Haunted Burlington: Spirits of Vermont's Queen City

by Arcadia Publishing

Overview

Uncover the ghostly past and peculiar happenings of Burlington, Vermont…

The vibrant city of Burlington is a perpetual hub of activity, with hordes of shoppers strolling up and down Church Street and groups of college students scattered about the lawns of UVM. Stop and listen to the stories of Queen City Ghostwalk guide Thea Lewis, and discover the ghostly shapes and spirits that appear among the throngs of the city's living. Meet the mischievous poltergeist who haunts Converse Hall and the ghost of the Flynn Theater. Take a peek at peculiar happenings at the Firehouse Center or the old Howard Opera House. Lewis delivers plenty of chills with a strong dose of history and a pinch of humor.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781596297685
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	09/25/2009
Series:	Haunted America
Pages:	96
Sales rank:	1,021,921
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Thea Lewis is the owner and tour guide for Queen City Ghost Walk. She is the author of HAUNTED BURLINGTON (2009). She works for WCAX-TV and is also active in the chamber of commerce in Burlington.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

A Hero Keeps Watch

Situated neatly between Burlington's bustling Church Street pedestrian mall and picturesque City Hall Park is the Firehouse Center for the Visual Arts, so named because the building that houses the exciting gallery was once a working fire station.

A city landmark since 1889, the Ethan Allen Engine Company No. 4 was designed by prominent local architect Alfred Benjamin Fisher, who designed and built many structures in Chittenden County during that era. At the time, it was ranked the tallest building in Burlington due to its tower, which served as a place to hang fire hoses for drying and housed the station's warning bell.

The Burlington Fire Department can trace its origins back to 1808, but it wasn't until April 24, 1857, that the Ethan Allen Fire Engine Company organized, becoming Burlington's third volunteer firefighting team. A new fire district had been created to respond to the city's growing need for protection. An engine, horse drawn in those days, was purchased, and the group of men widely known as the Ethans agreed to use and maintain it.

In the late nineteenth century, Vermont's volunteer fire teams were quite competitive, traveling long distances to other states to participate in what was called a Fireman's Muster, an event that tested both the men and their engines. In September 1878, the Barnes Hose Company, whose station can still be seen on Burlington's North Champlain Street, attended the National Fireman's Tournament in Dexter Park, Chicago, competing against twenty-two teams from across the country in an event that required teams to pull a hose cart weighted with five hundred pounds of hose a distance of three hundred yards, at that point reeling off three hundred feet of hose and attaching the pipe to a hydrant to run a stream of water. The Barnes team won, completing the test in just sixty- two and a half seconds. This record was never broken.

Inside Burlington's city limits, the teams, made up of all men in those days, were similarly determined to spool out their hoses before anyone else. On more than one occasion in Burlington's firefighting history, two groups arrived at a fire at exactly the same time and argued so loudly and so long about who had the right to tap the hydrant that the building they had come to save burned to the ground. One of those buildings, coincidentally, was a fire station.

Without the benefit of today's technology, you can bet that a great deal of physical effort and quick thinking went into battling those early fires. The men depended on their physical strength, their ingenuity, their fellow firefighters and even their horses to get the job done. Combine the limitations of early firefighting equipment with the bitter cold of a Vermont winter, though, and just imagine what might go wrong.

On a bitterly cold January day in 1885, the Ethans were called to a fire just south of the downtown area, at the Holt Spool and Bobbin Factory. No one is sure what started the fire, which began near the top of a wooden partition between the main building and a small drying room, but you would be right in thinking that a fire in a spool and bobbin factory with wood shavings and sawdust all around would progress quickly. Mr. Holt was there, and he ran to the factory's engine house. When he got there, he found that one of the workmen had already taken matters in hand, attaching a hose to the pump to try to squelch the blaze.

In the meantime, the flames were raging hotter and higher, carried by the extremely flammable wood dust. The workers were forced to flee with only the possessions they carried with them at the time. Mr. Holt tried to open the door to the main room but was beaten back by the inferno. He ran back to the boiler room to order the safety valve opened, but the fire had already made its way into the engine room.

At the Ethan Allen Fire Company building, the alarm bell sounded, and the team proceeded to the factory with great haste. With the Ethans on that fateful day was a firefighter with a reputation for tremendous courage and determination. His name was Edwin C. Parker. Edwin had grown up on his father's farm in the town of Westford, Vermont, and had been a resident of Burlington for seven or eight years. At the age of thirty-four, he was a fine example of a gentleman of that era. Polite and helpful, confident without being pompous, Edwin was a favorite friend and acquaintance. As people were apt to say of a straight arrow sort of individual of that time, he "kept good habits" and guarded his character. His regular job was that of clerk at a clothing house, but it was widely recognized that the thing Edwin Parker liked to do better than anything else was fight fires. He was good at it. Prompt and attentive to the smallest duty, Edwin was reliable. In an urgent situation, he was the picture of grace. Indeed, it seemed that the hotter and more dangerous the blaze, the cooler and more fearless Edwin became. One of the best firemen in the city, his deeds and merits soon saw him promoted to the position of fire assistant on the Ethan Allen Engine.

Edwin and his team arrived at the fire mere minutes after the sound of the alarm. When they got there, flames coming from both sides of the building licked at the frigid air and were fanned by the biting wind. It seemed plain that the building was doomed.

It was so cold that day that the hydrants on Champlain Street had frozen. The Ethans and another fire team called the Boxers, who were second to arrive, connected their hoses to hydrants on Pine Street, running them through an alley next to the building.

Wasting no time, the Ethans concentrated their efforts toward the corner of the building in order to save stock in what were called dry houses in an addition to the main structure. After a short time, the nozzle on the Ethans' hose became clogged by a stone. Thinking quickly, Edwin ran back to the cart for a new one, but as he raced back into the alley, the upper portion of the factory's engine house exploded, opening up a ten-foot section of the wall and raining a monstrous pile of brick down upon the fire assistant.

In the aftermath, the entire alley was strewn with rubble, and when the smoke and dust cleared, another Ethan, Dr. J.C. Rutherford, raced to the spot where Edwin's body stood bent double, his head and feet buried. With great care, his body was drawn out of the debris. It was clear to those on the scene that their brave friend had battled his last fire.

Edwin's body was taken by sleigh to the Mary Fletcher Hospital, where it was determined that his skull had been completely crushed. In due time, his remains were removed by the local undertaker and transported to the boardinghouse where he had lived before he died, so that friends and loved ones might pay their last respects. His casket was draped with a cross of flowers incorporating the number "4" and the banner of his beloved Ethan Allen Engine Company, along with the trumpet, belt and hat he had used in service to the city.

You might think that something as final as death would end that service. But you would be wrong. After Edwin passed away, strange things began to happen to his fellow firefighters with the Ethan Allen Engine Company. They claimed to feel as though they were being watched or followed in their tasks by someone they couldn't see. They would hear sounds of someone moving equipment about when there was no one else in the room. Sometimes, walking through corridors, they would hear footsteps, as though someone was walking along with them.

Although it was completed after his death, firefighters keeping watch in the newly constructed Ethan Allen Engine Company building claimed that they could feel Edwin Parker's presence. Sometimes the tower where hoses were hung to aid their drying might be completely empty, yet firefighters would still hear scraping and creaking noises as though someone was moving hoses about, allowing more air to circulate.

In modern times, a young woman who worked at the Firehouse Center tells this tale: She was staying late one winter night to tie up some of the day's loose ends when the custodian stopped by her office to say that he was about to leave, and to let her know that she was the only employee left in the building. They said their goodbyes and he locked up, leaving her to her work. She was alone, tapping at her computer keyboard, when she heard a puzzling noise. It was the sound of the building's elevator starting up. Situated across from her office, it is in the exact place that would have housed the bottom of the building's old hose-drying tower. With her office door open, she watched the lights on the elevator move as it drew closer to basement level and the doors parted, but instead of closing after a few moments, they remained open, as though a passenger was trying to decide whether to get off to pay a visit. She grabbed her purse and left.

In doing research for my haunted tours, I've talked to firefighters who believe that most of Burlington's old stations are haunted. When I asked why, one firefighter said, "In Burlington's history, we've had a lot of fires. You try, but you can't win 'em all. Sometimes we lose people. I think sometimes, whether they're just confused or their house is gone and they've got no place left to go, they just get on the truck and come back to stay with us."

Fire Station #3 on Mansfield Avenue was completed in 1896 at a cost of $5,000. It has a fifty-foot-high drying tower like the one at Ethan's and another feature of architectural interest: a winding staircase. Some say that in the days when horses drew the carts, they viewed the firefighters as companions and would try to follow them upstairs to their quarters. The configuration of this staircase prevented that.

Trucks replaced horses at Station #3 in 1921, but the story is often told that sometime before the end of that era, men on duty were roused from sleep by sounds of distress coming from the horses downstairs. They tumbled out of bed and raced to see what was wrong. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they were completely dumbfounded to see that the horses were standing completely harnessed for a fire. Their confusion turned to amazement as they heard shouts outside and flung open the large front doors to discover that the building across the street was ablaze.

Horses can't be blamed, however, for the feeling some firefighters have had while sleeping in one of the upstairs rooms. It's said that the guys will often put a rookie in a particular bed by the window. It's the bed where you might wake up suddenly at 3:00 a.m., feeling as though someone you can't see is trying to get into bed with you.

One man claims to have seen the spirits of an old woman and a small child at Station #3.

At Station #5 in Burlington's South End, one firefighter was so spooked that he hung a crucifix on the wall in his room.

At Station #1, Burlington's Central Station, men claim that the old fire chief, now deceased, rings one of the station's alarm bells.

Some firefighters make light of these stories, but no one denies them. Pete Walsh, a Burlington firefighter for more than twenty years, says, "I consider myself a skeptic. But I would definitely say from what I've seen with my own eyes, Burlington's fire stations are haunted."

Whether these spirits linger because they have a vested interest in the stations they've worked in and love or, as some firefighters claim, because they've lost their true home and have no place else to go, they couldn't keep company with more dedicated, courageous companions than the men and women who keep Burlington safe: our local firefighters.

CHAPTER 2

Memories in the Meadow

It always amuses me when I'm researching a ghost story and a potential interview subject says, "I can't imagine you'd find anything here. This is a very new building."

Look around at the place you call home. Is it in the country? Maybe it's in the suburbs or an urban area. Do you live in a newer condo or an older one-family home?

Like people, places have their own history, and in the same way you can't judge a book by its cover, you can't judge an area's potential for hauntings simply by the age of its buildings.

I first heard of something interesting happening at the South Meadow condominium complex off Pine Street in Burlington from a young woman who admits to being a little more sensitive to spirit energy than other people. As it turns out, she is the recipient of a gift passed down through her family for generations. Her great-aunt, her mother's sister and even her daughter share her ability to see things that most people don't.

Her first experience with something you might consider not quite normal happened in her upstairs apartment while she was unpacking right after moving in. She had just placed four wooden salad bowls, each made so that the lip of one fit neatly inside the bottom of the other, in the cabinet beside the big salad bowl. As she turned to reach for another item, the entire stack of bowls came flying out of the cabinet. She took it in stride. One by one, she placed the bowls back in the cabinet and went about her business.

A few weeks later, she was working in the kitchen when her daughter, nearly three years old at the time, asked for help with something she was doing. "Sweetie, I'm busy. Can you bring it in here?" the woman asked. The little girl stood in the doorway wide-eyed. "No, Mama, I can't," she replied. "The lady doesn't want me to come in the kitchen."

The woman looked around. "What lady?" she asked. "She's there," the little girl said, pointing. "What does she look like?" the mother asked. "She has a fancy white dress and hair like this," the girl answered, moving her hands from her head down to her shoulders.

A middle school teacher by day, this woman is an individual who has no problem setting people straight, whether spirit or human. She looked around the kitchen and said in a commanding tone, "Everyone is allowed in the kitchen." She paused and then said even more purposefully, "We can ALL be in the kitchen."

She told me that there had been no incidents in the kitchen since that day, but from time to time she still saw a faint shape moving back and forth past the kitchen's entrance.

Her encounters extended to the neighborhood playground. One day, she and her daughter were alone there. While she stood watching the little girl at play, she felt someone place a small hand on her hip. It felt like another child trying to get her attention. She looked to see who had joined them, but there was no one there.

Things seemed fairly normal for a little while, but then she began waking up shortly after falling asleep at night, convinced that she could smell something burning. It always happened at the same time, between eleven o'clock and midnight.

I was fascinated by her story, wondering what or who could be causing these strange occurrences. As I noted before, this was a fairly modern housing development. So I started my research on the history of the area the way most lazy people would: I Googled it.

Unfortunately, nothing clicked. So I went back to doing it the old-fashioned way. I got out my Historic Guide to Burlington Neighborhoods and some other books that are the result of local historic preservationists carefully piecing together people, events and architecture to paint a picture of Burlington's past. Something jumped out at me: a photo of an old marine hospital "two miles south of the city" that became a place to treat soldiers during the Civil War.

I was off. Next I found, in the Chittenden County Gazetteer online, that on July 16, 1866, the hospital grounds were purchased by a corporation for $7,000, and the building was enlarged and improved to create Burlington's Home for Destitute Children. Founded by a local group headed by Lucia Wheeler of Burlington, the Home was supposed to supply needy children with basic necessities to "promote their intellectual, moral and religious improvement, and fit them for situations of usefulness and self maintenance." The article goes on to tell of how, starting with "seven little waifs," the Home went on to provide refuge for several hundred children in the space of the first ten years. The building could accommodate one hundred "inmates" at a time, and all of these children fell under the legal guardianship of the Home, which could, if it chose, bind children into service with another individual until they came of legal age so that they might learn a trade. One notation says that parents could enter into an agreement to have their children cared for by the Home for a period "not longer than three months," getting them back "if the board chooses to return them."

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Haunted Burlington"
by .
Copyright © 2009 Thea Lewis.
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements,
Introduction,
A Hero Keeps Watch,
Memories in the Meadow,
Backstage Ghost,
Haunted Harbor,
At Home with Henry,
Phantoms of the Opera House,
The Black Cat,
Spirits of the Overlook,
America's First Serial Killer,
The Legend of Timothy Follett,
Terror in the Walk-In,
The Haunted Mall,
Next-Door Nightmares,