For the past three years, visitors have flocked to Historic Deerfield to experience the village’s haunted history. Along the “Deerfield After Dark Ghost Walks,” attendees talk to actors embodying the spirits of rumored town ghosts. This year, the tours sold out in only two days, a testament to Deerfield’s reputation as a village with a history so alive many late residents still roam.
“Probably every house has a ghost story,” Claire Carlson said in the kitchen of Historic Deerfield’s Old Tavern built in 1760.
Carlson, the interpretive programs manager at Historic Deerfield, collects the ghost stories for these night tours. The historian has gathered eerie tales from the homes along Old Main Street, the rooms of the Deerfield Inn, the dorms of Deerfield Academy and even the upstairs of Old Tavern itself. The ghost characters along the night tours often start with a stray rumor before Carlson digs into past articles and books about the town’s history.
“Pastkeepers over the years have kept these stories alive and passed them around,” Carlson explained.
For the season of spooks and seances, Carlson introduced a few of Deerfield’s friendly and not-so-friendly phantoms.
Violet
Deerfield Academy students have swapped ghost stories for decades. According to a 2017 article from the Deerfield Scroll, around 2011, students in the Pocumtuck girls’ dorm even asked a teacher to cleanse the building of its rumored ghost, Violet.
A past ghost on the “Deerfield After Dark Ghost Walks,” Violet’s name came from rumors of her ghost dying students’ bedsheets purple. Carlson said students also occasionally smelled a mysterious floral perfume. According to the 2017 Deerfield Scroll article, students believed Violet also closed doors and knocked over a few trash cans.
“My crime against the trash caused them to feel the need to ‘cleanse’ the building, as if I’m some kind of disease. Last time I checked I was here first, but what do I know?” reads another Deerfield Scroll article from 2022, where then student Aly Gonzalez channeled Violet’s voice. In response to the girls pulling out a Ouija board, Gonzalez wrote, “Perfect, just what I needed, some nosy kids trying to communicate with the dead.”
The 2017 article also described graduate Zakiya Newman’s odd encounter with Violet. After lifting the window shades in her dorm, Newman discovered a huge handprint at the top of her window. A friend remarked that it must be one of her guy friends, but Newman said this friend had not visited her room in months, and his handprint would have evaporated by then.
“The handprint was at the very top of the window and very clear and distinct, as if someone had repeatedly hit the window with his/her palm to intentionally leave a mark,” Newman told student reporter Julia Angkeow.
Other peculiar Deerfield Academy visitors
Violet is not the only ghost students have sensed or spotted within the school’s halls. The same article mentioned another student studying in the DeNunzio dorm’s dark basement when he heard a strange sound. The boy turned to see the blinds of a window rolling up to the top.
Teachers have also sensed paranormal presences in the dorms. In the late 1960s, Michael Bois, who once taught history at Deerfield Academy, was reading at his desk on the second floor of the John Williams boys’ dorm when he heard distant whispers and opening doors. Despite searching the dorm to find nothing out of the ordinary, Bois told Deerfield Magazine he passed a closed door when a loud crash, “like a tray of silver falling to the floor,” clattered against the walls.
Sleeping on the second floor again a few years later, Bois woke up to the sound of voices chatting outside his bedroom. When he checked the halls again for the speakers, he saw nothing but a normal dorm.
With so many ghost stories, it is no wonder why Deerfield Academy’s course catalog includes an English class titled, “American Ghost Stories.”
Cora and Herschel
“They say we have had a passel of ghosts here at the Deerfield Inn for hundreds of years. At least two of them are pretty active still,” reads the Deerfield Inn’s website. “One is a bit bossy and inquisitive, one is mischievous and gets excited when children are staying.” The blog post continues to describe guests and staff noticing mysterious tissues on the floor, pillow tugs and moved objects.
When asked about ghosts in the inn, Eliza Sagan, a supervisor at the Deerfield Inn and actor in this year’s Ghost Walks, recalled a strange night three years ago. After a late shift at the bar, Sagan tried to turn off the Christmas music with no result. She even turned off the iPad, but the song refused to stop.
“So I think [the ghosts] really like Christmas music,” Sagan said, with some cautious laughter. Floor Supervisor Melanie Abercrombie said she has also experienced something similar many times.
While cleaning a room, Lisa Rose, manager of the inn’s housekeeping department, said guests have complained about feeling as if their bodies were being pulled down into the mattress by something (a ghost), and about hearing the sound of kids crying coming from the walls, but Rose said the ghost stories have quieted since the inn’s 2013 renovation.
According to Carlson, past innkeeper Laurie McDonald told Carlson about sensing the ghost of Cora Carlisle against her shoulder. A former innkeeper, Carlisle sold the inn in 1945, but Carlson said, “She’s always around, hovering, making sure everything is going well at the inn. People have felt her over their shoulder watching them work.”
Guests have also described visits from the ghost of a young boy, who the inn staff named “Herschel.” According to Carlson, guests mentioned Herschel moving objects around the hotel room and knocking books off the table, with one guest even telling a reporter that someone pushed him out of bed the night of the inn’s 1979 fire, saving him from a tragic death.
“The inn is not reputedly haunted, it is haunted, it’s just part of its identity,” Carlson said. Over the last 30 years, at least three paranormal investigations looked into the guests’ complaints, according to Carlson.
With rooms named after Carlisle, Herschel and another rumored ghost named Chester, Abercrombie said visitors pay extra to stay in these rooms despite their identical rates.
Why do we care so much about ghosts?
Countless other ghost stories fill the homes and buildings of Historic Deerfield, with one, nicknamed the “The Woman In White,” lingering in the town common.
To Carlson, the ghost walks allow visitors to step into the past, the same appeal behind the firecracker successes of time travel novels and films.
“I think it’s interesting to think about, if you’re living here today, what would it have been like to live in Deerfield 300 years ago?” Carlson said with wide eyes. “It’s a different way to experience history.”
She added that ghost stories also give grown-ups permission to pretend. “It allows adults to tap into their inner child,” she said. “To me, it’s not scary, it’s tapping into that imagination; everyone has imagination.”