Today, we travel through Vermont in search of a family curse, a legendary lake creature, the ghost stories surrounding a terrible railroad disaster, and a group of mineral springs that seemed to resist every attempt to turn them into a business.
Some parts of these stories are supported by historical records. Others belong entirely to folklore. Together, they reveal how real people, places, and tragedies can become legends passed down for generations.
Long before Vermont had its present name or boundaries, Indigenous people lived throughout the region. Archaeological evidence shows that people were living in the Champlain Valley nearly eleven thousand three hundred years ago. Over time, small seasonal camps developed into more permanent communities along the lakes and rivers.
The Western Abenaki were among the Native peoples whose homeland included what is now Vermont. Lake Champlain provided food, transportation, and spiritual meaning, while rivers such as the Winooski and Missisquoi connected communities throughout the region.
In 1609, Samuel de Champlain became the first European known to have set foot in what would become Vermont. Contrary to a frequently repeated claim, there is no reliable evidence that Jacques Cartier visited Vermont in 1535.
The French built Fort Sainte Anne on Isle La Motte in 1666, creating Vermont’s first European settlement. France eventually lost control of the region to Great Britain in 1763. Vermont then declared itself an independent republic in 1777 before joining the United States on March 4, 1791, as the fourteenth state.
That long and complicated history created the perfect setting for stories in which fact and folklore are rarely far apart.
The Curse of the Hayden Family
Our first story takes us to the small town of Albany in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.
In 1801, William Hayden, his wife, Silence, and Silence’s mother, Mercie Dale, settled there. Local history credits William with building one of the town’s first frame houses and establishing a cloth-manufacturing business.
William was ambitious, but ambition did not always translate into financial success. As he expanded his property and businesses, he borrowed money from Mercie. According to the family story, he failed to repay her.
When Mercie became seriously ill, she reportedly began to suspect that her son-in-law was poisoning her. Whether there was any reason for that accusation is unknown. No surviving evidence shows that William tried to harm her.
The curse comes next.
According to the legend, Mercie declared, “The Hayden name shall die in the third generation, and the last to bear the name shall die in poverty.”
For a while, the prediction must have seemed unlikely.
William and Silence’s son, William Hayden Junior, became wealthy by constructing railroads in New Hampshire, Canada, and Michigan. In 1854, he used part of that fortune to build one of the most impressive homes in northern Vermont.
The brick mansion had massive columns, granite details, elaborate woodwork, and a dining room capable of seating thirty people. Although several rooms appeared to have marble fireplaces, they were cleverly disguised heating registers connected to an early central heating system.
The most remarkable feature was on the third floor: a ballroom with a specially designed spring floor. The floor could flex beneath dancing guests without cracking the ceiling below. One can imagine music filling the house while carriages waited outside and the Hayden family entertained its neighbors in grand style.
Then the family’s fortunes began to change.
Illness, contested wills, family arguments, and questionable financial decisions gradually consumed the estate. The barns and many of the mansion’s expensive furnishings disappeared. The house was eventually abandoned, and Armenia “Mamie” Hayden, identified in the National Register nomination as the family’s last surviving Hayden, died in poverty in 1927.
To people who knew Mercie Dale’s warning, the family’s decline looked like proof that her curse had been fulfilled.
The mansion itself survived. In 1953, a remaining barn and part of the house’s service wing were destroyed by fire. Restoration began later in the decade, preserving the main portion of the building.
That documented fire may have helped create later stories about flames mysteriously appearing on the property. There is no good evidence of recurring supernatural fires, although the house has long been described in local folklore as haunted by members of the Hayden family.
Was it truly a curse? History gives us more ordinary explanations: debt, inheritance disputes, illness, and the difficulty of maintaining an enormous estate. Still, the accuracy with which Mercie’s supposed prediction appeared to match the family’s fate ensured that her words would not be forgotten.
From a mansion in Vermont’s northern hills, our next story carries us west to the waters of Lake Champlain.
The Legend of Champ
Lake Champlain is more than one hundred miles long, with deep water, sudden waves, and long stretches where distant objects can be difficult to identify. It is exactly the kind of place where a lake monster might feel at home.
Long before anyone used the name Champ, Abenaki and Haudenosaunee traditions included stories about giant snakes and powerful horned water serpents. These are important cultural traditions in their own right, however, and should not automatically be treated as early eyewitness reports of the modern lake monster.
Samuel de Champlain is often credited with seeing Champ in 1609. That story is almost certainly incorrect.
Champlain did describe a large, heavily scaled fish with a long snout and sharp teeth, but his encounter occurred near the St. Lawrence River. His description probably referred to a gar. The familiar quotation in which he supposedly described a serpent with a horse-shaped head appeared much later and does not come from his original account.
The first well-known printed report of a monster in Lake Champlain appeared in a newspaper in 1819.
A man identified as Captain Crum claimed that he saw an enormous black creature in Bulwagga Bay. He estimated its length at an astonishing one hundred eighty-seven feet. He said it had a head resembling a sea horse, three teeth, a white star on its forehead, a red band around its neck, and eyes the color of peeled onions.
It was an impressive amount of detail for something reportedly seen from about two hundred yards away.
The creature surfaced again in newspaper reports during 1873. A railroad crew claimed to see an enormous serpent with shining silver scales. Clinton County Sheriff Nathan Mooney reported another creature that he estimated was between twenty-five and thirty-five feet long.
The stories attracted the attention of showman P. T. Barnum, who offered fifty thousand dollars for the hide of the great Lake Champlain serpent. No one collected the reward.
Interest in Champ returned in 1977 when Sandra Mansi took a photograph that appeared to show a long neck and rounded body rising from the lake. Investigators found no obvious evidence that the photograph had been altered, but the original negative was lost. The picture therefore could not establish whether the object was an animal, a log, or something else entirely.
The numbers connected with Champ are frequently misquoted. By 1992, researchers had collected approximately one hundred eighty sighting reports involving about six hundred people. That does not mean six hundred sightings occurred in 1992.
Champ also received what is sometimes described as legal protection. The reality is more playful. Port Henry, New York, declared its waters a safe haven for Champ in 1981. Vermont adopted a protective resolution in 1982, followed by similar New York resolutions in 1983. These were symbolic declarations rather than ordinary wildlife laws.
Large fish, swimming animals, floating logs, unusual waves, and atmospheric distortions could explain many reported encounters. None of the photographs or sightings has provided conclusive scientific evidence of an unknown creature.
Yet Champ remains part of the region’s identity. The monster appears on signs, souvenirs, children’s books, statues, and baseball uniforms. Belief is optional. Keeping an eye on the water is simply part of the fun.
Our next story is much darker because the tragedy at its center unquestionably happened.
The West Hartford Railroad Disaster
Shortly after two o’clock on the morning of February 5, 1887, the Montreal Express pulled away from White River Junction.
The train carried approximately one hundred fifteen passengers and crew members. Some were returning home to Canada, while others were traveling to Montreal for its winter carnival. Outside, the temperature had fallen to nearly eighteen degrees below zero.
About ten minutes after leaving the station, the train approached the wooden railroad bridge over the White River near West Hartford.
Contrary to some later retellings, the bridge did not simply sway and throw the train into the river. Evidence from the investigation pointed toward a defective rail near the approach to the bridge, although investigators also debated whether a broken axle contributed to the accident.
Passengers suddenly felt the cars swaying and jolting as wheels left the rails. The rear sleeping car tipped from the bridge, dragging another sleeping car and two passenger coaches with it.
Four cars plunged approximately forty-two feet onto the ice covering the White River. The engine, baggage car, and mail car remained above when a coupling finally broke.
The fall was only the beginning.
The wooden passenger cars were heated with coal stoves and illuminated by oil and kerosene lamps. When the cars shattered, the stoves and lamps overturned. Flames raced through the wreckage and climbed toward the wooden bridge.
Engineer Charles Pierce and other crew members slid down the embankment and began breaking windows. Pierce reportedly helped eight passengers escape. Other survivors and nearby residents joined the rescue despite the darkness, flames, and deadly cold.
The Pingree home at one end of the bridge and the Paine farmhouse at the other became emergency hospitals, refuges, and temporary morgues. Injured passengers were placed in kitchens, bedrooms, parlors, and anywhere else that offered warmth.
Historical accounts disagree slightly about the final toll. The Vermont Historical Society lists thirty-four dead and forty-nine injured. A detailed later reconstruction counted thirty-seven deaths and fifty injuries. The confusion is understandable because the fire destroyed much of the wreckage and made some victims extremely difficult to identify.
The disaster became part of a growing demand for safer railroad cars. Coal stoves and open-flame lamps had transformed an accident into an inferno even though safer heating and lighting technology was already available. In the years that followed, steam heating, electric lighting, stronger bridges, and federal railroad safety standards became increasingly common.
Then came the ghost stories.
People have claimed to smell smoke near the bridge when nothing is burning. Others tell of a phantom conductor inspecting the tracks or a silent locomotive crossing the river. These stories cannot be verified and appear to have developed long after the accident.
There is also no reliable support for the claim that a nearby barn served as the hospital. Contemporary research identifies the two neighboring homes instead.
The ghost stories may not be history, but they keep the memory of the disaster alive. Beneath the supernatural details is the true story of passengers, railroad workers, and local residents facing fire, wreckage, and bitter cold together.
Our final stop takes us deeper into Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, where six mineral springs became connected to another famous curse.
The Brunswick Springs Curse
Brunswick Springs sits near the Connecticut River in the small town of Brunswick. Six mineral springs emerge close together on a wooded property overlooking the river valley.
During the nineteenth century, promoters claimed that the water possessed remarkable medicinal qualities. Visitors traveled by train to nearby North Stratford, New Hampshire, and then crossed the river by carriage to drink the water and stay at the resort.
The curse story most often told today begins in 1748—not 1874, as some versions incorrectly state.
According to the legend, Abenaki people brought a wounded European soldier to the springs and used the water to help him recover. The soldier later returned with plans to bottle and sell the water.
The Abenaki objected to someone profiting from a place they considered sacred. A confrontation supposedly followed in which an Abenaki man and child were killed. The grieving mother then cursed the property, declaring that anyone who attempted to profit from the springs would fail.
That is the legend. No contemporary account confirming the soldier, the deaths, or the curse could be found in the sources reviewed for this article. Even the soldier’s identity and nationality change from one telling to another. It should therefore be treated as later folklore, not as established Abenaki history.
The resort fires, however, have a firmer historical foundation.
The Brunswick Springs House opened during the nineteenth century and burned in 1894. Later developers tried to revive the resort. Local histories record several more hotel fires between 1929 and 1931. At least one was reportedly connected to the combustion of paint fumes, while the causes of others were never clearly settled.
Wooden resort hotels were especially vulnerable to fire during this period, but a succession of burning buildings naturally encouraged people to remember the curse.
Eventually, the hotel ventures ended. A municipal plan describes Brunswick Springs as a one-hundred-acre property whose use is now restricted by a Vermont Land Trust conservation easement and connected to Abenaki stewardship. The springs remain protected from the kind of large commercial development that once surrounded them.
There is no scientific evidence that the water can miraculously heal injuries, and no evidence that supernatural forces destroyed the hotels. What is real is the property, its six springs, its resort history, and the repeated fires that made the curse seem believable.
At its heart, the legend also carries a warning about treating every natural or culturally important place as something to be owned, packaged, and sold.
Remembering Vermont’s Legends
Vermont’s folklore is powerful because it remains attached to real places.
The Hayden mansion still stands as a reminder of a family’s rise and fall. Lake Champlain still produces strange shapes and unexpected waves. Trains still cross the White River near the scene of the 1887 disaster. Water still flows from the mineral springs at Brunswick.
For genealogists, stories like these can be valuable clues—but they should never be mistaken for proof. A family curse may lead to probate files, lawsuits, and property records. A ghost story may preserve the memory of a forgotten disaster. A strange local legend may point toward old newspaper articles or traditions that were never written down.
Preserve the story, but investigate it. Ask who first told it, when it was first recorded, and which details changed along the way. Very often, the truth behind a legend is just as fascinating as the legend itself.
