As summer fades, my thoughts turn to autumn. A time of the year when we celebrate the good harvest, prepare ourselves for the approaching winter and ponder the approaching Halloween season. My late fall memories growing up in Concord include some wonderful experiences.
There were times when we would sit around a campfire on a cold night and just enjoy companionship. We would take turns telling hauntingly good tales that were told and retold each autumn. The scarier the better and if the story included a ghost or two, we paid even closer attention to the storyteller. Camping, scary stories, cold autumn nights
by that campfire. Yes, I am fortune to have some wonderful memories from many decades ago.
Halloween was a night full of trick or treating and a visit to the Concord Boys Club down on
Highland Street where the club provided us with a barrel of apple cider and plenty of donuts. My father was a gifted storyteller and always shared a story or two, especially around this time of year. He grew up in Concord and his father and grandfather before did too.
One of the stories my father shared with me related to Rattlesnake Hill and the granite quarries. His father, his grandfather and his great grandfather worked as quarrymen and spent countless hours up on the hill behind Blossom Hill Cemetery. There was a time when stories about the hill were told and retold for generations to the children growing up in Concord over the years. You see, our ancestors thought Rattlesnake Hill was haunted.
There once was a time when the stories of the hill were welcomed and found to be both
frightening and entertaining. The old timers would spin their yarns about the ghosts and witches that once frequented Rattlesnake Hill long before the men arrived to quarry the rich deposit of fine granite. It was a time when Concord, then simply known as Rumford, was still under the control of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and ultimately subjected to the rule of the crown. The majority of the people walking our streets still spoke with a heavy English accent and the men gathered in the taverns with their own form of spirits each cold evening.
Rattlesnake Hill was revered by the first settlers and known to be a special place for the Native Americans that inhabited our town many years before we did. The grounds were thought to be special and somewhat magical, a place where it was an honor to be entombed in the rocky soil that provided safe journey to the afterlife. The Native Americans believed this to be true and the first settlers in our little town felt Rattlesnake Hill was indeed a special place that they honored in their own way.
As the years passed and the stories of spirits walking the hills became less frequent, there would be occasional encounters that simply could not be explained. The 19th century brought the development of many granite quarries on Rattlesnake Hill, thousands of men spent long hours of labor extracting the precious granite from the rocky soil — the soil that the Native Americans considered to be sacred. The granite men arrived and worked each day, some would speak of the hill as a special place, others simply were not interested.
My grandfather once told my father about odd occurrences, things that could not be
explained, a chill or the feeling that you were being watched from the surrounding forest. Then there were the voices, faint and somewhat distant. My grandfather heard the voices as my own father did. To this very day you can stand deep in the forest on Rattlesnake Hill in isolation and listen. If you listen carefully and concentrate for just a few minutes you might hear the distant murmurs yourself.
As the 19th century gave way to the 20th century, the stories of the haunting of
Rattlesnake Hill were still being told, especially in the late fall as Halloween approached. The vibrant foliage, the chill in the fall air and the bright moon were known to draw children late at night to the hill to listen for the past. As the 1900s progressed and the granite industry deserted most of Rattlesnake Hill the forest returned, the isolation was once again evident.
To this very day I still walk Rattlesnake Hill. I walk with my thoughts as I walk with my
ancestors too. As the fall arrives and the winds whistle about the deserted quarries, the fallen leaves rustle about and the forest surrounds me. Yes, like my ancestors before me, I do sometimes experience the feeling of being observed from the forest, a chill sometimes. If the wind is just right you might be able to still hear the voices too, the voices of the Native Americans that are interred on this sacred hill. A very special place indeed.