WILLEM: New Hampshire's White Mountains harbor many mysteries, murders, and tragedies, some of them almost 400 years old.

We're going to hike today to the scenes of at least two of them.

Join us for half an hour of Mountain Mysteries.

♪ Welcome to Windows to the Wild.

I'm Willem Lange.

Marianne O'Connor is a mother, an educator, and a writer who spent some years researching the spooky and unexplained mysteries, the tragic deaths, and the unsolved murders in the White Mountains.

We're going to hike today with Marianne to the scenes of a couple of those incidents described in her great book, The Haunted Hikes of New Hampshire.

Marianne!

MARIANNE: It's a pleasure.

WILLEM: Oh, the pleasure is all mine.

MARIANNE: Are we ready to take on a haunted hike?

WILLEM: Well, I don't know.

MARIANNE: We could run into something unusual.

WILLEM: It's a sunny day.

MARIANNE: But you never know.

WILLEM: There are a bunch of shadowy figures behind us.

MARIANNE: I noticed that.

It’s daunting.

WILLEM: If you think they’re ghosts, they’re not.

They're your family, right?

MARIANNE: That’s right.

They're here for the ride.

WILLEM: They're going to hike along with us.

And where are we going first?

MARIANNE: We're heading up the Coppermine Trail to the Bridal Veil Falls.

And along the way, we're going to look out for a plaque which was placed here by Bette Davis.

WILLEM: Wait a minute.

We don't know that, right?

MARIANNE: It's a mysterious plaque.

WILLEM: Mysterious plaque?

MARIANNE: Mysterious plaque.

Yep.

It was placed on a rock here.

And it goes along with the tale of Arthur Farnsworth, who is the keeper of stray ladies.

And we're gonna hear that story so we don't get lost in the woods, because the ghost of Arthur Farnsworth.

WILLEM: Bette Davis was a favorite of mine because we went to the same prep school.

MARIANNE: No kidding?

WILLEM: Not at the same time.

Thank god!

I’d be 90.

But yeah, she was interesting to me.

I'm gonna put this in in my pack and we'll take off.

How far a hike is it to Bridal Veil?

MARIANNE: It's about two and a half miles.

Little under.

WILLEM: Two and a half miles?

About two hours.

MARIANNE: It's a great hike.

Great family hike.

Easy.

Nice and graudal.

Nothing difficult And beautiful falls await at the very end of the trail.

WILLEM: You're speaking my language.

MARIANNE: All right!

WILLEM: Nothing difficult.

[laughing] Okay, dear.

Let's go.

MARIANNE: Here we go.

WILLEM: You're the leader.

♪ Marianne's parents and her partner, Pavel, join us on the hike.

They've heard all her stories many times, so they'll hang back and enjoy the scenery.

MARIANNE: We'll see a number of blazes.

Yellow blazes.

WILLEM: Oh, yeah.

♪ MARIANNE: So, the story of Betty Davis... is that she came to love Franconia and Sugar Hill as a second home, and in 1939, she had a movie premiere in Littleton, New Hampshire, and took a much needed vacation at Peckett's.

It was a famous ski house in the 1930s.

And there she met Arthur Farnsworth, who was a big, strapping Vermont WILLEM: A charmer.

MARIANNE: A charmer.

WILLEM: Yeah, yeah.

MARIANNE: And she was smitten with him.

And Bette was a very determined woman and said to many of her colleagues at that time that she was going to marry Farnsworth and that he would fall in love with her and that she would marry him.

So, his job as manager of Peckett’s was to make sure that all the guests were off the trails, and Bette positioned herself to become lost on this very trail on the Coppermine Trail so that he would have to come to her rescue.

WILLEM: How do we know that she did this on purpose?

Did she say so?

MARIANNE: She intentionally got herself lost.

She was quite an actress, you see.

WILLEM: Well, yeah, that was her business.

MARIANNE: So she got lost on the trail and did not return back to Peckett's, and Farnsworth set off to go find her.

She was, of course, a famous Hollywood movie star at the time.

And he found her.

They had their first kiss right on this trail, and they fell in love.

WILLEM: Bette and Arthur were married shortly after on New Year's Eve, December 31st, 1940.

MARIANNE: They did build a home here in Franconia Notch.

It's in Sugar Hill, still standing.

It's called Butternut.

It's rented out privately.

It's a beautiful home.

But mysteriously, Farnsworth passed away very suddenly with an attack that he had right on Hollywood Boulevard.

He began bleeding and convulsing.

WILLEM: Two days later, Arthur Farnsworth collapsed, slipped into a coma, and died.

MARIANNE: And the cause of death eventually was ruled as a blunt blow to the head.

He had a brain aneurysm that led to his death.

And Bette was questioned before a grand jury and was later acquitted.

Let go.

But she gave the performance of her life when she WILLEM: Literally!

MARIANNE: When she detailed that Farney had fell down the stairs to his death.

And this is what caused the blow to his head, which led to his death.

Apparently, Bette was overheard in conversations, apparently with Tennessee Williams.

They were having a few cocktails one night, a couple of martinis, and Bette supposedly confessed that she caught him cheating on her.

WILLEM: Well, I guess both of them were fairly active.

MARIANNE: Yeah, both of them were quite known to... WILLEM: Extramaritally.

MARIANNE: Yeah.

And in a fit of anger, she clobbered him over the head with an iron lamp.

WILLEM: Okay, but there was a witness to that crime, wasn’t there?

The young lady in this act with Farny?

MARIANNE: Supposedly.

WILLEM: But no one ever came forward.

MARIANNE: No one ever came forward.

Yeah, so it remains a mystery.

WILLEM: In the 1960s, Bette sold the estate she and Farny had built in Sugar Hill.

Shortly afterward, there appeared bolted to a large boulder in the middle of the brook, an inconspicuous and very-hard- to-find bronze plaque.

MARIANNE: It simply said, [To the keeper of stray ladies.

Presented by a Grateful One.]

And that's what Arthur Farnsworth was.

He was the keeper of stray ladies.

So, if you are lost on the trails, you may be found by the spirit of Farny.

WILLEM: I won’t be.

I won’t be found by him I hope.

[chuckling] MARIANNE: I might get lost.

WILLEM: Oh, he's one for stray ladies, right?

MARIANNE: For stray ladies.

[Willem chuckling] WILLEM: Now we're almost at the plaque.

Is that right?

MARIANNE: You hear the brook babbling right up here.

WILLEM: That's roaring.

MARIANNE: We're going to come down along this embankment and this is where we'll find the plaque.

It's going to be right down in here.

WILLEM: This is where Farny found Bette?

MARIANNE: This is where Farny found Bette.

WILLEM: It’s like a movie!

[water falling] MARIANNE: To Arthur Farnsworth The Keeper of Stray Ladies’ Peckett’s - 1939 Presented by a Grateful One And there you go.

WILLEM: Well, we don't know who did it.

Obviously, somebody who was hired to do it.

unless there was a grateful one who could do it not Bette because she wouldn’t have done it.

MARIANNE: She wouldn't have come out here on herself, but she had it she had the plaque put in.

WILLEM: And this was the spot?

MARIANNE: This was the spot where she was found.

This plaque is difficult to find.

People have come here in search of it and have not found it.

That's happened many times.

The story's been around for a long time.

And old Farny might be haunting the hills here at the Coppermine Trail.

So, you better not get lost because he might try to find you if you're a stray lady.

WILLEM: Okay!

MARINNE: But we found it today!

WILLEM: Up to the Bridal Veil.

[water falling] Marianne's father and stepmother decided to turn around at the Arthur Farnsworth plaque.

The rest of us headed on to Bridal Veil Falls.

Tis a perfect day, though.

MARIANNE: Isn’t it beautiful?

WILLEM: Cool, sunny.

MARIANNE: Beautiful day for a hike.

♪ WILLEM: What's spooky?

MARIANNE: The spiderwebs are spooky.

PAVEL: That's pretty amazing.

MARIANNE: Nice.

It's a sign.

WILLEM: Yeah, I got one on my porch.

That a sign?

Every time I come up the door, I get it in the head.

[chuckling] Say, Sorry, sweetheart.

♪ Well, look here.

Isn’t that pretty?

MARIANNE: Yep.

You can see an old steel fence, some posts with a foundation.

WILLEM: And the name of this brook is?

MARIANNE: This is the Coppermine Brook.

WILLEM: Where's the copper mine?

MARIANNE: I'm not sure where the copper mine is.

♪ [water flowing] ♪ ♪ [water flowing] WILLEM: Just before the Falls, there's a shelter Coppermine Shelter.

We stopped, had a drink of water, rested our legs, and then we were off to see the Falls.

♪ [water flowing] Oh, my golly!

MARIANNE: So, here we are.

WILLEM: We finally made it.

MARIANNE: We made it to the Falls.

WILEM: Very nice.

MARIANNE: Aren't they beautiful?

WILLEM: Yeah.

That's not too shabby.

MARIANNE: Not too shabby.

MARIANNE: What a sight.

WILLEM: Beautiful.

MARIANNE: Worth the payoff.

WILLEM: Yep.

Tis.

And it goes way, way up there.

That's great.

Woohoo!

That is spectacular!

MARIANNE: Into this beautiful pool.

On a hot day, you might want to take a dip.

I don't know if you’d want to do that today.

WILLEM: No, not today.

[water falling] Well it's just a beautiful waterfall.

MARIANNE: It really is.

WILLEM: I didn't see how up it went when I first looked.

MARIANNE: Yeah, you can see it right around the corner there.

WILLEM: That’s fantastic.

MARIANNE: Great day for it.

It's a perfect fall hike or anytime hike, really.

WILLEM: Yeah.

In the fall it would be spectacular.

Onto our next haunted hike.

MARIANNE: Let's do it.

WILLEM: Only about two hours we'll be out of here.

MARIANNE: Okay, let's hit the trail.

WILLEM: Okay.

Thank you, by the way.

This is just lovely.

[water falling] Well, we are at the entrance to the Indian Head Trail, where another one of the White Mountain mysteries occurred.

And my trusty Irish guide, Marianne O'Connor, is going to lead us up there and talk about the story on the way.

A very interesting thing happened here.

Mysterious, too.

MARIANNE: Very mysterious.

Known as the Indian Head Incident, happened in 1961.

Although the story didn't break out until about 1966.

WILLEM: Okay, good.

WILLEM: Well, let's take the trail.

We got a way to go.

And you can talk about it on the way.

MARIANNE: That sounds great.

WILEM: What happened to poor Barney and Betty?

MARIANNE: Barney and Betty Hill.

WILLEM: Okay.

♪ Indian Head Trail is the longer of the two trails that climb Mount Pemigewasset, but also the easier.

Just after leaving the parking lot, you go under Interstate 93.

Pretty soon, you leave the sounds of the highway behind.

The trail climbs at fairly easy grades through the forest, and passes below the cliffs of the Indian Head profile.

♪ Look at these roots.

♪ As we scrambled our way up the Indian Head Trail, Marianne talked about how she got interested in writing about haunted hikes.

MARIANNE: I've always been interested in ghost stories and scary stories, and I loved to read Stephen King when I was little.

And my father introduced me to a lot of science fiction and fantasy-type stories.

And ever since then, I've just sought it out.

Just always liked the mysterious part of scary stories.

WILLEM: What’s a good sign?

MARIANNE: Cairn right there.

Little one.

WILLEM: Somebody had the strength to build one!

MARIANNE: Yep.

There you go.

WILLEM: About an hour and a half into our hike, we stopped to take a rest and talk about Marianne's book.

Oh, great book.

I really enjoyed it.

I have three copies around the house.

MARIANNE: No kidding?

WILLEM: One by my bed, one in the bathroom, one in my office, so you're available every moment.

MARIANNE: Way to go.

I'm happy to hear that.

Well, I like to get people out hiking.

One of the high points of having a book about mountains and about the outdoors is you hear that people are inspired after they read one of the stories or hear something and they want to go out on an adventure and find it and look for it themselves.

Some of my other favorite hikes that I've done with my children incude The Devil's Den.

That's in New Durham, and it's a wonderful cave that you WILLEM: Yeah I saw that.

Little loop that goes around a cave.

MARIANNE: And that's a really easy hike that has outstanding views of Merrymeeting Lake.

You would love it.

You go into a cave, you go spelunking.

WILLEM: Sturdy shoes, you said, and a flashlight?

MARIANNE: Yep.

Sturdy shoes and a flashlight.

Definitely bring your flashlight with you.

We had flashlights but not headlamps and we had to carry the flashlights in our mouth because it was pitch black in there.

Load of fun.

Kids loved it.

WILLEM: That's great.

MARIANNE: It's one thing that I think has led my children on a lot of hikes.

Sometimes, children will complain and they'll say, I'm never going to do this again.

I hate this.

But you know what?

WILLEM: That's the one they want to do next!

MARIANNE: They talk about it and then they want to go again.

And I believe that once you are exposing your children to a lot of outdoor experiences like that, they're going to grow into adults who care about the outdoors.

WILLEM: That would be nice.

We could use a few more.

MARIANNE: We could.

The trails that are described in the book are described in terms of how difficult they are by how many ghosts appear in the description.

This is a three-ghost hike.

WILLEM: I wouldn’t have minded seeing 50 ghosts if the trail had been half as hard.

MARIANNE: Yeah.

This is a three-ghost trail!

WILLEM: We'll get there eventually.

Well, Marianne’s going on a trail to the the summit.

I'm going to stop here for a second or two and have a swig of electrolyte replacement.

And this is just as good a place as any to tell you the story of Nancy Barton, another one of the sad, sad stories of the White Mountains.

Nancy worked on a large farm up near Jefferson, north of the notches, owned by a Colonel Whipple, a prominent citizen whose brother had signed the Declaration of Independence.

Quite a large farm.

She was a 16 year old domestic, and she fell in love with a farmhand named Jim they never did know his last name.

And they fell in love with each other, I guess, and they planned to get married.

She gave him all of her savings as a dowry and he went off to Portsmouth.

He said he was going off to Portsmouth to plan their wedding.

Well, she found out when she got back to the farm that afternoon that he had just flat gone off to Portsmouth, not to plan anything.

They think the Colonel had talked him into going down there to join the Continental Army.

Anyways, we're in the middle of winter.

She decided to follow him.

At least get back her dowry, if not her loved one.

So, she took off in spite of all advice right into the teeth of a storm.

She knew it was a good 30 miles down through the notch.

Off she went in her walking shoes and her long skirts.

She followed their tracks for a while.

She found where they built a fire.

She warmed herself a bit there and took off after him again.

But when she had to wade a brook, she slipped, I guess, and she got pretty wet, sat down on the far shore, exhausted, dehydrated, worn out, cold, to kind of rest for a few minutes.

And that's where they found her frozen to death with her face in her hands.

Poor Nancy, dead as a hammer.

They buried her right there beside the brook and she's there today.

You can go visit her grave.

It's just a a few steps off the traveled way.

And they say that along the trail, you can still hear the wailing and laughter of Nancy Barton.

♪ By golly, Marianne!

MARIANNE: I think we made it.

WILLEM: I never thought we'd see this spot that I would anyway.

MARIANNE: Well, here we are.

WILLEM: Made it look so innocent from the highway.

MARIANNE: Doesn’t it?

[chuckling] WILLEM: It ain’t innocent!

MARIANNE: That gave us a run for our money, that trail.

WILLEM: What a climb.

And you can see why it gets steep off here.

MARIANNE: You can see it.

We’re standing right on the Indian Head's forehead.

WILLEM: Yep.

MARIANNE: And from the top of his forehead down to his chin is almost 100 feet.

So, this is a good-size profile here.

And from the highway you can visibly make out the Indian Head’s profile, with his big nose and his overhung forehead.

And at one time, this mountain was covered in trees.

The chief's head was not revealed until a fire which broke out in early 1900.

And suddenly, when the smoke cleared, there was the Indian Head’s profile.

So, it has a a story to it as well.

♪ And Will, not far from here was the spot where Betty and Barney Hill were abducted by aliens.

WILLEM: Now, wait a minute.

Hold it.

Allegedly... MARIANNE: Allegedly abducted.

WILLEM: They spotted something in the skies.

They entered Franconia Notch from the north, right?

MARIANNE: Right when they were near Parker's Hotel, they stopped.

They spotted some- thing following them in the sky.

But at the point where they pulled the car over and stopped and then when they came back, they were near Ashland.

So, they lost time and memory of any event that had happened between here and in Ashland... so the story goes.

WILLEM: Yeah.

She's talked about it till the last days of her life.

MARIANNE: That's right, that's right.

WILLEM: She had a drawing somebody made a drawing of the thing.

It was a dish or disc-shaped thing with humanoids looking out of windows.

MARIANNE: Yeah.

And one of the most fascinating aspects of the story is that, with her photographic memory, she was able to produce a map that she saw inside the craft.

And years later, an astronomer did some research on that same map and it’s now known as the Fish Hill Star Map.

If you Google that one!

From a galaxy 30 light years away from here.

So imagine that.

WILLEM: Right!

Okay, okay.

MARIANNE: So imagine that!

WILLEM: You’ll forgive me if I don't imagine that, but okay, I can do that!

As Marianne described Betty and Barney's experience, I watched her carefully remembering her other stories about ghosts and poltergeists in mountain huts, the spirits of dead climbers hovering around Mount Washington, and the wailing often heard near Nancy Barton's grave.

I thought, She really believes all this!

You don't suppose nah.

On the other hand why not?

MARIANNE: I chose to use this story because it is greatly significant as one of the first documented cases of a UFO abduction in the United States that's been thoroughly documented and is famous.

People do come from all around to visit this area.

I just thought that the the story stood out a little bit in terms of it being somewhat different than some of the other ghost stories.

It was still mysterious and unusual, and I think that's what people are looking for in a haunted hike.

WILLEM: That happened here?

MARIANNE: Indian Head Incident.

WILLME: At the foot of Indian Head.

I wish I'd had that saucer to get up here today!

[laughter] God, it would have been a lot easier.

Aliens are nothing.

MARIANNE: I would have taken a ride.

WILLEM: You bet.

Ah, that’s quite a tale.

MARIANNE: Take a ride down.

WILLEM: All right, well, we're going to have to get down somehow.

MARIANNE: We will.

WILLEM: Before dark.

MARIANNE: We'll have to hit that trail again.

WILLEM: Give me a break.

That steep stretch at the end... MARIANNE: It's a steep one.

WILLEM: It's going to be easy-going.

MARIANNE: Yep.

WILLEM: Slow-going.

MARIANNE: But you know what?

It's a challenging climb for a small mountain.

WILLEM: It is.

MARIANNE: Challenging climb.

WILLEM: Not as long as this morning’s hike but a lot tougher.

MARIANNE: Mhm.

Definitely.

That's for sure.

WILLEM: Okay!

MARIANNE: Well, we racked the miles on today, Will.

WILLEM: That's right.

It's four miles here.

And how many miles this morning?

MARIANNE: It was about two and a half each way.

So, it was five.

WILLEM: Each way.

So, there’s nine miles.

MARIANNE: Yep.

There you go.

[Willem chuckles proudly] Still got it in ya!

WILLEM: I don't know.

I haven't got back to my truck yet!

[laughter] ♪ Whether you believe in the Indian Head Incident or not, the view from the bare granite ledge is pretty spectacular and worth the climb or scramble.

Interstate 93 comes out of Franconia Notch below, winds away south, and disappears way down the Pemigewasset Valley.

♪ We have made it.

MARIANNE: We've made it.

WILLEM: Two of our haunted hikes today the Bridal Veil Falls and Bette Davis, and now Indian Head and Barney and Betty Hill, the alien abductees.

MARIANNE: That's right.

WILLEM: And now, if we can get down this silly thing, we will be MARIANNE: We can call it a successful day.

WILLEM: Yes.

That's correct.

MARIANNE: One for the books.

WILLEM: One that we survived.

Okay.

We've come to that time, of course, when we have to say goodbye, so we shall.

Thank you so much, dear.

MARIANNE: Thank you for coming.

WILLEM: And Pavel, for being, I don't know, sort of the spirit of the whole outfit.

PAVEL: Thank you very much for having me.

It was a pleasure.

WILLEM: Oh, our pleasure.

MARIANNE: It was a pleasure.

I had a great day.

WILLEM: We did.

MARIANNE: It was fabulous.

WILLEM: I’m Willem Lange, and I hope to see you all again on Windows to the Wild.

♪