IS BUCKTHORNE HALL In OLD BENNINGTON, VERMONT HAUNTED?

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•  Is Buckthorne Hall Haunted?

YES!

ABSOLUTELY!

DEFINITELY!

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Whether you believe or don't believe in the super natural and para normal, if you enter Buckthorne Hall you will be subjected to it.  

If you are of a sensitive mind in nature you will notice how it effects you instantly and depending on your reason for being there the spirits will treat you appropriately.

How many spirits actually haunt Buckthorne Hall is undetermined since the land was haunted long before any colonist landed there in the new world.

The area, the valley, the hills and mountains that make up the Land of the Dead as it is called by the native Indians dates back to before they even existed there.  No Indian tribe hunted or pitched camp in this area having sensed that spirits of the dead dwell there. 

 The only time any Indian ventured into the valley and hills of the dead was to be healed or die.  

The natural springs, sand filtered, in the sanctuary  lands of Buckthorne Hall have healing powers so that was where Indian warriors went to be healed or die but their bodies were never left there.  Other Indian medicine men with spiritual powers protected them and would carry all the bodies away to be buried according to custom in Indian burial grounds else where.

The European and British Colonists ignored this belief but during the Revolutionary War the wounded soldiers were encamped in a hospital on the south meadow, now a lawn,  behind Buckthorne Hall Mansion built in 1901. 

There the soldiers, were, some,healed by the sand springs whilst others died but none buried there.  

The Hicks family came at some point and created a farm around the wooded area containing the springs and large lake like pond later called Jenning's Pond even after the James Colgate Estate bought that land behind the Hicks Farm.

Around the late 1890s Howard Hart Shields, of Troy, New York and Furnace Grove, Woodford, whose father Capt. Hamilton Leroy Shields, bought the farm and iron ore mining site, west of the town of Bennington, that Howard's father, Captain Hamilton LeRoy Shields, bought in the mid 1800s.  

Howard bought the Hicks Farm and built Buckthorne Hall and its Carraige House/barn in 1901 west, of the formal and English gardens designed and created in 1905.

Giving it the name, HILL HOUSE, which was customary for these shingle cottages being named, but when asking Ham Shields he said his mother might have called it Bergamot after a wild pale lavender flower of the Monarda Bee Balm) species.  I felt that it was too close to a perfume essential oil well known so I decided to finally name it Buckthorne Hall 

instead.

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Howard was the first of the Shields family to build a permanent village mansion in what became Old Bennington.  Before this it was known as Bennington Center after the town, down in the flood plains, was created.  The new town was called the swamp where the swamp people lived and worked in the valley of the dead, that often flooded..

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Howard built his mansion for his wife Caroline Lane also from Troy and moved in about 1901.  They first had a daughter Elizabeth and then a son Hamilton called "Ham" the 3rd.

In 1910 Caroline died mysteriously.  Around 1926 Howard married his house keeper, Helen Anderson, that the family never accepted, for being a servant and not being an aristocrat that had great wealth.  They called her"The Rat.  She actually looked like one.

In 1929, the market crash wiped out Howard's fortune and he shot himself in the Williams College Men's Club but only blew off part of his chin.  

He survived but then was more greatly abused mentally by his second wife, Helen who was practicing witchcraft with her new house keeper that she had a lesbian relationship with.  

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Howard in dispair hung himself in what Tzaims later created as his art studio and organ loft.  

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The Attic.

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Helen and her companion lived there after Howard's death, together, practicing witchcraft and became locally known as Witches, concocting poisons and becoming drug addicts.  They belonged to an Old Bennington Witches Coven that included the wife and later daughters of Walter Berry, owner and operator of the Walloomsac Inn also in Old Bennington.

When Helen died mysteriously in 1961 or 1962, she left the property to her companion, but Ham broke the will having the property turned over to his son Arthur.  

Arthur didn't want it and Ham's wife, Margerey French-Shields, wouldn't step inside or go near it.  After a major auction Ham put the property up for sale since no one bid on buying it at the auction claiming it was haunted and cursed since Howard committed suicide in the attic and it was a Witches Coven.  

Ham listed it with 5 acres for $28,000 but it still didn't sell.  

Helen sold two acres and the Carraige House, to pay back taxes in 1945 for $5,000 to a retired Colonel Coe, 

The Shields-Hart-Eddy families wouldn't finance her or accept her into the family, though Helen forced herself into family reunion photos.

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1963 Labor Day Weekend

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Tzaims discovered it and recognized it from a recurring dream he had as a boy whilst living on the prairies south of Chicago, Illinois, West of Lake Michigan.

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"I moved there on !st October 1963 not knowing any history of the property and unaware that I was in any way related to anyone in Bennington. 

I leased the property with a lease/purchase agreement for $200 a month, fixing the price for one year, which was extended for 3 years more, and I bought it, 1 April 1968.

  Mirian Kellogg Fredenthal, an instructot of textile dedign at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art where I was a student of Interior and Architectural design, having been fired before receiving a permanent position, also came with me from Philadelphia since I rescued her and made her the vice president of my New Textile Mill Operation: Tzaims Luksus Incorporated.

Miriam was a brilliant textile engineer and perfect and was the acting personnel manager and textile technition.

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THE HAUNTING

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The first night sleeping in Buckthorne Hall we both experienced hearing people and noises in the house and in the morning found results of polterguists having moved objects and breaking things.

Making friends with Paul Feeley, a painter and instructor at Bennington College, he remarked he wanted to buy HILL HOUSE but his wife Helen wouldn't let him.

 Paul noted it was an important example of turn of the century American Shingle Style Architecture and gave me Vincent Scully's book on the subject.  

He also said that Shirley Jackson was inspired by the dark shingle like castle myteriously built back from the road surrounded by old trees. 

Shirley Jaction wrote 

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE 

based on its reputation.

Doubts are she wrote anything but instead her husband Edgar Stanley Hymen, a famous philosophical educater and writer actually used her name for his ghost writing of fiction based on witchcraft.  He had a vast library of satanic books including an original edition of The Grand Grimoire!

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It is a hill house.

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The 3rd floor of Buckthorne Hall contained the servant's rooms adjoining the attic, accessible then only by a back stair.  It had no electricity, the original painted walls intact, and was much sealed off probably when Howard hung himself in the attic in 1935, the year Gene, my younger brother was born.  

Helen never used it and had no servants.  

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When leaving the attic and heading down the stairs I would get a sudden chill in my spine and my back and feeling very cold and terrorized by something behind me in the dark.  

Being 31 years old I had never been afraid of a dark space before as I was with this one.  Monsters in the dark?  I was terrorized!. 

 I would bolt down the stairs completely frightened and close, slam, the door behind me catching my breath.

This happened for many months but I finally managed to ignore and face what ever energy it was but I never did uncover anything until many decades later, or in 1974, when I cut ceilings and floors to create two story rooms connected with and opening up to the attic where now my antique church organ was moved to my organ loft and art studio, andto display the Spruce wooden beamed, magnificent structure, of Buckthorne Hall, which later I furnished with several gold plated, crystal French Empire chandeliers to resemble my father's lost Moika Palace, the Yusupov palace in St Petersburg, Russia, where he was born and his family was part of the Russian Imperial Family.

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Opening up these spaces allowed the spirits access to the whole house, being locked in the attic before, as well as letting the bats° that dwelled up there, from when the house was built, to fly freely into the entire house  

At first I feared the bats but they never bothered me.  Only their guano upset me when they got in my living space.  

I was never able to keep them out since they could squeeze into tiny spaces I could never find.  I wouldn't kill them so eventually they became pets.

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The Master Bedroom, marked Mrs. Shields Room on the kitchen staff bell system, had a huge blood stain fixed permanently on the floor near where her, most probably Helen's bed might have been but I never asked Ham about it.  I removed the master bath and converted that master bedroom into the Great Hall and slept in Howard's room adjoining it with the shared bath.

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Later I slept in a bedroom in the West wing of the mansion that might have been Ham's bedroom as a child, his north room and his sister Elizabeth next to it south divided by a large linen closet, shared a bathroom, in what I converted into my Oxford Suite. with bedroom, library, breakfast living room, with the Bath.

Gene had the East wing as did Miriam before Gene's arrival in 1966 and Miriam converted an old school house into her own house and hand weaving studio at least one mile away.

It was here in the west wing that I was first attacked in bed by a spirit ghost several times whilst asleep being awakened several nights by invisible forces.  

I finally moved out to another bedroom but my brother Gene chose to sleep there.  Many nights he experienced the same powers and would be thrown out of bed.  

It was dangerous to be thrown out of bed so I felt it best he not sleep there again, so I decided to move back in to determine what this power was.

I would wake up to something holding me down.  I knew I was awake since I saw my whole room.  I couldn't move, struggling and frozen.  I could move my arms partly but something held them above the elbows.  After a while it passed when I stopped struggling, but I was never thrown out of bed.

One night, the last it happened, I didn't struggle but was able to move my arms and embraced this invisable force above me gently.  Wrapping my arms around what ever it was.

A young naked man appeared with a strong breath having drunk Gin.  He appeared to be wrestling with me as a sporting match.  

He said: "I didn't think you could do that!"

 and backed off retreating from my room.  I chased after him asking him to wait, talk, who he was, but he disappeared, just vanished.  

He never returned to me in that room again or in any space in the house, but he did to Gene later if he slept there so Gene never slept there again.  I wasn't able to explain my experience with this spirit since I could hardly believe it was real myself..

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I decided it was Howard!

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Women who visited experienced invisable powers and never returned.  Miriam never unpacked her things during her 3 year stay there in the master bedroom and later in a room next to the attic door she preferred.

She was aware of the presence of something super natural and was anxious to get her own house away but close since she loved both Gene and I like her favorite younger brothers

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Haunted woman from Scotland

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One very wealthy young woman from Scotland became possessed by something and tried to throw herself into the fire in the fire place..  We, including my friend Guy Hamilton of New Orleans, who drove up to visit with her in her luxury RV.  

We had to carry her out to her silver mobile home vehicle to sleep.  She was paralized.  She was unable to enter Buckthorne Hall again by some invisible power even that next morning so she and Guy Hamilton quickly departed.

I can include more on these events over the decades later but now I need to leave this as it is enough for now

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I know my brother's spirit has joined the others especially with Howard's spirit, but why were they previously trapped there? 

 Something they suffered locally and remained to avenge themselves, to solve it so they could 

 be at peace, or fixed by where they died preferring to remain as security and prevent anyone of evil nature to dwell there.?

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Perhaps Caroline  Lane is also there, not being happy living there.  Also maybe Helen, the witch, wanting revenge against the Hart-Shiels-Eddy family for rejecting her, but the female spirits only haunt women, not men.

 I only experienced Howard who after our encounter never visited me again though I wanted him to in order to discuss things only he could know. 

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I now could see and talk to ghosts.

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I learned ghosts were naked and not wearing sheets or clothes by nature, but that should be obvious.  How can spirit ghosts be wearing clothes?

My brother Gene died suddenly and peacefully sitting by the wood stove on 12 December 2013.  It was 9:00 in the morning, I got up and found him in tbe kitchen, 

There was a fire in the woodstove he built.  I asked him if he wanted some hot water to drink as the Tibetan Lamas preferred when visiting, since he claimed he had some pain in his chest, but not as severe as during the night.  

He smiled and said yes.  I turned to put the kettle on and heard a thud behind me.

His body fell against the cool side of the Franklin cast iron fireplace but it didn't burn him.  

I quickly grabbed him, held him tightly in my arms.  He died exactly like my father.  He looked like our father, and he died in my arms so quietly and suddenly.

It tore me apart since he was so gentle and innocent like a Saint from heaven!

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The hospital claimed he died of hardened arteries and heart failure. He was not embalmed or cut and buried in the garden where when deciding where our home cemetary should be, a deer was standing where he is buried.  My grave site is next to his.

The deer didn't move but stared at us then lept away.  Gene said "We will be buried there."

I ordered two coffins hand made of Oak, the wood of our family tradition, from a Trappist Monastery in the mid west.  They held Mass for him and planted an Oak tree in their monastery garden for him. 

Saint Peter's Episcopal church consecrated our home burial site, the minister, a former Trappist Monk,  held a Midnight Mass for Gene.  Only two people came.  Peter Crabtree, a reporter, and an undercover local policeman.  

I commented to the priest that no one came.  He said "On the contrary, he said the church was filled with spirits.  All the candles were lir and a full Mass was performed, organ and small choir, and a spirit burial ritual held burning messages to Gene from all attending.

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The ground was frozen and the grave diggers couldn't dig the grave with two feet of snow.

Gene's body was held in state in the Great Hall of Buckthorne Hall until a grave could be dug.  

He remained without any sign of decay, his colour was as if sleeping for five weeks.  I was happy to learn that an unembalmed body could survive being frozen in Bucthorne Hall Great Room for 5 weeks and appear sleeping.  For me I finally learned something about the dead and proper way to tread the body.  Dead or alive they remain one's beloved family. and deserve kind treatment!

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He was covered by two Royal family flags.  The imperial Russian Flag 

and

  Royal Flag of the Royal Family of Englandʻ.

  Both are our family flags.

Saint James Episcopal Church in Arlington, Vermont held a memorial service for him.

Shea Funeral Home, with Mark Shea, director, arranged the grave digging.  

Cat TV, Bennington Public Television, filmed his funeral and presented it to the community.  Peter Crabtree recorded his funeral on his blog. 

Mark Shea knows my burial plan to bury me next to Gene in our garden but now that I live in Burma I might seek burial here.

I will let Gene's spirit haunt and protect Buckthorne Hall since he loved it so greatly and wanted to be buried in its beautiful garden.  

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Beware of Gene's ghost!  

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He will haunt you where ever you go unless he knows I give you permission to be there, but you must prove to me your true and faithful reason to enter.  You must be pure of heart and mind.

Those entered and who vandalized and looted are cursed for life where ever they go if they don't return  what they stole from Buckthorne Hall!

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They can only be released from this curse when they return what they stole and pay for what they damaged.

They are now totally haunted whether theist or athiest!

I.N.R.I.