in nearby Chelmsford, Massachusetts.
“I wrote Mrs. Russell postponing the investigation until spring. Mrs. Russell accepted my decision with some disappointment, but she was willing to wait. After all, the ghost at Ocean-Born Mary’s house is not a malicious type. Mary Wallace just lives there, ever since she died in eighteen fourteen, and you can’t call a lady who likes to hold on to what is hers an intruder.
“‘We don’t want to drive her out,’ Mrs. Russell had repeatedly said to me. ‘After all, it is her house!’
“Not many haunted-house owners will make a statement like that.
“Something had happened at the house since our last conversation.
“‘Our caretaker dropped a space heater all the way down the stairs at the Ocean-Born Mary house and, when it reached the bottom, the kerosene and the flames started to burn the stairs and climb the wall,’ Mrs. Russell said. ‘There was no water in the house, so my husband went out after snow. While I stood there looking at the fire and powerless to do anything about it, the fire went out all by itself right in front of my eyes, when my husband got back with the snow it was out. It was just as if someone had smothered it with a blanket.’
“This was in December nineteen sixty-three. I tried to set a new date, as soon as possible, and February twenty-second seemed all right. This time I would bring Bob Kennedy of WBZ, Boston, and the ‘Contact’ producer Squire Rushnell with me, to record my investigation.
“Lorrie was willing, asking only that her name not be mentioned.
“‘I don’t want anyone to know about my being different from them,’ she explained. ‘When I was young my family used to accuse me of spying because I knew things from the pictures I saw when I touched objects.’
“Psychometry, I explained, is very common among psychics, and nothing to be ashamed of.
“I thought it was time to find out more about Lorrie’s experiences at the haunted house.
“‘I first saw the house in September nineteen sixty-one,’ she began. ‘It was on a misty, humid day, and there was a haze over the fields.’
“Strange, I thought, I always get my best psychic results when the atmosphere is moist.
“Lorrie, who is in her early forties, is Vermont-born and raised; she is married and has one daughter, Pauline. She is a tall redhead with sparkling eyes and, come to think of it, not unlike the accepted picture of the ghostly Mary Wallace. Coincidence?
“A friend of Lorrie’s had seen the eerie house and suggested she go and see it also. That was all Lorrie knew about it, and she did not really expect anything uncanny to occur. Mr. Roy showed Lorrie and her daughter through the house and nothing startling happened. They left and started to walk down the entrance steps, crossing the garden that lies in front of the house, and had reached the gate when Pauline clutched at her mother’s arm and said, ‘Mama, what is that?’
“Lorrie turned to look back at the house. In the upstairs window, a woman stood and looked out at them. Lorrie’s husband was busy with the family car. She called out to him, but as he turned to look, the apparition was gone.
“She did not think of it again, and the weeks went by. But the house kept intruding itself into her thoughts more and more. Finally she could not restrain herself any longer, and returned to the house, even though it is a hundred and twenty miles from her home in Weymouth, Massachusetts.
“She confessed her extraordinary experience to the owner, and together they examined the house from top to bottom. She finally returned home.
“She promised Roy she would return on All Hallow’s Eve to see if the legend of Mary Wallace had any basis of fact. Unfortunately, word of her intentions got out, and when she arrived at the house, she had to sneak in at the back to avoid the sensation-hungry press outside. During the days between her second visit and Hallowe’en, the urge to go to Henniker kept getting stronger, as if someone were possessing her.
“By that time the Russells were negotiating to buy the house, and Lorrie came up with them. Nothing happened to her that Hallowe’en night. Perhaps she was torn between fear and a desire to fight the influence that had brought her out to Henniker to begin with.
“Mediums, to be successful, must learn to relax and not allow their own notions to rule them. All through the following winter and summer, Lorrie fought the desire to return to Ocean-Born Mary’s house. To no avail. She returned time and again, sometimes alone and sometimes with a friend.
“Things got out of hand one summer night when she was home alone.
“Exhausted from her last visit—the visits always left her an emotional wreck—she went to bed around nine-thirty in the evening.
“‘What happened that night?’ I interjected. She seemed shaken even now.
“‘At eleven p.m.,’ Lorrie replied, ‘I found myself driving on the Expressway, wearing my pajamas and robe, with no shoes or slippers, or money or even a handkerchief. I was ten miles from my home and heading for Henniker. Terrified, I turned around and returned home, only to find my house ablaze with light, the doors open as I had left them, and the garage lights on. I must have left in an awful hurry.’
“‘Have you found out why you are being pulled back to that house?’
“She shook her head.
“‘No idea. But I’ve been back twice, even after that. I just can’t seem to stay away from that house.’
“I persuaded her that perhaps there was a job to be done in that house, and the ghost wanted her to do it.
“We did not go out to Henniker in February, because of the bad weather. We tried to set a date in May, but the people from WBZ found it too far away from Boston and dropped out of the planning.
“Summer came around, and I went to Europe instead of Henniker. However, the prospect of a visit in the fall was very much on my mind.
“But it seemed as if someone were keeping me away from the house much in the same way someone was pulling Lorrie toward it!
“Come October, and we were really on our way, at last. Owen Lake, a public relations man who dabbles in psychic matters, introduced himself as a friend of mine and told Lorrie he’d come along, too. I had never met the gentleman, but in the end he could not make it. So just four of us—my wife, Catherine, and I, Lorrie and her nice, even-tempered husband, who had volunteered to drive us up to New Hampshire—started out from Boston. It was close to Hallowe’en all right, only two days earlier; if Mary Wallace was out haunting the countryside in her coach we might very well run into her. (The coach is out of old Irish folktales; it appears in numerous ghost stories of the Ould Sod; I’m sure that in the telling and retelling of the tale of Mary and her pirate, the coach got added.)
“The countryside is beautiful in a New England fall. As we rolled toward the New Hampshire state line, I asked Lorrie some more questions.
“‘When you first saw the ghost of Ocean-Born Mary at the window of the house, Lorrie,’ I said, ‘what did she look like?’
“‘A lovely lady in her thirties, with auburn-colored hair, smiling rather intensely and thoughtfully. She stayed there for maybe three minutes, and then suddenly, she just wasn’t there.’
“‘What about her dress?’
“‘It was a white dress.’
“Lorrie never saw an apparition of Mary again, but whenever she touched anything in the Henniker house, she received an impression of what the house was like when Mary had it, and she had felt her near the big fireplace several times.
“‘Did you ever get an impression of what it was Mary wanted?’
“‘She was a strong-willed woman, I sensed that very strongly,’ Lorrie replied. ‘I have been to the house maybe twenty times altogether, and still don’t know why. She just keeps pulling me there.’
“Lorrie has always felt the ghost’s presence on these visits.
“‘One day I was walking among the bushes in the back of the house,’ Lorrie said. ‘I was wearing shorts, but I never got a scratch on my legs, because I kept feeling heavy skirts covering my legs. I could feel the brambles pulling at this invisible skirt I had on. I felt enveloped by something, or someone.’
“‘Mrs. Roy, the former owner’s mother, had told of seeing the apparition many times,’ Lorrie stated.
“As a matter of fact, I have sensed a ghost in the house, too, but it is not a friendly wraith like Mary.’
“Had she ever encountered this other ghost?
“‘Yes, my arm was grabbed one time by a malevolent entity,’ Lorrie said emphatically. ‘It was two years ago, and I was standing in what is now the living room, and my arm was taken by the elbow and pulled. I snatched my arm back, because I felt the spirit was not friendly.’
“‘What were you doing at the time that it might have objected to?’
“‘I really don’t know.’
“Did she know of anyone else who had had any uncanny experience at the house?
“‘A strange thing happened to Mrs. Roy,’ Lorrie said. ‘A woman came to the house and said to her, “I’ve come back to see the rest of the house.” Mrs. Roy was puzzled—”What do you mean, the rest of the house?” The woman replied, “Well, I was here yesterday, and a tall woman let me in and only showed me half the house.” But, of course, there was nobody at the house that day.’
“What about the two state troopers? Could she elaborate on their experience?
“‘They met her walking down the road that leads to the house. She was wearing a Colonial-type costume, and they found that odd. Later they realized they had seen a ghost, especially as no one of her description lived in the house at the time.’
“Rudi D., Lorrie’s husband, is a hospital technician. He was with her on two or three occasions when she visited the house. Did he ever feel anything special?
“‘The only thing unusual I ever felt at the house was that I wanted to get out of there fast,’ he said.
“‘The very first time we went up,’ Lorrie added, ‘something kept pulling me toward it, but my husband insisted we go back. There was an argument about our continuing the trip, when suddenly the door of the car flew open of its own volition. Somehow we decided to continue on to the house.’
“An hour later, we drove up a thickly overgrown hill and along a winding road at the end of which the Ocean-Born Mary house stood in solitary stateliness, a rectangular building of gray stone and brown trim, very well preserved.
“We parked the car and walked across the garden that sets the house well back from the road. There was peace and autumn in the air. We were made welcome by Corinne Russell, her husband, David, and two relatives who happened to be with them that day. Entering the main door beneath a magnificent early American eagle, we admired the fine wooden staircase leading to the upstairs—the staircase on which the mysterious fire had taken place—and then entered the room to the left of it, where the family had assembled around an old New England stove.
“During the three years the Russells had lived at the house, nothing uncanny had happened to Mrs. Russell, except for the incident with the fire. David Russell, a man typical of the shrewd New England Yankee who weighs every word, was willing to tell me about his experiences, however.
“‘The first night I ever slept in what we call the Lafayette room, upstairs, there was quite a thundershower on, and my dog and I were upstairs. I always keep my dog with me, on account of the boys coming around to do damage to the property.
“‘Just as I lay down in bed, I heard very heavy footsteps. They sounded to me to be in the two rooms which we had just restored, on the same floor. I was quite annoyed, almost frightened, and I went into the rooms, but there was nobody there or anywhere else in the house.’
“‘Interesting,’ I said. ‘Was there more?’
“‘Now this happened only last summer. A few weeks later, when I was in that same room, I was getting undressed when I suddenly heard somebody pound on my door. I said to myself, oh, it’s only the house settling, and I got into bed. A few minutes later, the door knob turned back and forth. I jumped out of bed, opened the door, and there was absolutely nobody there. The only other people in the house at the time were the invalid Mr. Roy, locked in his room, and my wife downstairs.’
“What about visual experiences?”
“‘No, but I went to the cellar not long ago with my dog, about four in the afternoon, or rather tried to—this dog never leaves me, but on this particular occasion, something kept her from going with me into the cellar. Her hair stood up and she would not budge.’
“The Lafayette room, by the way, is the very room in which the pirate, Don Pedro, is supposed to have lived. The Russells did nothing to change the house structurally, only restored it as it was and generally cleaned it up.
“I now turned to Florence Harmon, an elderly lady, a neighbor of the Russells, who had some recollection about the house. Mrs. Harmon recalls the house when she herself was very young, long before the Russells came to live in it.
“‘Years later, I returned to the house and Mrs. Roy asked me whether I could help her locate ‘the treasure’ since I was reputed to be psychic.’
“Was there really a treasure?
“‘If there was, I think it was found,’ Mrs. Harmon said. ‘At the time Mrs. Roy talked to me, she also pointed out that there were two elm trees on the grounds—the only two elm trees around. They looked like some sort of markers to her. But before the Roys had the house, a Mrs. Morrow lived here. I know this from my uncle, who was a stone mason, and who built a vault for her.’
“I did not think Mrs. Harmon had added anything material to the knowledge of the treasure, so I thanked her and turned my attention to the other large room, on the right-hand side of the staircase. Nicely furnished with period pieces, it boasted a fireplace flanked by sofas, and had a rectangular piano in the corner. The high windows were curtained on the sides, and one could see the New England landscape through them.
“We seated ourselves around the fireplace and hoped that Mary would honor us with a visit. Earlier I had inspected the entire house, including the hearthstone under which, allegedly, Don Pedro lies buried, and the small bedrooms upstairs where David Russell had heard the footsteps. Then, too, each of us had stood at the window in the corridor upstairs and stared out of it, very much the way the ghost must have done when she was observed by Lorrie and her daughter.
“And now it was Mary’s turn.
“This was her room,’ Lorrie explained, ‘and I do feel her presence.’ But she refused to go into trance, afraid to ‘let go.’ Communication would have to be via clairvoyance, with Lorrie being the interpreter. This was not what I had hoped for. Nevertheless, we would try to evaluate whatever material we could obtain.
“‘Sheet and quill,’ Lorrie said now, and a piece of paper was handed her along with a pencil. Holding it on her lap, Lorrie was poised to write, if Mary wanted to use her hand, so to speak. The pencil suddenly jumped from Lorrie’s hand with considerable force.
“‘Proper quill,’ the ghost demanded.
“I explained about the shape of quills these days, and handed Lorrie my own pencil.
“‘Look lady,’ Lorrie explained to the ghost, ‘I’ll show you it writes. I’ll write my name.’
“And she wrote in her own, smallish, rounded hand, ‘Lorrie’.
“There was a moment of silence. Evidently, the ghost was thinking it over. Then Lorrie’s hand, seemingly not under her own control, wrote with a great deal of flourish ‘Mary Wallace’. The ‘M’ and ‘W’ had curves and ornamentation typical of eighteenth-century calligraphy. It was not at all like Lorrie’s own handwriting.
“‘Tell her to write some more. The quill is working,’ I commanded.
“Lorrie seemed to be upset by something the ghost told her.
“‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t do that. No.’
“‘What does she want?’ I asked.
“‘She wants me to sleep, but I won’t do it.’
“Trance, I thought; even the ghost demands it. It would have been so interesting to have Mary speak directly to us through Lorrie’s entranced lips. You can lead a medium to the ghost, but you can’t make her go under if she’s scared.
“Lorrie instead told the ghost to tell her, or to write through her. But no trance, thank you. Evidently, the ghost did not like to be told how to communicate. We waited. Then I suggested that Lorrie be very relaxed and it would be ‘like sleep’ so the ghost could talk to us directly.
“‘She’s very much like me, but not so well trimmed,’ the ghost said to Lorrie. Had Mary picked her to carry her message because of physical resemblance, I wondered?
“‘She’s waiting for Young John,’ Lorrie now said. Not young John; the stress was on Young, perhaps it was one name—Young- john.
“‘Who is Youngjohn?’ I asked.
“‘It happened in the north pasture,’ Mary said through Lorrie now. ‘He killed Warren Langerford. The Frazier boys found the last bone.’
“I asked why it concerned her. Was she involved? But there was no reply.
“Then the ghost of Mary introduced someone else standing next to her.
“‘Mrs. Roy is with her, because she killed
her daughter,’ Lorrie said, hesitatingly, and added, on her own, ‘but I don’t believe she did.’ Later we found out that the ghost was perhaps not lying, but of course nobody had any proof of such a crime, if it was indeed a crime.
“‘Why do you stay on in this house?’ I asked.
“‘This house is my house!’ Ocean-Born Mary reminded me.
“‘Do you realize you are what is commonly called dead?’ I demanded. As so often with ghosts, the question brought on resistance to the need of facing reality. Mary seemed insulted and withdrew.
“I addressed the ghost openly, offering to help her, and at the same time explaining her present position to her. This was her chance to speak up.
“‘She’s very capricious,’ Lorrie said. ‘When you said you’d bring her peace, she started to laugh.’
“But Mary was gone, for the present anyway.
“We waited, and tried again a little later. This time Lorrie said she heard a voice telling her to come back tonight.
“‘We can’t,’ I decided. ‘If she wants to be helped, it will have to be now.’
“Philip Babb (another name the pirate used, later) allegedly had a secret passage built under the house. To this day, the Russells are looking for it. There are indeed discrepancies in the thickness of some of the walls, and there are a number of secret holes that do not lead anywhere. But no passage, as yet. Had the pirate taken his secrets to his grave?
“I found our experience at Henniker singularly unsatisfactory since no real evidence had been forthcoming from the ghost herself. No doubt another visit would have to be made, but I did not mind that at all. Ocean-Born Mary’s place is a place one can easily visit time and again. The rural charm of the place and the timeless atmosphere of the house make it a first-rate tourist attraction. Thousands of people come to the house every year.
“We returned to New York and I thought no more about it until I received a letter from James Caron, who had heard me discuss the house on the Contact program in Boston. He had been to the house in quest of pirate lore and found it very much haunted.
“James Caron is in the garage business at Bridgewater, Massachusetts. He has a high school and trade school education and is married, with two children. Searching for stories of buried treasure and pirates is a hobby of his, and he sometimes lectures on it. He had met Gus Roy about six years before. Roy complained that his deceased mother was trying to contact him for some reason. Her picture kept falling off the wall where it was hung, and he constantly felt ‘a presence.’ Would Mr. Caron know of a good medium?
“In August nineteen fifty-nine, James Caron brought a spiritualist named Paul Amsdent to the Ocean-Born Mary house. Present at the ensuing seance were Harold Peters, a furniture salesman, Hugh Blanchard, a lawyer, Ernest Walbourne, a fireman and brother-in-law of Caron, Gus Roy and Mr. Caron himself. Tape recording the seance, Caron had trouble with his equipment. Strange sounds kept intruding. Unfortunately, there was among those present someone with hostility toward psychic work, and Gus Roy’s mother did not manifest. However, something else did happen.
“‘There appear to be people buried somewhere around or in the house,’ the medium Amsdent said, ‘enclosed by a stone wall of some sort.’
“I thought of the hearthstone and of Mrs. Harmon’s vault. Coincidence?
“Mr. Caron used metal detectors all over the place to satisfy Gus Roy that there was no ‘pirate treasure’ buried in or near the house.
“A little later, James Caron visited the house again. This time he was accompanied by Mrs. Caron, and by Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Walbourne. Both ladies were frightened by the sound of a heavy door opening and closing with no one around and no air current in the house.
“Mrs. Caron had a strong urge to go to the attic, but Mr. Caron stopped her. Ernest Walbourne, a skeptic, was alone in the so-called Death room upstairs, looking at some pictures stacked in a corner. Suddenly, he clearly heard a female voice telling him to get out of the house. He looked around, but there was nobody upstairs. Frightened, he left the house at once and later required medication for a nervous condition!
“Again, things quieted down as far as Ocean-Born Mary was concerned, until I was shown a lengthy story—two parts, in fact—in the Boston Record-American, in which my erstwhile medium Lorrie let her hair down to columnist Harold Banks.
“It seems that Lorrie could not forget Henniker, after all. With publicist Owen Lake she returned to the house in November, nineteen sixty-four, bringing with her some oil of wintergreen, which, she claims, Mary Wallace asked her to bring along.
“Two weeks later, the report went on, Lorrie felt Mary Wallace in her home in Weymouth near Boston. Lorrie was afraid that Mary Wallace might ‘get into my body and use it for whatever purpose she wants to. I might wake up some day and be Mary Wallace.’
“That’s the danger of being a medium without proper safeguards. Such mediums tend to identify with personalities that come through them. Especially when they read all there is in print about them.
“I decided to take someone to the house who knew nothing about it, someone who was not likely to succumb to the wiles of amateur ‘ESP experts,’ inquisitive columnists and such, someone who would do exactly what I required of her: Sybil Leek, the famed British psychic.
“It was a glorious day late in spring when we arrived at Ocean-Born Mary’s house in a Volkswagen station wagon driven by two alert young students from Goddard College, Vermont, Jerry Weener and Jay Lawrence. They had come to Boston to fetch us and take us all the way up to their campus, where I was to address the students and faculty. I proposed that they drive us by way of Henniker, and the two young men, students of parapsychology, agreed enthusiastically. It was their first experience with an actual seance and they brought with them a lively dose of curiosity.
“Sybil Leek brought with her something else: ‘Mr. Sasha,’ a healthy four-foot snake of the boa constrictor family someone had given her for a pet. At first I thought she was kidding when she spoke with tender care of her snake, coiled peacefully in his little basket. But practical Sybil, author of some nine books, saw another possibility for a book in ‘Life with Sasha’ and for that reason kept the snake with her. On the way to Henniker, the car had a flat tire and we took this opportunity to get acquainted with Sasha, as Sybil gave him a run around the New Hampshire countryside.
“Although I have always had a deep-seated dislike for anything reptilian, snakes, serpents, and other slitherers, terrestrial or maritime, I must confess that I found this critter less repulsive than I had thought he would be. At any rate, ‘Mr. Sasha’ was collected once more and carefully replaced in his basket and the journey continued to Henniker, where the Russells were expecting us with great anticipation.
“After a delightful buffet luncheon—’Mr. Sasha’ had his the week before, as snakes are slow eaters—we proceeded to the large room to the right of the entrance door, and Sybil took the chair near the fireplace, while the rest of us—the Russells, a minister who was a friend of theirs, two neighbors, my wife, Catherine, and I gathered around her in a circle. Our two student friends joined the circle too.
“It was early afternoon. The sun was bright and clear. It didn’t seem a good day for ghosts. Still, we had come to have a talk with the elusive Mary Wallace in her own domain, and if I knew Sybil, she would not disappoint us. Sybil is a very powerful medium, and something always happens.
“Sybil knew nothing about the house as I had told our hosts not to discuss it with her before the trance session. I asked her if she had any clairvoyant impressions about the house.
“‘My main impressions were outside,’ Sybil replied, ‘near where the irises are. I was drawn to that spot and felt very strange. There is something outside the house which means more than things inside!’
“‘What about inside the house? What do you feel here?’
“‘The most impressive room I think is the loom room,’ Sybil said, and I thought, that’s where Ernest Walbourne heard the voice telling him to get out, in the area that’s also called the Death room.
“‘They don’t want us here … there is a conflict between two people … somebody wants something he can’t have …’
“Presently, Sybil went into a trance. There was a moment of silence as I waited anxiously for the ghost of Mary Wallace to manifest itself through Sybil. The first words coming from the lips of the entranced medium were almost unintelligible.
“Gradually, the voice became clearer and I had her repeat the words until I could be sure of them.
“‘Say-mon go to the lion’s head,’ she said now. ‘To the lion’s head. Be careful.’
“‘Why should I be careful?’
“‘In case he catches you.’
“‘Who are you?’
“‘Mary Degan.’
“‘What are you doing here?’
“‘Waiting. Someone fetch me.’
“She said ‘Witing’ with a strong cockney accent, and suddenly I realized that the ‘say-mon’ was probably a seaman.
“‘Whose house is this?’ I enquired.
“‘Daniel Burn’s.’ (Perhaps it was ‘Birch.’)
“‘What year is this?’
“‘Seventeen ninety-eight.’
“‘Who built this house?’
“‘Burn …”
“‘How did you get here?’
“‘All the time, come and go … to hide … I have to wait. He wants the money. Burn. Daniel Burn.’
“I began to wonder what had happened to Mary Wallace. Who was this new member of the ghostly cast? Sybil knew nothing whatever of a pirate or a pirate treasure connected by legend to this house. Yet her very first trance words concerned a seaman and money.
“Did Mary Degan have someone else with her? I hinted. Maybe this was only the First Act and the Lady of the House was being coy in time for a Second Act appearance.
“But the ghost insisted that she was Mary Degan and that she lived here, ‘with the old idiot.’ Who was the old idiot? I demanded.
“‘Mary,’ the Degan girl replied.
“‘What is Mary’s family name?’
“‘Birch,’ she replied without hesitation.
“I looked at Mrs. Russell, who shook her head. Nobody knew of Mary Wallace by any other name. Had she had another husband we did not know about?
“Was there anyone else with her, I asked?
“‘Mary Birch, Daniel, and Jonathan,’ she replied.
“‘Who is Jonathan?’
“‘Jonathan Harrison Flood,’ the ghostly voice said.
“A week or so later, I checked with my good friend Robert Nesmith, expert in pirate lore. Was there a pirate by that name? There had been, but his date is giving as sixteen ten, far too early for our man. But then Flood is a very common name. Also, this Flood might have used another name as his nom de pirate and Flood might have been his real, civilian name.
“‘What are they doing in this house?’ I demanded.
“‘They come to look for their money,’ Sybil in trance replied. ‘The old idiot took it.’ “‘What sort of money was it?’
“‘Dutch money,’ came the reply, ‘very long ago.’
“‘Who brought the money to this house?’
“‘Mary. Not me.’
“‘Whose money was it?’
“‘Johnny’s.’
“‘How did he get it?’
“‘Very funny … he helped himself … so we did.’
“‘What profession did he have?’
“‘Went down to the sea. Had a lot of funny business. Then he got caught, you know. So they did him in.’
“‘Who did him in?’
“‘The runners. In the bay.’
“‘What year was that?’
“‘Ninety-nine.’
“‘What happened to the money after that?’
“‘She hid it. Outside, near the lion’s head.’
“‘Where is the lion’s head?’
“‘You go down past the little rocks, in the middle of the rocks, a little bit like a lion’s head.’
“‘If I left this house by the front entrance, which way would I turn?’
“‘To the right, down past the little rock on the right. Through the trees, down the little … ‘
“‘How far from the house?’
“‘Three minutes.’
“‘Is it under the rock?’
“‘Lion’s head.’
“‘How far below?”
“‘As big as a boy.’
“‘What will I find there?’
“‘The gold. Dutch gold.’
“‘Anything else?’
“‘No, unless she put it there.’
“‘Why did she put it there?’
“‘Because he came back for it.’
“‘What did she do?’
“‘She said it was hers. Then he went away. Then they caught him, and good thing, too. He never came back and she went off, too.’
“‘When did she leave here?’
“‘Eighteen three.’
“‘What was she like? Describe her.’
“‘Round, not as big as me, dumpy thing, she thought she owned everything.’
“‘How was Jonathan related to Daniel?’
“‘Daniel stayed here when Johnny went away and then they would divide the money, but they didn’t because of Mary. She took it.’
“‘Did you see the money?’
“‘I got some money. Gold. It says seventeen forty-seven.’
“‘Is anyone buried in this ground?’
“‘Sometimes they brought them back here when they got killed down by the river.’
“‘Who is buried in this house?’
“‘I think Johnny.’
“I now told Mary Degan to fetch me the other Mary, the Lady of the House. But the girl demurred. The other Mary did not like to talk to strangers.
“‘What do you look like?’ I asked. I still was not sure if Mary Wallace was not masquerading as her own servant girl to fool us.
‘Skinny and tall.’
“‘What do you wear?’
“‘A gray dress.’
“‘What is your favorite spot in this house?’
“‘The little loom room. Peaceful.’
“‘Do you always stay there?’
“‘No.’ The voice was proud now. ‘I go where I want.’
“‘Whose house is this?’ Perhaps I could trap her if she was indeed Mary Wallace.
“‘Mary Birch.’
“‘Has she got a husband?’
“‘They come and go. There’s always company here—that’s why I go to the loom room.’
“I tried to send her away, but she wouldn’t go.
“‘Nobody speaks to me,’ she complained.
‘Johnny … she won’t let him speak to me. Nobody is going to send me away.’
“‘Is there a sea captain in this house?’ I asked.
“She almost shouted the reply.
“‘Johnny!’
“‘Where is he from?’
“‘Johnny is from the island.’
“She then explained that the trouble with Johnny and Mary was about the sea. Especially about the money the captain had.
“‘Will the money be found?’ I asked.
“‘Not until I let it.’
“I asked Mary Degan to find me Mary Wallace. No dice. The lady wanted to be coaxed. Did she want some presents? I asked. That hit a happier note.
“‘Brandy … some clothes,’ she said. ‘She needs some hair … hasn’t got much hair.’
“‘Ask her if she could do with some oil of wintergreen,’ I said, sending up a trial balloon.
“‘She’s got a bad back,’ the ghost said, and I could tell from the surprised expression on Mrs. Russell’s face that Mary Wallace had indeed had a bad back.
“‘She makes it … people bring her things … rub her back … back’s bad … she won’t let you get the money … not yet … may want to build another house, in the garden … in case she needs it … sell it … she knows she is not what she used to be because her back’s bad … she’ll never go. Not now.’
“I assured her that the Russells wanted her to stay as long as she liked to. After all, it was her house, too.
“‘Where is Johnny’s body buried?’ I now asked.
“‘Johnny’s body,’ she murmured, ‘is under the fireplace.’
“Nobody had told Sybil about the persistent rumors that the old pirate lay under the hearthstone.
“‘Don’t tell anyone,’ she whispered.
“‘How deep?’
“‘Had to be deep.’
“‘Who put him there?’
“‘I shan’t tell you.’
“‘Did you bury anything with him?’
“‘I shan’t tell. He is no trouble now. Poor Johnny.’
“‘How did Johnny meet Mary?’
“‘I think they met on a ship.’
“Ocean-Born Mary, I thought. Sybil did not even know the name of the house, much less the story of how it got that name.
“‘All right,’ I said. ‘Did Mary have any children?’
“‘Four … in the garden.’
“‘Did anyone kill anyone in this house at any time?’
“‘Johnny was killed, you know. Near the money. The runners chased him and he was very sick, we thought he was dead, and then he came here, I think she pushed him when he hurt his leg. We both brought him back here and put him under the fireplace. I didn’t think he was dead.’
“‘But you buried him anyway?’ I said.
“‘She did,’ the ghostly servant replied. ‘Better gone, she said. He’d only come back for the money.’
“‘Then Mary and Johnny weren’t exactly friendly?’
“‘They were once.’
“‘What changed things?’
“‘The money. She took his money. The money he fought for. Fighting money.’ “Suddenly, the tone of voice of the servant girl changed.
“‘I want to go outside,’ she begged. ‘She watches me. I go out because her back is bad today. Can’t get up, you see. So I can go out.’
“I promised to help her. Suspiciously, she asked, ‘What do you want?’
“‘Go outside, you are free to go,’ I intoned.
“‘Sit on the rocks,’ the voice said. ‘If she calls out? She can get very angry.’
“‘I will protect you,’ I promised.
“‘She says there are other places under the floor …’ the girl ghost added, suddenly.
“‘Any secret passages?’ I asked.
“‘Yes, near the old nursery. First floor. Up the stairs, the loom room, the right-hand wall. You can get out in the smoke room!’
“Mr. Russell had told me of his suspicions that on structural evidence alone there was a hidden passage behind the smoke room. How would Sybil know this? Nobody had discussed it with her or showed her the spot.
“I waited for more. But she did not know of any other passages, except one leading to the rear of the house.
“‘What about the well?’
“‘She did not like that either, because she thought he put his money there.’
“‘Did he?’
“‘Perhaps he did. She used to put money in one place, he into another, and I think he put some money into the smoke room. He was always around there. Always watching each other. Watch me, too. Back of the house used to be where he could hide. People always looking for Johnny. Runners.’
“‘Who was Mr. Birch?’
“‘Johnny had a lot to do with his house, but he was away a lot and so there was always some man here while he was away.’
“‘Who paid for the house originally?’
“‘I think Johnny.’
“‘Why did he want this house?’
“‘When he got enough money, he would come here and stay forever. He could not stay long ever, went back to the sea, and she came.’
“I tried another tack.
“‘Who was Don Pedro?’ That was the name given the pirate in the popular tale.
“She had heard the name, but could not place it.
“‘What about Mary Wallace?’
“‘Mary Wallace was Mary Birch,’ the ghost said, as if correcting me. ‘She had several names.’
“‘Why?’
“‘Because she had several husbands.’
“Logical enough if true.
“‘Wallace lived here a little while, I think,’ she added.
“‘Who was first, Wallace or Birch?’
“‘Birch. Mary Wallace, Mary Birch, is good enough.’
“Did the name Philip Babb mean anything to her?’
“‘She had a little boy named Philip,’ the ghost said, and I thought, why not? After all, they had named Mary for the pirate’s mother, why not reciprocate and name her son for the old man? Especially with all that loot around.
“‘If I don’t go now, she’ll wake up,’ the girl said. ‘Philip Babb, Philip Babb, he was somewhere in the back room. That was his room. I remember him.’
“‘How did Philip get on with Johnny?’ I wanted to know if they were one and the same person or not.
“‘Not so good,’ the ghost said. ‘Johnny did not like men here, you know.’
“I promised to watch out for Mary, and sent the girl on her way.
“I then brought Sybil out of trance.
“A few moments later, we decided to start our treasure hunt in the garden, following the instructions given us by Mary Degan, girl ghost.
“Sybil was told nothing more than to go outside and let her intuition lead her toward any spot she thought important. The rest of us followed her like spectators at the National Open Golf Tournament.
“We did not have to walk far. About twenty yards from the house, near some beautiful iris in bloom, we located the three stones. The one in the middle looked indeed somewhat like a lion’s head, when viewed at a distance. I asked the others in the group to look at it. There was no doubt about it. If there was a lion’s head on the grounds, this was it. What lay underneath? What was underneath the hearthstone in the house itself?
“The Russells promised to get a mine detector to examine the area involved. If there was metal in the ground, it would show up on the instrument. Meanwhile, the lore about Ocean-Born Mary had been enriched by the presence in the nether world of Mary Degan, servant girl, and the intriguing picture of two pirates—Johnny and Philip Babb. Much of this is very difficult to trace. But the fact is that Sybil Leek, who came to Henniker a total stranger, was able, in trance, to tell about a man at sea, a Mary, a pirate treasure, hidden passages, a child named Philip, four children of Mary and the presence of a spook in the loom room upstairs. All of this has been checked as entirely correct.
“Why should not the rest be true also? Including, perhaps, the elusive treasure?
“Time will tell.”
For several minutes Paul and Sybil were silent, thinking over what they had just heard. Then Paul spoke first.
“Well, it’s obvious to me that the treasure is still there, somewhere, waiting to be found.”
Sybil shook her head. “What, after all those years? Don’t you think someone has been up there since the book was published and found it?”
“That remains to be seen,” Paul replied. “My gut feeling tells me that it is still there, waiting to be discovered.”
“And what do you propose to do about it?” Sybil demanded to know. She already knew the answer in her heart.
“We’re going to go up there, day after tomorrow.”
And so they did.