In the early 1990s, my father took on the task of refurbishing the family homestead. It was already more than a hundred years old by then and had sheltered four generations beneath its worn roof.

I remember the horsehair plaster being torn down to make way for sheetrock, the back porch being repaired, a pocket door installed in the bathroom, and a secondhand Jacuzzi tub replacing the old clawfoot bathtub. If he had known how popular the old farmhouse aesthetic would become, he might have kept it all.

I especially remember how proud he was of the new hardwood floor he installed in the living room. In the center, he designed an intricate inlaid compass, accurate down to every direction, with detailed patterns in each corner of the room. It was more than a renovation—it was a family home, a legacy, and he was determined to leave his fingerprint on it.

Old houses like that keep secrets. Sometimes they’re fascinating glimpses into the past—a bottle of whiskey tucked into a wall, a handwritten note, a forgotten keepsake, a time capsule of sorts. My father once told me he discovered an old rifle—maybe a shotgun—hidden inside the walls. Rather than displaying it, he wrapped it back up in oil-soaked rags, found a good hiding place, and sealed it back inside the house.

Some secrets, he believed, were better left where they belonged.

One of the things that held the oldest secrets was a trunk.

For as long as I could remember, it sat deep in the back of a long closet, hidden in the darkness and spoken about in hushed tones. It wasn’t locked. It wasn’t even really hidden. Everyone knew it was there.

Everyone also knew to stay out of it.

Not because anyone would punish you, but because the trunk belonged to Nellie.

Unlike the rest of the house—where her spirit supposedly tolerated your presence—Nellie’s trunk was different. It contained her earthly possessions, and if you disturbed them, you were sure to feel her wrath.

During the summers, there were always people at the house. Most of my father’s friends—and his wife’s friends—had kids, and everyone seemed to end up at the old homestead on weekends. Like I said, everyone knew the stories about Nellie, the haunted house, the trunk, and the warning never to open it.

Well... less a rule, and more of a warning.

One weekend, while the adults were outside relaxing and the kids were left to entertain themselves, one of them decided he wanted to see what was inside the trunk.

Just to be clear, I didn’t witness this myself. I’ve simply heard my father tell the story more times than I can count.

At the time, the trunk sat in the back of the closet in my father’s bedroom.

The kid—we’ll call him Zack—had been gone for a while. It was the ‘90s. Parents didn’t hover over their kids like they do today. Nobody thought much of it at first.

Eventually someone asked where Zack was.

They called for him.

Nothing.

Everyone quieted down and yelled again.

This time they heard something faint.

It wasn’t an answer.

It was screaming.

The adults rushed upstairs, following the muffled cries until they reached my father’s bedroom. The closet door stood open.

It was obvious Zack was inside.

My father stepped into the closet.

There, at the back, sat Nellie’s trunk.

It was almost closed.

Almost.

Two little legs stuck out from beneath the lid, kicking frantically.

Zack was trapped upside down inside Nellie’s trunk.

According to the story, he had climbed inside to rummage through Nellie’s belongings when the lid suddenly slammed shut, trapping him upside down with only his ankles and feet sticking out.

Sometimes the story changes.

Sometimes people say he was pulled into the trunk.

Sometimes they say something held the lid shut.

Maybe I should ask my father again, but after all these years I doubt even he remembers exactly what happened. Realistically, Zack would have had to be awfully small for the story to happen exactly that way.

But stories have a way of growing over time.

And whether the details changed or not, one thing never did:

Nellie didn’t like people going through her things.

She hadn’t liked people invading her space in life, either.

Ozial passed away in 1923, leaving Nellie alone in the homestead with their two sons.

Even though she had poured her life savings into building the house, her name was never placed on the deed. She depended entirely on her sons for her livelihood.

Royce, the oldest, married Avis Mailman in 1926.

Everett married Bertha in 1930.

Both sons brought their wives into the family home, and it probably didn’t take long before Nellie began driving wedges into both marriages.

One story I heard over and over involved dinner.

The stove was coal-fired, so every evening Bertha would build a fire to cook for everyone.

Nellie didn’t appreciate another woman using her kitchen.

She developed a habit of waiting until Bertha stepped away from the stove before quietly pouring water over the fire—a container she had already hidden nearby.

When Bertha returned, the fire would be dead.

Then Nellie would scold her for not having dinner ready on time.

Eventually, Avis caught Nellie in the act.

Rather than confront her, she came up with a plan.

The next day, after Nellie filled her usual container with water, Avis secretly emptied it and replaced the water with kerosene.

When Bertha stepped away from the stove, Nellie grabbed the container and dumped its contents onto the fire.

The flames erupted.

She nearly burned the entire house down.

Whether from embarrassment or fear, Nellie never tried that trick again.

Eventually, Avis had enough.

She saved every dollar she could until she was able to buy the house directly across the street.

But the damage done while living under Nellie’s roof stayed with her.

My aunt always believed Avis cursed the homestead—that no one who lived there afterward would ever truly lead a happy life.

Royce remained in the family home. He raised his son there and later helped raise his grandchildren.

Although he eventually moved on from Avis, the two never officially divorced.

The only time Royce ever tried, he sent a lawyer across the street to serve her with divorce papers.

Years later, the lawyer, toward the end of his life, he confessed to my aunt what happened next.

Avis answered the door.

She looked at the papers.

Then she grabbed the lawyer by the shirt collar and belt, lifted him off the porch, and threw him into the yard.

According to his own recollection, the poor man’s feet never touched a single one of the five porch steps on the way down.

Ozial took his fiddle with him while on these voyages, most likely playing to entertain himself and the crew between whales, when Ozial would take his post as a harpooner. During one fight with a particular angry whale, a line was wrapped around Ozial’s leg. The men managed to grab the line after he was pulled overboard. It was said that both the men and the whale pulled the line so taut that when Ozial was finally pulled back onto the deck, his clothes were still completely dry.

Ozial would later suffer a wound in his right arm from cleaning a still loaded shotgun. His arm was amputated below the elbow, and although the missing limb kept him from going back out to sea, he was able to make a living hunting and shell fishing on the cape. He even continued to play his fiddle, by attaching the bow to his shirt sleeve. He continued to play and call line dances locally.

And although there’s no definitive proof as to what ships he was on, or how many whaling voyages and with what ships he may have served on if he hadn’t lost his arm, the coincidence I can’t get past is this one, that Ozial served aboard the Bark whaler Merlin from eighteen seventy six to eighteen eighty. And sometime after eighteen eighty one, the Merlin was lost at sea.

During his time and possibly on one of these voyages, Ozial found himself in Maine, possibly near the coastal town of Verona, where he met a young schoolteacher named Nellie Bennett. There must have been something special about the thin frame Cape Codder, because Nellie agreed to marry him and move from her coastal home to the place that his family was from. But before doing so, she gave him her life savings for him to build her a house in the small village of Santuit.

She gave her husband to be only two stipulations for the house: that it to be built with new lumber, and because she had been a teacher and disliked the look of it, there would be no wainscoting in the house. Unfortunately for Nellie Bennett, now Nellie Baker, the house was built with lumber repurposed from an earlier Baker home, and there was wainscoting on the interior walls when she arrived as a newlywed. Not only that, but her name did not appear on the deed for the home.

She sunk her life savings into the home that wasn’t built to her standards. This start caused a lifetime of unhappiness for Nellie. She became bitter. She was known in the villages of Santuit and Cotuit as having a mean reputation, and she went out of her way to keep it that way. Even being his senior by roughly five years, Ozile died first, leaving Nellie to be taken care of by their two sons for the last two decades of her life.

Both of their sons married, and both tried to bring their wives into the house built for Nelly. She emotionally tied her sons to her as best she could, and saw their wives as a direct threat to her, to her home, and to her family.

While married, the youngest son Everett developed appendicitis. Nelly didn’t trust doctors and convinced him to stay at home. The resulting infection nearly killed him. He finally got to a doctor, but most of the damage was already done. After that, he was determined to get himself and his wife Bertha out of the house, and during his recovery, built a home across the street for them. Maybe it was the stress, or maybe it was the damage done from the appendicitis.

Whatever it was, Everett was driven mad. Everett suffered from fits of rage. He developed illusions about treasure buried deep in the sand of the family’s cranberry bog property. He’s remembered for always wanting to dig in the hills, saying quote, “there’s barrels of gold buried in the sand.” As a very large man, Everett’s mental breakdown and fits of rage landed him in a state mental hospital, where he stayed for the rest of his life.

He couldn’t be trusted not to hurt the people around him, and when this happened, it took a toll on his wife. She was found trying to walk herself and her youngest child into the nearby pond with the intention of ending both their lives. Nellie was seen as mean hearted, cold, disappointed, and distrusting of the women who entered her house. The women of my family have always felt unwelcome by her spirit and believe that Nellie cursed the home in an attempt to keep them out.

On the contrary, the men in my family tell stories about Nelly, but don’t seem to have any fear of her whatsoever.

She was right, it’s definitely set in the fall. Not sure why I thought the story of the headless horseman was set around Christmas. I was probably thinking of a Christmas Carol.

Rob started writing a script for a movie idea he had, he later went on to directing the movie himself, working with a fantastic production crew and actors in the indie horror genre that are top notch performers.

One book came from a collection of stories I wrote for the podcast episodes, and the next one was inspired by the conspiracies surrounding aliens and what that would mean if experienced firsthand.

Now other podcasters are making movies and asking us to take part.

Where else will we find ourselves as we progress? Follow us to find out.