Episode 115: Perspective

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When the young man stumbled into the police station, the officers knew something was wrong just by looking at his face.

He was panicked and afraid, and it took them a good long while to get him to calm down and tell his story.

It seems that he had been trying to hitchhike his way through the town when he he saw something that frightened him to the core.

While walking through a neighborhood, he saw lights descend from high above in the night sky before hovering roughly 100 feet above the houses.

There were five of them, he claimed, and they were all in a perfect row.

His story actually resembled that of a young woman who had been found sitting in her car around midnight just a couple of hours before.

When the Exeter police had asked her to explain herself, she too told them a story about lights above the road, Except the lights in her story had been red and they had chased her.

The hitchhiker took one of the officers back to the place where he had witnessed the lights and pointed out the wooded area they had moved toward before vanishing.

Together, they entered the trees, where both of them claimed to see more lights now tucked low inside the small forest.

The next officer to arrive saw them as well.

And those sightings continued, off and on, for most of September of 1965.

All told, roughly 60 witnesses came forward and described the exact same thing, mysterious lights in the sky over the town of Exeter, New Hampshire.

And while explanations have been tossed around for decades since, there was one prevailing theory at the time.

Aliens.

Honestly, it makes sense when you remember what they had already read about in the news.

This was a decade and a half after Roswell, New Mexico, four years after Betty and Barney Hill's claim of abduction right there in New Hampshire, pop culture was awash in science fiction adventures and it had left an impression on them.

People tend to view things through the lenses of personal experience and the folklore of their day.

Sure, today we have a lot more scientific knowledge at our disposal and a better understanding of how the universe works, but history is long and deep.

Communities have encountered the unexplainable countless times over the centuries, and every time they have, they've done their best to frame it in a way their contemporaries would understand.

But just because they happened long ago doesn't make those events any less mysterious.

In fact, some tales can be downright terrifying.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is lore.

When most people think of Gloucester, Massachusetts, they think of The Perfect Storm, the Hollywood film starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg.

Or maybe they think of the fish sticks sold by Gorton's fishermen, also from Gloucester.

But this New England fishing town is a lot more than pop culture references and men in yellow raincoats.

In fact, Gloucester is one of the oldest communities in New England, having been founded in 1623, just three years after the Mayflower landed in what would become known as Plymouth.

Gloucester was the first seaport on the east coast, and when you dig into its history, you get a beautiful snapshot of what early colonial life was like.

By the time the summer of 1692 rolled around, the people of Gloucester had lived there for generations.

King Philip's War, also known as the First Indian War, was decades in the past, but New England was five years into a new conflict.

Today we call it King William's War, and it was a struggle for dominance between the English and the French.

War has always had a way of destabilizing communities, and Gloucester in 1692 was no exception.

They were figuratively on the edge of the world, positioned far north of Boston at the southeastern tip of a peninsula known as Cape Anne, and they were cut off from much of the rest of the colony by rivers and marshland, making it feel as though they were isolated and alone.

Because of the war, a good number of Gloucester's young, healthy men were off fighting battles against the French and the various Native American tribes who had aligned themselves with them.

And I need you to remember that, if the people of Gloucester had a list of fears, the French were sitting comfortably at the top.

Why?

Well, because of religion.

The colony of Massachusetts was a Puritan settlement, a group of anti-Catholic Protestant Christians who had left England for more freedom and security in the New World.

And not only were the French the longtime enemy of the English people, but they were Catholic.

To say that their presence in New England was troubling to the Puritans would be putting it mildly.

As the war raged on, it grew closer and closer to their little part of the world.

The 400 or so people living in Gloucester had felt safe for a long while, but raids were beginning to happen a bit too close for their comfort.

So as you can imagine, tensions were high, and it's in the middle of that perfect storm of isolation and fear that a young fisherman had a strange encounter.

Ebenezer Babson was just 25 years old in the summer of 1692.

He and his family lived in a modest house, and as he sat by the fire one July evening, he heard strange noises as if there were people outside his door.

He stood up and crept his way over to one of the windows and then peered out onto his dimly lit property.

But there was nothing there.

The noises continued that evening, and every time Ebenezer went to look for the source, he found nothing, which had to have been frustrating for him.

And don't forget, this was 1692, and the world was a lot more quiet back then.

It wasn't a neighbor's radio or the sounds of traffic on 128.

In an area where the most common sounds at night were from the local wildlife, the unmistakable noise of other people was a rare thing.

And it kept happening.

Early sources tell us that Ebenezer continued to hear these sounds for weeks.

Sure, he could have grown used to them or convinced himself that it was just a new animal that he had never heard before.

But something else happened during that time.

The noises moved inside his house.

He would be sitting at home in the evening after a long day of hard labor, only to be startled by the sound of something crawling beneath the floorboards.

If that was all, he might have relaxed.

After all, most old homes in New England play host to the occasional animals in their cellar, even today.

But if Ebenezer was honest, honest, he would say that these noises felt different.

In fact, they sounded like people.

Then one evening, he was returning home from the fields.

He was tired and filthy and ready for a refreshing ale.

But as his home came into view from a distance, he saw the front door open wide and two men stepped out into the evening light.

Two strangers.

And when they saw him approaching, They turned and ran.

Frightened for the safety of his family, Ebenezer dashed to the house house and burst in.

Thanks to the stories of local raids by Native Americans and their French allies, he expected to find his family dead or injured.

Instead, his wife saw him and turned to greet him with a smile.

Who were the men I just saw leaving this house?

He asked her.

The look of confusion on her face was all the answer he needed.

She had seen no one in their house.

No visitors had been there, no strangers had threatened her life, no one had come calling on them for days.

Now, I don't know if Ebenezer spent more time questioning his wife or if he gave up right away.

He had seen two men step out through his front door, a doorway that was most likely just a few feet away from where his wife stood inside, and yet she had no memory of them.

So he turned and exited the house and decided that he would track them down in the fields.

Once outside, he ran hard in the direction he had seen the strangers go moments before.

They had a head start, but he was hopeful.

He knew his property, after all, and against all odds, he found them.

They had attempted to hide themselves by kneeling in the tall grass that covered much of his land, and they were talking to each other.

Even from a distance, he could make out their words, spoken in perfect English.

The man of the house is now come, one of the strangers said to the other, else we might have taken the house.

Fear washed over Ebenezer.

These strangers were clearly a threat, and given another chance, they might return and do harm to him and his family.

Without engaging them at all or even alerting them to his presence, he turned and quickly ran back home.

They were all in danger, but if he could move them quickly to a safer place, he might avoid the worst of it.

If only Ebenezer Babson knew just how wrong he was.

Perspective is everything.

I don't want you to assume that Ebenezer lacked courage simply because he decided to run and hide.

In fact, if anyone in Gloucester had a reputation for standing up to danger, it was him.

Let me illustrate that with a quick story.

The Cape Ann Peninsula sticks out into the Atlantic Ocean about 30 miles northeast of Boston.

On the southern side of the tip is Gloucester, Gloucester, the setting for today's story.

On the northern side, though, is the town of Rockport.

They're separated by about four miles, and that put Rockport right into Ebenezer's backyard.

Just a few years after the events in Gloucester wrapped up, Ebenezer was standing on a small neck of land on the coast that would eventually become Rockport, doing a little fishing with his nephew, when a bear snuck up on them.

The legend tells us that the bear went right for the nephew, so Ebenezer distracted it and lured it toward the water.

Once he and the bear were both hip-deep in the cold Atlantic, Ebenezer threw himself at it, a long fish knife gripped in one hand.

And, amazingly, he won.

A short while later, he dragged that bear back to shore and then used his knife to skin it where it lay.

Ever since, locals have called that strip of land bear skin neck, much to the confusion of modern tourists.

Because of that, I have a hard time believing that a man who is willing to go one-on-one with a bear had a low threshold for fear and cowardice.

But there was something about these two strange men that bothered Ebenezer enough to convince him to pack up his family and run.

Maybe it was their strange all-white clothing, or their surprising speed.

Whatever the reason, he moved fast.

Family for Ebenezer consisted of not just his own wife, but also his widowed mother, two sisters, one brother-in-law, and that nephew who would later go fishing with him.

The whole family grabbed whatever necessities they might need and then headed to the Gloucester garrison.

It was the local fortification that had a small handful of soldiers stationed there to help with pirate raids and attacks from the ever-encroaching King William's war.

But just as the last of Ebenezer's family passed through the wooden gates of the fort and the door was shut, the sound of heavy footsteps pounded toward them.

Some of the men stationed at the garrison had seen real military action, and to them, it sounded like an entire company of soldiers had approached.

Ebenezer Babson grabbed his musket and slipped back outside the fort, only to see the same two strangers a short distance away.

At least, he thought they were the same men, their clothing was the same, and their faces, from what he could tell, were similar.

It was enough to convince him that these two men were scouts working ahead of a larger force, and the people of Gloucester were in trouble.

The alarm was raised, and then a patrol was put into action the following day.

Ebenezer joined them, of course, but they found no sign of the enemy on that first trip.

The next day though, everyone in the patrol saw the same two strangers, confirming their white clothing and odd silver muskets.

This time though, the strangers chased them, pursuing them all the way back to the garrison.

Soon enough, it seemed as if the strange soldiers were everywhere.

Ebenezer recalled looking out from the fort and seeing the men dart between trees and large rocks, and their movements were far more fluid and light-footed than anyone they had ever seen before.

But so far, they had not fired upon the men of Gloucester.

By mid-July, though, the first shots were fired.

A man named John Brown, a friend of Ebenezer, saw three of these strange visitors one day outside the fort, and he aimed his musket at them.

One historian records that Brown missed, and, I quote, owing to the strangers dodging about in so lively a manner.

It was as if they were being taunted.

On July 14th, while on patrol, Babson himself saw six of them together, a sure sign that their numbers were growing.

The next day, he made the decision that the folks living down close to the harbor deserved to be warned about this serious threat, and so he grabbed his musket and headed south at a run.

About a half mile out, though, he heard a gun go off somewhere behind him, and a bullet buzzed past his ear and lodged itself into a hemlock tree beside the road.

Puritan leader and amateur historian Cotton Mather described what happened next.

Looking about, he wrote, he saw four men running towards him, one with a gun in his hand and the other with guns on their shoulders.

So he ran into the bushes and, turning about, shot at them, and then ran away and saw them no more.

Miraculously, all of the strangers fell to the ground.

It seemed too good to be true, but Babson decided to cautiously inspect the bodies while he had the chance.

When he was still a few paces off, though, all four of the strangers hopped back up on their feet and dashed off into the woods.

Babson reloaded, and as he did, a handful of other men from the garrison joined him, most likely drawn to the scene by the sound of gunfire.

Together, they carefully approached the last place Babson had seen the strangers, and when they spotted them, the Gloucester men fired upon them, sending a number of the enemy to the ground.

This time, they were certain.

Their bullets had taken down the enemy, and surely this would be the end of the conflict.

Babson himself had sighted one of the men in white and watched him topple over after he was struck.

So he and the others carefully approached the undergrowth to search for the body.

They found all the telltale signs of human activity at the edge of the woods there: broken branches, scattered footprints, even torn leaves lying on the ground.

But much to their disappointment, they didn't find the one thing they'd been hoping for:

a body.

Two whole weeks.

That's how long this cat and mouse game went on.

Two long weeks of seeing the enemy outside the fort, giving chase and coming up empty.

Two weeks of firing directly at them but not killing a single one.

Two weeks of frustration and failure.

And fear.

As you might imagine, the soldiers inside the Gloucester garrison were exhausted from it all, but that didn't mean they hadn't learned anything new.

In fact, those two weeks were very informative.

On multiple occasions, some of the soldiers actually heard the strangers speaking, although they didn't understand the language they used.

And once, while they were out on patrol, a few of the men stumbled upon a larger gathering of the white-clad strangers in a clearing in the middle of an orchard.

There, between the the weathered trunks of apple trees, stood about a dozen of the invaders, engaged in some sort of ceremony or ritual.

One of the men, a local man named Richard Dolliver, actually pointed his musket at the thickest group of strangers and then pulled the trigger.

Today we might think of it as shooting fish in a barrel, all of them gathered so closely together and easy to hit.

But not a single one of them fell to the ground.

And of course, once the gun went off, they scattered like a flock of birds.

At the end of their rope, the men of the garrison sent for reinforcements, and a few days later, a troop of 60 fresh soldiers arrived, led by Major Samuel Appleton of Ipswich.

But rather than frighten them away, the arrival of help only seemed to push the enemy to escalate their efforts.

It all came to a head one night when soldiers inside the garrison heard a great commotion outside.

They looked out over the walls to see what appeared to be an army of these strangers, all running back and forth in erratic patterns, and they had surrounded the fort completely.

The English soldiers panicked and began to fire directly into the enemy troops.

As they did, more and more of them poured out of the woods and joined the attack.

But for every bullet fired into their ranks, the soldiers of Gloucester received yet one more shot of frustration, because it wasn't working.

None of the strangers would die.

To their credit, the enemy didn't fire back, despite each of them carrying long silver muskets of strange design on their back.

They did throw volley after volley of rocks and sticks over the wall, but not once did they draw their weapons and fire.

And while I'm sure the soldiers inside were grateful for the non-deadly combat, I can't help but assume that they must have felt like they were being toyed with the entire time.

It was at some point during this assault that Ebenezer began to think more deeply about who these attackers might be.

They weren't French or Native American.

They weren't pirates or marauders or even English highwaymen.

They were something otherworldly, as evidenced by their magic ability to avoid bullets, even when those bullets appeared to strike them.

To a Puritan man, that left only one option.

These were the forces of the devil himself, sent to torment them.

Just a couple of months earlier, the people of nearby Salem had finally closed the book on over a year of investigations into an outbreak of witchcraft.

What if the devil had simply given up in one place and picked Gloucester as his next target?

So Ebenezer put that theory to the test a few days later.

He was with a number of other men on the walls of the garrison, looking down onto the field around them when a group of the strangers came into view.

Quietly, he told his fellow soldiers to hold their fire and wait, because he had an idea.

Kneeling down, Babson gripped one of the silver buttons on his uniform and ripped it off.

Then, using a ramrod, he pushed the button and some wadding down into the breach of the barrel.

Once he was ready, he stood back up and took aim at the stranger who looked, at least to him, like the leader of the group.

And then he fired.

The shot was true.

The button, acting like a makeshift bullet, flew straight and struck its target.

And the moment it did, the stranger vanished.

He didn't topple over or fall backwards, mind you.

He disappeared.

And that was all the proof Ebenezer Babson needed.

Silver was known to harm the forces of evil, whether they were a witch or an agent of the devil.

And it had worked.

It was a litmus test that gave them the results they needed.

They weren't wrestling with mortal soldiers after all, but the forces of darkness, which meant they needed a new plan.

Babson and the others immediately dropped to their knees and began to pray out loud.

None of the historians recorded what that prayer might have been, but we can assume it was either the Lord's Prayer or perhaps a psalm of deliverance.

Whatever words they spoke, they shouted them, making them heard over the walls and out into the field beyond.

In response, the most horrific sounds came from the other side of the walls.

It was a chorus of agonizing, guttural screams, as if an army of men were being tortured with red-hot brands.

The screams went on for a long while, building in intensity as they did, until finally they reached what sounded like a crescendo.

And then,

they stopped.

When Ebenezer and the others felt it was safe, they all began to stand back up and peer over the wall.

They expected to find the enemy still there, running about, but that's not what greeted them when they looked out on the field.

No, what they saw was entirely unexpected.

The strangers were gone.

The world is full of unexplainable moments.

That strange sound in what should be an empty house, the odd footprints in the mud outside your bedroom window, those lights that seem to hover over the woods.

We all have and will encounter things that fall somewhere along that scale between the mundane and the otherworldly.

Most of the time, we have enough information to remind us that it's just the wind or a neighbor's dog, and we can relax.

That's how we process life, after all.

We have a head full of experience and understanding, and we see the world through those lenses.

Sometimes, though, it doesn't work.

The experiences that leave us unsettled can sometimes refuse to pass through the filters we've set up.

They stand out as something outside the ordinary, the extraordinary, and we can't get them off our mind.

For Ebenezer Babson, those otherworldly visitors who surrounded the Gloucester garrison were that sort of experience.

They didn't fit into the neat and tidy boxes that he and his peers had organized their world into.

They didn't match anything in the database, so to speak, and that left everyone else feeling a bit uncomfortable.

Of course, human beings encounter new things all the time.

Explorers have made that a way of life, whether they're studying the depths of our planet's oceans or looking at data transmitted here from the surface of Mars by a rover, we are very good at learning and adapting and in the process, pushing away the shadows that frighten us with the light of science and fact.

But that's the frustrating part of the events that took place in Gloucester in July of 1692.

There was no evidence left behind.

No one was injured, no structures were damaged, and no bodies were found.

Nearly three weeks of intense terror just sort of came to an end and then faded away like a voice on the wind.

Almost.

Because Ebenezer Babson remembered being shot at and the sound of that bullet that had buzzed past his ear, and he remembered the tree that it had struck.

And at some point during the chaos of those three weeks, he returned to the tree to see what he could find.

When he arrived at the old hemlock tree, he quickly found the place where the bullet had pierced the bark.

and brushed his finger over it.

It was real, alright, and that meant that there might be something left behind.

Pulling out his knife, maybe even that same fish knife that he would later use to kill a bear and save his nephew's life, he began to work at the hole in the tree.

It must have taken him a while, but eventually he managed to enlarge the hole enough to find what he was looking for.

Gently, he used the tip of the knife to pry it free and then dropped it into his hand.

It was a bullet, but it was unlike any of the ammunition that he and the soldiers at the garrison would have used in their muskets.

This bullet wasn't a round lead ball, or even the misshapen remains of one.

It was round and long, like a cylinder, with a point at one end.

And Babson had never seen anything like it.

In fact, conical bullets were an idea that no one had encountered and wouldn't until Captain John Norton presented a design for them to the British Army.

It would take a while for them to catch on, but they would eventually replace lead balls completely.

Just not in Babson's lifetime.

You see, John Norton submitted his bullet design to his superiors in 1823, 131 years after the events in Gloucester finally came to an end.

Looking backward in time, it's easy to wonder: was the bullet in Ebenezer Babson's hand a piece of forgotten military history, or a tiny glimpse of the world to come?

Much of what we know today about the Gloucester Specters is from the writings of Puritan minister Cotton Mather.

Along with being one of the biggest voices in support of the use of spectral evidence in the Salem witch trials, he also spent years gathering tales of the supernatural, which he published years later.

Stick around after this short sponsor break for one more powerful example of the types of stories Mather loved to collect and share with his audience.

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As I said before, perspective is everything.

In 1692, the Puritan colony of Massachusetts viewed everything through the perspective of their faith, and at the top of their list of superstars was a man named Cotton Mather.

Mather is one of those names you never forget once you learn about him.

Maybe it's that unique first name, Cotton, or those stories associated with his deeds and influence.

But three centuries later, a lot of his legacy comes down to his writings.

Mather wasn't a slouch.

He began attending Harvard at the age of 12 and earned his master's degree by the age of 18.

and the path before him was crystal clear when he left Harvard.

He was going to do God's work by becoming a minister in his father's church.

Over his career, Cotton Mather managed to write and publish more than 400 works, ranging from theology to history.

His views fed the hungry minds of the most conservative and paranoid people in the colony.

And while that might be fine in a more stable era, when the city of Salem erupted in a community-wide panic over the existence of witches, his writings only seemed to fan those flames.

If Mather had a drum to beat, it was the validity of spectral evidence.

In other words, when an accused witch was brought before the magistrates of Salem, Mather believed that testimony involving visions of the devil or ghostly visitors was admissible in the court of law.

And early on in the Salem witch trials, his beliefs were followed.

If a neighbor claimed to see your ethereal form hovering over their bed at night, that testimony was enough to earn you a conviction.

After the dust had settled in the spring of 1693 and after the events in Gloucester had run their course, Mather gathered a large number of supernatural stories and published them under the title, The Wonders of the Invisible World.

Like I said, this was his passion, and it cemented his reputation as a purveyor of the unexplainable.

In September of the following year, one of the young women in Mather's Boston church began to show frightening symptoms that reminded many of the events in Salem.

Her name was Margaret Rule, and she was part of a family that had lived on the frontier in Maine just a couple of years before.

Like many, it was the conflict between the English and the French, along with their Native American allies, that drove the Rule family back south, where they resettled in Boston.

What happened, as best we can tell, went something like this.

Margaret's family lived in a small neighborhood in the north end of Boston, and while they got along well with almost everyone around them, there was an older woman who always seemed to give Margaret trouble.

This woman was cranky and rude and had no trouble speaking her mind.

And true to the suspicious nature of those early Puritans, that cast her in a disparaging light.

Locals whispered that the woman was casting spells on people, but their fear worked both ways.

They might not have felt safe around her, but they also feared what might happen if they turned her into the authorities.

And then, She publicly threatened Margaret.

Almost immediately, Margaret fell ill.

Friends from all over the neighborhood gathered at her family's home to check on her and offer assistance and advice.

And of course, Cotton Mather paid her a visit as well, being the good minister that he was.

But looking back, that might not have been a good thing.

On September 13th of 1692, Mather stood in Margaret's house with a handful of other visitors.

He later recorded that the room quickly grew unbearably hot, and when Margaret actually fainted in front of them, Mather had to fan her face with his hat.

When she awoke, Margaret began to make predictions about the future, claiming that she had somehow made a connection with the world of the spirits.

She warned her neighbors that a local boy would soon nearly drown, and later that day, the news confirmed she had been correct.

Which of course encouraged those neighbors to start asking Margaret for information regarding their own fortunes.

Mather though was quick to step in.

The forces of evil weren't a tool for the righteous to wield, he told them, and he encouraged them to keep their distance.

Now, maybe he said that because he didn't want another Salem on his hands.

Perhaps he'd begun to see the nuance and danger in believing everything one might hear around the sickbed of an afflicted girl.

Or maybe it had something to do with Margaret's claim that Mather himself was a witch.

Any of those reasons could have turned Mather's heart from belief to skepticism, but if I were a betting man, I'd put my money on the latter.

Instead, Mather chose to watch and wait.

He took notes whenever he visited, notes that would someday help him publish the details of Margaret's story in another book, of course.

And while the things he claimed to observe would have landed Margaret in jail in Salem had she lived in that community a couple of years before, he never once called for the sheriff to lock her up.

He just watched.

And honestly, we don't know why.

Perhaps he was just waiting for the right evidence to allow him to use Margaret as the centerpiece of a new witchcraft panic.

Or maybe he knew it would be more profitable to sell these stories to a willing public.

It's hard to say.

But what we do know is that Mather's audience was changing, and while a lot of factors played into that, there's one man in particular who we can thank.

His name was Robert Califf.

He was a Boston-area textile merchant who had a problem with Mather's approach.

He believed the minister had directly contributed to the death toll in Salem, and knew that if he let Mather continue, he would only do more damage.

So Califf wrote a book of his own that painted Mather as a foolish instigator, someone whose blind faith had a deadly undercurrent.

The world was maturing, and science had the power to triumph over superstition, but only if people listened.

That's what his book was meant to accomplish, and as one final jab at Mather, he gave it a title that mocked the minister's own work, More Wonders of the Invisible World.

Margaret eventually recovered, and no one in the North End was ever hanged for witchcraft.

Both men would publish their books, of course, and as the years played out, society began to mature.

The voice of reason had spoken, and the people of New England were beginning to see the world through a new, more modern lens.

And just like Margaret Rule and her family, that's something we can all be grateful for.

This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research by Robin Miniter and music by Chad Lawson.

Lore is much more than just a podcast.

There is a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video.

Check them both out if you want more lore in your life.

I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both.

Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic.

You can learn more about both of those shows and everything else going on over in one central place, theworldoflore.com/slash now.

And finally, you can also follow the show on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Just search for lore podcast all one word and click that follow button.

And when you do, say hi.

I like it when people say hi.

And as always, thanks for listening.

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