In Episode 461, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger travel to Georges Island in Boston Harbor to explore Fort Warren and search for the ghost of the Lady in Black — a Civil War-era shade related to the story of a daring prisoner rescue on the island. People died on the island, and there are reports of hauntings, but do we have the right ghost?
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CREDITS:
Produced and hosted by: Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger
Edited by: Ray Auger
Guest Interview: Sophie Belanger
Theme Music by: John Judd
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
*A note on the text: Please forgive punctuation, spelling, and grammar mistakes. Like us, the transcripts ain’t perfect.
[OCEAN SOUNDS]
[LOW SHIP MOTOR]
JEFF: Our destination is just ahead. It’s that island right there.
RAY: You can’t miss those docks or the visitor’s center, can you?
JEFF: Nope.
RAY: We’re coming up to Georges Island in Boston harbor. I admit I’ve never actually been to the island before, but I’ve seen it out the window of airplanes when I fly out of Logan airport.
JEFF: You do get a good look at it from the sky quite often from the airport. It’s just seven miles from the heart of downtown Boston.
RAY: I know it was a Civil War-era fort once.
JEFF: Yes, that’s true. At 39 acres in size, the island sits in a great spot to defend the harbor. But this fort has other unique connections too.
RAY: Like what?
JEFF: There’s the military connection, of course. And… if we’re to believe the many stories coming from the island… Georges Island is home to a ghostly figure called… The Lady in Black.
[INTRO]
JEFF: Hello, I’m Jeff Belanger.
RAY: And I’m Ray Auger. Welcome to Episode 462 of the New England Legends podcast. We’re on a mission to chronicle every wicked strange legend in New England one story at a time. So many of our story leads come from you. Like this one! Thanks to Andrew Senesi for sending it in. If you’ve got a local story of ghosts, monsters, aliens, roadside oddities, or the just plain weird, please send it to us through our website.
JEFF: And… if you go to our website right now you’ll see a link to buy my brand-new 2027 Haunted New England calendar! For 13 years in a row now, photographer Frank Grace and I have teamed up to produce this gorgeous calendar. We only print a few hundred and once they’re gone, they’re gone. So grab yours soon.
RAY: I have mine!
JEFF: This calendar is written, photographed, and printed right here in New England. No AI, all original work by people you know. We’ll post a link to it in the episode description as well.
RAY: We’ll explore the haunting of Georges Island right after this word from our sponsor.
SPONSOR
RAY: So Georges Island is a beautiful island today. It’s well-cared for, many tourists come through each year.
JEFF: It’s a great historic site.
RAY: But it’s also haunted?
JEFF: It is… and with good reason. But we’ll get to that.
RAY: Got it. I can’t wait to see it! Here’s a little more background on this place. The island was first used by colonists in the 1620s. So it goes all the way back to the earliest days of Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was mostly used for farming back then. The government took over the island in 1825 because of how strategic the position is for coastal defense. In 1847, the construction of Fort Warren was completed, but the defenses built here were pretty much obsolete by the time the first soldiers moved in.
JEFF: Though Fort Warren may have been obsolete defensively, it still had its use. The military used the fort for training, for harbor patrols, as an offshore prison, and during the Civil War, it served mostly as a prison for captured Confederates. It’s during the Civil War that our story begins. So let’s head back to the year 1863, and look for this ghost.
[TRANSITION]
RAY: It’s September of 1863 here on Georges Island just off the coast of Boston. Abraham Lincoln is president of the United States—though that depends on who you ask. For example, if you ask someone up north, they’ll tell you it’s Lincoln. Ask someone in the south, and they’ll say the president is Jefferson Davis. The biggest news these days is the brutal Civil War raging in this country. Now in its second year, the war is taking a heavy toll.
JEFF: This past July, Confederate forces pushed into Pennsylvania where a huge and costly battle took place in Gettysburg. Concern is growing that the Confederacy is going to try and push north again.
RAY: To be fair, it’s a long way from Boston to Gettysburg. Still, the soldiers stationed here at Fort Warren are on alert. You never know when the south may send some ships up north to attack and try and pull resources away from the front lines.
JEFF: Plus, Fort Warren has started taking in Confederate prisoners of war. So everyone has to be on their toes.
RAY: One of those Confederate prisoners is Samuel Lanier. Just before Lanier went off to fight for the south, he married is sweetheart, Melanie. The poor woman is worried sick about her new husband. Fortunately, the officers at Fort Warren allow their prisoners to send letters back home to let their loved ones know they’re okay.
JEFF: The prisoners here are treated pretty well. First, it’s the right thing to do, but second, they know these prisoners have value. If there’s ever a prisoner swap with the Confederacy, these men may help get some Union prisoners back home.
RAY: When Melanie receives word that her husband is safe, she’s relieved. But knowing he’s in prison, possibly for the duration of the war or even longer, has her worried sick… and frankly… pretty angry. The two continue to write letters back and forth.
JEFF: In some of his letters, Samuel outlines the layout of Fort Warren, and where he’s being held within the fort. Melanie decides she’s going to help.
RAY: Melanie spends days traveling north until she arrives in the town of Hull, right on Boston Harbor, and only one mile by water from Georges Island. Melanie finds some southern sympathizers in Hull, and together they make a plan.
[SCISSORS CUTTING]
[WRITING ON PAPER]
RAY: The family cuts some men clothes to fit Melanie. They draw out a map of Fort Warren, and finally….
[PISTOL COCKS]
RAY: They arm her with a pistol.
[OCEAN WAVES-NO BIRDS]
[ROWING IN BOAT]
JEFF: It’s midnight. Melanie—disguised as a man—rows a small boat the mile across the water to Georges Island. Careful to make her approach, she manages to slip ashore unseen. She knows the guards are watching for large ships or many boats. She’s hoping her small rowboat will go unnoticed.
[ROWING STOPS]
[WHISTLING A TUNE]
JEFF: Melanie is whistling one of her favorite tunes as she walks the permitter of the fort.
[WHISTLING A TUNE]
JEFF: When she hears a man whistle the same song back from inside the wall, Melanie knew she found her Samuel. Melanie climbs up the shortest part of the fort’s wall, and pulls herself over the side. Following where the sound came from, she finds her Samuel who is surprised to see her dressed as a man. But there’s little time to lose. If they’re both going to escape, they need to do it now. Melanie finds a key…
[CELL DOOR OPENS]
JEFF: And unlocks her husband’s cell. Just as the two run for the wall…
SOLDIER: HALT!
JEFF: The pair are caught by a guard.
[RUNNING]
RAY: Colonel Dimick who is in charge of Fort Warren, races to the scene. That’s when Melanie raises her pistol…
[PISTOL SHOT]
RAY: And fires toward Colonel Dimick.
[THUMP]
JEFF: With the pistol’s report still echoing… and Colonel Dimick still standing, Melanie looks beside her in horror. The gun had misfired, and now her husband lay dead on the ground of Fort Warren.
RAY: Melanie… though at this point, the Union soldiers believe her to be a man… is quickly arrested and locked in a cell.
[CELL DOOR SLAMS]
RAY: It doesn’t take long for the soldiers to figure out their new prisoner is a woman. They already know she’s a southern spy, and there’s only one way to deal with captured spies. Melanie is sentenced to hang.
JEFF: Melanie is heartbroken over the loss of her husband. She has no will to live anymore. But… she requests that if she must die, she should have her dignity and die in a dress, not these men’s clothes. The officers agree to her request. The only problem is there aren’t many women on the island, and none who care to part with a dress for another woman to die in. She they improvise with some black robes.
[SLOW WALKING UP WOODEN STAIRS]
JEFF: Melanie Lanier is marched up to the gallows…
[TRAP DOOR]
[THUD]
JEFF: And hanged.
RAY: No one in Fort Warren is happy about what’s transpired. No one wanted to hang a woman. The site of it haunts them.
JEFF: It truly does haunt them. Pretty soon, soldiers stationed here begin to notice a dark apparition gliding through the grounds and in the barracks. Those who remember the hanging believe this is the ghost of Melanie… the Lady in Black.
[WOMAN SOBBING]
RAY: Sometimes soldiers will hear disembodied voices, or the sounds of a woman crying until they get closer and the sound goes silent. No matter what, Fort Warren is haunted. And that brings us back to today.
[TRANSITION]
JEFF: There’s a few things we need to share.
RAY: Okay.
JEFF: First, there’s no record of a hanging at Fort Warren. And a woman being hanged in the 1860s, would have been big news. In fact, the last woman to hang in Massachusetts was Rachel Wall who hanged in Boston Common in 1789 for piracy. BUT…
RAY: Buuut?
JEFF: But there’s more to this. And I do believe Fort Warren is haunted, even if the Lady in Black story doesn’t hold up historically.
RAY: Okay, why is it haunted?
JEFF: We do know that 13 Confederate soldiers died at Fort Warren while they were imprisoned here. In 1963 a memorial to the 13 was installed here by the Boston chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. That memorial was on the island until June of 2017, when then Governor Charlie Baker ordered the memorial removed.
RAY: So we know people have died out on this island. And they died during war time.
JEFF: They did.
RAY: So maybe it’s the right ghost but the wrong name?
JEFF: Maybe. So it turns out I know someone personally who may have had a ghostly experience here in Fort Warren on Georges Island.
RAY: Very cool. Who?
JEFF: My daughter, Sophie. She went out here for a school trip in second grade. I called her to get the story.
SOPHIE: I remember being in one of the barracks rooms with a whole group of us and we were like 7, and off exploring by ourselves, which already sounds like a bad idea. And I remember being over by one of the fireplaces. And then it got kind of really dark, and I remember just being terrified. And I looked behind me and all my friends were just running up the stairs, leaving me in the room. So, I just turned around and I booked it upstairs too.
JEFF: Did you see anything?
SOPHIE: I saw like a shadow cast of the fireplace. I think in my head, I feel like I saw more things, but I really don’t remember because I was in second grade. But I definitely remember that there was something like dark over there and I was really scared.
RAY: Wow… seven year old Sophie Belanger the ghost hunter.
JEFF: She’s a chip off the old block. We tried to remember if I had told her about the ghost there before she went or after she got home. Either way, I remember when she got home she was pretty worked up over what she saw that day.
RAY: And today the legend continues on Georges Island.
JEFF: It does, even if the backstory doesn’t hold up, the haunting endures. We often have to give some kind of label to anything we can’t explain or don’t understand. Here on Georges Island, that label is the ghost of the Lady in Black.
[OUTTRO]
RAY: And that takes us to After the Legend where we take a deeper dive into this week’s story and sometimes veer off course.
JEFF: After the Legend is brought to you by our Patreon Patrons! Thank you patrons for financially supporting us in everything we do. Our patrons help with our hosting, production, travel, marketing, and all of the other costs it takes to bring you this podcast. All we ask is $3 bucks per month, though some give a little more if they can. And for that you get early ad-free access to new episodes, plus bonus episodes and content that no one else gets to hear. The more patrons we have, the more we can do. To sign up click over to patreon.com/newenglandlegends.
To see some pictures related to this week’s story, click on the link in our episode description, or go to our website and click on Episode 462.
Before we part ways until next time, please make sure you’re subscribed to our podcast because it’s free and we don’t want you to miss a minute of the weirdness. If you’d post a review for us and tell some of your friends about us, we’ll love you forever. This is all grass roots, friends. You are how we grow. So thank you for listening to us each week. We’re grateful to spend some time with you.
We’d like to thank my daughter, Sophie Belanger for granting us an exclusive interview. Thank you to our patreon patrons, thanks to our sponsors, and our theme music is by John Judd.
Until next time remember… the bizarre is closer than you think.