The Haunted Tombstone

Practical minded folks with level heads on their shoulders will tell you that witch’s curses and the like are superstitious nonsense with no basis in reality. While that may very well be true, if one were to pose the question to the good people of Bucksport, Maine, the response probably wouldn’t be to your liking. You see, they know something naysayers don’t, namely that curses are more than just empty threats spewed in the heat of the moment. On rare occasions, these words spoken in anger eventually come to pass.

This story has its beginnings in the mid-1700s when Jonathan Buck was the acting justice of the peace in a quiet town along the coast of Maine. A champion of the law, he had a reputation for coming down hard on anyone he felt had overstepped the boundaries of right and wrong. The events that would forever change a community, however, left some wondering if perhaps he felt that the rules he enforced to the letter only applied to others.

In addition to his role as peacekeeper, Buck owned a sawmill, as well as the town’s general store. Successful in every aspect of life, he was also a husband and father of nine who, by all appearances, was devoted to his family.

The incident that would forever tarnish Buck’s legacy is a shocking example of what happens when someone in authority oversteps their boundaries. In this instance, the circumstances involved a young woman whom Buck himself accused of practicing witchcraft in their God-fearing berg. Bypassing the courts, he ordered that she be burned to death. He justified the ruling by saying that it would be the only way to save her immortal soul.

Believing that he was the arm of the law, his cronies fell in line, tying the accused witch to a stake and setting her alight. As the flames rose, she had cast her eyes upon Buck and uttered, “So long shall my curse be upon thee and my sign upon your tombstone.”

At some point during the gruesome affair, one of the woman’s legs, which had become dislodged from her torso during the fire, had fallen to the ground. Upon seeing this spectacle unfold, the victim’s son, his features and body malformed since birth, had emerged from the crowd and retrieved the charred appendage. Holding it close to his chest, he had hobbled off into the woods. Where he ended up, no one could say. With his beloved mother gone forever, he disappeared and was never seen or heard from again.

The entire episode was quickly forgotten, at least by Buck and his followers. A decorated war hero who led a charmed life, he died on March 18, 1795, at the age of seventy-six. While most of the residents of Bucksport, the town he had founded, mourned his passing, a handful of dissidents who had seen through his righteous exterior celebrated the fact that he was at last going to answer for his sins, which had gone unpunished in this life.

According to those who didn’t worship the ground Buck walked on, the real reason he had bypassed the court system and put the alleged witch to death had nothing to do with black magic. They contended that he had sent her to a fiery grave to prevent her from revealing a secret he had been keeping for years. It was alleged that the two had once been involved in a torrid affair, which had resulted in the birth of the woman’s only son. Though she had initially agreed to suffer in silence, she eventually tired of being the sole parent of a child born with a host of mental and physical maladies. When she threatened to tell Buck’s wife, he knew he had to act fast or risk losing everything.

Even though the woman hadn’t lived to make good on her threat, she had done him one better. Succumbing to the flames with a curse on her lips, she had made certain that her death would tarnish his memory for centuries to come.

In 1852, some sixty years after his passing, Buck’s great-grandchildren had a monument erected in his honor at his final resting place in Bucksport Cemetery. The memorial, which stands at an impressive fifteen feet tall, was, and still is, visible from the road that runs parallel to the gravesite.

Not long after the stone monument was put in place, visitors to the site noticed a strange pattern that appeared on the surface. Those who saw it agreed that it looked very much like the outline of a woman’s leg.

Cemetery caretakers, alerted to the phenomena, scrubbed the stone numerous times with every sort of cleanser imaginable, but the imprint of the leg returned time and again. To add to their woes, workers told of encountering a dark figure lingering near the monument that had given them second thoughts about the nature of the stain. The presence, which they believed to be that of a woman, usually showed up around dusk and always manifested in the vicinity of Buck’s grave. Sensing that she was something other than human, no one had the nerve to ask her to leave when the time came to lock up for the night. Instead of disturbing her vigil, they would turn a blind eye and be on their way. They knew from experience that she would be gone by morning, just as they knew that she would return to her spot by Buck’s monument as twilight approached. Though she had never attempted to harm them in anyway, those who encountered her claimed that they had known instinctively that to confront her would end badly for them.

In 1898, newspapers all over New England got hold of the ‘leg on the tombstone’ story and ran with it. In no time at all, visitors were coming from miles around to get a glimpse of the notorious “witch’s leg,” a practice that continues to this day.

Skeptics have been quick to point out that there were no reported witch burnings in Maine, even during the witch hunts that ran rampant back in the 1600s when the country’s northernmost state was still part of Massachusetts.

On the other side of the equation, steadfast believers in the tale of Jonathan Buck and the woman he put to death for reasons far more personal than he dared to admit, argue that it was possible that this particular execution, which hadn’t been sanctioned by the court, was never recorded and as such, never happened in the eyes of history. If this was indeed the case, the unnamed woman’s execution slipped through the cracks; that is, until the unusual goings-on at Buck’s monument sparked renewed interest in both her story, and that of the man who signed her death warrant.

Resources: onlyinyourstate.com, enchantednewengland.com, catchingmarbles.com

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