Ghosts of the SouthCoast Read Online Free Page A

open no matter how many times he’d made sure it was shut tight.
    I experienced it for myself firsthand the night the bulkhead doors to the basement continually slammed open and shut, even though we had secured them with a wooden two-by-four between the interior handles. Each time we ran down there and locked it down, I still thought we were just the victims of some prank—until I walked down and could still see the heavy metal doors flopping open and shut on their own in the still night air. The topic of the paranormal was something in which I’d always been interested, but after that night, it consumed me. I would soon find out that the ghosts of the SouthCoast were all around me. I just had to know where to look.

CHAPTER 3
THE WHERE
    W ith all the stuffy science and background information out of the way, now we can get to the fun part: the ghosts themselves.
    With the current paranormal media explosion—everything from books, magazines, reality television shows and films like
Paranormal Activity
—it’s becoming more accepted to talk about things like ghosts and hauntings. While many still scoff at such a notion, and others may deem it a slight against their chosen belief system, it’s still easier today to walk into your public library and ask the reference librarian about ghost stories from your town than it was ten or twenty years ago.
    With that in mind, more and more historical locations are willing to use ghosts as a way to connect with a new, younger audience. You need only do a Google search for “historic ghost tours” to see there’s practically one in every city and quite a few towns as well. On my radio show,
Spooky Southcoast,
we’ve come up with a simple saying that summarizes how we view the place of the paranormal in learning about our past: come for the ghosts, stay for the history.
    That’s the approach we’ll take with
Ghosts of the SouthCoast
as well. While others might try to spook readers with chilling tales of terrorizing screams and ghostly hands knocking on the window, in this volume we’ll treat the ghosts for exactly what they are: a direct link to our past, a (formerly) living example of the SouthCoast’s diverse history. Throughout, I’ll try to offer some personal insights and anecdotes from my own adventures investigatingthe paranormal in the area, and you’ll see they’re more likely to raise an eyebrow than they are the hair on the back of your neck.
    Still, it might not be a bad idea to lock the front door and turn on all the lights as we head into the unknown.
W AREHAM AND B UZZARDS B AY
    The town of Wareham lies along the beginnings of the Cape Cod Canal, and its official nickname is Gateway to Cape Cod. It’s considered the easternmost edge of what we call the SouthCoast and has as much in common with its Cape-side counterparts as it does with the other SouthCoast communities.
    Wareham was originally named Agawam after the Wampanoag tribe that inhabited it. In 1666, the Plymouth colony purchased Agawam from the Indians and later renamed it Wareham in homage to a town in Dorset, England, of the same name. It was incorporated as its own town in 1739.
    Within Wareham’s borders is the coastal village of Onset. Its seaside bluffs and abundant ocean view made it a destination point for the wealthy and the famous in the early 1900s, and at one time it was known as Hollywood East for the celebrities that would often vacation there.
    In its own way, Wareham still has a connection with the Hollywood of today. Oscar-winning actress Geena Davis, who starred in such paranormally themed films as
Beetlejuice
and
The Fly,
is a Wareham native.
The Fearing Tavern
    One of the oldest structures in Wareham is the Fearing Tavern. Along with having perhaps the coolest name of any haunted location, it’s also a spot where the ghosts are directly related to its history.
    The original part of the building dates back to 1690,