JACOB'S NECK
Location: Jacob's Neck is a tiny resort town located on Interstate 6 facing Cape Cody Bay midway between Eastham and Wellfleet on Massachusetts' Cape Cod.
Description of Place: A decrepit two-story beach house on a bluff overlooking the bay, the New England-style summer residence has been deserted since 1978. The former residence includes bay windows, a rooftop cupola, a pitched roof with garret windows and a side wrap-around porch. Although empty, trespassers are not allowed without permission.
Ghostly Manifestations: A man's angry voice echoes into the night. Lights in the deserted structure light up in the tower room, but the location is always locked up tight when the police arrive to investigate. Beach-combers sometimes watch a figure standing out on the widow's perch watching them. The idly curious wander the bluff peeking inside for sounds of life, but are pelted away by stones falling from the roof. It's enough activity for a potential horror movie, but the phenomenon is real to those who experience it.
The location has long had a reputation for being haunted. Police are constantly responding to the burglar alarm there, possibly set off by the wandering of its one unearthly resident. One local officer, Ron Beck, who has several times answered the alarm in the middle of the night, wrote in the town archives the following evaluation of his experiences. "It is highly recommended that any officer entering this house act according to his or her feelings. In other words, if you feel like running, please do so. Screaming is also allowed. It is requested, however, that upon exiting the house that you at least slow down enough to open the door and not go through it. Locking the door behind you is preferred, but oft times not necessary since at times it locks and unlocks itself."
Reese Wagner is a former cop. She is an athletic, very attractive woman of thirty-four who served as an officer in Jacob's Neck for twelve years, until she quit to raise her family. She served prior under Police Chief Tom Rankin and later under Beck. Rankin even lived for a few months at the beach house. She gives the following account of a night in the old edifice: "I didn't tell anyone what happened to me at the beach house for a long, long time. I kept it pretty much to myself but for my husband and Rankin.
"One night in 1989, I got a call to go to the house about the alarm. I pulled up close to the house, got out of my cruiser and went to the door which seemed locked at the time, but the house was dark and I didn't have my flashlight. So, I turned round to go back to my cruiser for my flashlight, but when I turned round all the lights had come on upstairs, and the front door was now standing open. I'm figuring, maybe I tugged the door loose, but I felt there was an intruder in the house.
"I entered the house gun drawn and started to walk around. I first went through the kitchen, and as I went through there, the light went on which was unusual. I'm thinking, maybe its on a timer, or there's a short, but it went off on its own. I continued onward through the living room, and over along the patio doors, there were a series of curtains for blocking the sunlight from coming in, but they're blowing and swaying as if the doors were open, but they weren't, they were sealed tight. I looked for an open window to explain the breeze, but there wasn't one. I recall being so scared by that point that I couldn't go any further, even with another gun by my side because I knew I'd shot the first thing I saw."
Reese recalls she thought she heard a figure upstairs, but unlike most people by this point, she continued pressing further. She didn't find another person, at least anyone of the corporeal sense, but she could hear continuing activity through the floor below her - a creaking noise, like a rocking chair. Subsequently, her back-up, Officer Taye Jackman, had arrived and had followed her same path through the house. By his testimony, he looked through the kitchen to the rocking chair in the living room and watched it rocking back and forth, empty of an occupant.
"There was nothing really dramatic." Reese adds. "It was just enough the scare the pants off you, and maybe speed up your heart rate."
Police Chief Tom Rankin had lived in the house between August 1976 to January 1977. Now retired, he and his wife of almost forty years live in a small cottage not far from their daughter who still lives in the idyllic community. The old beach house turned out to be expensive to keep. Fixtures were always failing, pipes were coming loose, the staircase creaked and groaned so badly it was possibly close to collapsing. He allowed close friends to rent the house, warning them of the repairs and possible ghost. Repairs they could handle; the ghost they did not worry about, but each of them moved out a few weeks after arriving, each of them leaving a trace of belongings behind.
One of whom was Brendan Cage, a local artist who saw the house as a love cottage for him and his potential bride, Kellie Clarkson, the daughter of an elected official. "My future father-in-law had offered to pay would it would take to fix up the house for habitation." Cage reflects. "With my future-in-laws in tow, I arrived to look over the house and discuss the repairs when Kellie's mom just happened to look up and said she had seen a figure staring out from the top floor. We all looked and thought it was just a trick of light and show. I mean, the house was fully furnished with all this old furniture and drapery. A few minutes later, we were walking through the house, and we didn't see anyone."
"The first weekend I spent in the beach house, I was sleeping in the attic room. There's a bathroom there with one of those pull-strings. I'm laying there, and I hear it sort of dancing, bobbing about in the air, and the light went out. I got up, and turned it back on. It went off again, and when I turned it back on, this time I held on to the cord and the hatch to the room opened and closed as if someone had gone out... it was quite exciting!"
"When my fiancée moved in, she chose the first bedroom at the top of the stairs for herself, and I was sleeping in the attic which I had converted into a studio office. No sooner do I turn off the light, and I hear someone enter the room. I turn on the light, and the footsteps stop. I turn off the light, and they start up again. It just kept going - lights on, no steps - lights off, footsteps - It was like someone was in the room walking around the bed. I tried to deal with it, but Kellie came up and asked what was the matter. She had heard them and thought I was struggling with something.
"The light was an on-going thing. It happened to guests we had who tried sleeping up there, but they didn't appreciate it like I did. They'd get upset. It was like living with someone and that was their room. Only... it didn't stop there. After the wedding, Kellie and I would hear someone coming down from the room, and she'd think someone had climbed in through the window, which is a difficult but not impossible thing to do. I'd go up and down the staircase following the footsteps, but I'd never find another person.
"My brother heard about the ghosts and wanted to experience the footsteps for himself, but he never exactly made it." Cage continues. "We were coming in one day, and I was telling him about some of this stuff at the foot of the stairs, and as we look up, we both see this figure exit one bedroom and go up the stairs to the attic. He looked as human as anyone else. It was an older man in a fairly modern suit with what I think they called the old muttonchops whiskers, but he didn't pay any attention to us whatsoever. Needless to say, that was all my brother ever had to do with the house."
As anyone remotely familiar to the paranormal is, dogs are sensitive to ghosts, and their behavior speak volumes on the affairs of the supernatural. "Kellie meanwhile had this big German Shepard." Brendan adds. "It had been her pet for years since they were kids. She raised it from a pup, and as big and scary as it was, it was so totally homeless. When she brought the dog home, it would not enter the house. It would stay at the front stoop, look up the side of the beach house and whine. Not knowing what was going on, her dad lifted this crazy dog up, carries it one, two feet inside, and it breaks loose and jumps back into the car." Brendan starts laughing. "Now, all I'm wondering is, who told him about the ghost!"
Since the house has been empty, the beach house has been used for string police files and equipment. They're returned to find the door bolted from the inside, an open umbrella blocking the staircase and the light in the attic room burning brightly. The light has been see burning even when the power is shut off.
History: No one knows exactly when the beach house was built, but it is known to be at least two hundred years old. It was originally the summer residence of the Starwin family from Boston, Massachusetts, but they also rented it out to various families between 1963 to 1972. In 1976, it was donated to the town as a home for the new police chief with the promise that the town pay to cover the expenses in restoring it. Partial restoration was started, but never completed. It was empty again by 1980. In 1998, a couple charmed by the house wanted to buy it, but at the last second, they refused and started looking elsewhere.
Identity of Ghosts: According to legend, the beach house was built by Captain Jeremiah Benjamin "Buck" Starwin (later known as Captain Jeremiah Starbuck) around 1790 as a dowry to encourage a future wife, but he died in a storm at sea before he could attract a future wife, and the edifice he created passed on to his relatives. Legend claims he does not want another person living in the house but for him and a potential bride.
Investigations: There have been no formal investigations done of the house, but several individuals claiming psychic potential have claimed to have felt a stern strong male presence on the premises. One thought the foundation should be excavated for human remains. Another described Captain Starbuck to precise details, even to the point of "recalling" his family name.
Source/Comments: Jeremiah of Jacob's Neck (Episode: "Pilot"), Phenomenon and history loosely based on Cap'n's Grey's in Barnstable, Massachusetts, the Coffin House in Nantucket, Massachusetts, Dillingham House in Sandwich, Massachusetts, Yaquina Bay Lighthouse in Newport, Oregon, Hecata Head Lighthouse in Florence, Oregon and Fairport Harbor Lighthouse in Fairport, Ohio.
Jeremiah of Jacob's Neck was a failed thirty minute pilot for a comedy which starred Keenan Wynn as the ghost of Jeremiah Starbuck. It aired August 13, 1976 on CBS. The rest of the cast included Ron Masak ("The Facts of Life") as Police Chief Tom Rankin, Arlene Golonka ("Mayberry RFD") as his wife Anne and Quinn Cummings and Brandon Cruz as his kids Tracy and Clay. The show was possibly a thinly-veiled copy of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1968-1970, NBC/ABC).