Storrowton gives haunting look at historic tales

Date: 10/14/2016

WEST SPRINGFIELD – Séances. Vampires. Witches. Things that go bump in the night. If you like your scary tales with a bit more history than hysteria, Storrowton Village has an annual Halloween-themed event that’s right up your alley.

This year’s edition of “Tales from Haunted New England” is slated for Oct. 21 at 7 p.m. in the Village Meetinghouse.  Dennis Picard, director of Storrowton Village will be telling this year’s collection of tales.

“The stories I tell are ones I’ve found in town histories and newspaper reports,” Picard said. “They’re just odd, unusual things that relate to what goes bump in the night and people’s fears.”

The evening, he explained is a storytelling event in the old-time sense of the tradition. It’s also one that usually attracts a mostly adult audience.

“When people in the general public hear ‘storytelling,’ they think of ‘story time’ for little kids,” Picard said. “Storytelling has an ages-old history of sitting around the fireplace in the wintertime while there isn’t as much farm work to do, and just swapping stories. That’s really what this is. It’s not the not the Freddy Kruger, ‘Friday the 13th’ jump-out and scare you. It’s telling tales.”

For example, Picard said there was a whole series of newspaper articles in the 1890s that dealt with vampires.

“We all know vampires aren’t real today, or we go to the movies to see them,” he said “But you read an article in a Providence, Rhode Island newspaper from 1890 that talks about vampires and they’re absolutely serious about it, that’s the kind of story I tell.”

Picard said not only were the newspaper reports serious, they included information on how to get rid of vampires.

Other accounts include things such as a “good poltergeist” story from out in Sheffield, and the account of a Northampton sawmill owner whose death was suspected by some of being caused by bewitchment.
"They had a whole trial and they examined some of the women in town to see if they had signs of being witches,” Picard said.

Back then, Picard said, people found that kind of tale “eerie,” an effect the mention of witches and poltergeists still seems to elicit in modern-day audiences.

For a historical take on ghost hunting – which in the past often relied on séances – Picard said you have to look to the spiritualism movement of the 1840s. Then, – as now with the ghost hunting phenomenon – Picard said the movement spawned some dubious practitioners.

“People want to believe there’s something beyond themselves; it’s cross-cultural,” he said.

For the origins of modern-day Halloween traditions, Picard said you have to look to the effects of immigration on American traditions.

“It is historically interesting that you have no Halloween until you get gobs of Irish immigrants,” he said. “The old Yankees in this locale didn’t have [the tradition] as part of their culture.”

But some aspects of what came to be thought of as Halloween did have origins in New England, such as getting a new broom in the fall to “sweep” bad spirits out, and burying a witch bottle near the front door to keep witches out of the house.

“Tales from Haunted New England” is about a 45-minute presentation.

Tickets are $5. For info visit www.easternstatesexposition.com/sv/events/hauntedne.