Exciting Climax to Murder on the Common!

Its Christmas, Dearborn Street is all lit up, families are filling up the tunnels traveling to friends and families, but…

There is word that Joseph Knapp Jr. will die mysteriously like his brother within Salem Prison before his New Year’s Eve execution. This is the climax of the story where we find out who committed the murder of Captain Joseph White. Will Henry be able to make it in time though the packed tunnels to save Joseph; so he can be properly killed by the State…

Come back every Tuesday to read the latest installment of “Murder on the Common” featuring everyone’s favorite immortal, Henry Sinclair, and his reincarnated third-generation Viking ragtag crew.

New Installment

 

The Murder that Inspired the Game Clue and Edgar Allan Poe

Welcome to the Salem Tunnel Report. Every Monday we will post new and old tunnel finds along with those who built them. In our posts you will learn how Salem has shaped American history from the profits of the smuggling that happened in these tunnels; sometimes for the good, but more often not.

Gardner Pingree House
128 Essex Street

Built in 1804-1805 for John Gardner Jr. by Samuel McIntire. Jeremiah Page provided bricks, David Robbins was the mason, Joseph Fogg the lumber, Epes Cogswell was housewright, and William Luscoomb III painter. Gardner had owned 6 ships. All but 2 had different captains and co-owners. He never captained any of his ships. The only economic venture he went on twice with anyone was with his relative Simon Gardner who had owned two ships with him and captained both.

Next door was the site of the Captain Joseph Gardner home where the Plummer Hall now stands that houses the Essex Institute. The Captain was killed by Narragansets in 1675 at the Great Swamp Fight. At the Captain’s death his wife Anne inherited her father’s Emmanuel Downing’s house which was west of Plummer Hall and married Gov. Simon Bradstreet and lived there. This house was torn down in 1750 and Francis Peabody built his mansion. This book was written across the street from where the first American poet wrote her books, Anne Bradstreet.

In 1811 John Gardner Jr. ran into financial problems and sold the house to Nathaniel West. Could he have received a bribe from Russell Sturgis as well? Nathaniel West was a captain who owned many ships with Nehemiah Andrews, Crowninshields, Derbys, Benjamin Pickman, and Francis Boardman. Nathaniel West bought the John Turner mansion, next to the Peter Palfrey House to the right, opposite Central Street in 1833 and opened it as a tavern called “The Mansion house” in time for President Andrew Jackson’s visit. Later it would be called the “West Block”. Nathaniel West sold the Gardner-Pingree House three years later to Captain Joseph White. He was murdered in this house.

“It’s raining, it’s pouring.
The old man is snoring.
He went to bed bumped his head,
and he couldn’t get up in the morning.”

Captain Joseph White who bought the Come Along Patty from Elias Haskett Derby with the Cabot brothers and renamed it the Revenge became the first privateer from Salem. He was in the slave trade. He was heavily invested in The Second National Bank of the United States. He had questionable feelings towards a young niece who lived with him. He hated the man whom she would marry and made a fortune of $3 million dollars before 1830, which he was not going to give her any. In the winter of 1829-1830 Captain Joseph White was feeling ill and had his lawyer Joseph Waters draft him a new will. In 1830 someone snuck through the tunnel and murdered him.

This murder would inspire Edgar Allen Poe’s to write the Tell Tale Heart. It is reminiscent of Agatha Christies’s Murder on the Oriental Express. The intrigue of the murder and the sudden death of Judge Parker might of led Parker Brothers to buy the U.S. rights to the 1949 Cluedo/Clue game because it reminded them of the strange tale that happened in this Salem house! I wonder if it was a literature fan who moved the Crowninshield-Bentley House to the right from its old home in the Hawthorne Hotel’s parking lot. That house was in H.P. Lovecraft’s story The Thing on the Doorstep. Also Rev. Bentley wrote his memoirs of Salem in the Crowninshield-Bentley House.

Captain Joseph White was not kind to his relations that had worked for him in his house. He only showed a special form of kindness to his young attractive niece. The announcement of her engagement to a captain that was just released from Joseph Jr. & Stephen White Co.’s employment just sent him into a furor.

At 82 he has been abandoned by his niece for 3 years and is ill during a hard winter. His favorite nephew has been dead for some years but his brother is still at the old captain’s side. Was Stephen jealous of the attention his uncle gave to his female cousin or the attention she deprived him? Did Stephen foster some hatred towards his uncle for favoring his dead brother over him? Did the old Captain plan a mercy killing that would blame the Knapps and Crowninshields of murder to remedy the capture of a ship he once owned and a public insult? Remember Joseph J. Knapp Jr. was born the same year his father had lost the captain’s baby the ship Revenge.

We will not know, but we do know who ever snuck into to kill the old man knew of the tunnels. The tunnels connect the White/Story compound to the old man’s mansion. The old man bankrolled Joseph Jr. & Stephen White Co. and the construction of his nephews houses with the tunnels attached to them. I have been in the White brothers homes and seen the sealed up entrances to the tunnels and I have friends who have played in the tunnels attached to Judge Story’s House.

Many secrets in Salem!

For more read info Salem Secret Underground: The History of the Tunnels in the City and its sequel Sub Rosa by Chris Dowgin published by Salem House Press. Available at Barnes & Noble, Remember Salem, The Witch House, Jolie Tea, and Amazon.com.

Sub Rosa Coming to Remember Salem!

Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Dr. Who, Ghosts, and Sub Rosa…

The book Sub Rosa is sold at Remember Salem the harry Potter Shop in Salem, MA

The new smash hit sequel to Salem Secret Underground, the book everyone digs, is coming to Remember Salem. Sub Rosa will be on the shelves of this magical themed store that showcases the products from Harry Potter, Dr. Who, and Game of Thrones in Salem MA. Many people come from all over the world to find the magic they expected to find in Disneyland, but were left disappointed.  After much hunting through the various witch shops in Salem, hopefully your feet will magically lead you here. The store is probably the only place in Salem that ties you directly into that feeling you’re looking for.  Because once you enter this attraction you walk right into a fairy tale. Death Eater hoods, a life size Dobby, a Goblet of Fire, Nimbus 2000, and many other Harry Potter props decorate the walls, which are all for sale! If you are real lucky you might be able to peek your head in and see the Great Hall in the backroom…

The Wizard Kevin Wynot in his wand shop.

Then next door is Wynott Wands. This is real magic. The shop is what Olivander’s was trying to capture. This is the real deal. In here you will find what Disney could never capture.

Wynot Wand shop's shelves of magical wandsWands are hand turned in the basement and some even have magical cores. A true Victorian wand emporium. And your benefactor is Mr. Wynott, who is from an ancient Salem family.

Nearby in Salem, on an ancient land came the magic powder to make the most famous wands of all, the original  #2 pencils! Joseph Dixon would get his black lead (graphite) from land on the ancient Wyman Mills property to make his famous pencils J.K. Rowling used while writing her Harry Potter series. Also the famous London banker George Peabody before moving across the pond would sell these magic wands for him. These wands were brandished to create Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and many other tales…

Wynott Mills and Salem Lead Works the property lead was obtained from to make the first Dixon #2 pencil.
Wynott’s Mill where magic graphite powder was obtained for Dixon’s #2 Pencils.

Plus both properties are haunted. The basement of the Wynott Wands holds two trapped souls.  The store owner tells tales about the two ghost. Siblings, siblings who died in a fire that ravaged parts of Essex and Liberty Streets. A Sister and her large autistic brother. The sister  has been the cause of a few women’s mental breakdowns and the brother has flipped a desk and thrown ceiling tiles to the floor. Then next door a kindly old man can be seen from time to time with his ghost cat just putzing through. If you’re lucky  you might catch Tim Maguire, the stores’ owner and guest on Ghost Hunters. Just ask him and he may bring you on a paranormal investigation of his properties…

Historic image of the building Wynott Wands is in.

Previous to the wand shop, the location serviced as the home of many businesses in Salem including a bakery and hair salon that would give corpses their last haircut before their internment.  Also running in front of the shop is one of the many tunnel extensions leading from the coast that leaks the energy of a water undine that is fed off the ghosts under the wand shop. The ghosts provoke the needed emotions that the Undine feeds off of from the living.

Joseph White bought this house in 1811 which would be the house he was murdered in during the year 1830. This is the mansion from the game Clue.

Then across the street is the mansion that is the inspiration for the board design for the game Clue. In 1830 Captain Joseph White planned an elaborate scheme to exact revenge on his two business partners through his own death.  He plotted for his nephew to implement the murder and to pin the crime on the old man’s business partner’s sons and heirs. After the success of this murder, the nephew teams up with one of the the most powerful senators, Daniel Webster, in the country to assassinate a president and get away with it!

The inspiration for the Miskatonic Institute.

To the left of Captain White’s mansion, a home he bought after being bribed by British agents to restore a new national bank, is the Essex Institute. H.P. lovecraft rewrote their history in many of his stories. He renamed the ancient museum the Miskatonic Institute.

Sub Rosa Book Cover

 

To find out more about the murder that inspire the game Clue, the #2 pencil, H.P. Lovecraft in Salem, our nation’s banking history, and unaccounted Presidential Murders; read Sub Rosa which will have Advance Reader Copies on sale at Remember Salem next week! Also on sale there is Salem Secret Underground: The History of the Tunnels in the City. Pick up a copy as well; you won’t regret it!

Jolie Tea in Salem and a Good Read

Advance Reader Copies of Sub Rosa for Sale…

Sub Rosa Book Cover

Enjoy reading over a cup of tea at Jolie Tea in Salem, MA. They are the first shop to sell these ARCs. What is even more amazing than their 200+ collection of fine teas, is that the building they are in is connected to the tunnels of Salem. Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Crowninshield had his Merchant Bank in the building. He also was one of many politicians from Salem who was a director of the Second Bank of the United States Boston Branch. Crowninshield was one of many in Salem in 1811 that was bribed by the British to work to create the bank which would sell 70% of its shares to the British after the War of 1812.  Across the Common you can also see Senator Nathaniel Silsbee’s house who also was bribed and became a director in the bank.  In this building Sophia Peabody had lived for a period of time when Nathaniel Hawthorne lived down the street. Hawthorne’s uncle had a stagecoach company with offices in the building or next door.

As rich as the tea at Jolie is the history connected to the building. Looking over your tea cup you can see through the window the Salem Common that was developed to hide massive amounts of tunnel dirt in. It is the same location the first National Guard unit was formed on. Their descendants dug the tunnels and hid the dirt. Just to the left is the historic Hawthorne Hotel. On that property was originally the Franklin Building owned by Thomas Perkins.

Salem Common
The Salem Common with Nathaniel Silsbee House in the distance.

Perkins had paid Charles Bulfinch to build the Bunker Hill Monument, Mass General Hospital, Perkins School for the Blind, and India Wharf. Bulfinch was the one who designed the homes connected to the tunnels in Salem and Boston and the idea of hiding tunnel dirt in rivers, ponds, and marshland. Bulfinch would be the one who built all of the tunnels in Washington D.C. Perkins is the drug dealer who started the Forbes family off to fortune by selling opium to China. His empire was sold to Sturgis Russell who’s cousin founded Skull & Bones. William Russell will purchase property off Perkins in New Haven, Conn. to build the crypt on.

Archer Building that sat previous on this location the Hawthorne Hoptel is on now.
The Franklin Building once stood on the lot the Hawthorne Hotel occupies now. In the closest corner of the building the Parker Brothers had their first toy store.

Also the window seat looks out upon the parking lot which at one time was the location of the Bently-Crowninshield House featured in H.P. Lovecraft’s Thing on the Doorstep. The story details Daniel Upton’s account of the tragedy that befell Edward Derby. Edward Derby marries a woman who becomes possessed by her dead evil father who in time possess Derby’s body after he was pushed into his wife’s body when he was in Arkham Asylum.  Left for dead the wife’s body limps to Upton’s doorstep informing him that it was in fact Derby who inhabits his wife’s decaying body as he becomes the thing on the doorstep. Arkham Asylum is the same asylum that the Batman universe uses. The Bently-Crowninshield  House has since been removed to in front of the Hawthorne.

The Bently-Crowninshield House now on Washington Square and Essex Street. The home featured in the “Thing on the Doorstep.”

Now the window behind you over looks the holy parking lot. Once the location of a Jewish temple. So if you are ever chased by any of Salem’s vampires. A variety called psychic vampires. The type of person who can speak at you for an hour and drain your soul and time away. If you are ever confronted in Salem, MA, it is good to know where the consecrated land is…

The Jewish Temple now in the auxiliary parking lot for the Hawthorne Hotel. You can also see the Bently-Crowninshield House to the left in its original position when Lovecraft wrote the story.

Below are images of Benjamin Crowninshield, Thomas Perkins, Jolie Tea Building, Merchant Bank notes, and the tunnels….

The Brown Building Which houses Jolie Tea.
Benjamin Crowninshield
Merchant Bank Notes
Sealed tunnel under Jolie Tea. Notice the furnace drawing air from beyond the sealed entrance from the tunnel.
Opium Dealer Thomas H. Perkins. Went from slave trader to opium dealer.
Skull & Bones crypt built on Thomas Perkins old lot.

So head over to Jolie Tea and experience some history from your window seat over one of the 200+ teas they offer. They also sell Howqua Tea named after the man that Perkins made the wealthiest man in the world by selling his opium to. Your welcome to read a store copy of Salem Secret Underground:The History of the Tunnels in the City or its sequel Sub Rosa while at Jolie or buy a copy to bring home with you! They are both filled with the story of the tunnels in Salem and how her smugglers’ shaped American history…

 

H.P. Lovecraft and Salem MA

HP Lovecraft and Salem MA

March 1931 H.P. Lovecraft of Providence Rhode Island will write At the Mountains of Madness. A story that is set inside the interior of Antarctica. One of the characters Frank H. Pabodie will be based on George Peabody’s family. It also mentions the Miskatonic Institute which is based on a Salem institute.

H.P. Lovecraft would travel to Salem, MA in 1923 and 1929. Salem and various surrounding towns will appear in his works. These trips to towns in Essex county would become the basis for the fictional towns in his narratives.

Arkham was from Salem to Ipswich. Innsmouth would be Gloucester and Ipswich. Kingsport would be the city of Marblehead. Many of the locations and buildings in these towns he used as settings for his town still exist. In Salem the Crowninshield-Bentley House would be the setting for the Thing on the Doorstep. People we have mentioned in my narrative, the Crowninshields and Derbys, would be characters in the story. The first story Arkham appears in is The Picture in the House.

The Thing on the Doorstep was set behind the Hawthorne Hotel when the doorstep faced the Common. A female cousin is talking to her male cousin of her possession by their ancestors, Derbys and Crowninshields, as she is shrinking into a dwarf. At the end of the narrative the thing on the doorstep goes running into the Common. The house is now next to the house Joseph White was murdered in.

Other locations include the Old Burying Point, Essex Institute, and Danvers State Hospital. The Old Burying Point appears in Pickman’s Model. Pickman was another smuggling family inside Salem. The Essex Institute, now part of the Peabody Essex Institute, becomes the Miskatonic Institute. It appears in At the Mountain of Madness, Shadow Out of Time, Dunwich Horror, Dreams in the Witch House, and Herbert West- Reanimator. The last story deals with a typhoid outbreak. The Essex Institute hosted the Salem Lyceum lectures in which John Quincy Adams spoke on politics, James Russell Lowell read parts of Dante’s Inferno, Longfellow would try out new pieces at, and Alexander Graham Bell would have his first public demonstration of the phone. Nathaniel Hawthorne was their secretary.

Arkham Sanitarium is Danver’s State Hospital. Danver’s State Hospital and it appears in Pickman’s Model and Shadow over Innsmouth. The real sanitarium was inspired by Thomas Story Kirkbride. He was the founder of the precursor to the American Psychiatric Association. Many hospitals would be based on his Kirkbride Plan, including Dr. Thomas Miller’s St. Elizabeth in Washington D.C. Kirkbride developed his requirements based on a philosophy of moral Treatment. The typical floor plan, with long rambling wings arranged en echelon (staggered, so each connected wing received sunlight and fresh air), was meant to promote privacy and comfort for patients. The building form itself was meant to have a curative effect, “a special apparatus for the care of lunacy, [whose grounds should be] highly improved and tastefully ornamented.” The idea of institutionalization was thus central to Kirkbride’s plan for effectively treating patients with mental illnesses.

The asylums tended to be large, imposing, Victorian-era institutional buildings within extensive surrounding grounds, which often included farmland, sometimes worked by patients as part of physical exercise and therapy.

Danvers State Hospital was built in 1878. Following Kirkbride’s direction it was a shining star, even though the first prefrontal lobotomy had happened here. By the time when the psychiatric field turned toward over predominance of pharmaceutical treatment it became hell on Earth. When I moved to Salem in 1992 the institute closed a day after my birthday on January 24th. For the most part they just opened their doors and let the patients walk out. Many would find their way to Salem where the Crombie Street Shelter was. Built behind Stephen White’ Barton Square Church.

These gentlemen provided lots of local color to Salem. There was Kevin and Ken always around. Then there was Dreadbeard. One was a millionaire who got weekly stipends. You would see him with a new laptop or digital camera at times. Many times he would sell them after and hour for $5 to a local merchant. Once he showed me pictures on his digital SLR camera of the view from an airplane of St. Thomas where he decided to be homeless for the winter.

Danvers State Hospital was left abandoned for years. Many would venture through the various tunnels on the property which were so scary that Hells Angels have been know to run out of it. If it is not haunted, it definitely is eerie with the scrawling of troubled minds on the walls. The tunnels connected the wings to a donkey engine rail to move carts of laundry and food.

My friend John Archer was one of thee main supporters of an effort to preserve the buildings from contractors in 2005. The center Kirkbride building was saved along with 4 apartment complexes, that would mysteriously burn down where they wanted a new parking lot. John Archer was able to salvage much of the interior and a cupola to be used in the construction of a new wing to his mansion. It has been written up in the New York Times Magazine and other periodicals. John was so kind to extend the use of his mansion for a group 40th birthday party for me and my friends catered by the great Boston catering company Brandi Foods.

Danvers State Hospital will appear in the film Session 9 and will inspire Batman authors to use it as Arkham Asylum in their DC universe. Lovecraft actively admired and supported authors who would develop stories based on his lexicon of mythology.

Other locations used in Lovecraft stories would include the Witch House and the Derby House. The Derby House is where Elias Hasket Derby Jr. grew up who extended the tunnels in 1801 in town. The Witch House was the residence of Roger Williams. Williams was a minister in the First Church in Salem before the Witch Trials. He was removed from town for his beliefs that Native Americans should be fairly compensated for their property and he believed in separation of church and state. In fact it was Thomas Jefferson’s studies on the trials which inspired him to include separation of church and state in the First Amendment. Williams would go on and become the founder of Rhode Island and the Baptist Church.
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For more tales like this about how Salem MA has shaped American History read Sub Rosa by Christopher Jon Luke Dowgin available at Barnes & Nobel, Amazon.com, and your favorite local independent book seller.
Ask for it by name!

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The Most Haunted Ghosts Stories that Shaped America’s History

H.P. Lovecraft on the best Salem ghost tour and Salem walking tourOh, Salem was named Arkham by H.P. Lovecraft. An area encompassing Salem to Ipswich. Inside these bounds is Arkham Asylum. In real life it is even scarier than what Bob Kane or Lovecraft could imagine.

Danvers State Hospital is where they invented the lobotomy. Its building are connected to a series of tunnels that had trains move food and laundry from building to building. Kirkbride in fact connected all of his asylums he built by such tunnels. In these tunnels patients would wander and doodle perverse or surreal illustrations on the wall. The film Session 9 was filmed within its confine. Next to it is a potter’s field in which the patients only received a number to mark their identities. Now it is luxury condos…

Before they were converted for the punishment of the wealthy, my friend Jonathan Archer took one of its towers down that housed the ward for the sexually insane and attached it to a new addition to his mansion.

Jonathan Archer is the descendant of Samuel Archer III who built the first commercial property in which the Parker Brothers sold their first Ouija board out of, Thomas Perkins (Opium dealing Boston Brahmin who is the predecessor to the Skulls and Bones) once owned, and one of the oldest secret societies in America had owned. The Salem Marine Society who pilfered artifacts from around the world through the tunnels attached to this building to their museums still retain a clubhouse on top of the building that stands in that location now. They sold it to Frank Poor who founded Sylvania.

The Hawthorne Hotel is built on a property that once held a building that burned down 6 times taking many lives. In its parking lot once stood the Crowninshield-Bently House which was featured in H.P. Lovecraft’s “Thing on the Doorstep”.  Its other parking lot is holy ground for a Jewish Temple once stood there.

Further down the tunnel, this building connects to the second oldest jail in the country. A truly haunted penitentiary that has been converted over to luxury condos to abuse the wealthy once more. This is also attached to a potter’s field haunted by Giles Corey.  Just beyond that is the location of the haunted Lyceum in which James Russel Lowell read Dante’s Inferno in English for the first time. A building attached to the nefarious George Peabody’s home on the common.