We have reached the best time of the year. The summer heat has broken, the leaves are crispy, and the best holiday, Halloween, is coming up quickly. We all know Halloween was not celebrated in Colonial America, but that doesn’t mean we can’t incorporate a bit of Colonial America into Halloween.
To celebrate, I have compiled a list of scary stories, supernatural stories, ghost stories, folklore, and legends that were either written in or set in Colonial America. This era provided a perfect setting for the development of American horror. Europe had ancient castles, ruins of abandoned abbeys, and moody wind-swept moors to inspire centuries of writers and storytellers. America had isolated settlers, a strict, religiously controlled society, and an untamed wilderness where any evil could lurk. It was fertile ground for witches, devils, the supernatural, cryptids, and folklore.
Witches and the Devil
The earliest stories date back to the start of America when Puritan communities were on constant guard for the devil, who was a very real and imminent threat.
In his book Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions (1689), Cotton Mather tells stories about incidents involving witches, from the haunting of the children of Boston mason John Goodwin to the murder of Mr. Philip Smith to Mary Johnson and her dealings with the devil at Hartford.
Witch hysteria came to America while fading out across much of Europe, with the deadliest event being the notorious Salem Witch Trials in 1692/1693.
The Mather family (Father: Increase, Son: Cotton) again intervened after the trials to defend the judges’ actions, review the cases, and add further accounts of documented supernatural incidents. Cotton’s book Wonders of the Invisible World (1693) looks at the cases that eventually led to convictions and death and defends them by giving accounts of similar trials heard by Judge Sir Matthew Hale.
Increase Mather’s An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences (1694) provides a remarkable account of accidents, apparitions, and unaccountable phenomena. Mather retells the tale of a woman being molested by spirits, a maid possessed by evil, and even a house haunted by a demon.
Lithobolia: or, the Stone-Throwing Devil (1698), written by Richard Chamberlayne, is a tale that is considered an early example of supernatural horror writing and what many say is the first documented incident of witchcraft in America. The story centers around incidents of witchcraft, demonic voices, and poltergeist activity that take place at a tavern in New Hampshire in 1682. Increase Mather mentions the story in Illustrious Providence when documenting the spread of witchcraft before the Salem trials.
The beginning of American supernatural horror
Wieland: or, The Transformation: An American Tale (1798) by Charles Brockden Brown is often considered the first American “Gothic” novel. Gothic means a story characterized by an atmosphere of fear, supernatural occurrences, and often a return of horrible past events and their effects on the present.
Wieland takes place in Colonial America between the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. It is a psychological horror story that involves religious fanaticism, family, the supernatural, mental illness, deception, and murder.
American Legends
One of the most well-known legends often told at Halloween is Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820). Set in Sleepy Hollow, New York, in 1790, it involves pedagogue Ichabod Crane in his competition for the affections of Katrina Van Tassel. After hearing the legend of the Headless Horseman at a harvest party, Crane makes his way home only to be confronted by the dead Hessian mercenary.
Another legend from Irving’s book Tales of a Traveller (1824) is that of Captain William Kidd. Captain Kidd was a Scottish privateer who lived in New York City. The governor of New York, Massachusetts Bay, and New Hampshire commissioned him to hunt down pirates and enemy French ships in the Indian Ocean. Unfortunately, by the time he made it back to America, the political views had shifted, and he was arrested for piracy in Boston and shipped to England to stand trial. There, in 1701, he was found guilty, hung not once but twice as the rope broke the first time, then gibbeted and displayed over the River Thames. Kidd supposedly haunts many places around New York City, his beloved adopted city.
Another of Irving’s tales, The Devil and Tom Walker, takes place in Massachusetts, where Captain Kidd supposedly buried some of his treasure. In 1727, Tom Walker, the elderly miser, meets “Old Scratch” at the swamp while walking in an abandoned Wampanoag fortress. “Old Scratch” offers Walker the riches in the swamp buried by Kidd for a price (his soul). Then, it explores everything that happens when someone realizes their immortal soul no longer belongs to them and when it comes time to pay the price.
Even George Washington is mentioned in one ghost story by Nathaniel Hawthorne in his book In Colonial Days when discussing the legends of Old Province House. Howe’s Masquerade follows Governor Howe as he throws a costume party on the eve of the siege of Boston (April 19, 1775)—guests dressed in rags representing Washington and his generals. Howe and their guests are confronted with a ghostly funeral march of Puritan governors, illustrating the death knell of royal authority and a bad omen for the British in the upcoming battle.
American Cryptids
W.F. Mayer’s In the Pines (1859) explores the beginnings of the Jersey Devil. Deborah Leeds’s thirteenth child was born in 1736 in the Pine Barrens in New Jersey. Soon after birth, the child suddenly turned into a horrible wyvern-like creature with a goat’s head, leathery bat-like wings, horns, small arms with clawed hands, legs with cloven hooves, and a forked or pointed tail.
The Jersey Devil has haunted the Pine Barrens since being spotted in 1820, 1841, 1909, 1925, 1937, 1951, and as late as 1960.
So, sit back with some Halloween candy and enjoy some scary colonial stories on this fine autumn evening.
Heather Baldus
Collection Manager
Lives & Legacies 