LOCAL HAUNTINGS? Jeff Belanger Has a Story For You
JEFF BELANGER IS OBSESSED WITH HAUNTINGS. Best known for his work on the “Ghost Adventures” series and “New England Legends” podcast, the Southbridge-born ghosthunter is coming to the East Longmeadow Public Library on October 1 with a slate of scary stories. “I’m into anything weird,” he says. “Mostly ghosts, but anything on the fringe. I feel like that’s where we learn the most about who we are.”
As a kid, Belanger moved from Southbridge to Sandy Hook, Connecticut, where he enjoyed local library talks by paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. The Warrens, who lived in the neighboring town of Munroe, famously investigated a home believed to be haunted by a witch named Bathsheba Sherman. The story of the Warrens’ work banishing the terrorizing spirit inspired “The Conjuring” movie, released in 2013 and followed by multiple sequels.
Along with the Warrens’ storytelling, Belanger was fascinated by a friend’s claim that a ghost haunted his home. “The house was built in 1760, it was literally older than America, so it wasn’t that crazy [to imagine],” says Belanger. “He said, ‘Some old guy lives here with us – don’t tell your parents.’ Back then, that was something you kept quiet.”
After studying writing at Hofstra University, Belanger went into journalism and got hooked on Halloween features. But his interest was piqued in 2003 when he visited the Paris Catacombs, an underground ossuary for six million people moved out of overcrowded cemeteries during the 18th century. The three-mile-long site is a carefully constructed mausoleum whose depth is equivalent to a five-story building. “I was walking down a hallway that was narrow enough so that if my fingers were out, I was touching bones,” recalls Belanger. “Suddenly, I saw a shadow the size of a man dart right to left. I was already surrounded by millions of skeletons and had endured 20 minutes of the willies, but I didn’t feel threatened.”
In 1999 Belanger started the website ghostvillage.com. Ghost stories poured in, and he had enough material to write his first book. Less than 10 years later, “Ghost Adventures” was pitched to him as an eight-episode season for the Travel Channel. The wildly popular show is still running, now on Discovery and Amazon Prime, and he has been a writer and consultant on every show. “New England Legends” became a PBS program in 2013 and a podcast in 2017.
I asked Belanger to tell me more about Podcast Episode 261: “Half-Hanged Mary of Hadley,” one of the area’s most famous local ghost stories.
LIKE BATHSHEBA SHERMAN OF “THE CONJURING,” Mary Reeves Webster of Hadley was believed to be a witch. She married her husband in 1670 and they had no children. A decade later, when she was in her mid-40s and he in his mid-50s, they became wards of the town because he was unable to work. Some neighbors didn’t take kindly to her in particular. “If you had to bring her food, firewood and clothing,” says Belanger, “you can imagine that that would make some people quite bitter.” Their bitterness became outright scorn when Webster didn’t receive them warmly. Soon there were reports that horses refused to pass by her house, which led men to barge into her home and feel justified to beat her.
On March 27, 1683, she was formally charged with witchcraft. The magistrates of Northampton said she was “under strong suspicion of having familiarity with the devil or using witchcraft.” But the Northampton court didn’t feel equipped for such a serious case, so she was sent to Boston, where she was tried and indicted. Even though she was exonerated, few in Hadley believed she was innocent. “Once you call someone a witch, there’s nowhere to go,” explains Belanger. “Today we use the word ‘evil.’ What do you do with that?”
In December of 1864, a prominent local deacon, Philip Smith, came down with an illness that puzzled his doctor and caused him to grow weaker and more delirious by the day. By January, he and some of the locals were convinced he was bewitched, so they went back into Webster’s home and dragged her outside, where she was hanged and presumed dead. The next morning, the men buried her in the snow, but to their horror, she dug her way out and lived for another 10 years. “At that point,” says Belanger, “whatever you thought about her was verified.”
Webster became infamous when Margaret Atwood, who wrote “The Handmaid’s Tale” in 1985, dedicated the novel – about a dystopian future in which women are forced into servitude – to the woman who survived incomprehensible persecution. “It’s such an important story to tell,” says Belanger. “I’m just a minister, but these legends are sermons from the past. They haunt us because we’re still talking about it.”
