were things in every corner of the room.”
There was a loud noise from the far side of the room, and when the team looked to see what had caused the racket, they found a chair tipped over on its side. Don and the four investigators then withdrew from the wardroom and stepped out into the passageway. As they stood close together, trying to take in what was happening, they heard a woman let out a loud moan. Don said, “It was so loud that all five of us turned and said, ‘what the hell was that!’” The ghosthunters’ audio recorder captured the mournful wail, making it hard to dismiss as over-active imaginations and rattled nerves.
This is not the only unexplainable sound that Don has heard on the ship. In fact, his first ghostly encounter on the Salem was the unmistakable sound of a barking dog. Don and a co-worker named Katy were the only two people onboard as they went about closing the museum down for the night. Katy waited for Don on an upper deck as he climbed up the steep ladder from the ship’s combat information center (CIC), which is located in the bowels of the ship. The CIC is not featured on public tours because it is accessed via a long ladder with steel rungs. When Don reached the top of the ladder, he looked at Katy, wondering if she could hear what he was hearing: a dog barking down below in CIC. By the time he climbed back down into the ship’s belly, the barking had stopped and there was no dog to be found. Don informed me that many of the Greek refugees brought their pets with them when they were evacuated to the Salem.
Another active area that has a strong connection to the deaths of the Greek civilians is located below one of the crew’s berthing quarters and is referred to as the “butter room.” It is called this because it is a walk-in refrigerator where the ship’s supply of eggs and butter were stored. This cold storage room made an ideal place to store the bodies of the civilian casualties who passed away while onboard. Don told me that he has never seen or heard anything in the butter room himself, but others have reported hearing voices and felt very uneasy while investigating this onetime morgue.
There are reasons to believe that some of the paranormal activity aboard ship is related to the spirits of sailors. One possible ghost could be a sailor who fell to his death in the ship’s elevator shaft while working to prepare the deactivated ship for storage. A possible psychic link that may also be allowing the spirits of other sailors to haunt the ship is the permanent display of items from the Salem’s sister ship, the USS Newport News (CA-148). This museum-within-a-museum is a heartfelt tribute to the Newport News’s service to our country and her tragic loss of twenty crewmen during the Viet Nam conflict. There is a theory in paranormal research that suggests that objects can hold psychic energy from people who had a strong connection to that item while they were still alive.
The ship’s surgery. People have reported seeing shadowy figures moving about in this confined space. Female voices have also been heard here.
A male figure has been seen a number of times in the chief petty officers’ mess. People have caught only fleeting glimpses of this man, so there are no clues as to his identity. Shadowy figures have also been sighted in the crew’s mess. Two unrelated psychic investigators picked up on a male entity in the crew’s mess. Both psychics described the entity as being a verbally abusive seaman who doesn’t want people to be in that area of the ship. When Don was first told this, he openly challenged the aggressive spirit with the fact that he, Don, was a sailor too and he wasn’t afraid of anyone. Nothing happened, so he left it at that. However, a few months later, when the second psychic sensed this rude spirit, Don was singled out. This is what he told me:
I was here in the mess with a group; we had been in here for a little while when their psychic said, “He’s here now and he’s laughing at us. He thinks we’re the funniest thing ever.” And then she said, “He hates you.” And I said, “Me?” She said, “Yeah, he says you think you’re tougher than him, and he’s telling me to get you out of here.” So, I’m just standing there, and then she says to me, “You’re ready to go, aren’t you? You look real pissed off.” I didn’t know what she was talking about until I realized that my hand was bleeding in one place from me clenching my fist. Then she says, “Oh yeah, you’re both ready for a fight and you don’t even know it.” Now, of course, I’m baffled. Then all of a sudden, my back was freezing cold, and it was warm down here that night. The psychic looks at me and says, “Don, he’s right on your back; he is right on you.” Then it stopped. The cold went away, and it was all over—just like that. That was the night I walked away from here thinking this is a creepy place.
The USS Salem does appear to have one friendly ghost. His name was John Schaffer, and he was a native of Quincy, Massachusetts, who served onboard the Salem as a warrant officer while the ship was on active duty. When the Salem was brought back to the Fore River facility, John volunteered to help with the restoration work. He even lived on the ship and had his own cabin. He also died on the ship. Schaffer suffered a heart attack while in the anchor windlass room, which is the most forward area of the ship and contains the machinery for raising and lowering the ship’s anchors. Don told me that he has never encountered John Schaffer himself, but the museum’s director, Michael Condon, has talked with people on the quarter deck as they were leaving the ship who have commented on how helpful John was with answering their questions. Don said, “Mike’s a pretty straight up guy, so I tend to believe what he tells me.”
CHAPTER 5
Stone’s Public House
ASHLAND, MASSACHUSETTS
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
