Maple Grove Wattshausgeischft*
By
Dennis Boyer, ă2003
Maple Grove nestles in a picturesque hollow between the valley area of Longswamp and the South Mountain uplands of Red Lion. It is said that it was an early stop for travelers and that it hosted a succession of inns, taverns, stables, and hotels. Maple Grove's heyday was apparently in the years of early Berks County settlement up to the era of canal and railroad proliferation, roughly 1730 to 1830.
No one knows the exact date of the first
settlement at Maple Grove. But it is worth noting that by the early 1730s much
of the choice farmland in the areas presently known as Bucks and Montgomery
Counties was already settled. Land companies, surveyors, and agents of the Penn
family turned their attentions to the areas north of South Mountain. A series
of rough wagon roads were hacked through the towering chestnuts, hemlocks, and
oaks of South Mountain. Connections were needed to link the Old Goshenhoppen
area with the Lehigh Valley and to link the various new South Mountain
settlements. The crest of the ridge at the Rittenhouse Gap was not a
particularly hospitable site for a rest stop. The bubbling pure springs and
protecting hillsides at Maple Grove proved to be a natural stop for the early
teamsters with their heavy oxen teams.
We can imagine how an early lean-to might
have been replaced by a trader's hut with a rum keg. Soon a blacksmith may have
set up shop. Then a regular inn may have followed to satisfy the carriage and
stagecoach trade.
Some stories tell of a series of
establishments on the site of what would later become the Maple Grove Hotel.
One version refers to a hewn log structure called "The Bear Tavern",
perhaps an oblique reference to Macungie and the "great bear swamp".
Another version speaks of a frame structure called "The White Inn."
The spirit lore of Maple Grove focuses on these eating and drinking
establishments. Indeed, it seems that the ghosts of the earlier inns were
transferred to the successor businesses without missing a beat. A variety of
distinct ghost stories developed out of these traditions.
Royall, a retired Mack truck worker told
me his version in the early 1970s. He was quite a humorous yarn-spinner, an
inheritance he attributed to his mother's "coal region origins." But
when it came to the Maple Grove ghost accounts, he grew serious.
* * *
People started talking about the Maple
Grove Tavern Ghost when the pictures started coming out. You know there were
paintings --I guess you could call them murals –on the inside walls of the
Maple Grove Hotel. These paintings were painted long ago. Some say at least a
hundred years ago. The people and places in the paintings would suggest that is
so.
So what connection would paintings have to
ghosts? Good question. There was talk before about --let's see, my Dutch isn't
that good, Mom didn't talk it you know –about well, I guess it was der
Wattshausgeischt, but sometimes you just heard the term "spook."
But I think people took it more seriously
when the covering paint layers started to peel off and show the drawings
underneath. Now you'll hear lots of talk about those paintings and what was on
them. Everyone knows that some of them were restored. But few know that there
were more on other walls.
Some of those were very disturbing. There
were bodies in coffins and devils. I hear others say they saw ugly half-human
and half-animal pictures. Those weren't restored. They were scraped off. I knew carpenters and painters who didn't
want to work around them.
Anyway, when the paint first started
peeling off to reveal the murals there was a curious pattern of omens and
signs. A painting of a farmer might show through. Then a local farmer might get
hurt in an accident. Or a painting might show through of a woman doing laundry,
then a neighbor might slip and hurt her leg while hanging up the wash.
Even that you could say is coincidence.
But then the odd stuff started right at the bar. The first sign, I recall, was
the glut of bodily reactions. It would happen that everyone in there would
start hiccoughing, or belching, or passing gas at the same time --and I mean to
tell you the latter was loud and foul --or sometimes all three sounds as in the
form of an impolite little jug band.
Now you could pass that off --no pun
intended –as the product of bad beer and poor dietary habits. But it was only
the beginning. Next a gallon jar of red beet eggs turned to human eyeballs
right before a dozen patrons.
Another time a salesman bought a round of
shots. The bartender filled a row of six shot glasses and watched as they
emptied without moving. The others, including the salesman, had not been
watching closely so they were uncertain about the bartender's nervous
gibberish.
The bartender filled the shot glasses a
second time. And this time everyone saw the whiskey disappear without so much
as a ripple. The salesman picked up his ten dollar bill and with a look of
disgust stomped out of the bar, throwing over his shoulder ~ remark about how
he would not be the butt of jokes by a bunch of "dumb Dutch."
Then there was the incident I found most
remarkable, and I saw it myself. A fellow from Alburtis came in one day and
ordered a beer and a piece of pickled tripe. The bartender brought both and the
Alburtis man quickly drained the glass and asked for a refill. Just like that
the pickled tripe jumped up off the plate and slapped the man back and forth
across the face like some sissy Frenchman's glove.
Now I found that unique and so did the
Alburtis man, who fled saying he'd take his business elsewhere. When I
expressed my surprise the bartender said matter of factly, "What do you
expect when an Alburtis tripe-eater comes to Berks County where we have good
souse."
It may sound queer, but I later learned
things that made me very uneasy. Oh, I don't mean the weird happenings or any
fear of ghosts. It's more like an inexplicable dread of something that's going
to happen --you don't know what, you just know it will be bad. I should have
left well enough alone, but my curiosity got the better of me. It just had to
find out more about the vague origins of these haunting forces.
My ignorance would have continued if I
hadn't chanced upon Old Reinert down by Shamrock. You probably wouldn't know
him, he died not long ago at darn near a hundred years old. He wasn't one of
your "hill" Reinerts, his family were flatlanders from the Mertztown
area. If meeting Old Reinert was luck it was certainly the bad variety. He had
the evil eye. You dared not talk poorly of others in front of him or he would
offer to put a hex on them.
Old Reinert claimed to know the whole
story of what happened at the Maple Grove Hotel. But then he claimed to have
picked up the story from ghosts who visited with him to exchange gossip and
chew tobacco. What can you make of such talk? Was he insane, or just silly like
the very old sometimes get, or telling the truth? I guess we'll never know.
He told me he had waited a long time for
me to come and ask. He said I had a part in this story. There were two murders
in the place. In the first the tavernkeeper poisoned a traveler to get the
man's money and wife. Then the murdered man's brother figured out the crime and
had the tavernkeeper murdered and married his dead brother's widow who was by
then also the tavernkeeper's widow.
So the two of them ran the tavern for a time
until blood starting flowing from a butcher knife every time they cut meat on
the serving table. It was the murder knife. They would throw it out, but the
next morning it would always be back on the table. The man and the three-times-
married woman went crazy and were taken away.
Old Reinert thought the whole thing was a
simple problem. It could be cleared up if someone would set free one of those
ghosts of the murdered men. It could be done with a Geischtschpiggel*.
The old man's theory was that the two
murdered men were destined to chase each other around in the hotel through all
eternity, unless one could escape. But this mirror thing was an odd angle. I am
only part Dutch, but my wife is as Dutch as they come and she tells of how
hexerei was used to enchant a mirror so as to find buried money and other
treasures. But communication with the spirit world, who had heard of such a
thing?
Old Reinert drew me further into this dark
plot. He said he would make a mirror for me. Then I will find someone to look
into it at midnight. Their soul will cross over and set free one of the two
murderers. So I was to be careful of who I picked. It was my special job. He
told me I was related to all the people in this mess: the brothers, the wife
and the tavernkeeper. Only such a person could work the spell.
I told him I wanted none of his filthy
sorcery, but he just laughed and said it's not done till it's done. He did not
expand upon this last statement. Nor would he respond to my questions about the
details of his story. We did not see each other for several years. Then I sadly
heard of Old Reinert's death. When I went to pay my respects to his family, a
relative took me aside.
"What happened?", I asked.
"Ei, ei, the doctor says heart
attack", she replied skeptically.
"But the man was in good health. And
happy. You know how he liked antiques and such and anything to do with that old
hotel. Well, he heard that on a sale by
Mertztown there would be a mirror from the hotel. Well, naturally, he bought
the thing. You would have thought he bought a gold bar for a nickel. He would
polish the glass and sit and look in the mirror for hours. When he took sick, I
would come over to stay with him and cook for him. On the last night he stayed
up with his mirror while I went to bed.
"Just when the clock rings out
midnight I heard him yell, ‘No, no'. Then I thought I heard another man talk,
saying 'Now it's over for you'. I thought we had robbers. But when I come down
he is alone in the chair dead with his head on the table, face down on the
mirror."
She really did not want that mirror
anymore and asked me to take it. On the advice of a Seisholtzville pow-wow
doctor I hid the mirror in church where, she told me, it would remain powerless
until taken off church ground. Sometimes I feared that the story was not
entirely finished.
Family history research took me back to
that church years after I hid it there. The helpful pastor told me many
church-related anecdotes. But he also acted a bit nervous.
"It is good to have a visitor,"
he said. "This is a beautiful church.
But even on a sunny day it is dark here in the office area. Always cool
and damp. And you may think me silly, but I often hear a voice in here."
When I asked what he heard I could not
look him in the eye. Instead, my gaze drifted to a certain piece of woodwork
that I knew from experience could be pulled off to reveal a cavity. His answer
did not surprise me.
"Why it's an old Dutch man saying,
'It's not over'", the pastor said breathlessly.