| Haunted Places and Urban Legends from Massachusetts |
Warning: Some of these places are "No Trespassing" |
- LEICESTER
- FALL RIVER
SPIDER GATES CEMETERY
"I'm just a ghost in this house
I'm shadow upon these walls,
As quietly as a mouse
I haunt these halls."
- Allison Krauss, Ghost in This House
It has been called the eighth gate to hell, where rituals have been held in the middle of the night, dreadful deaths, and, it is said, the devil has made an appearance.
Located in Leicester, Massachusetts, Friends Cemetery, or Spider Gate as it is often called, is the resting place for the Quakers. It is called Spider Gate beacause of the ornate pattern of wrought-iron that adorns the front gate. The most frequent tale about it is that it is the eighth gate to hell, and seven others are hidden in the surrounding area.
If you can find (and have the courage) and enter them in the correct order, you will be sent to the netherworld. Stories of satanic rituals flourish due to a section of ground that is higher than the rest and is in a square shape resembling and "alter." It is said that the devil will come if you recite an incantation and place a piece of alabaster in a forked tree inside the cemetery.
Other non-supernatural calamities have happened there also. A piece of string is what is left in the tree by the entrance, where a boy from the area is said to have hanged himself in the early 1980's. Tales are also told about a small cavernlike outcropping of rocks on the outer edge of the cemetery. As it is told, a teenage girl was murdered, mutilated, and left there.
The trustees that take care of the cemetery say there is no truth in these tales. The raised ground is not an alter, but in reality a foundation from the old Leicester Meeting House. They also deny any deaths happening there either.
There are many other unexplained happenings that go on there, such as a section of land where grass will not grow. Sometimes a strange white ooze comes out of the ground. Roaring sounds can be heard eminating from the surrounding forest. Street gangs from the town use it for their "rites of passage" by taking new pledges and binding them to the trees overnight. If they survive they are allowed into the gang.
Someday the truth may be known, but for now all there is are legends.