For Whom the Ghost Bell Tolls

“Are you ready to go searching for ghosts?” were the first words my friend said when I finally answered the phone. Before I could speak (wanting to answer with a "No"), Michelle continued, “I’ll be there in a half-an-hour. Be ready.” She hung up the phone before I could respond. I glanced at the clock on my nightstand. 7:45 in the morning. I realized the book about ghost towns that I gave her for her 29th birthday was coming back to haunt me.

As we began our adventure, Michelle revealed our destination by handing me a map and the book on haunted locations. She had dog-eared one of the pages in the chapter about sites in Rhode Island. My duty was to find out how to get to the Ramtail Factory. I looked through the passenger window of her purple Honda Accord and let out a heavy sigh. Michelle, and anyone with whom I've traveled, knows I cannot read a map to save my life. I have been lost, really lost, in random locations throughout the United States several times because of my inability to decipher maps. After a brief discussion (which entailed her speaking and me listening), she decided that I would give map reading another try. As we headed north on I-95 toward Rhode Island, I had only two hours to study the map and find our target.

The days of mid-September are not as hot and humid in northern New Jersey as the days of summer, but the trees still stubbornly cling to their jade and emerald coats. About an hour into Connecticut I saw maple, oak and birch trees yielding their branches to the gold and amber shades of autumn. I was now, finally, fully awake. I reached toward the dashboard, turned up the radio, and we opened our windows all of the way. We were doing eighty miles an hour, and the sounds and the sights of the highway, and the music of Jane’s Addiction, danced around us within the vortex of wind that the open sunroof and windows had created. I relaxed into this glorious feeling of freedom. The map that I had been carefully studying also got caught up in this eddy of wind and blew out of my window. Although I feigned sorrow at this loss, I was quite relieved now that I was no longer chained to the duty I had been previously assigned. I didn't care that the map was gone, and "Jane Said" it was alright.

Prior to the map’s disappearance, I was surprisingly able to plot the route we needed to take in order to get to the village of Haversham. From this location, the ghost-hunting book gave vague directions to the actual site, so the wayward map had served its purpose. After another hour on I-95, Michelle steered her car onto Rhode Island State Highway 2 and drove toward Haversham. We had obscure directions on where to head after passing through this town, but we possessed determination and several hours of daylight to accomplish our goal. When we found a graveyard eleven miles past Haversham, we knew from the description in the book that we were on the right track. We parked the car and headed into the thick woods. With any luck we would find our way to the site, and then back to the car, before nightfall. Perhaps we would even encounter the ghost of Peleg Walker.

In 1799, the Potter family of Rhode Island started a wool-processing mill near the now abandoned town of Foster. In 1810, after a falling out between the Potter’s and Peleg Walker, their son-in-law, Mr. Walker hanged himself in the mill. The Ramtail Factory’s bell mysteriously rang at midnight for several days after his death. The workers at the factory removed the rope attached to the bell, but the bell still rang every midnight. According to legend, the factory would occasionally start running in the middle of the night with the water wheel spinning in the opposite direction of the flow of the river. The ghost of Peleg Walker was to blame. Soon after Walker’s death, the Ramtail Factory went out of business. The site gained greater notoriety when the 1885 state census listed the site as being “officially haunted.” Michelle and I found the ruins of the Ramtail Factory about two hours after we began our hike. We both thought we heard a ringing bell soon after we found the remnants of the abandoned mill.

Over dinner that night in Newport, Michelle and I recalled the events of the day. The hike into the woods had been refreshing as it had been a long time since either of us had exercised in this manner. We laughed when we recounted how we had to maneuver ourselves across twenty-five yards of stream, both nearly falling into the water after slipping on the exact same slimy river rock. We spoke with wide eyes as we remembered finding the many stone walls and ruins of a once-thriving wool-processing mill. But we sank into more serious tones when we discussed the possible answers as to what could have been the source of the bell we both swore we had heard.

Even though we were driven by the desire to encounter something other-worldly, neither Michelle nor myself are convinced that what we heard was the sound of Peleg Walker summoning the workers to the last place he drew breath: the Ramtail Factory. Perhaps it was the wind whistling through the trees in such a way that the breeze mirrored the sound of a bell. Maybe the sound we heard was the bell from a boat ringing somewhere out in the not-too-distant port of Newport Harbor. Or maybe the bell was actually our over-active imaginations calling to us after having been stimulated by the fresh air of the Rhode Island countryside and our adventure. Whatever the sound was, I am glad that the bell-ringing ghost of Peleg Walker inhabits the woods deep in the Rhode Island countryside, over three hours away from New Jersey.