The First Annual "I Ain't 'Fraid O' No Ghosts" Ghost Hunt: Part One-The Tyng Mansion

 

I had grown bored of your typical run-of-the-mill Halloween haunted house.  Teenagers, lines, cheap scares, and, yes, more teenagers.  It had worn out its welcome.  It held no interest for me any longer.  So this Halloween I set out to do something different.  Something new.  Something spoooooky.  So what did I do?

I organized a ghost hunt!

New England is steeped in history and mystery.  It seems every town has its own legend or ghostly tale to tell.  It was my job to pick which ones to investigate.  My research led me to the Massachusetts/New Hampshire border where we could visit a number of spook-filled haunts in a short period of time.

Our first visit?  The ruins of the old Tyng Mansion in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts where stories of a vengeful ghostly woman have run rampant for years.  Our findings?  Right after the jump.

The first thing that was decided the day of the hunt was that I would be Winston Zedemore.  My wife, Mrs. Blackjack, had already staked her claim to Ray Stantz.  And our two other cohorts, the BananaChocoloateBootyClapper and her husband Mr. BananaClapper, had already chosen Egon and Venkman, respectively, prior to our gathering.  Nevermind the fact that we weren’t out to bust ghosts, merely to hunt them.  But no matter.  It was time for Winston to get some credit for once. 

I was ready to see some shit that would turn me white!

We arrived in Tyngsboro in the mid-afternoon on Saturday, October 30^th.  It was a cloudy, brisk autumn day.  Perfect for hunting ghosts.  The creepy vibe was definitely in the air.  While driving along the rural leaf-lined back roads, Mrs. Blackjack/Ray Stantz filled us in on our destination’s backstory:

John Alford Tyng, for whom the town is named, fell in love with a servant girl by the name of Judith Thompson.  She was beautiful, and he was smitten, but to marry a girl of such low stature would not befit the Tyng name.  So Tyng came up with another plan.  He hired a con man known as Dr. Blood to marry the two of them.  The marriage was a farce, but Ms. Thompson was not in on the ruse.  She proceeded to give Mr. Tyng two children.  A third was on the way when John decided to end this relationship for reasons unknown.

He hired Dr. Blood to kill Judith and the two children.  He waited in a different room in the Tyng Mansion while the deed was done.  They then buried them under the mansion hearth.

The hauntings started soon afterward.

Dr. Blood died in nearby Dunstable (now Nashua, NH) from drowning in a puddle of his own booze, broken free by a smashed flask.  A woman’s footprint was found on the back of his head.  It is said woman’s laughter was also heard the night of the attack.

John Tyng, terrified of the prospect of his wife’s vengeful return from the grave, moved to another nearby mansion, but fell ill soon afterward.  People trying to visit him could not, saying the spirit of Judith Thompson was keeping them away.  One man, Capt. Joseph Butterfield, managed to make his way into the mansion and to Tyng’s room.  Tyng died on the spot.  Judith’s ghost materialized then and there, cursing Tyng for all eternity.

The mansion burned down in 1979 mysteriously.  Beforehand, however, tales of shackles and bloodstains in the attic led some to believe that slaves were housed there.  It is said their ghosts haunt the area to this day.

One last story was of a Native American chief who sold the property to the Tyng’s by mistake.  It is said he haunts the large boulder near the property that he used to sit on remorsefully, looking upon the land he once called his own.

We almost gave up on finding the remains of the Tyng Mansion.  The directions I had received were a bit deceiving.  But near the point of departure it was Mrs. Blackjack who spotted the sign (shown above).  We had found it.

The foundation of the house was hard to detect under all the fallen leaves, but the cemetary was much more obvious. 

Being small in size, it look little time to locate John Tyng’s grave.

I had found John Alford Tyng, the murdering bastard that he was.  There was no sign of Judith Thompson in the cemetery, as you’d expect, so I next set out to find more of the Tyng property and the boulder nearby.  A gate in the rear of the cemetery seemed to point the way…

Through the gate revealed a wide path, clearly used heavily when the mansion was in use.  Remnants of the old house could be seen through the row of trees to the right.

After snapping pics and investigating the old grounds I was drawn further into the brush.  I wanted to find the boulder.  Surprisingly, it didn’t take me long to find it.

Whether it was because I was by myself, or because a dog started barking as I got close to it, this was the one time on the old Tyng Mansion property that I got a bit spooked.  It also didn’t help that all the plantlife around the boulder was lined with thorns, as if to say, stay away!

I didn’t touch the boulder.  I wasn’t about to anger any spirits.  Instead I just stood there taking in the natural beauty of the place until it came time to head back and rejoin the group.  We needed to move on.

No ghosts were seen at Tyng Mansion that day, but I think we knew right then that we were in for an adventure that day.  We had four more places to visit.  And the sun was starting to go down…

Gilson Road Cemetery in Nashua, NH was next.  Little did we know that some real spookiness, and an unexplained event or two, was right around the corner.

Stay tuned for part two…

–Cap’n Blackjack, aka Dr. Winston Zedemore