TALBOT HOUSE
Location: The Talbot House is centrally located at the end of Main Street at 1986 Vincent Street in the small religious community of Falwell, Massachusetts, eight miles east of Fall River on Old Bedford Road. South Vincent runs directly into Reed Road toward Interstate 195; North Vincent runs across Fall River Road toward New Bedford to the East.
Description of Place: Resembling the standard image of the iconic haunted house, the Talbot House rests a large acre of land along Vincent Street, part of which was developed into homes in the 1950s. A two-story white and gray Victorian with a pitched roof and garret windows, the house has been restored, but not modernized, maintaining its original charm. Several antiques and Late Nineteenth Century furniture fill the house.
Ghostly Manifestations: Upon first glance of the house, a guest or visitor might notice first the network of marks carved into the masonry of the foundation. Countless "X's" reaching over a hundred years have been scratched into the bricks holding up the house. The reason for this benign vandalism is simple; visitors who carve their signature there do so asking for good luck from the spirit of the supposed witch who once lived in the house. The alternate legend claims that by knocking on the wood structure three times will force her presence to appear. Those brave enough to welcome her can inquire directly for a wish to come true while those too scared to face her are doomed to have bad luck until they return and apologize for waking her. It's a very minor urban legend in the area, but there is a little merit to it. Locals believe the house is haunted.
"I don't personally believe the house is haunted." Local Constable Ted Grant remarks between searches for paperwork on his visits to the house. "But I have been to the house on several occasions looking for supposed trespassers, and one time out of three do I ever really find anyone. Just a week ago, three kids down from out of Boston came to loiter on the property and try to find or stir up the ghosts." He pauses for a laugh. "You'd think watching all those horror movies would discourage them from trying to wake up the dead." He shares the file he has on calls to the house. "Anyhow, trespassing was a lot worse back in the Eighties when the house was at the height of its reputation. My predecessors actually had to chase far more kids out from trying to burn down the house and having those insane cult rituals. You'd think teenagers would have better things to do with their time than to go breaking into private property looking for things that don't exist."
In the police folder separated by arrest sheets on trespassers, vagrants, vandals, misguided cultists and a motley menagerie of otherwise bored teenagers and amateur ghost hunters going back twenty years are the ghost stories of a house that has been empty far too long for adequate supernatural evaluation. In 1980, a few months after the death of the last owner, a neighbor called the police about a light she saw bobbing through the house when it was supposed to be empty. No details on the follow-up that night, but by that October, the same neighbor reported the same similar light once again. This time, an officer who lived just a block over came over on foot and checked the house. He walked the perimeter checking the ground floor windows and doors and found the house locked up tight. Convinced that no one could have got into the house, he then took a few steps back and looked up into the side parlor window. Staring at him from the window was Morgana Talbot, the scarlet-haired hostess of the house having returned from the grave staring at him. She stepped back a bit and then vanished from view into nothingness. An attached memo remarks that the officer checking the house possibly let his imagination get away from him, but the addendum to that theory is that he had never met or seen a photo of Morgana before that experience, yet, he described her appearance perfectly.
There are over fifty similar police reports of lights and figures that have been seen in the house since 1980, the most recent in 2006. The edifice is cared for by a local grounds keeping service with their own key to the back door. While keeping up the grounds for ascetic purposes, the foreman in charge goes through to look through the house for damages due to weather and or vandals, such as the random shattered window by the local delinquents trying to force the ghost to appear in the material realm. In recent years, though, foreman Ed Kyser has insisted on someone accompanying him through the large house for company. Conversations with him involve sounds of voices in the house from the top floor, footsteps going up and down the staircase, the swish of a woman's long skirts just out of view and even shadows of people who do not exist.
"In December 1995,"Kyser tells during a stroll of the grounds. "The police called on me to seal up a number of broken windows left by kids to the house. It was my duty to tape garbage bags over the windows until the glass could be replaced and I had to stay in the house until they could get here. Anyhow, I'm laying on the large sofa in the parlor trying to rest and I keep hearing this ping-ping-ping-ping sound from the room keeping me from dozing off to sleep. I'd get up, wander from the parlor through the front hall to the dining room, study, kitchen and back to the parlor. As soon as I get comfortable again, it happens again... ping-ping-ping-ping... maybe a bit louder than before. I figure, maybe it's some sort of electrical clock I'm over looking, but I look and look and I never found it. I now wonder if something was trying to keep from getting any sleep."
"On another occasion..." Kyser continues. "I'm in the house after a big freeze that burst a pipe in the kitchen, and I'm here with the plumber working to fix this pipe, and it was a really tremendously cold morning, and I'm drinking hot coffee from a large thermos. I leave the thermos on the table in the kitchen to follow the plumber out to his truck for a new fitting or tool or something, and the thermos I'm quite sure I had left on the table where we were working is now on our return inside on the big table in the dining room on the other side of the service porch from the kitchen. It's still in direct view, only now its empty... and I could have sworn I only had three small cups from it.
"Oh yeah," Kyser recalls another story. "Did I tell you about the apparition yet? On another occasion I had a glass guy here fixing the side parlor window over there." He points to a bay window extending from the house. "After he finished the job, he came to me at the shop and says, 'I thought you said the house was unoccupied.' and I told him, 'Well, the owner lives in California. She uses the house to store belongings.' and he goes on to tell me, 'Well, she must have come by, because as I was cleaning up after myself, I saw the figure of a woman come down the stairs and pass through the parlor for the kitchen.' Well, I figure he's right so I go over to the house to review the work I've done and talk to her. You see, I don't want my guys go around the house while she staying and looking in the windows at her, but when I get there, she's not there. The house is locked up tight, there's not a presence inside so I figure she's in town doing some shopping. I call her on her private line, and she gets back to me; she's in Monterey... that's in California. I tell her someone saw a woman in the house and right off the bat, she asks 'Did she have long red hair?'"
The typically West Coast-bound owner is Cassandra Peterson, an actress and TV personality best known for fusing sexuality into the horror movie genre, better known to the public as her alter-ego persona, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Even when she briefly lived in the house, she believed she was visited by her relative's spirit. She recalls that one night she felt a presence in the house and when she went downstairs, she saw the apparition of her relative standing beneath her portrait. She was dressed in white and long bright red hair falling down her back.
"I wasn't scared. I'm torn between being a believer and being frightened." She confesses, although she's not ready to go on the record to admit she believes in ghosts, a trait shared by celebs like Mena Suvari, Neve Campbell, Hugh Jackman and Nicolas Cage. "But she certainly surprised me. She was just there and gone the next."
In recent years, Kyle Baxter has taken over the weekly overseeing of the house in place of Kyser. Baxter is a former Army drill sergeant who served time in the Gulf War prior to his medical discharge. Built like a freight train, his mind is much more rational and centered than the majority of witnesses to have dealt with noises and sounds in the house. Yet, he too testifies to incidents that "long for explanation."
"The phone rings, but no one is ever there." He reports with the confused diction of a man listing complaints. "People get in that I can't find. Furniture I've moved returns back to its place. Objects vanish; I never did find my crescent wrench. I hear kids giggling down the staircase, a man laughing in the study, sounds of a dog scampering across the top landing. There's a logical explanation, right?"
History: Founded around 1690, Falwell was a small Amish community for just over a hundred years before it received its town charter in 1805, having grown in size since the construction of the textile mill and steel works. The town boasts having escaped the violence of the Revolutionary War and serving as the home town of Major James William Peterson, a Civil War hero who served as mayor from 1873 to 1891. Peterson was an ancestor of Morgana Talbot, who later acquired Talbot House. Rumors are Talbot was interested in the house, which was built in 1903, because it's original tenant was a witch. Other rumors claimed the house was built over a forgotten cemetery. These kind of rumors lead to the speculation that Talbot herself was a witch, an innuendo she suffered through for most of her life. Furthermore, after she died in 1941, she left the house to her grand-daughter, also named Morgana. Many believed that the younger lady was actually the older woman having returned from the dead and looking younger than ever. When the grand-daughter passed away in 1980, the house was held in probate until her legal heir could be found, although Nicholas Talbot, a local businessman and former town undertaker, tried seizing the house by contesting the will. The house eventually passed down to the possession of the daughter of the heir, noted entertainer Cassandra Peterson, better known to the public as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Although her career keeps her residence to California, she uses the house as a museum for several of her horror-movie paraphernalia. A caretaker used to live in a cottage near the property, but he left after a few months.
Identity of Ghosts: Morgana Talbot is said to be a very beautiful and friendly spirit, but she does have her mischievous side evident by her penance for mischief. Generally described as tall and full-figured with tresses of long red hair, she's been seen several times since her death. Sounds of other beings suggest perhaps the house could be a portal for other harmless ghosts crossing in and out of the afterlife.
Source/Comments: Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988), Manifestations and history loosely based on the LaVeau House and Mineuercanal House both in New Orleans, the Old Phelps Mansion in Stratford, Connecticut and Woodburn Mansion in Dover, Delaware.