Weird Island

34. HAUNTED: Ramtail Mill

Episode Summary

Out in Foster, Rhode Island a ghost is rumored to haunt the place of his death. A factory that once stood along the Ponaganset river. And his presence has been noted so often and for so long in this place that it actually became Rhode Island’s only officially documented Haunted location. To Visit: In the woods off Route 6 and Ramtail Road, Foster, RI WARNING: This episode includes talk of death and suicide. Please take care when listening.

Episode Notes

To Visit: In the woods off Route 6 and Ramtail Road, Foster, RI

WARNING: This episode includes talk of death and suicide. Please take care when listening.

Episode Source Material:

Episode Transcription

Have you ever been out for a walk in the woods in the fall, late in the day as the sky started to darken? And noticed how quickly the mood can change as the sun, which had just been glowing through the red, yellow and orange leaves, dips lower and starts casting long shadows around you. Everything starts to look a little grey and spooky when you’re out in the woods at dusk. And god forbid you’re out there past sunset. The darkness can be all consuming.
This is how it can be out in rural Foster, Rhode Island, where the population is fairly sparse and the land is largely wooded, and hilly and interlaced with streams.
The place is absolutely beautiful. But if you go there at night, it’s almost like shining a flashlight into a black blanket.
It’s out there, in the darkness in Foster, that a ghost is rumored to haunt the place of his death. A factory that once stood along the Ponaganset river. And his presence has been noted so often and for so long in this place that it actually became Rhode Island’s only officially documented Haunted location.
How is something like this made official, you ask? Well, in 1885 this place was actually marked as haunted in the Rhode Island state census, which was taken every 10 years between 1865 and 1935 to supplement the federal census. And while ghost stories have been told since as far back as Roman times, and there are likely thousands of places considered haunted, it is incredibly unusual that a detail like that would be noted in a census. So what is it about this place that makes it stand out?
I’m Sara, and you’re listening to Weird Island. Each week I’ll be telling you about the strangest stories I can dig up, from my tiny little state of Rhode Island. And this week, I’ll be telling you about the legend of Peleg Walker, who is said to haunt the Ramtail Factory in Foster, Rhode Island.
When it comes to telling ghost stories, I’ve admitted before that I’m not the best person to speak on the matter. Though I love a good ghost story, and go on ghost tours in most places I visit, I haven’t had my own paranormal run-ins. So, to take on this story, I had to bring in an expert. One who not only has a long history of encountering the paranormal but tons of specific experience with Ramtail Factory.
It was a very romantic story, one of true horror. It was something I really wanted to see for some reason. I liked the whole story. I started visiting the site. I’ve been there well over 100 times. Well over. And it became something I really dug into and began wanting to know more about the people and the place and the whole history of it.
This is Tom D’Agostino, and he’s a paranormal researcher and writer based right here in Rhode Island.
Well I always had an interest for ghosts and haunts, and we grew up in a haunted house. And when I was in college, I lived in a haunted house for a very short time. And that’s what prompted me to start studying different sciences, everything from psychology to sociology to meteorology you know, astronomy, anything I could find to give any explanation to any of this paranormal that’s going on. And I’ve been doing it now for 39 years.
In the years he’s been studying Ramtail Factory, Tom’s research has gone beyond the paranormal. He’s painstakingly dug up the history of the factory and the people who started it, and reconnected the dots to tell the real facts behind the legends.
And this story, it began in 1790, with a wealthy businessman named William Potter. Potter moved from Warwick to Foster and purchased land along the Ponaganset that included a sawmill and a gristmill. And he ran these two mills for a few years before starting a fulling mill.
Then, in 1813, he purchased an additional 6 acres of land and started building what would become, at the time, Foster’s largest attempt at a water-powered textile mill. He would end up calling it the Foster Woolen Manufacturing Company.
The name Ramtail Mill was actually more of a nickname. And that’s probably because of this process that happened in the mill, where little loose pieces of wool would be clipped from the cloth as it was stretched out and processed, and the little pieces looked like rams tails littered all over the floor.
Now, today, no one really knows what the factory itself looked like, but the complex probably included the mill, some houses and a store. But this wasn’t some huge operation. While the factory was said to be relatively successful, it only employed something like 28 people. But even though the business wasn’t huge, William Potter didn’t go into this venture alone. He started the company with four partners, his son Olney Potter, his brother-in-law Jonathan Ellis, and two son-in-laws, Marvin Round and Peleg Walker.
Peleg Walker is the real protagonist in our story. He married William Potter’s daughter, Mary (also called Polly), in 1810 and entered into the mill partnership in 1813.
So, here’s where I diverge from the factual story to the legends about this place and these people. According to legend, the Potters ran the mill by day while Peleg Walker held the position of night watchman. At the end of each work day, a bell would ring in the factory, which would tell the workers the day was done and they could return home. And after everyone left, Peleg Walker, with candle lantern in hand, would begin his rounds, walking through the factory. He would do this all night long, until the sun began to rise. And when the sun had risen, Peleg Walker would ring the bell again, calling all the workers back to start their day.
This happened day after day. But one day, Peleg and the Potters got into an argument. Maybe he owed the factory money. Or maybe they no longer needed a night watchman. But either way, the argument didn’t end well. A worker was said to have overheard Peleg shouting that if they wanted his keys back, they’d have to take them from the pocket of a dead man.
Not long after that, on the morning of May 19, 1822, the morning bell which would call the workers back to the factory didn’t ring. Slowly, a group of workers assembled at the mill, but the doors were locked. So eventually, someone called for William and Olney Potter. When they arrived, they apparently broke a window to get in. And once inside, they saw a horrible sight. Peleg Walker’s body was hanging from the bell rope, with the keys to the mill tucked safely in his pocket.
Of course, everyone was shocked and upset, but life had to go on. So Peleg was buried in the family plot, and the factory reopened. But even after death, they could not keep Peleg Walker out of the factory.
A few days later, late in the night, after the mill closed and everyone was at home, asleep, the mill bell began to ring. Again, someone went to fetch the Potters, and as soon as Olney Potter put his key in the door and opened it, the ringing stopped. He searched the factory, but no one was inside. So everyone kind of shrugged and went home.
But then it happened again the next night. And Again, there was no one in the mill. Maybe the rope attached to the bell was just blowing in the wind, they thought. So they took the rope off the bell and figured they’d probably solved their problem.
When the bell still rang again on the third night, the Potters took the bell itself out of the factory.
But then other things started happening. People would wake up to hear the whole mill running on its own in the middle of the night. And they even tried to stop the water wheel to halt the operation of the factory and saw that it was running backwards, against the flow of water.
People were freaked out, and they started to leave the area. No one wanted to work in a haunted factory! So the factory declined and eventually shut down, and years later in 1873, it burned down to the foundation. But even though nothing but the stone foundations remain, locals still report seeing the ghost of Peleg Walker, wandering the area.
This story gained so much notoriety that Amos Perry, supervisor of the 1885 RI state census labeled the factory as haunted - the only officially haunted site in the state.
But why did this story persist and gain so much notoriety? Well, I think it’s because it’s built on the foundations of real history. Many elements are true. But, of course, some aren’t.
So, even though the name Peleg Walker seems made up, he was a real person, and a real part-owner of the mill. And actually, while the name Peleg isn’t common today, it was a relatively common name in Foster at the time. When I asked Tom where he started trying to piece this story back together, he said he started at the Town Hall.
The town hall. The deeds. Deeds tell a lot about things. So I started looking up the deeds. And of course I started looking up the probate records, which tells a lot about who they were and what they owned.
And by all accounts, things appeared to be going well for Peleg Walker.
Peleg was spending a lot of money, living high, he actually considered himself a manufacturer and was proud of it.
He had a nice home, nice furnishings and expensive clothes. Not only was he part owner of this mill, but he purchased a home and a store, which he later sold.
He did spend a lot of money and he was doing other things. Like he bought another mill in Burrillville and he owned the land adjacent to the factory, and you had to go through his land to get to the factory.
So it looked like he was doing pretty well, and branching out as a mill owner.
But, the rumors that he had a fight with the other owners of the Ramtail Mill may have been legitimate.
I don’t know exactly what happened or why - if he had a falling out of sorts or if he owed the mill something, but something really went wrong. Because he started selling off other properties.
Maybe his ownership of another mill caused conflict with the Potters. Or maybe he was spending money he didn’t really have, because it appeared he may have owed the other owners of Ramtail about $500. There’s no actual record of Peleg Walker having been a night watchman, but it’s conceivable that he acted as night watchman at times. Or that he was filling the role as a way to cover his debts.
Then, just days before his death, there were three kind-of mysterious deeds drawn up. Transferring his shares of the Ramtail mill to the other owners, and transferring the land he owned.
As I was going through different deeds, of course, Peleg Walker he died in 1822 on May 19th they found him, which could have meant he died on May 18th, but on May 19th they found him… So anyway, on May 17th these two deeds are made out to Olney Potter and William Potter, giving his land and rights in the factory to them.
I found this other, made to William A. Potter, and it was stuffed in the middle of nowhere. William A. Potter giving his brother Olney some of his pieces of land and whatnot and shares that would have been Peleg’s.
It’s weird that all of this happened just before he died, but what’s even weirder is that all of these deeds appear to have been signed after midnight.
They’re signed at like 1 in the morning, which you wouldn’t even do at like 1 in the morning. Or quarter of 1 anyway. At that time you’d be working under candle light, there was no such thing as kerosene lanterns or anything. And he didn’t sign them, someone else signed his name.
All of this brings us to that fateful day, May 19, 1822. When rumors claimed the morning bell failed to ring. But, here’s the thing…
That would be a Sunday. The factory wouldn’t be open, because it was the Sabbath day, so nobody works.
So, no one should have expected the bell to ring. Even so, people went looking in the factory, because no one could find Peleg Walker. When they went inside, rather than finding Peleg hanging from the bell, they found him lying on the steps, with his throat cut, at least, that’s the story according to a diary entry written by one mill worker.
There’s another man who in 1817, Jonathan Bucklin, who also killed himself in the mill. That’s when the Potters took his property. He had a loan with them and put his property up. And what happened was he couldn’t pay it, the loan back, so they auctioned off his property. And they may have gave him a job in the mills and he killed himself, too.
Peleg either slit his throat or hung himself, and Jonathan Bucklin either slit his throat or hung himself. One did one, the other did the other. A diary entry talks about Peleg’s death. They said he slit his throat and this lady saw it. Over time, I guess the two were slowly melded and mixed up a little.
So, you can start to see how the elements of these stories, which admittedly are still a little tough to exactly nail down, may have gotten foggy and melded and changed over time to form the legend.
After his death, William Potter turned the business over to his son William A. Potter, and Jonathan Ellis sold his shares as well. And as time went on only Olney Potter remained of the original group of five shareholders.
There was one last, strange coincidence that Tom stumbled upon that I’m not sure how to explain. He noticed that Olney Potter died suddenly, exactly 9 years to the day after Peleg Walker’s death, with no cause of death mentioned.
Now, to me, a big piece of why this legend seems to have persisted and become so ingrained in local legend is that after Peleg Walker’s death, it did appear like people were rapidly leaving the mill and the town, as if they were responding to the haunting. Foster’s population peeked in 1820 at almost 3,000 people, then began to decline to just over a 1,000 by the time of the 1885 census that noted the mill as haunted.
But this likely had nothing to do with Peleg Walker’s ghost, and more to do with other forces, ones that are stronger than ghosts.
While the mill represented efforts to shift towards manufacturing, it’s likely the economic base of the town was agricultural. And the town’s structure and success were oriented around the turnpike that ran through the area and encouraged its development. Farmers shipped things like pork, apples, dairy, and vegetables to Providence markets. But from the mid-1800s on, the population declined as the soil in the area became depleted and overfarmed and people moved elsewhere to find their fortunes. Then in 1932, a bypass was constructed around the small town, isolating the village from any real traffic. That’s why, today, the area of Foster where the mill was once located seems like such a ghost town. And it makes the leap of the imagination much easier to imagine that this area is abandoned because of the haunting.
Today, very little of the mill remains, just some stone foundations in the woods, but people still frequently visit the site and hope to encounter the ghost of Peleg Walker.
And Tom’s been more than anyone.
One night I went there with a friend of mine, and this is when we first started going there to the factory. And I just wanted to show him it. It was almost like a pick up vigil. And I was standing there, it would be about 40 minutes into when we were just hanging out there. All of a sudden, this glowing light, tall light, like almost a formless human height appears, moving around, like almost at the height of where the floor would have been. And I was just stunned, I was just watching this. And of course there’s trees growing up into there now. There wasn’t many years ago. And I just turned to my friend, and I was like, “Hey, do you see this?” And he was just gone. He was running. He left.
Visitors to the area can go see Peleg Walker’s grave, in the Potter family plot, and it’s marked with some kind of haunting words: “Life how short, eternity how long.” This sounds pretty foreboding. But Tom assured me, it’s actually a relatively common phrase to see on graves, especially when someone dies young. And Peleg was only 35 years old when he died.
Peleg’s death was said to be a suicide. But with the argument with the other owners and those mysterious deeds turning the shares and property over just days before, could it really have been something more sinister?
I think there was something else going on and he had no reason to kill himself. If he died tragically, it might not have been premeditated. But I don’t think he did it to himself. It might have been an argument gone wrong.
Even with all of the details of the real story that have been dug up, it’s impossible to know what really happened. But it does seem like the circumstances of his death are suspicious. And when you look at the real history, it is - as Tom called it - kind of a “romantic” story in a way, because it’s got all the elements you want in a narrative: intrigue and conflict and mystery. And with all of this as the baseline, it becomes clear why this story has been told over and over and shifted over time into the legend it is today.
I’ll leave you with this last story Tom shared of an interesting experience he had while visiting Ramtail. Paranormal investigators often take recordings while visiting haunted sites, and these recordings are called electronic voice phenomena, or EVPs. And Tom recorded an interesting one on a visit to Ramtail.
When I said, “What happened on May 19, 1822?” and we got the answer on the recorder. “Killed.”
Thanks for listening! And a big thank you to Tom D’Agostino for joining me on this week’s episode. Check out his book Rhode Island’s Haunted Ramail Factory, as well as his many other books about New England Hauntings. If you liked this episode, please leave a rating or review, or you can send me a note at Weird Rhode Island at Gmail.com. And if there’s a topic you’d really like to hear about, let me know! See you next week as we dig up more stories about all things weird and wonderful in the little state of Rhode Island. Until next time!