Always on the alert for hauntings, especially at Halloween, Marash Girl checked to see if there were any houses in Falmouth, Massachusetts, reputed to have haunts . . . and sure enough, she found reference to a house at 56 Highfield Drive . . .
Convincing Marash Boy that there was nothing to fear, she coerced him into driving her through downtown Falmouth, across the now bike-pathed railroad tracks, up a wooded hill to a magnificently restored mansion, a mansion with the words HIGHFIELD HALL emblazoned on the front. Could this be the house that we had been searching out? It certainly looked in amazingly spiffy condition for any ghost to even consider entering. . .
Convincing Marash Boy that there was nothing to fear, she coerced him into driving her through downtown Falmouth, across the now bike-pathed railroad tracks, up a wooded hill to a magnificently restored mansion, a mansion with the words HIGHFIELD HALL emblazoned on the front. Could this be the house that we had been searching out? It certainly looked in amazingly spiffy condition for any ghost to even consider entering. . .
Thus Marash Girl had the courage to enter (as Marash Boy left in a hurry, supposedly, to search out a safe parking spot) and ask, "Is this the house that has a ghost?" Immediately, the lady at admissions called over a volunteer, and said in low tones, "This one is yours!"
As it turned out, the volunteer tour guide was a former history teacher from the area, and knew everything that there was to know about this mansion and its ghost. [Rather than going into the full history of the house here, let me refer you to the book, RING AROUND THE PUNCH BOWL, and/or the website, http://www.woodsholemuseum.org/woodspages/sprtsl/v17n1-HighShep.pdf
Highfield Hall, built in 1878 as the stately home of the Beebe Family, was "one of the first grand summer compounds to be built on Cape Cod" by the very family whose home on Beacon Street, Beacon Hill, Boston, was taken by eminent domain and torn down when the Massachusetts State House needed to expand. The Beebe home in Falmouth was in extreme disrepair when, "in 2000 Town Meeting Members authorized Falmouth Selectmen to take Highfield Hall and six acres by eminent domain, and in 2001 the Town signed a lease with Historic Highfield to renovate and operate Highfield Hall. The extraordinary restoration effort that followed was made possible through donations totalling in excess of $8,000,000 — almost all of which were contributed by private individuals."
So where was the ghost? According to our guide, visitors looking up at the house from the grounds below have, on occasion, spied a ghostly apparition looking out of the second floor bedroom window, an apparition said to be the ghost of Mary Louisa Beebe who died of cancer at the young age of 45 in that very room.
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| Looking out of the second floor bedroom window, Marash Girl stands where the ghost has reputedly stood gazing out of the window at the sunken gardens below. |
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| Standing at the back of Highfield Hall stands Marash Girl with her camera held out in front of her for protection, looking for the apparition in the center uppermost window. |
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| Is there an apparition that the camera detects, an apparition that the naked eye cannot? |
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| The ice house . . . if no longer ice, then what may lurk within these walls? |
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| A convoluted path behind the mansion and beyond the ice house leads into the deep, dark woods . . . And what may emerge from these woods on Halloween night? |
NANCY DREW AND THE HAUNTED...
ReplyDeleteYOU are back to the past and the haunted third floor of nineteenth century scents and photos and tom swift sr. books, and bearded photos with eyes that never let you go, and dark and dangerous attic storage tiptoeing across the timbers of our heaven;s abode, the times of fitzgerald and earlier, of imaginings and imagination, of a child reading under the cover of night, and a blanket candle and the refusal to sleep until the story slept.