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The Gardner-Pingree House

When a town is referred to as ‘Witch City, USA,’ it’s a fair assumption that the aforementioned conurbation may have a notorious affiliation with the legends and lore of witchcraft and spooky tales. Salem, Massachusetts, didn’t earn its moniker cheaply, paying a steep price in blood and fire. Dark past aside, Salem also tells a colorful tale through the ages and possesses some of the most celebrated architecture in the United States. 

Who haunts the Gardner-Pingree House?

Ghost in dark hallway
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Despite the attractive aesthetic that Salem is renowned for, it is implausible that a place with so many skeletons in the cupboard could have shed its associations with demons, darkness, and the downright spooky. In fact, Salem is positively riddled with tales, sightings, and lore that can be traced, in some cases, right back to those fateful days of the witch trials. Not even the upstanding Pingree-Gardner house is spared the infamy. You can see for yourself what the city possesses by booking a ghost tour with Salem Ghosts.

FROM PROSECUTIONS TO PINGREE

The practice of witch trials had largely begun to fade in all but the most remote parts of Europe by the mid-17th century. Fanatical writings of the time by Joseph Glanvill and Cotton Mather cried that demons were alive, deeming any denial of this perceived truth as heretical, thus stoking the smoldering flame of a brewing social paranoia and fear. Between February 1692 and May 1693, around 200 people in Massachusetts and Connecticut were accused of witchcraft and being under the devil’s direction, showing that more than god-fearing English seafarers had landed on the shores of the New World. 

By the time the trials had ended, around 30 people had been found guilty of this imaginary crime. Thirteen women and five men met their maker at the end of a rope. Even more tragic was the fate of Giles Corey, who was publicly pressed to death after refusing to enter a plea. Five more anguished souls would die while awaiting judgment in Salem’s disease-infested jail.

Built in 1804 and originally the home of wealthy Salem Merchant John Gardner Jr, this ornate red brick Federalist-style home speaks both to the affluence on hand in its construction and the influence that Roman and Greek democracy had upon the styling of the times and colonial politics as a whole. The founding fathers brought balance and symmetry to the Federalist Party, from which the architectural style garners its name. Celebrated Salem architect Samuel McIntyre would embrace these themes as he blazed a trail shaping both the Federal and the Pingree-Gardner house, of which he was the author. 

THE GHOSTS OF SALEM

Corey Giles, the witch trial victim who met perhaps the most gruesome of ends as he was publicly tortured, is said to have cried out as he was crushed to death for all to see. Cursing both the town of Salem and the merciless magistrate Jonathan Corwin, who had sentenced him, Giles may indeed have sought revenge from the grave as Corwin died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 30. Eerily, witnesses claim to have seen the ghost of Giles just before the outbreak of the devastating Great Salem Fire of 1914. A curse indeed.

Corwin is a recurring figure of ire in Salem, and the Joshua Ward House deepens the stigma. Ward was a retired sea captain who had built this Federal Style house in the mid-1780s. The land, however, was previously owned by the notorious Corwin, also known as ‘The Strangler.’ After Corwin’s sudden heart attack, his family interred the body in the home that had previously occupied this space. The frigid Massachusetts cold made a ground burial impossible and Corwin’s relatives chose interment in the house for fear that locals may dismember his body in an act of bitter revenge.

Corwin’s corpse would remain here for several years before being moved to the Broad Street Cemetery. It may be a stretch to suggest that Corwin was laid to rest here as the ghosts of Corwin, Giles, and even a dark-haired woman, believed to be another of Corwin's victims, are said to haunt the property that still stands today. 

MASSACHUSETTS MURDER

Ghost in a study
Copyright US Ghost Adventures

The storied history of the Pingree-Gardner home and its striking veneer belies a dark and dastardly tale within. One that may be the most shocking of all. In 1814, this red brick house was sold to wealthy retired merchant Captain Joseph White, who resided there with a single manservant and his niece, Mrs Beckford, who worked as his housekeeper.

Mrs. Beckford had a daughter, who was married to Mr. Joseph J Knapp Jr. When Knapp learned that Captain White had written Beckford in his will to the tune of $15,000, greed consumed him. Should White meet an untimely end, he would bestow a sizable portion of his amassed wealth upon his wife; thus, he would become a wealthy man. He conspired with his brother to hire a local criminal to do the evil deed. On the evening of April 6th, 1930, Richard Crowninshield, hired by brothers Joseph and John Knapp, entered through a window and bludgeoned the elderly captain to death in his sleep. Crowninshield took his own life upon realizing the end that surely awaited him while both Knapp brothers would be found guilty and hanged to death.

The act of violence and the following outcry are said to have inspired Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlett Letter. The house itself is also believed to have inspired the Parker Brothers’ board game ‘Clue.’ 

Witnesses claim to have seen ghostly faces peering from the property's windows, staring at onlookers below, while strange orbs of light appear in photographs taken of the building. Captain White's footsteps are often heard clomping around while the disembodied white figure of a child has been seen peering from a downstairs window.

HAUNTED SALEM

Salem offers a curious visitor a looking glass through time. Peering back to an age of folklore and fable, fear of the devil, and the birth of a nation. The architecture that mirrors those values of the founding fathers stretches through the bare brick beauty of its colonial past into the more profound, darker tales of crimes and punishment of both the innocent and the guilty. You can wander these streets yourself, but beware; in Salem, there are spirits on the wind and figures in the windows. See for yourself by booking a ghost tour with Salem Ghosts. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, and keep reading our blog for more real Massachusetts hauntings.

Sources:

https://beyondthemilestravelblog.com/2020/10/25/ghost-sighting-and-ghost-stories-in-salem/
https://youtu.be/Z-qw1iw7Y7I?si=F6XoxO0O61cVMxwJ

https://www.salemweb.com/guide/arch/houses2.php.html

https://www.thedistractedwanderer.com/2010/10/tale-of-salems-gardner-pingree-house.html

https://salemwitchmuseum.com/locations/site-of-george-corwin-house-joshua-ward-house/
https://www.salem.org/salem-witch-trials/

https://www.neh.gov/article/records-salem-witch-trials#:~:text=A%20third%20of%20those%20arrested,five%20others%20died%20in%20jail.

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