Meet Holyoke’s ghosts: Tour of Forestdale Cemetery reveals the tales of prominent 19th century Holyoke figures

In the mist hovering over the 24.5 acres of Forestdale Cemetery, ghosts of Holyoke’s former folk wander through the crisp, musky autumn air. The dead are preoccupied; they seem to ignore the visitors and the constant crunch of decaying leaves or the twisted branches shading their resting place.

If you’re lucky, you just might get to hear their tales.

The Wistariahurst Museum hosts a tour of Forestdale Cemetery each October, voicing the historic stories of ghosts of well-known residents who have not walked the streets of Holyoke since the early 1900s. The hourlong tour leads curious individuals on a short loop, with 16 stops at unique graves of influential Holyoke historical figures.

Volunteer actors dressed in Victorian attire invite guests back to the mid-1800s, where a bad case of summer complaint (we know this today as food poisoning) could send you 6 feet under. Smallpox spread through old cotton rags processed at the paper mills. Before Ashley Reservoir was built in 1897, dysentery outbreaks flooded homes through contaminated water. Female doctors and midwives treated tuberculosis. Those who lived were the minority: In 1793 Holyoke, only 16 of 100 people would make it to 36 years old, with six surviving to 56. 

The Wistariahurst tour sets the scene with the story of Otto Dreikorn, who opened Dreikorn Bakery in 1889 and pioneered automated bread-making. He famously printed “untouched by human hands” on every orange wrapper. 

The brick-and-mortar bakery on Main Street filled South Holyoke with smells of fresh bread and pastries until it closed in the mid-1950s. The Dreikorns fed the masses, selling bread at an affordable price for paper mill workers and distributing their loaves to grocery stores.

“We were very proud of the fact that we used only the freshest ingredients to make white, fortified bread,” Debra Long, who played Dreikorn, said to the tour. “Everybody remembers it from then because these (orange) wrappers were everywhere.”

Scurry away from Dreikorn too quickly and miss some hauntingly beautiful gravestones. One gravestone, with the name “Still,” is chiseled with Celtic symbols for the four apostles above a plethora of Celtic knots. Farther along the path, teacher John Callahan covered every inch of his headstone with words, including the Constitution’s Preamble, to teach young souls long after his demise.

Before finding Callahan, however, Roland T. Oakes, played by Wistariahurst Executive Director Megan Seiler, appears beside the large acorn atop his headstone. Oakes is credited for bringing a 24-hour workday to Holyoke paper mills. The Roland T Co., a former gaslight installation company, installed electric wiring in Germania Mills, Skinner Mills and the American Writing Paper Co. to keep the factories running all day and night.

The mills earned Holyoke the nickname “The Paper City,” a reputation that began with a wealthy and distinguished gentleman, Joseph Clark Parsons, who also appears on the tour to explain his contribution.

A businessman with ties back to the original settlers of Springfield, Parsons established Parsons Paper Mill, one of 26 paper mills operating in Holyoke during 1890. The towering headstone topped by a cross serves as proof of the success of his manufacturing ventures. 

Played by Chris Gauthier, Parsons recounts his doubters who believed any paper mill built along the canal would collapse from the shaking of the Fourdrinier paper-making machine. (Today, the four-story manufacturing building that Parsons built still stretches a quarter-mile along the canal, currently hosting a cannabis farm.)

“Parsons’s paper was of fine quality and built a second mill on Sargent Street. Until the mill shut down in 2004, Parson’s paper was the oldest manufacturer in the nation,” said Gauthier, as Parsons.

Before Parsons can finish, he is interrupted by the voice of a beautiful ghost gossiping about the lonely men who visited her brothel, specifically her ghostly neighbor whose story was rudely cut off. 

Caroline Pratt LaPointe, who went by Carrie, ran her establishment on Lower Westfield Road with three to eight other women employed. Pratt worked away until she was 39, when she found the love of her life, Joseph LaPointe, and moved with him to New Hampshire. When her husband died in 1904, Pratt found her way back to Holyoke and opened up shop again.

“We had some very well-known clientele, but I don’t kiss and tell,” Pratt’s actor Zina Tissi said. “Let’s just say that when the police made raids on my establishment, the sirens rang loud and long so my clients had time to evacuate.”

Despite Pratt LaPointe’s infamy among the living and the dead, the most prominent and important ghosts in Holyoke are the Skinner family, who donated the Wistariahurst home to the town for educational purposes.

Those brave enough to finish the tour will visit the Skinner family twice. Stare too long at the large headstone depicting a woman kneeling before an angel blowing his horn, and the cold touch of Belle Skinner might startle you.

Belle Skinner, played by Rita Dietrich, loves to reminisce about her childhood home, the Wistariahurst house. Her father, William Skinner, moved the house from Williamsburg to Holyoke when a flood wiped out the family’s mill on Mill River. Belle Skinner recounts the story of her father moving the house to Holyoke where the Wistariahurst museum now stands.

“The home up in Williamsburg was still unscathed by the flood, so they very cleverly decided to take the house apart, put it on oxcart and bring it down to Holyoke where it now stands. What a sight that was!”

Skinner reminds her audience of her family’s world-famous silk and satin, the successful business pioneered by the salesmanship of her father and brothers, William Cobbert Skinner and Joseph Allen Skinner. Skinner silk factories thrived up until World War II embargoes hindered Japanese shipments of raw materials for silk.

“We were a very close family, and so it’s appropriate that we are all laid here together. Except for Joseph, of course, he always did things differently,” Dietrich-as-Belle said.

Joseph Allen Skinner, whose ears perked up from hearing his name, ushers visitors to his own cemetery plot at the end of the path. He points out the Bible verse on the top of his tombstone: “because I live, ye shall live also.” 

Joseph Allen Skinner owned the Skinner Silk Manufacturing Co. with brother William Cobbert Skinner after their father died.

“Let’s just say I was the brains, and Will had a knack for making sales happen. At one time, we were one of the largest employers here in Holyoke,” said Ralph Strycharz, playing Joseph Skinner.

His farm in South Hadley, called the Orchards, became Orchards Golf Course, which Joseph built for his daughter Elizabeth “Polly” Skinner, who loved to golf.

A homebody determined to make a life for himself, Joseph was a collector at heart: he acquired properties, trinkets and board positions on local banks and organizations. His estate extended more than 33,000 acres of land on the border of Hadley and South Hadley, which he donated to Massachusetts: It became Skinner State Park.

“I hope many of you will get up there soon,” says the ghost of Joseph Skinner, “they say the fall foliage is very beautiful this time of year.”

For more information on programs at the Wistariahurst Museum, visit wistariahurst.org.

Emilee Klein can be reached at eklein@ gazettenet.com