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You deserve to feel great. Book your virtual visit today at joinmidi.com. That's joinmidi.com. Jeff, there isn't much to see here in Sullivan, Maine. No, no, not much. Population's just over 1,200 people. It's mostly forest, few houses, few businesses. It's a quiet town. And we're pretty far up here near the coast of Maine, just a bit northeast of Acadia National Park. And what are we looking for?
Ray, what we're looking for today is nothing but a cellar hole. All right. What did it used to be? Well, it used to be a house way back in the late 1700s, a house that got a lot of attention because of something that happened inside. Ooh, what happened inside? According to many written accounts, dozens of people came here and saw a ghost. A ghost? Now, does anyone know who the ghost was? Well, they do because they recognized her. The ghost spoke and even identified herself.
We've come to Sullivan, Maine to witness not just New England's, but America's first documented haunting. We're here to find the ghost of Nellie Butler.
Hey there, I'm Jeff Belanger. Welcome to episode 394 of the New England Legends podcast. And I'm Ray Ogier. Thank you for joining us on our mission to chronicle every legend in New England, one story at a time. Please subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss a minute of the Wicked Strange. We'll go searching for the ghost of Nellie Butler right after this quick word from our sponsor. Men, if you're ready to reclaim your edge, listen up. I'm
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So America's first documented haunting happened right here in Sullivan, Maine? It did. It happened right up here, just off the side of the road. Wow. Okay, so there's an obvious old rectangular foundation here in front of us.
It's maybe 20 feet wide and 40 feet long, give or take. There's stone blocks marking the sides. There's some large trees growing up through the middle of the rectangle. So obviously this building has been gone for quite some time. But there's no doubt that this was once a building. Yeah, this was once the home of Abner Blaisdell.
Now, if you've watched the New England Legend television series on PBS and Amazon Prime, we actually covered this story years ago in part of episode seven, The Legendary Road Trip. You can go watch that on Amazon Prime right now, and you can see exactly what we're seeing. But just like in the television episode, we're not going to give out the exact location because this is private property. We had permission and had to promise not to reveal it. But you can still see some pictures of it on our website.
Anyway, back to the story. Right. All right. There have been people living here for thousands of years. The indigenous people called this land Waukeg. European settlers came here in the 1700s and the town of Sullivan incorporated in 1789. Those early settlers named the town after the Revolutionary War hero, Daniel Sullivan, who lived nearby in Sorrento. He died in 1782. The early industries here were lumber mills and sawmills.
And in those early days of Sullivan, this new country called the United States was still growing. They needed to build. And you need to remember, this was still Massachusetts. Maine hadn't become its own state yet. But no matter what you call it, the region has trees and lumber. It was an exciting time, but still a dangerous one, too. But it's safe to say that something profound happened right here where we're standing, Ray, and it led to a frenzy. They call this America's first documented haunting.
To find out what happened, let's head back to the year 1799. It's late December of 1799 here in Sullivan, Maine. The nation is still mourning considering George Washington passed away on the 14th of this month. For the past two years, Washington's former vice president, John Adams, has been running things. But here in Sullivan, winter is settling in. It sure is. It's been cold, but it's about to get colder.
We're standing inside the home of Captain Abner Blaisdell here in Sullivan. Though there's a fire on the hearth, there's a chill in the air.
The Blaisdells have been hearing strange sounds from their basement for the last couple of days. It's got the family unnerved, to say the least. They've checked the basement for any sign of animals or rats, but found nothing. Did you hear that? Yeah, I did. It sounds like a voice, but I can't make out a word of it. And it is coming from the basement.
It's now Thursday, January 2nd, 1800, a new century. Over the past week, the sounds and murmurs have increased in the Blaisdell house. But now the murmurs are sounding more like words. The voice sounds feminine. Captain Abner Blaisdell decides it's time to confront this entity. Blaisdell is now standing alone in his empty basement. Well, speak. Who are you then? I am the dead wife of Captain George Butler.
Born Nellie Hooper. And with that, the ghost has a name, Nellie Butler. The Blaisdell family's in shock. Blaisdell knew of Nellie because her father, Dennis Hooper, lives a few miles down the road. Nellie was born in 1774. She was one of seven children. When she was 19 years old, she married George Butler. Less than a year later, Nellie gave birth to a child who died almost immediately after birth.
And then Nellie died a few days later, on June 13th, 1797. It would appear less than three years later, she's somehow back. Okay, that's tragic she died so young as a result of childbirth. But why would her ghost manifest itself here at the Blaisdell house? Well, that is a mystery. Still, Abner Blaisdell isn't one to be questioned. He knows how crazy it must sound to imply that Nellie Butler's spirit is haunting his basement. He's going to need witnesses, even if it's just to prove it to himself.
Pretty soon, the entire Blaisdell family are gathered in the basement, listening to the disembodied voice claiming to be the spirit of Nellie Butler. This is just eerie. Yeah, it is. I can't figure out where the voice is coming from, but it's definitely down here in the basement. In the coming days, the Blaisdells invite other neighbors to come over and witness this haunt. Sometimes it's just the voice. Sometimes it's just Knox, and sometimes they see the wispy apparition of Nellie Butler.
The oldest Blaisdell daughter, Hannah, soon reaches out to Nellie Butler's sister, Sally. And Sally's intrigued enough to come visit the haunted basement. Sally hears the disembodied knocks. And soon she hears her dead sister's voice. However, Sally is petrified. And though it sounds like her sister, she believes the voice more likely belongs to the devil, who's trying some trickery for reasons that no one understands.
Weeks turn to months, winter turns to spring, and now dozens have experienced the haunting in the basement of the Blaisdell house. Eventually, the spirit of Nellie Butler requests an audience with her widower husband, George. When George Butler arrives to the Blaisdell basement, the motives of the spirit of Nellie Butler start to get a little clearer. George Butler is walking down into the basement now. Let's give him some privacy.
George, what happened? When I was called to talk to this voice, I asked, "Who are you?" It answered, "I was once your wife." The voice asked me, "Do you not remember? I told you I did not think I should live long with you. I told you that if you were to leave me, I should never wish to change my condition. But if that I was to leave you, I could not blame you if you did. This passed between me and my wife while she was alive, and there was no living person within hearing but she and myself.
I am sure that this was never revealed to any person, and no living person could have told it to me before the voice did. Suddenly it becomes clear why Nellie Butler's spirit is haunting the Blaisdell house, and not her former house or anywhere else.
Nellie has come to play matchmaker for her husband and the Blaisdells' 14-year-old daughter, Lydia. Lydia is shocked by the news that the ghost haunting their basement wants her to marry George Butler. But as soon as time passes, the family decides this marriage is literally the will of God. On May 28th, Lydia and George Butler make it official. The two are married on Butler Point. However, the following day, the spirit of Nellie Butler has another message for George.
Be kind to your wife, for she will not be with you long. She will have but one child and then die. Now everyone is spooked, not just George Butler and young Lydia, but people in town too. Soon the locals start to question if this is a prediction or some kind of curse. Was this really the spirit of Nellie Butler or some demonic entity sent here to curse them?
The spirit of Nellie Butler must sense the town's trepidation too, because she's really turning up her religious intensity in her speeches. Thomas Uren is considered one of the most pious church-going men in town. He's been a vocal critic that perhaps this apparition is coming from an evil place. But after his own encounter with the spirit of Nellie, he changes his mind. She quoted scripture. She told of the dangerous sinner's face and said she would rise in the day of judgment.
Uran is convinced, and soon spreads the word that this may be a true godly miracle happening in this little town. It's August 9th. There's a small group of people gathered in the Blaisdell basement, including George Butler, his new wife Lydia, and Abner Blaisdell. You can almost feel like something's about to happen.
Oh, look at that. Yeah, I see it. Nellie Butler is materializing in the basement right in front of us. It looks almost like she's wrapped in a white sheet with her arms folded across her chest. And look, so George Butler's walking up to the ghostly figure. Okay, he's raising up his left hand now. Oh, his hand is passing right through her. This is incredible. And now Nellie Butler is fading into nothing. Though there aren't many skeptics left in town, the spirit of Nellie Butler insists that the Blaisdells should gather all doubters.
It's the middle of August when almost 50 people group outside the Blaisdell house. The spirit of Nellie Butler claims she will prove to the skeptics once and for all that she is real. Look it, look it, look it. Yeah, I see it. The spirit of Nellie is gliding out from the basement and slowly moving towards the road. Let's follow her.
So there's dozens of us following this specter toward a neighbor's house down the street. Nellie aims to prove she can wander beyond the four walls of the Blaisdell basement. Nellie's spirit is now guiding us into a field. Okay, well, she stopped, and now she's vanishing into nothing. She's gone. Days pass, then weeks. Nellie Butler seems to be at rest. There are no more knocks or sightings of her.
It's now March of 1801. Young Lydia Butler gave birth to the couple's first child together. But tragically, Lydia did not survive childbirth. And sadly, her child died shortly after his mother. Lydia Butler and Nellie Butler had suffered the same fate. Nellie Butler's eerie prophecy came to pass. And that brings us back to today.
Nellie Butler became America's first documented haunting years after the fact. A Reverend Abraham Cummings heard about the stories of Nellie and came to Sullivan to interview everyone he could about the matter. For Reverend Cummings, this was evidence of the hereafter, a visible miracle and proof of the hand of God.
He published all of this testimony in a book titled Immortality Proved by the Testimony of Sense, in which contemplated the doctrine of specters and the existence of a particular specter addressed to the candor of the Enlightened Age. Man, that just rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it? Right? I know, right? Now, it's important to point out that these Nellie Butler ghost sightings that occurred over the span of about eight months took place in the year 1800.
That's almost half a century before the spiritualist movement launched in the United States. Yeah, good point. So had this ordeal occurred after 1848, when the spiritualist movement officially started...
I would imagine it would have taken a different tone. I mean, it would have been wedged into the realm of spiritualism. Instead, it takes on a religious bent, because when something happens and we can't figure it out, we do our best to fit it into some kind of box. One person's ghost is another person's miracle is another person's overactive imagination. And today, as we stand inside this former foundation, it's an incredible feeling. This was ground zero for one of the most profound hauntings in American history. It
It happened right here. You can't help but stare closely just a few feet away and wonder if maybe today is the day that Nellie Butler returns one more time.
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Right? I mean, usually they hide or they're making noises, but you can never find them. She's appearing. She's saying, listen to me. Yes. I have a message. So it's curious, and I get the skeptical arguments. The ghost was exclusive to the Blaisdell basement until the very last sighting. And of course that raises questions like, are the Blaisdells messing around with people? Were they trying to get their 14-year-old daughter off and married? And I know people are going to cringe at that, but this was the year 1800. Right. It was...
1,400 was... Normal. I mean, 14 was kind of marrying age. I mean... That was old age, right? Well, no. Middle-aged? No, that's probably... It's still on the young side. She's already washed up at that point. 16, 17, 18 was a little more normal. Old spinster. Right. But yeah, she was no spinster. But I know people cringe, and obviously laws have been changed, although not by much. I mean, seriously. But yeah, so it begs a lot of questions, like why just this basement? But...
This book, and by the way, Reverend Abraham Cummings' book, it's available online. You can read the whole thing. And if you go to our episode page, we have a link to it. If you want to read the whole thing, you can read, I think it's like 60, 70 pages. I'll just listen to the podcast. Yeah, that's probably easier, probably easier. But if you care to see the testimony. So for him, this was, and we've covered stories like this before, where something ghostly happened.
And a religious leader documented it because for the religious leader, it was like, see, this is proof there's God. Right, right. There's our religion. This is we're following the right path. We're getting these signs. Right.
So for them, it was very important religious work that they were doing. Cummings wasn't a ghost hunter, right? He was a reverend saying, look, see, this is real. Well, it's a win-win because if he could prove that it was evil, right, there's still proof that there's the opposite. There's good. If there's evil, there's good. If there's good, there's evil. If it's evil, we're doing the right thing. We're going to church. We're praying and we've got to expose this. If it's good, it's the hand of God and we're doing the right thing. We're going to church. Yeah, you're right. Can't lose that. So for him, it was...
It was definitely a win-win. Another book I want to acknowledge, Marcus Labrizi. If you watched the episode on Amazon Prime, we interviewed him. He wrote the 2010 book, The Nellie Butler Haunting, a documentary history. And he's a professor at the University of Maine at Machias University.
and actually joined us on the television episode. So his book's a great resource too. How much more can you get out of it? I feel like we summed it up pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty much the story, but the cellar hole is still there. And when we filmed, it's on private land and it's hard to find. You're not gonna know where it is. We had to know.
And the landowner requested as we filmed, he's like, don't show my house in the background, which was easy to do. We just kept the cameras on the one side and you couldn't see much anyway. There's very little to see. In fact, all there is to see, you can see on our website, you can see the photo and be like, okay, there's the cellar hole, right? So it's, yeah, it's a cellar hole. Although I will say it's, it's the, the, the stone blocks are
are more defined than more traditional cellar holes, which would just be like a pile of rocks, like stone walls, you know, just round rocks. These are actual cut stones that formed probably a much more solid foundation for a house. Yeah.
Um, so there's no question that's where the house was. And basically what we're standing in is the basement, right? Like this, where she appeared. Yeah. Yeah. So like we were literally, I mean, right. It's not like it was a second floor, which would have been above our heads. Like, no, it was right here where that tree is growing, you know? And, uh, it's, it's, it was pretty, it's pretty wild. And is there anything mystical about the tree? That's a good question too.
Oh, yes. Oh, my gosh. Is it? It was dead. Okay. So, and this, because I remember when we were filming there, I said...
I said, look around. All the trees are fine outside of the foundation. This one in the middle was just dead. Oh, my God. That's so cool. Yeah. We got pictures of it. All right. Well, that's something right there. So it was a little weird. But yeah, but you can just imagine. And it's 20 by 40. Go ahead. Take a tape measure and chalk it out on your driveway or something. It's not a big space. It's not small either, but yeah. Yeah. But also, you can only cram so many people down there to witness a thing, you know? Yeah.
Um, so yeah, no, it's, it's, it's one of these incredible stories. Um, and by the way, there were ghost sightings before 1800 and they were mentioned in letters and journals and stuff like that. Of course there were, but this one was so thoroughly documented because of Cummings who wrote this book decades after the fact. Right.
So I get the problem with that too. It wasn't like this happened and he wrote it all down like within a week or two. This was, this had time to stew and grow and stuff like that. Maybe you forget some facts. Do you add a few more? Totally possible. I get it. But at the same time, you know, people that love ghosts and hauntings look back at this one and go, yeah, that was, this was the one. This was patient zero. Plus you're trying to sell a book. I mean, you know, you gotta be, you gotta be excited. You gotta embellish.
Yeah. Although, I mean, he quoted people. This isn't just like him making up a story. He's like, you know, George Butler said this, and this person said this. Who were there? Did they have fact-checking websites back then? No, you had Cummings and what he liked or didn't like, and that's how it goes. But it's one of those incredible stories.
heart-wrenching. And I love the mystery of it. Like, why would she be in their basement? Right. Right? She's like, she didn't die here. She may have never even been in that house. And why does she have such a strong message? Right. Why was she so hell-bent on getting her former husband married again? Yeah. Only to tell him, oh, by the way, this isn't going to go well. Yeah.
Thanks. Thanks a lot. Thanks for the warning, hon. Thanks for the matchmaking. And like, yeah, you're going to get about one good year out of this. And then she's going to die too. Maybe it was, maybe he didn't treat her well in the real world. I don't know. When she was alive. But that's not really much of a gift. Kind of revenge, maybe? I don't know. It's complicated. And did Lydia have anything to do with that death? Or the two deaths of the child and his new bride?
Well, no, Lydia would have been 10. No, 9 when Nellie Butler died. Nellie, I meant Nellie. Oh, did Nellie have something to do with it? Did she have something to do with it? Oh, the ghost of Nellie. Yes. Oh, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. So maybe the whole thing was a revenge plot. This is complicated. Write a book about it. I feel like this is true crime circa 1800, maybe. We should do a whole podcast, a new true crime podcast on Nellie. Just like an eight part on this? Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's an intriguing story, but...
But one for the books, one for the books. The America's first documented haunting up there in Maine.
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And our theme music is by John Judd. Until next time, remember, the bizarre is closer than you think. Men, if you're ready to reclaim your edge, listen up. I used to be held back by constant bathroom trips with multiple wake-ups during my sleep and looking for restrooms whenever I was out. Then I discovered Better Man. After just two months, I started experiencing fewer trips to the bathroom, less urge to go.
and I even slept through some nights. I feel a noticeable boost in my overall well-being, even sexual stamina. It gives me the freedom and confidence to live life on my terms. Better Man is clinically tested and trusted by thousands of men over 25 years. Ready to take back control? Go to BeBetterNow.com to order your supply today. That's BeBetterNow.com. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Use as directed. Individual results may vary.