Throughout history many people have believed that people and places can be attacked by spirits. These malicious spirits are usually called poltergeists. The term is German and translates as a ghost that makes a noise. Most people are probably familiar with that type of spooks from the 1982 movie "Poltergeist" and its three sequels.
Some experts believe poltergeists are an energy force rather than an actual haunting and are often centered on overly emotional adolescent girls. Others believe they are just high-spirit ghosts who just want to have fun. A third group of students of poltergeist believe that it's all a bunch of hooey and simply the living playing tricks on the gullible.
In February, 1921, Mrs. Julia Lowd, was happily living at her home on High Range Road. She and her husband, Sedley Lowd, had lived there happily for nearly 30 years until his passing in 1917. Here together they had raised their six children and lived off the land as farmers. Now a widow at age 71, she shared the house with a 9-year-old grandson who helped with the chores.
Suddenly without warning things began to change in the peaceful home. Chairs tipped over and fell with a thump to the floor. The coal hod moved across the kitchen floor and dishes had to be removed from the cupboard because they were rattling so noisily. A piece of firewood flew across the room and made a dent in the door. Without warning a dinner fork took flight and smashed a window pane. Another piece of wood became airborne and struck Widow Lowd in the head, giving her a black eye. Outside foot steps could be heard on the porch but when the door was open there was no one there. Spooky!
In frustration, Julia telephoned her son Sedley, a shoe worker in Derry. He spent the night with her and while there he also witnessed the strange goings on. Pork chops would jump out of the frying pan and a chair followed him across the kitchen floor. The Lowds tentatively blamed the activities on some freaky electrical disturbance because most of the strangeness occurred in the room where the telephone was located. They offered as proof the story of seeing the receiver jump from its holder and crash to the floor.
Other stories were soon being circulated throughout the neighborhood. It was told that one day Julia had gone into a closet to get her coat. When she tried to get out she found the door locked by a sliding bolt. She remained imprisoned there until her grandson came in from playing outside. Buttons from the sewing basket took flight, furniture did gyrations and "slippers and bed cloths cavorted without their owner's permission." Fred Stevens, the door-to-door fish seller, related how when he was carrying a bucket of oysters into the Lowd house something whizzed across the room and yanked the pail away from him. He was left stand there holding onto what remained of his burden — the wire handle of the bucket.
The story of the Lowd poltergeist spread across the town, state and region. Newspapers all over Massachusetts carried reports of the strange goings-on. A delegation of local young men camped out side the house one night hoping to see spooks. They didn't. Students of the occult and news writers came to Londonderry to interview the Lowds. On Feb. 25, 1923, a Boston investigative reporter stayed overnight in the Lowd house hoping to see spooky antics. All night he stayed awake watching everything. When nothing out of the ordinary occurred, he wrote that the whole thing was likely just pranks perpetrated by the grandson. This is something the family has always denied.
Soon after the haunting Mrs. Lowd moved out to live with her daughter. The home was sold in May, 1921, to Lillian and Everett Bagley. On Saturday afternoon, August 23, 1923, a defective chimney started a fire that quickly spread throughout the two-story colonial house. There was little time to do nothing anything but flee the burning building while carrying a few pieces of furniture. The cattle and hens in the barn were all killed.
Now, 87 years later, there has been no report of hauntings in that section of Londonderry or any serious talk of making a movie about the 1921 events in Londonderry. No other house was ever built on the site of the "haunted house." Some locals probably think this is for the best after what happened to the residents of the house in the Poltergeist movies.
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Rick Holmes is the former town historian of Derry.
