Nantucket 'ghost' writer shares a few secrets
BY MARLI GUZZETTA
Although she doesn't like to discuss the matter too much, Nantucket-Chicago writer and New York Times bestselling author Blue Balliett has seen and heard too much not to believe in the paranormal on Nantucket.

The author of "Nantucket Ghosts: 44 True Hauntings," (May 2006, Down East Books), Balliett began collecting Nantucket ghost stories two decades ago for the first of two books that would become "44 True Hauntings." It was a slow process at first; people were skittish.

"It wasn't anything anyone had talked about publicly on the island," Balliett said. "It was something that people had known about for sure, but not anything anyone talked about."

Parker Gray, the electrician who offered the story of the Shimmering Bubble at the 1800 House, was one of the first to speak with her. He met her in the Town Building, and told her his story in a kind of sotto voce manner, she said,

"He was such a completely matter-of-fact guy, sitting there in his work boots," Balliett remembered. "He said, 'This is what happened. This is what I saw. This is what I had to do to stop it.'"

After her first book of hauntings came out, the stories "poured in," said Balliett, who now hears at least one new story every time she comes back to Nantucket for the summer. "I think people liked knowing they had an ear they could trust who wouldn't ridicule people. ... I often wished I could have filmed people as they told me the stories; when you watch their face and their body language when they tell a story like this, you hear so much more about what they're saying. It was evident to me in compiling this story that they were telling me something that was very real to them."

Balliett called the idea of ghost stories in America "delicious."

"We're so new and modern, it's delicious when you find an American community of people who live with their ghosts," she said. "I don't think hauntings are scary. I think there's an extra-human dimension to life. What does it tell you if these things can happen? For me, it's really fascinating."

So what did Balliett learn, if anything, about Nantucket ghosts?

+ "The stories almost always take place in an old building," she said.

+ "There doesn't seem to be any sort of a pattern with who has these experiences, because all kinds of people tell me stories - off-islanders, yearrounders, wealthy people, people without money, children. And it doesn't tend to be any one time of year."

+ "Most people weren't at all frightened when it was happening; it wasn't until later that they were jolted. That was a common thread. ...If they saw somebody walk through a room, or up a flight of

stairs, they'd find themselves standing and

looking and absorbing. And it wasn't until

afterwards that they thought, "'What did I just

see?'"

+ "I heard in a bunch of different ways and

a number of times, for people who had something

unpleasant happening on a regular basis

in the house - a house with lots of banging

doors, for example - that if they talked back to

the house in a firm way, it would tend to subside."

A "haunted home" in Balliett's books, for

example, has a new owner who often woke feeling

someone pressing down on various parts of her body. "I had read a lot of Blue's stories about people talking to their ghosts, so I said out loud, 'I would really appreciate it if you didn't wake me up, and I'm glad you're here, and I hope you're happy with what we've done to the house,'" the owner said. "Ever since then, he's been delightful. He's a nice companion. We're happy to have him."

+ "I took the first ghost book to the oldest paranormal research organization in the U.S. the American Society For Psychical Research, and talked to the guy in charge. He wasn't surprised," Balliett said. "He said Nantucket's terrain is similar to the islands off the coast of Britain that often report this stuff. Many people feel it's logical that it has to do with the amount of moisture. That whatever this perception is, it's an electrical one, because bodies are electrical, and that there is something about Nantucket's climate and the amount of water everywhere that makes it possible for some of these perceptions to occur."

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