Does anybody know a folklorist or a ghost story buff?  I'm trying to find a ghost story I heard when I was a kid.  It was about a witch who was hanged at a manor in colonial times and cursed the manor and the family with a plague of demons.  I found the story terrifying.  I had it on a cassette.  It was there called "The Black Oak."  I can't find it anywhere.
:-\\

Sorry, don't know that one

Does anybody know a folklorist or a ghost story buff?  I'm trying to find a ghost story I heard when I was a kid.  It was about a witch who was hanged at a manor in colonial times and cursed the manor and the family with a plague of demons.  I found the story terrifying.  I had it on a cassette.  It was there called "The Black Oak."  I can't find it anywhere.
:-\\


Here are a couple of "historical" quotes. I guess when witches get done in, they are likely to curse the person who's doing them in. Wooden shoe? (I couldn't find any Black Oak stories that were like that, and I'm sure you already looked.)

"Witchcraft
Old Town, Maine
When a suspected witch was convicted of a crime and sentenced to be hanged, she fiercely defended the fact that she was innocent. However, no one heeded her declaration, and the punishment was enforced. When at the gallows, the witch cursed the mayor and promised to haunt him to his grave. No paranormal activity was reported by the mayor, but on his grave is a boot print. If the print is removed, it will reappear in no more than a few days. "  (moss?)  ???

This next one sounds a little confusing to me. The only relevant thing is the witch cursing his killer part.

Joshua Ward House
Salem, Massachusetts
Built on the foundation of the former sheriff that was responsible for hanging witches during the infamous Salem witch trials’s house, many reports of hauntings in the house have been reported. The sheriff used an old English law that allowed him to crush a suspected witch with rocks to make him plead guilty or innocent. The man eventually died, but as he did so, he “cursed” the sheriff. The sheriff died 5 years later of unknown causes. Candles have mysteriously been taken out of their holders and melted, trash cans have turned over, it is always cold in the corner of one room, alarms are set off for no reason, one guest has seen an elderly ghost sitting by the fireplace, and a picture has been taken of one of the ghosts"
 
Probably what you heard was a ghost story made up by an imaginative story teller using common themes of scary stories .  Imagine if you were that story teller and you knew that how-many-years-later your story still haunted one of its readers!  Maybe more than one person!!  Maybe there's a discussion forum for people who are still haunted by stories of witches and ghosts!
Kids are so impressionable.  Nowadays some parents take their kids to horror films. My parents never did.

I still have favorite stories, like the one in which the main character, a girl of maybe age 10 had psychic abilities, and one day,when she was sick with a high fever, she "saw" the mother of her best friend falling into an open well. She disappeared, was all the husband knew, and he thought she had run away on a sailing ship leaving him and the baby behind (the "baby" grew up to be the main character's friend.)  So they dug up the old well, and there she was (that is, her bones)! So the husband could now forgive his long lost wife and live sort of happily ever after.  (Her psychic abilities were by no means a strong theme in the books. But I thought it was very cool.)

What I can say is I don't remember the whole story and I didn't understand all the occult references to the Bible and curses in the story.  I've forgotten even more of it after 30-plus years.  I do remember it held a fascination for me and I was scared of the dark for weeks because of it.  With my morbid fascination, I listened to the tape over and over again!  And I never forgot the chilling bass-baritone at the end intoning..."And that is what happened in New Hampshire one-hundred years ago!"  We lived in New Hampshire.

My father brought the tape home from work and gave it to me.  He used to bring home all sorts of stuff the Division of Program discarded.  Dad was director of foreign languages for a large school system then.  A lot of the toys, tapes, films, and instruments had were from the education market.  The tape with "The Black Oak" story on it seemed to be a straight up reading of a story with no attendant academic fare.  The story on the other side of the tape was called "The Dead Hand."  In that one some medical students steal a hand for a cadaver and hide it in Colby's bed clothes for a joke.  The Dead Hand punishes Colby by haunting him with its indelible presence until the medical student goes mad and is sent to a lunatic asylum where "The Dead Hand" haunts him still. 

If I could hear them today I could discern whether they were written in the nineteenth century or the twentieth.  "The Black Oak," if contemporary, was making a feint at being written in the late eighteenth century, as the Salem Witch Trials and other witch executions did occur in New England in the late seventeenth century (1600s).  I doubt it was a legend based on a true case because there were no recorded witch hangings in New Hampshire.  The eastern black oak (Quercus velutina) does range as far north as southern New Hampshire.

You're probably right.  It's just a story spun by a contemporary amateur long-forgotten.  It remains among the scariest stories I've ever heard because of the way it described the humid summer midnight when man of the house watched eerie cat-like demons crawling from a knot in the Black Oak, and I would look at the oak across the street every humid night and imagine the same thing!  AND it didn't help that our house was widely rumored to be haunted with west portion of the house build in 1771, and god knows what kinds of things might have transpired within those walls!

I also had an overactive imagination and the ontological insecurity of the depressive eleven year old I was, so when I found my parents' H.P. Lovecraft anthology, I hungrily read page after terrifying page, and spent many weeks lying catatonic and terrified of the dark or any unknown noise.  I moped nervously around during the days that summer, and had infernal nightmares when I did sleep!  I could have used a little Valium!
:o

I also had an overactive imagination and the ontological insecurity of the depressive eleven year old I was, so when I found my parents' H.P. Lovecraft anthology, I hungrily read page after terrifying page, and spent many weeks lying catatonic and terrified of the dark or any unknown noise.  I moped nervously around during the days that summer, and had infernal nightmares when I did sleep!  I could have used a little Valium!
:o


Same here.

And I never forgot the chilling bass-baritone at the end intoning..."And that is what happened in New Hampshire one-hundred years ago!"  We lived in New Hampshire.

You're probably right.  It's just a story spun by a contemporary amateur long-forgotten.  It remains among the scariest stories I've ever heard because of the way it described the humid summer midnight when man of the house watched eerie cat-like demons crawling from a knot in the Black Oak, and I would look at the oak across the street every humid night and imagine the same thing!  AND it didn't help that our house was widely rumored to be haunted with west portion of the house build in 1771, and god knows what kinds of things might have transpired within those walls!

I also had an overactive imagination and the ontological insecurity of the depressive eleven year old I was, so when I found my parents' H.P. Lovecraft anthology, I hungrily read page after terrifying page, and spent many weeks lying catatonic and terrified of the dark or any unknown noise.  I moped nervously around during the days that summer, and had infernal nightmares when I did sleep!  I could have used a little Valium!
:o



The way you wrote this is so touching, it makes ME feel afraid. Poor kid. Sounds like you felt all alone, too – no one to talk to about it.  :\'(
I wonder if you could find it and read it over again, if it would soothe the memory, when read with more mature eyes. I've not had great luck in searching for obscure things published years and years ago.

The way you wrote this is so touching, it makes ME feel afraid.


Yeah.  I tried and failed the other night, and tried and failed again this afternoon.  The more I hear about this story, the more I wanna hear/read it too!


What I can say is I don't remember the whole story and I didn't understand all the occult references to the Bible and curses in the story.  I've forgotten even more of it after 30-plus years.  I do remember it held a fascination for me and I was scared of the dark for weeks because of it.  With my morbid fascination, I listened to the tape over and over again!  And I never forgot the chilling bass-baritone at the end intoning..."And that is what happened in New Hampshire one-hundred years ago!"  We lived in New Hampshire.

My father brought the tape home from work and gave it to me.  He used to bring home all sorts of stuff the Division of Program discarded.  Dad was director of foreign languages for a large school system then.  A lot of the toys, tapes, films, and instruments had were from the education market.  The tape with "The Black Oak" story on it seemed to be a straight up reading of a story with no attendant academic fare.  The story on the other side of the tape was called "The Dead Hand."  In that one some medical students steal a hand for a cadaver and hide it in Colby's bed clothes for a joke.  The Dead Hand punishes Colby by haunting him with its indelible presence until the medical student goes mad and is sent to a lunatic asylum where "The Dead Hand" haunts him still. 


Have you considered contacting the Ghost Story Society? 

You've got enough detail there that someone will likely recognize it, but the trick is finding a wide enough body of knowledgeable somebodies.  Although they're no longer publishing the All Hallows newsletter in PDF, a glance at their Yahoo group reveals it's still very active.

In the form of your memories of both the A-Side ("The Black Oak") and B-Side ("The Dead Hand") of the cassette, I think you've got an interesting piece of ephemera in the form of your memories of this cassette tape, and I'l bet someone out there can help you find it.  (Do you remember any lines other than the last line about New Hampshire?  Transcribe as much as you can, and let the mighty Goog do the rest, even if it takes a few years.)

Yeah.  I tried and failed the other night, and tried and failed again this afternoon.  The more I hear about this story, the more I wanna hear/read it too!

Have you considered contacting the Ghost Story Society? 

You've got enough detail there that someone will likely recognize it, but the trick is finding a wide enough body of knowledgeable somebodies.  Although they're no longer publishing the All Hallows newsletter in PDF, a glance at their Yahoo group reveals it's still very active.

In the form of your memories of both the A-Side ("The Black Oak") and B-Side ("The Dead Hand") of the cassette, I think you've got an interesting piece of ephemera in the form of your memories of this cassette tape, and I'l bet someone out there can help you find it.  (Do you remember any lines other than the last line about New Hampshire?  Transcribe as much as you can, and let the mighty Goog do the rest, even if it takes a few years.)


That's a good idea.  I've googled it off and on over the years, but I've never conducted an exhaustive search.  There's so much ephemera out there that has yet to resurface.  When you're a kid it's all the same.  There's stuff I thought I'd never see again all over eBay and Youtube.  At the same time, there's stuff I took for granted that has never resurfaced.  But that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish. 

I think that early freak-out with the witch story is what made The Blair Witch Project especially chilling for me.  It brought back that deep intangible horror.  I was raving about it for weeks when it came out.  I couldn't recommend it highly enough. 

I. too, tried to see if i could 'scare' up any info. on this, but was unsuccessful. I did come across an accused witch in New Hampshire, Eunice Cole -called Goody Cole.  Interesting reading , as the lady was often accused and jailed for accusations made against her. No leads though to your story, sorry! I will try again later.

If you want to read about the New Hampshire witch...http://www.hampton.lib.nh.us/hampton/biog/hall.htm
http://www.seacoastnh.com/Famous_People/Link_Free_or_Die/Goody_Cole_Accused_as_NH_Witch/

Yar, I have read about Goody Cole. 

My "Black Oak" story might have been an ad hoc tale concocted from other witch stories.  It could have been crap.  It didn't take much to scare the bejesus out of me when I was ten.  This image from your link would have given me nightmares:
http://seacoastnh.com/images/stories/linkfree/goodytop3.jpg

Or maybe not.  It was hard to tell what was going to set me off...but given my morbid curiosity, something surely would!
:o

Yar, I have read about Goody Cole. 

My "Black Oak" story might have been an ad hoc tale concocted from other witch stories.  It could have been crap.  It didn't take much to scare the bejesus out of me when I was ten.  This image from your link would have given me nightmares:
http://seacoastnh.com/images/stories/linkfree/goodytop3.jpg

Or maybe not.  It was hard to tell what was going to set me off...but given my morbid curiosity, something surely would!
:o


I'm  not quite sure, but, it does look as if she might be keeping an eye out for ya,(make that 2 eyes -PIMPL)