Fisherman in Millbury, Mass

Most of the ghost stories I hear are attention getting, but not really scary. But some are in fact flat out scary. The other night a woman from Rode Island shared such a story with me.

Years back she lived in an apartment in Millbury Massachusetts. A florist was below her and an old lady lived across the hall. It was a cheap two bedroom, so she and her fiance were excited to have the space and the extra pocket change. It wasn't long before she noticed something was strange. One of the bedrooms was cold all the time and she just couldn't be in it. It felt like doom. Her fiance dismissed her reaction at first, but soon found he too couldn't stand to be in the room. At night she began to hear stamping footsteps in the hall outside her apartment. Like someone was stamping the mud off their boots, then banging at her front door. The old lad across the hall heard it too, and the florist downstairs. They had been hearing it since before the lady form Rode Island moved in. One night she, or fiance and some guests were up late playing cards and the banging started. She told the guests that it was just the ghost. Her guests didn't believe her and insisted on going to the door, thinking he could open it really quick and catch whoever was making the noise. He did act quickly, but just as she told him, there was no one in the hall.

The noise and the cold room were frightening. But they adjusted at first. Then she woke up in the middle of the night and saw a man in a rain coat and hat standing at the foot of her bed. The vision went away, but then she started having vivid dreams where she was being grabbed and held down. She would wake up with bruises. Her doctor recognized them as bruises from being grabbed and tried to get her to admit that she was being abused. The doctor had seen this before, it was classic and the more the woman denied it the more insistent the doctor became. The night terrors continued, until they finally had to give up their cheap apartment and move.

No more bruises.

During her time living in that place she had gone to a garage sale in her neighborhood. The woman having the sale asked where she lived. Apparently the locals were very familiar with the building-- years ago a frustrated fisherman had abused his wife there. As the fishing dried up he became more and more frustrated until finally he beat her to death. This was sometime in the first half of the twentieth century. Afterward he drank himself to death in the apartment.

The landlord couldn't keep a tenant, most especially not a female tenant. A few months after the woman and her fiance moved, she went back to check on her elderly neighbor. The woman was afraid to come to the door at first. She said that since they had left the banging had moved from the hallway outside her apartment, into her apartment. When she was in bed at night it was at her door and she was terrified to get out of bed. She was unable to move.

Shortly after the visit the old woman passed away.