Mariner's Hollow (Young Adult, Paranormal, Thriller)

By F. G. Capitanio

A mysterious and desolate island. A devastating turn of events. A secret that will reveal the true meaning of Justice.

Fifteen-year-old Justice Worth is summoned to the house of Eleanor Burby, an unknown aunt living on Mariner’s Hollow Island, miles off the turbulent Maine coast. Events transpire that are much worse than spending winter break apart from his friends back home, and turn his visit into a nightmare. A blizzard slams the island in all its fury, and in its midst, his aunt dies of an apparent suicide. Trapped in her island home, stalked by ghosts within and a murderer outside, Justice begins to unravel not only the truth behind his aunt’s death, but the family secrets threatening to destroy his perception of those he loves most.

Little about Aunt Eleanor’s death makes sense, but as Justice probes the lives of those closest to her, suspects multiply and new dangers arise. Through it all, island spirits continue to haunt him, pushing him towards the family’s dark secrets, before the only living person who knows them all silences him forever, burying the truth in the one place where it may never be found: Mariner’s Hollow.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SDP Publishing
• Release date: Nov 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9780989972307

F. G. Capitanio

F. G. Capitanio is the author of several published poems, essays, and short stories. Mariner’s Hollow is his first published novel. He has spent several years in various departments of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration within the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, located in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He lives year round on Cape Cod, while continuing to work on his second Justice Worth mystery.

Book preview

Prologue

MIST AND SNOW

Off the coast of Maine there is an island that wallows in the frigid North Atlantic, exposed to the merciless chastisement of the North Wind. Cliffs crowning its northern edge disintegrate where water and wind fall upon the rocks, reducing stone to memory and pushing forward the sea’s inexorable advance. Land welcomes sea with open arms of earth and granite. It is a naïve host, beckoning its own demise by guiding in the demolishing waves.

A house, poised upon this northern outcrop of granite, stood one winter’s night in the company of ravished trees as the snow rode the wind in an ephemeral mix of ice and motion. It raced on invisible currents, changing directions and spiraling skyward before resigning itself, floating peacefully to its final resting place.

The headlands were covered with its thick remains, a white shroud, ruffled and humped like the backs of white whales surfacing in a frozen sea. On this immaculate palette, a square of golden light appeared a few hundred yards from the cliff. A lamp had been turned on and shone from a second floor window of the house, piercing the gloom like the one eye of a Cyclops.

Inside the master bedroom a man sat writing at a timeworn mahogany desk, his pen moving frenetically across a page. The air, thick with purpose, molded around his arm and guided its erratic motions, turning them into communicable fact. These words would finally bring about the end of all his misery and the beginning of justice.

When he finished, the man set down the pen, leaned back against the chair, and sighed deeply. Like the letter he’d written, the gesture was a release of stress, anxiety, and fear. This was what he’d wanted to do for so long, but never had the evidence needed to bring about a certain conviction. It took months of patience, light sleep, and diligent work through every minute, every hour, and every day that rushed past to mock him.

He was glad to be in the house, at rest. It comforted him; it gave him the peace of mind to concentrate and complete the task at hand. The fire, still bright and hot, cast a heat that covered him like syrup, stuck to his clothes, and melted away the cold. He could hear the clink, clink of icicles as they broke in the frigid wind gusts occasionally rattling the frosted windows.

His eyes closed, weighty with exhaustion, attempting to drag him into sleep kicking and screaming. Not now, he pleaded. She needed to come home. Not now. Then the inevitable tunnel of white light would solidify out of his vision, beckoning him until his head fell forward, only to startle him awake again. If he could just talk with her and show her the letter before he sent it to the police. She’d already known most of what he would write, and she believed him, unlike any other person whom he once called a friend. Nonetheless, he wanted her to see it on paper.

Her image danced in and out among his darker thoughts. How did he ever marry such a woman? Only the work of a loving god could have brought her to him.

Through high school there had been mistakes in his relationships, complete with unnecessarily bitter ends, resentments, frustrations, and the desperate conviction that with each passing girl he was only confirming that he’d probably be alone forever. Then he met her.

She attracted him at once, but he immediately saw how different she was compared to the type of girls he was used to. Those girls, who dressed to attract the opposite sex and flatter themselves, were the kind who cavorted with the most admired students and lived like leeches, sucking up whatever popularity could be achieved through the merits of those strapping and conceited youths. In his school’s social strata, he’d been a level below the jocks, but had enough good looks and personality to try his hand at winning the trendy girls for himself. He wanted to conquer and display them, simply to prove he could.

But with her everything changed. She humbled him. Her moderate status, thanks to a winning smile and earnest sincerity, never made her too proud. When they dated, their peers accused him of his old tricks, going after her for ulterior motives, most likely because she came from a wealthy family. Even if money wasn’t his motivation, people were sure the relationship would never last. He’d tire of her eventually.

He never tired of her. She loved him into humility and authenticity, and he clung to her like a lifeline. It was like this well into their marriage.

Now, more than ever, he wanted her beside him, longed to sense her approval and her relief that it would all be over. Despite his attempts to shield her from the brunt of the storm, her unease had grown as steadily as his own. If there was one regret, it was causing her to share in his misery. At least now absolution for both of them was written down like scripture on the page.

A soft cry broke his thoughts.

The child monitor’s static hum betrayed no other noise from the room next door. The clink of the occasional icicle, the flecks of snow hitting the window, the crackling hiss of the fire filled the silence, but nothing else.

Though possibly imagined, the noise brought with it a certainty of imminent disaster. He knew, in that moment, that something terrible had or was about to happen. He jumped to his feet and darted from the bedroom, leaving the chair tossed back on the floor, a testament to panic. Moving his hand to the light switch of his son’s room, he was almost too afraid to flip it; afraid to see what had happened to his little boy. But there was no other choice. Light flooded the room.

On the bed, surrounded by pillows, was his son, perfect in sleep, occupied only with the sucking of his thumb. He was three years old, a handful for his parents, but also a joy. Every broken dish, every spilled meal, every frantic search when he wandered off was worth it. Hard to believe, looking at him now, that his vigorous life was tamed, at once helpless and confident. The child had, during some part of the night, kicked away his blanket, so the man tucked it up around his shoulders and gave him a soft kiss on the cheek.

How irrational to have run to the boy as if there were a fire. The man was irritated and embarrassed. Was he trying to play the hero again? Did he want to face danger so he could dismantle whatever threatened his family? Admittedly he missed that feeling, but times had changed. He could never go back to that life when a new one was starting for him, with a new job where he could pick up the pieces and forge the path ahead. No more danger. No more playing the hero. The fear that gripped him before and moved him into an involuntary response of action was just a glitch. His son was fine, and he could go back to his desk, re-read the letter to double-check for mistakes, and finish his hot chocolate.

As he turned out the lights, a chill crawled up his spine and sent shivers over his body in waves. It should have felt warmer. He wasn’t used to heating a house so big, with as many rooms and hidden niches as it contained. It must have cost the family a fortune just to keep themselves warm on the often desolate and wintry island. He had checked the thermostat only half an hour ago, and it had been set high. Along with the fire, it should have been enough. He crossed his arms and rubbed his hands along them.

A hot shower would help. By the time he was done, his wife would most likely be home. The volume on the monitor could go up quite a bit, and he was sure that if he brought it in the bathroom, he’d hear it over the noise. He drank the rest of his hot chocolate, replaced the empty mug on the desk, and grabbed his towel from the closet.

The gentle sound of running water filled the master bedroom. A cloud of steam began to squeeze and curl its way from underneath the bathroom door, rising up to the heavy wooden rafters that crossed the cathedral ceiling, where it vanished like ghosts ascending from their graves. A gentle humming, which soon turned into cheerful singing, came from the man in the shower, his voice echoing in the tiled room.

Twenty minutes later, he turned off the water and slid open the shower doors. The man, still humming a tune, stepped out of the tub and began to dry himself off. He wondered if his wife was home yet, or if he had to wait longer to deliver the news burning to get out. He’d thought about the letter while he showered, repeating its words and wondering if everything had been well written. It had to be good enough, he decided. Having finished the task, he never wanted to think of it again. All the obsessing over whether he put in too little or too much was unnecessary stress. He had forced it out of his mind and concentrated instead on the pellets of hot water massaging his back, turning his muscles into jelly.

He put on his robe and took one last look in the foggy bathroom mirror, pleased with what he saw. He brushed his hair neatly to the side and moved into the master bedroom.

The figure lunged from the shadows like a coiled snake lashing out at prey. There was no time for surprise. The noose was flung around his neck and pulled tight. When he tried to push back against the bulk of his attacker, he found no strength left in his limbs. They were drained of their energy, as if stones hung from his hands and feet. While in the shower, he had noticed a growing weakness but attributed it to fatigue. Now, with the realization that he could not fight back, came the realization of why. The hot chocolate had been drugged.

The rope was yanked up, cutting into his flesh. He could do nothing but hang there, a dead weight that, at just over 160 pounds, was not too difficult for his murderer to handle. The rope had been hung over the rafters of the bedroom’s ceiling, and after that first mighty tug, was quickly tied around the closet doorknob. Though he wished it were a dream, that he was sleeping in the shower and would wake up from this new nightmare, he knew the truth. He was most certainly going to die.

Had the hangman’s knot been properly and calmly placed to the side of his head behind the ear, and had he fallen with a jerk from the height of a gallows, the man’s neck would have snapped mercifully, sending him to his creator before he even knew he’d lost his last breath. But his neck did not break. Despite his drugged state, he had the strength to kick out once in protest, a fish flopping about in its death throes. It was no use. Struggling any further would only serve to make his final moments on earth a more pathetic defeat.

He resigned himself to the inevitability of death. He wasn’t afraid, but he was surprised that he could still feel such vitriolic anger. This should have been expected. He had, in truth, been asking for it, like running ahead of a bus sure to catch up with him. But now that he faced it, and at the hands of a known enemy, he knew that the bus had not run him down from behind. Rather it had been one block ahead, waiting around a corner before pulling out to strike him down. There was the checkmate, the end of the game, and the frustration that came with losing it. Nothing was left but to lay down his king and die.

The burning began in his chest, driving him mad with desperation for air. Thrown into involuntary convulsions, his body tried unsuccessfully to force him to breathe. Then, as suddenly as it began, the burning stopped. His eyes, about to burst from his head, finally relaxed. His vision dimmed along with his thoughts, replaced by an explosion of purple and yellow lights. Then, with a final prayer for the child in the other room, the white tunnel of light again beckoned him into blissful rest.

Below the hanging man, a specter flitted like a mist across the room. Lit only by the flickering glow of the hearth, its shadow was thrown upon the wall and danced about in a celebratory show of victory. When the body had expended its last evidence of life, the figure placed a chair behind it, making sure it would appear kicked away. It glided to the desk and hovered decisively for a moment before taking up the letter, which was then carried to the fireplace and thrown upon the dying embers. The ghost stood with its gaze fixed upon it, making sure every piece of paper, every trace of ink was consumed by fire, until nothing remained but ash.

1

THE HOUSE OF BURBY

Justice Worth watched the black sedan disappear around a grove of thick pine trees, which were weighed down by the snow like old men burdened with time, their limbs twisted and knotted. His parents were gone, and he was left alone to contend with what lay behind him.

He turned and moved his gaze up the snow-covered hill, blinding despite the lack of sun on a grim gray day. A hulking mass crowned its peak, barely restrained in its cover of snow. It overwhelmed the whole of his troubled thoughts. The house looked less like architecture and more like a living beast, still and waiting for prey to wander into open jaws. The rounded edges of snow amassing at its corners added to its bestial nature.

A gust of wind forced him to hunch up his coat collar, pull down his woolen hat, and stuff his nose behind his scarf. His mother had forced him to wear it, but despite his complaints, he was thankful for it now. He stooped to pick up his suitcase and walked up a roughly shoveled walk to the main entrance. The front door was pressed into the mound, oppressed by the snow like the mouth of some mysterious cave.

A family crest, forged from metal, decorated the entrance. On the emblem a knight’s helmet hovered over a wild boar. The name Burby was engraved along the top. Hanging from the coat of arms was a thick knocker, useless in the knowledge that his aunt would not be home and had left the door unlocked. A thrill rose up within him as he reached for the doorknob.

To go anywhere besides Jonah’s or Nadia’s houses during winter break was previously unthinkable. The first full day of vacation, Christmas Eve, always went to family. By Christmas Day, relatives went home, and Justice usually had plans by two or three in the afternoon, after which he’d barely see his parents for the next seven days. This seductive fantasy of friends, snow, and seven days of freedom fell apart one morning when his mother, Elizabeth Baines, informed him he’d be spending the week after Christmas at his Aunt Eleanor’s house on Mariner’s Hollow Island.

What?! He sputtered and choked on his orange juice. But I don’t even know the woman! Why should I have to go during my favorite week of the year and spend it staring at her, trying to think of what the heck I’m going to say next?

Justice. Her voice was gentle yet tinged with sadness. You can’t understand everything at once.

She was sitting across from him at the kitchen table, eyes fixated on her hands, fingers spread out like nets on the tablecloth.

Justice gave her an inquisitive eye, unsure of what was wrong.

She looked up again. "Even I don’t understand everything, but right now all you need to know is this: she and her husband, Charles, separated a number of years ago. Now they’re finalizing the divorce. It’s been very difficult for her.

"She asked me if I could send you to stay with her after Christmas and keep her company. She asked solely for you. I would have gone myself, but your aunt and I aren’t as close as we once were many years ago, which is why you don’t really know her. She held you often as a baby, but she hasn’t seen you since you were about three.

Only recently, when I started visiting her again, I showed her your pictures. She has no children of her own, and I think it’d be good of you to keep her company.

But my friends, he protested.

Justice rarely whined to his mother. He was smarter than that. It never got him far, but now he was desperate enough, and tears began tugging at the edges of his eyes, not so much out of sadness, but out of frustration that his own mother couldn’t see how important these days were.

She leaned across the table, looking directly into his eyes. Justice, your friends will survive without you. Just thank God you have friends. Some, like your aunt, may live the rest of their lives with few or no friends at all, however long that may be. You will be staying with your aunt.

So he ended up opening the door to a house he didn’t want to visit, belonging to a woman he didn’t care to meet, and he just realized, as he grasped the doorknob, that he forgot his smartphone at home. Just great.

The antique door creaked open, and he stepped inside.

His eyes widened at the scope of the interior. The living room was larger than he’d predicted and constructed entirely of wood, from the floor panels to the walls and the beams that crisscrossed the cathedral ceiling. Furniture, looking old but expensive, surrounded elaborate area rugs in two places: one to the right of the entrance where there was a television set, the other to the far left, surrounding an intrusive stone fireplace. The scent of mold, burnt wood, and ash hovered in the room. Air freshener lingered over it all, attempting unsuccessfully to mask the dingy smell of unkempt time.

French doors on the opposite wall proudly displayed the property behind the house like two elaborate picture frames. Thick fields of snow undulated for hundreds of feet, a white lake that ended with an encroaching thicket. The black tree trunks lining the yard reminded him of soldiers hiding in the dusk, ready for action.

A switch to his left repelled the heavy gloom and the light made the outdoors disappear.

Lights, fashioned to imitate colonial oil lamps, lined the walls on either side of the room. Between them hung bulky, somber paintings of persons flourished with antiquated clothing. Justice made his way around, studying each frame. The first image to the left of the French doors was of an elderly man, whose face could have disciplined the rowdiest of children with one stern glance. Beneath the portrait, a small gold plaque read:

Augustus Henry Burby

b. November 1693

d. December 28, 1785

Beside the old man, a woman, who Justice assumed was Mrs. Augustus Burby, sat impeccably poised, a matriarch of refinement. Her plaque read:

Matilda James Burby

b. May 1702

d. December 28, 1786

Interesting, he thought, that both had died on the same date, one year apart. Augustus Burby had the only portrait paired together with that of his wife. All other portraits were only of direct descendants.

He finished his tour around the room, after having crawled over the sofas and end tables to read and examine each painting up close. He remained fascinated. Antiques had always enthralled him. The sense of an unattainable past kept him longing for lost days, mysterious and unfamiliar in a world that seemed desperate to throw upon young and old alike the new and up-to-date.

It amazed him that these men and women, eternally frozen with their unforgiving faces, were once alive, had smiled and laughed, had maybe even gone to school, made friends, craved and ate their favorite foods. Sad that their lives, full and exciting as they might have been, were reduced to wall decorations and small blurbs on gold plaques. He didn’t like the thought of his own life reduced to that.

But there was something strange about the portraits, something slightly off, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. The notion continued tugging at his mind. As he turned away, a sense of growing discomfort flooded him like water, cold and turbulent, filling a glass.

A living face suddenly peered out at him from the wall. Justice almost screamed before he realized he’d been startled by his own reflection. Trailing the procession of paintings was a monumental antique mirror, hanging with an enormity of weight that defied gravity with its overbearing frame. It captured the image of a boy whose features were soft and slightly rounded, untouched by any real hardship. Usually his skin was tinged light olive and spotted with several freckles on each cheek. His head was crowned with thick, long waves of brown hair that swept across his brow like a fan. But now the usually friendly face he was familiar with became yet another source of irrational paranoia. The lighting’s effect was ethereal. Shadows crisscrossed over his image, making it appear more gaunt, pale, and utterly foreign. Hair hung limp, looking wet and black on waxen skin. Only his eyes, as green as the barely remembered summer, remained truly his.

He shuddered and disappeared behind the mirror’s wooden frame. Whatever had come over him to turn a pleasant evening to dread was beyond him. It could have been any number of things. The house’s enormity and accompanying emptiness, the growing darkness outside, or the looming faces of the dead within, could have all combined to set his nerves on edge. Don’t be silly, he chastised himself. Only superstition allowed for fear. He was not superstitious, and he’d been fine a minute ago.

Justice opened up the French doors to the snowy evening, and breathed in deep. Instantly his nose frosted on the inside. Though the day had been cloudy, the sunset now tore through the gray blanket, as if trying to take a breath, forcing upon his vision its dying brilliance of orange and scarlet. It set the trees ablaze and melted away his fear, as it would melt the snow in a few months time.

He closed the doors and faced the living room again, glad to be there after all. There’d be much to explore, and he was eager to get started. Leaving his bags on a couch under the watchful eye of Matilda Burby, he switched off the living room lights and made his exit into a long hallway that led into the kitchen.

The kitchen was as dramatic as the room preceding it, with walls painted brick red and decorated with various items of Americana, antique food advertisements, and vintage posters. Bowls, dishes, and jars neatly arrayed granite counters. In the center of the wood floor was a large island that shared the granite top. Above it hung a rack of pots and pans.

On the island was a piece of paper.

Justice, grab whatever you want to eat from the fridge. I went off the island. Will be back soon. Make yourself at home.

Love,

Aunt

For an indecisive moment he stared at the refrigerator, torn between a gnawing hunger and a need to investigate more of his new environment before doing anything else. Curiosity won out.

He walked into the dining room. The atmosphere, more than any one particular object, impressed him the most, a spirit that transported him to Colonial America, having remained unchanged for 200 years or more. The floorboards were wide and rough, with bumps and indents betraying their age, unlike the smooth, thin, and much newer kitchen flooring. The dining table sat ten and ran the whole length of the long but narrow room to a second fireplace at the far end, framed not by stone, but by wood panels. To its right was a weathered red door Justice thought must lead outside. Paintings, covered in dust more than paint, hung neatly on the walls and had grown dingy and cracked. The art depicted colonial villages and sea battles with great whales. The room’s attributes fit together nicely and could have belonged in a museum display. Beyond it, another doorway opened into what appeared to be a library. All Justice could see were shelves filled with books.

He gasped upon entering the room. It was a library. He’d always loved books, especially antique ones. His reading levels impressed even his staunchest and most skeptical teachers, who, by the sixth grade, often found him reading not only the books assigned in class, but also those assigned to high school students, classics by the likes of Charles Dickens or the Brontë sisters. In middle school, his English comprehension and reading levels were considered near genius. And by the time he arrived at his aunt’s home, he’d almost depleted his town’s tiny library of viable books. Coming across the Burbys’ library was like finding gold right before going bankrupt.

The room, an almost perfect square, was small compared to the rest of the house. There were no windows. He turned in place, absorbing bookshelf stacked upon bookshelf from floor to ceiling. Not a single section of white wall showed, save for a strip of plaster around the fireplace, which the library shared with the dining room on the other side. In front of the fireplace lay a lush, burgundy area rug beneath a leather armchair and a matching leather ottoman. A lamp, turned on, stood upon an end table beside the armchair. He half-expected to see a tiny vial on the table with a label that read, Drink Me.

This was a room, he knew, that would get quite a bit of use over the next week.

He perused the books, just as he had the portraits in the living room, starting with those over the fireplace. Ten Holy Bibles, dusty and antiquated records of the supernatural, filled a large section of shelving. They were unused and probably had taken up their space for as long as the house had on Mariner’s Hollow. He noticed a number of classics as he moved down each row. Willa Cather’s My Antonia, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, The House of the Seven Gables and The Scarlet Letter, both by Nathaniel Hawthorne, all of Charles Dickens’s classics, Tales of a Wayside Inn by Longfellow, and the collected works of Henry David Thoreau. It seemed every book imaginable was in that room and then some.

He pulled out The Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The publication date on the title page was 1912. The table of contents listed a poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and he knew then why the name Coleridge sounded familiar. One of his English teachers in seventh grade, who’d recognized his lust for books, had given him the poem, though he couldn’t remember exactly what it was about.

He turned to a section of the poem and read:

At length did cross an Albatross,

Thorough the fog it came;

As if it had been a Christian soul,

We hailed it in God’s name.

It ate the food it ne’er had eat,

And round and round it flew.

The ice did split with a thunder-fit;

The helmsman steered us through!

And a good south wind sprung up behind;

The Albatross did follow,

And every day, for food or play,

Came to the mariner’s hollo!

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,

It perched for vespers nine;

Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,

Glimmered the white Moon-shine.’

"God save thee, ancient Mariner!

From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—

Why look’st thou so?"—With my cross-bow

I shot the ALBATROSS.

The words resurfaced, and Justice remembered the story of the old man who’d committed an almost unpardonable sin by killing that bird, a symbol of good luck. He replaced the piece of paper, closed the book, and set it on the end table for another time, determined to return and finish it.

When he rose from the chair, he saw it. By the doorway to the dining room a calendar hung on the wall, flipped to the month of December. In thick red marker the box designated the 28th was circled. It stopped him in his tracks. December 28th. He’d seen that date before. It brought with it the same unease that had overwhelmed him in the living room.

He ran back to the living room, flicking on the lights as he moved to the portraits on the wall. It was true, plainly engraved on each plaque. Throughout 300 years of the history they reflected, five people had died on the same day—almost half of them. They had died on December 28th.

Justice made his way back to the library, wondering about an explanation. Unfortunate events befall families every day. It might be called bad luck. And genealogical lines tracing back centuries would surely have their fair share of bad luck. But on the same day?

He remembered seeing a certain book on the shelves that might shed light on the house and its mysteries. His eyes scanned the books until he found his target, A History of Mariner’s Hollow. The tome was large and heavy. The dusty, cracked leather and frayed edges of the pages betrayed its age. Maps, charts, genealogies, newspaper reports, and articles about the island and its inhabitants filled almost 1,000 pages. It lacked a table of contents, so it’d take time to examine.

Justice began thumbing through it, ignoring the temptation to stop and read the pages flickering by. A section dealing with famous families drew his attention. He noticed many unfamiliar names: Hughes, Williams, James, and Tremont, until he reached the name Burby. At least 15 pages were dedicated to the family’s history in the colonial period, the Revolution, and into the 20th century, documented with genealogies, maps, articles, and lots of photographs.

The date was in a list of Burby deaths. These island records mirrored the portraits, though the book listed more than just direct descendants and inheritors of the surname. It contained information on every family member until the 1950s. The mysterious date also appeared in an article entitled The Haunted House of Burby, which dealt specifically with the house.

The Burby home, refuge of a once powerful shipbuilding legacy, had become a refuge of ghosts. During the house’s periods of abandonment, credible witnesses had made claims of lights turning on and off at night, figures staring from an upstairs window, and voices on the wind.

New England teemed with ghost stories. It had attempted to rival its mother country with its ability to tell a tale, but where the spirits longed to dwell, it seemed, were the islands. Pummeled by waves, storms, and shipwrecks; ravaged by settlers, hunters, and pirates; what greater place was there for the development of lore? While the harboring of ghosts on Mariner’s Hollow was not so well known as other island hauntings, the community’s residents had been reporting otherworldly accounts since the mid-1800s. These accounts had taken place not only in Burby House, but also places like Stenton Lighthouse, Oaks Bridge, and the Wandering Brig Restaurant. Burby House, however, gave the island the most to talk about. A number of deaths, in addition to the unusual phenomenon, had only added to the location’s mystique.

Neighbors whispered it was cursed from the beginning. Titus Franklin, the first victim of Burby House, lost his footing and fell to his death on the first day the roof was under construction. Two other workers also perished during construction. Records indicated a man named Frederick and another unknown worker were crushed when a section collapsed, though the exact location or explanation of the accident were never given.

On December 28th, 1829, Ophelia Cooper, a black woman who served under the employment of Lindon Fellows Burby, murdered her co-worker Sarah Hughes, also a black servant. The rumor was that both women were involved in an affair with their employer, unbeknownst to either of them until the unfortunate day Ophelia discovered them in a compromising position. After the murder, Ophelia Cooper hung herself outside the east wing master bedroom window. The family denied the scandal, though rumors escaped the house’s walls and brought some disrepute to the name, especially due to their race. Abolitionists saw the women as victims of a Northern slave owner who hid himself behind the façade of abolition and philanthropy.

Many have claimed to see the ghost of a black woman staring out from the window of the master bedroom.

Two suicides became eerily linked with Ophelia’s suicide during the next hundred years. The first occurred in 1867. An unknown couple occupied the house during the Civil War. The man, a Union soldier, was killed in battle and two years later his wife, unable to cope with living alone, killed herself on December 28th. A portion of the woman’s journal was found, but only a few pages survived, documenting her husband’s absence during the war. She referred by name only to their daughter, Hattie, sick with consumption. History had not revealed whether the daughter survived. Some local historians had surmised that the family knew the Burbys, who may have taken in the wife and child during the war.

The second suicide occurred in 1930 at the beginning of the Great Depression. Mr. and Mrs. Henry Owens were cousins to Thomas