Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Good evening and welcome to the Boo Review. I'm Jill Stanley. Tonight we're diving into a tale that is sure to send shivers down your spine and make you glance over your shoulder.
Based on a Boston Globe article dated Monday, April 8, 1878. Have you ever walked past an old house and felt the unmistakable feeling of eyes on your back?
Well, our protagonist, Roxbury Winthrop, felt something just like that, but a bit more sinister.
This isn't your average ghost story. We're talking moving shadows, goats heads, screams in the night, and a mysterious coach with no driver in sight. For more on this, here's Jennifer James at the bulletin desk to unravel the eerie events that unfolded at 121 Kirtland Street Jennifer.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: Thanks, Jill.
In April 1878, Roxbury Winthrop, a junior reporter for the Boston Globe, longed to find the one story that would break wide open and turn him into a household name. And he was certain that covering the story of a supposedly haunted house in Somerville was not it.
Still, he attacked this story with his usual diligence. He researched the backgrounds of the 70 year old house, of the owner and of the various families who had lived there over the past 20 years.
Reports of supernatural events occurring in the house at 121 Kirkland street began when Mr. And Mrs. Barker and their six children moved into the house late in 1869.
Almost immediately, the children began describing strange incidents around the house. Items would disappear, then reappear mysteriously.
The doors in the attic slammed and footsteps creaked. At night, when no one was upstairs, the windows of the house slid open and closed on their own, the family members heard whispering voices in the night.
Winthrop, always the skeptical reporter, took these claims in stride. A house full of children seemed as much explanation as one needed to explain. Things going missing and games of chase and hiding through the big old house could explain most of the rest.
Winthrop found that Mrs. Barker, the mother, had been confined to a wheelchair and was therefore limited in her ability to supervise her boisterous children.
One thing seemed clear. Mrs. Barker's health deteriorated. At 121 Kirkland Street Winthrop discovered that Mrs. Barker suffered terrible nightmares, including a recurring nightmare of seeing a black coach arriving in front of the house and taking her away from her family.
She raved at delivery men who brought milk, groceries or coal to the house.
Many nights her neighbors heard her shouting for the police from the front door, demanding they find the coach which had been stopping in front of the house when no coach had ever passed by.
In her last few months, she regaled visitors with her nightmare visions. Unable to Sleep and able to talk about little else, her frightened children claimed they too began to hear the wheels and the hoofbeats of the phantom coach arriving each night to steal their mother away.
After 22 months, Mrs. Barker succumbed to her illness and died in the house.
On that fateful night, eyewitnesses heard her crying out for her family, then wailing wordlessly, plaintively, for hours until shortly after midnight, she cried out in a clear voice, the coachman comes. His black hands beckon. God, shield me from his terrible eyes.
With that, she gave one last quivering wail and fell silent.
Surrounded by her terrified family. Her struggles continued to weaken until she breathed her last.
Mr. Barker moved far away with the children, and the house, now known in the neighborhood as that haunted house, sat empty for over a year until the owner, Mr. Hovey, lowered the rent and then lowered it again. Winthrop heard from several local lads who bragged about breaking into the vacant house. Some attempted to stay the night, but without success. The hooligans, driven away by doors opening and closing on their own, as well as the sounds of the phantom coach pulling in front of the house.
Finally, the Shambeau family moved in.
Mr. Shambeau worked at nearby Harvard University and quickly sublet two upstairs rooms for college students. The Chambeaus denied hearing things in the house, but it was well known that they had trouble retaining domestics for any length of time. Winthrop found one of these former employees, Ms. Mary Nolan, who worked as a maid for the family.
When Winthrop asked her about her experiences, Ms. Nolan shuddered.
She said she was told the house was haunted a few days after starting work there, and she heard many strange sounds and saw things she could not easily explain.
She found objects would disappear or be moved from one place to another when her back was turned and the crockery closet thumped and clattered as if the dishes were rearranging themselves on the shelves.
She heard from the young cook, Bertha Stoughton, that one night she was startled awake by a tremendous crash, as if every piece of crockery was hurled to the floor with great force.
She sprang up to assess the damage and was thunderstruck to find not an article therein disturbed.
Furthermore, Ms. Nolan could not attribute any of the rattlesnake bumps and other goings on to rambunctious Shambo children, for they had but one child, a slight and Serious boy of 11 named Philippe. He did not seem the sort for mischief or pranks, was not seen playing games at all, except he would blame missing books or other objects on someone he called the N. Rouge. He told Ms. Nolan that the N. Rouge lived in the house, and it opened and closed doors and windows and took Philippe's things without permission.
Ms. Nolan found the idea of an invisible playmate unsettling and, under the circumstances, difficult to dismiss out of hand.
Additionally, the students from the university often used one of the rented rooms as a dissecting room for their experiments. Late at night, Ms. Nolan recounted the messes they left on the floor the remains of a goat with its insides outside and with their notes scrawled in Latin around a large circle drawn on the floor, ringed with candles to illuminate their work.
She quit her employment after four months and would not live in the house again for $1,000.
Winthrop was curious and still skeptical as he set out for his final interview with Mr. And Mrs. Shambo. His attempts to speak with young Bertha Stoughton, the Shambo's cook, were unsuccessful, as the girl was missing. Some of the neighbors said she had suffered a similar fate to that of Mrs. Barker, a second victim of the evil in the haunted house, while others suggested that she simply fled in the night for her home in New Bedford or Providence.
The Chambeaus agreed to an interview in their home, but since Mr. Chambeau would not be home before eight in the evening, they asked that Mr. Winthrop arrive for his interview at nine.
At precisely nine o'clock, Roxbury Winthrop stepped from the carriage into the heavy rain. The spring storm, which had been threatening all evening, broke in an unaccustomed fury.
Thunder crashed twice in the time it took Winthrop to walk from the curb to the front door. The house shook from the force of the storm. As Winthrop raised a hand to knock on the door, he heard a thin wail through the storm, like an old woman wracked in agony. He glanced about in alarm, despite himself, and located a large black cat hiding under a tall pine tree on the property, staring at him with luminous yellow eyes.
Winthrop thought it must have been the cat which had yowled, but he could not recall ever hearing a cat make the sound that he had heard.
Ignoring sudden feelings of unease, he knocked on the door and was quickly admitted inside. The Chambeaus were polite, but obviously did not give any credence to the rumors of ghosts or danger. They had heard nothing out of the ordinary except the sound of rats scurrying in the ceilings and behind the wainscoting.
They dismissed the testimony of Ms. Nolan as coming from a young and foolish girl who jumped at shadows. They had heard of the unfortunate Mrs. Barker, who had been ill and died in the house, but asserted that it was not uncommon in a house as old as this one to have seen many births and many deaths over the years. After a short time, Mrs. Shambeau was called away. Her son was missing a book and wanted help to find it. Mr. Shambeau answered Winthrop's questions mechanically. He stated that Ms. Bertha Stoughton had left her employment some months before, having been a poor worker as well as a substandard cook and possessed a nervous disposition. He further took issue with Ms. Nolan's description of a goat carcass left on the floor and as a complete fabrication.
Just then there was a loud crash from upstairs, and Mr. Chambeau excused himself for a moment.
Winthrop was left alone in the dimly lit kitchen, feeling somewhat let down in spite of himself, when he heard a thin, trembling cry, like an old woman suffering some awful torment.
He could not be sure that the sound was coming from outside or inside the house.
It seemed for a moment to be coming up from the cellar.
His mind filled with a sudden image of Bertha Stoughton's bones in a shallow grave in the cellar, an image so clear, so vivid, that it staggered him. For a moment he smelled the earth from her grave.
Another blast of thunder shook the house. Now Winthrop heard voices coming from upstairs. A softer thump drew his attention to the back door of the house. It had swung open on its own and bumped against the wall.
The floorboards creaked softly in the hallway towards the dining room. He saw a shadowy shape in the hallway near the door and froze.
After an anxious moment, he could see the silhouette of a cat there, holding completely still.
He realized he was holding his breath.
He heard that piercing scream again, this time very, very close, seeming to come from all around him, and Winthrop broke out in a cold sweat. He saw a flicker of movement in the shadowy hallway and was sure the black cat was the same one he had seen outside. Its luminous yellow eyes regarded him coldly. It's the cat.
He sighed in relief. It's just the cat, after all.
Then suddenly, the shape of the cat seemed to change. As if standing up on its hind legs, the silhouette morphed into a human shape. And now it was taller than he thought at first. It was now the size of a small child. As he watched, dumbstruck, it seemed to shift again, and he realized it was standing much farther away, all the way in the dining room, not in the hallway at all. And it was much taller than he had thought, as tall as a tall man.
As he gaped with growing disbelief, he could see the shape of curved horns on its head.
Lightning flashed, illuminating the figure in one horrible moment.
If it was a man, it was a man, covered in matted black fur with the head of a massive goat and long curved horns.
Its eye sockets writhed with maggots, with human faces oozing blood down onto the shaggy face and chest.
As the horned figure reached its arms toward him, the front door blew open with a bang. Winthrop clearly heard the sound sound of a coach pull up in front of the house and stop. But through the open door, there was no coach to be seen.
From behind him in the empty room, he felt cold, clammy hands press on either side of his head.
The coachman comes.
Whispered a voice in his ear. Then the room was filled with a desperate scream, and Winthrop only realized sometime later that it had come from his own throat. Roxbury Winthrop fled into the downpour, leaving his overcoat and notebook behind, and raced through the storm down Kirkland street, all the way to Union Square before stopping. He never returned to 121 Kirkland street again. Story be damned.
Back to you, Jill.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: Well, Jennifer, in the storm swept shadows of Kirtland street, poor old Winthrop encountered something that's straight out of a gothic novel.
Well, that does it for us here at the BOO Review. I've been your host, Jill Stanley. Remember to tune in next month for more spine tingling bulletins from all of us here at the BOO Review. Thank you for tuning in. The Boo Review is a Common Mystics Media production in association with Access. Paranormal Story by Dennis Brose Edited by Yokai Audio, Kalamazoo, Michigan for more information, check out our website commonmystics.net Tune in to the Common Mystics Podcast Wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.
