Mad Anthony’s Ghosts & Multiple Memphre
By Joseph A. Citro
MAD ANTHONY'S GHOSTS
About a year after Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys seized Fort Ticonderoga, Colonel Anthony Wayne was put in command in the fall of 1776.
Col. Wayne liked the assignment because he was tired of campaigning and scouting, and because many of his good friends were stationed there. And he was given comfortable living quarters where many handsome young women were available to help occupy them.
In fact, he liked Fort Ti so much that his ghost decided to stay around long after Anthony died at the age 51 on December 15, 1796. Even today he is said to appear from time to time in the dining room of the commandant's quarters. At night he’ll be seen sitting at a table studying maps. Then at dawn he’ll rise, stretch, belch profoundly, and vanish.
And sometimes his specter is seen relaxing in front of the fireplace, contentedly puffing a pipe and swigging from a pewter mug. Observers say he looks huge and uniformed, just like his portrait, which may still be displayed on the wall nearby.
But as much as he liked New York and Ticonderoga, he was equally fond of Vermont, where he also had many good friends. He even enjoyed a brief flirtation with a beautiful young woman from Montpelier: Penelope Haynes, daughter of a wealthy landowner.
In fact – or maybe in fiction – when he began courting Penelope, his affection was taken away from another young woman named Nancy Coates. Nancy was so despondent over losing Wayne's favor that she allegedly ran into the freezing waters of Lake Champlain and drowned. Since then – so the story goes – Nancy's ghost continues to haunt the shores of the fort.
But back to Anthony Wayne’s conflicted ghost. Apparently, he couldn't decide in which state to spend eternity. Odd as it may seem, Col. Wayne's ghost is sometimes seen here, too. He may be the only New York ghost with a second home in Vermont. But here his ghost appears with two odd companions.
The story begins the year before his assignment at Ticonderoga, when Wayne was leading a scouting party through Vermont toward Canada. Near Lake Memphremagog, one of his guides brought him to a place where bald eagles were nesting.
Wayne wanted a pair. He knew if they were taken early enough, then carefully trained in the art of falconry, they would make excellent hunting companions.
Ever the cautious tactician, Wayne surveyed the high rock ledge where the eagle's nest was built. A fully grown parent circled overhead as if guarding the nest. The other eagles were off somewhere, probably searching for food. From this distance, Wayne could see just two tiny bald heads in the nest.
Clearly the eaglets were older than ideal. But, having come this far, Wayne would not return empty-handed. At his command, a bowman brought down the circling bird with a single arrow.
Before the other eagles could return, Wayne rushed up the rocks to remove the youngsters from their nest. He got more of a fight than he'd expected: One of the little birds lashed out and clawed Wayne's cheek, scaring him for life. The fighting spirit of the scrappy little critter no doubt appealed to the Colonel.
In the months that followed, Wayne raised the birds himself, handling every facet of their falconry training. His name for them, collectively, was "North West Passage."
"This one is North," he'd explain in a show of colonial wit, "and that one is West. Their surname is Passage. I call them that because of the hard time we had finding them."
He kept the birds with him until they died of old age, no doubt forming a three-way bond that would survive the grave. For after Anthony Wayne died in 1796 people started seeing his phantom form in the vicinity of the old log fort, and elsewhere, around Lake Memphremagog.
Just as in life, Wayne appears extraordinarily large, dressed in leather scouting gear, as he walks along the shore. Numerous witnesses have seen him alone, others see him with his arms outstretched, one twin bald eagle sitting on each wrist.
And more than one unbelieving observer has seen this strange ghostly sight become even stranger. Occasionally, when the moon is right and the shadows are long, the spectral Colonel will pause, turn, and face the water. Then, as if spotting something appealing on the far shore, the Colonel’s ghost will decide to cross the lake. He does so at any point simply by walking across the top of the water.
Strange indeed. But then again, perhaps not so strange. Quite possibly ghosts just can’t swim.
~~
As a possible footnote to this story, I should probably add that ghost stories are no way to learn history. Much of the above is unreliable. Penelope Haynes and Nancy Coates are most likely fictional characters invented to romanticize 19th- or early 20th-century legends. And there is no historical evidence of a Revolutionary War-era log fort around Lake Memphremagog. And that "North West Passage" business, well, that’s just nonsense.
But hey, I was never one to let facts get in the way of a good story!
MULTIPLE MEMPHRE
I continue to be interested in Vermont lake monsters. Champ is the superstar, of course, but Lake Memphremagog's resident critter comes in a close second. Memphre, as he, she, or it has been dubbed, might be thought of as Champ’s evil twin; in spite of recent public relations efforts, it has demonstrated certain frightening characteristics.
Apparently, Memphre has an odd feature that is not shared by any other Vermont water monster. It's something that adds a layer of mystery – not to mention considerable confusion – when trying to make an identification. It's something that makes the creature seem more supernatural than natural. (Presuming it exists at all.)
See if you can pick out the pattern in the following reports:
In the mid-1800s, Uriah Jewett, Memphremagog's first monster hunter, frequently saw a beast that became known as "Uriah's Alligator." The name clearly suggests the animal's appearance.
Back in August of 1850, the St. Johnsbury Caledonian reported that David Beebe, while fishing off Magoon Point [in the Canadian portion of the Lake], was "astonished to behold the head and six feet of body of a huge monster, perfectly erect and graceful, apparently motionless." In its somewhat convoluted diction, the newspaper concluded, "That a critter of the snake species does there exist, seems hardly to admit a doubt."
More recently, Dr. Curtis Classen owned a house on the lake. On October 26, 1935, he saw an unfamiliar reptile crawl out of the lake. Dr. Classen said it appeared very much like an alligator. He estimated that it was 18 inches wide and about ten feet long.
Then in the 1940s, Hector Guyon had a cottage on the lake's west shore near Green Point. Every morning for a week, between 9:00 a.m. and midday, he watched a “serpent” lounging in the water about 300 feet from shore. One day he and his brother-in-law rowed out to get a closer look. Mr. Guyon described a gargantuan grass snake, 150 feet long and about a foot thick. It was coiled, its head rising a good three feet above the water.
In 1972, on a clear summer night, Helen Hicks of Newport saw what she described as, "A creature which had… a face somewhat like a horse, with two very red eyes and a body... 75 to 100 feet long…." She said, "The neck appeared to be very long; [and] the back had… an appearance of scales.…"
Later, in June or July of 1976, a local fisherman saw what he described as "a seal with a long neck... It was black and well above the water."
Are you beginning to see the pattern? No? Well, neither am I. There seems to be no pattern. And that's what is especially odd about Memphremagog's Mystery Monster. Unlike Champ, who is consistently described as a "water horse," Memphremagog's beast is seen in wildly different ways.
This curious phenomenon was first noted more than a century ago by a local poet identified as “Increase Bullock” whose verse was reproduced in William Bullock's Beautiful Waters:
"Eyes saw the monster, but none saw alike,
He was half serpent, half horse, some said,
While others formed him like a huge long pike
With thick, bright scales and round, not flattened
head."
In fact, descriptions of the monster are so diverse that at least six distinct categories have been identified: the long-necked seal; the water-horse; the alligator; the "giant fish;" the "living log;" and finally, the snake or serpent.
Some people say the creature exhibits curiosity about its human observers. Others say it attacks them. Some insist that it projects a certain gentleness in its big dark eyes. Contrast that with the demonic red eyes described by Helen Hicks.
So, what are we to believe? Is Lake Memphremagog the most monster-crowded lake in Vermont? Do several varieties of unknown animals – cryptids – live there in apparent harmony? Or is there just one with the supernatural attribute of shape-shifting?
All we know for sure is that Memphre, and his many shapes, seems to pose a mystery within a mystery.
Joseph A. Citro is a Vermont author and folklorist known for collecting New England’s ghost stories, legends, and strange-but-true lore. His most recent book is The Vermont Ghost Experience, available at local bookstores or wherever books are sold. You can also ask your local library to order it for your enjoyment and the enjoyment of other library patrons. In Passing Strange, Citro shares folklore with a curious eye, a storyteller’s warmth, and just enough mystery to make you look twice on the ride home.