Investigation at Vale End Cemetery 
October 13, 2007         

History: Mary Ritter Spaulding (also known as the "Blue Lady") is said to be one of Vale End Cemetery's most famous ghosts. Her headstone is broken but still bears her maiden name, Mary Ritter, as well as the married name of her widower's second wife, Mary Spaulding. (The second Mary Spaulding was Mrs. Mary Flynn Colburn before her marriage to Isaac Spaulding.) According to folklore, Mary Ritter Spaulding (the "Blue Lady") was a religious woman who healed with herbs and prayer. She was a mother of seven children. No one is certain why she haunts Vale End Cemetery, but it is theorized that it might be because she and the second wife of Isaac Spaulding, her husband, are buried in the same gravesite. She appears on warm, foggy nights, especially in the spring and fall, and often times around Halloween. According to one account, she manifests as a bright, pale blue column of light. The column of light is approximately three feet wide and starts a foot or two over her grave. It is about six feet tall and seems to vibrate with energy.

Investigation: The SPI group arrived at 5:45 p.m. and scoped out the perimeter of the cemetery. We then set up our video and audio equipment in front of Mary Ritter's (the Blue Lady's) tombstone. We turned the equipment on at approximately 7:45 p.m. For quite some time things were very quiet.  A while later, from the west side of the cemetery, (with your back toward the entrance of the cemetery, Mary Ritter's tombstone is on the east side of the cemetery), we heard a sound that can only be described as that of an animal such as a Coyote with the exception it was a human voice. At first, we thought perhaps there were teenagers who saw us in the cemetery, and they were playing tricks on us, so we disregarded the sound until we heard the identical sound again a couple of hours later. We felt that if it were teenagers they could not have duplicated the sound with the exactness of which we heard it the first time unless it was on some sort of sophisticated tape recorder.  The sound we heard is hard to describe and unfortunately we did not capture it on our recorders.

During our visit, we also noted that the light from the video camera that was sturdily set in a tripod sometimes moved slowly and other times moved rapidly from left to right and up and down. There was no explanation for this movement as the camera was secure in its position. Thinking this might be some type of optical illusion, several times we moved quite a distance from the light, and then we walked toward the light to see if that would do anything to change the movement of light but it did not. The light continued to move in the directions I've already mentioned as well as to slowly go around in a circle. We thought we would "test" this by securely placing a flashlight approximately 12 feet away from the video camera. We turned the flashlight on and waited to see if there would be any "light" movement. Without hesitation, both lights began moving from left to right and up and down in perfect synchronization. There were six of us, and out of the six, five people saw the exact same thing at the exact same time and the sixth person (who was myself) did not see any light movement. We have no explanation as to why I didn't see any light movement. We cannot draw any firm conclusion from our visit to the cemetery other than we know we heard very unique human/animal sounds that are not "everyday" sounds, and we saw light movement from the video recorder and from the flashlight that was not caused by human hands. We did not capture any paranormal activity on the video recorder nor did we capture any paranormal audio.

Note: To view pictures from this investigation please click on this link.  Pictures From Vale End Cemetery Investigation October 13, 2007

Based on recent information that was passed on to me, I feel I need to add the paragraph below:

NOTE: (12-02-09): Recently, I was informed by a gentleman who grew up in Wilton, NH, and knows the history of Vale End Cemetery very well, that the stories that have been told and the many articles that have been written about Vale End Cemetery having buried Native American Indians inside or outside of the cemetery is a myth. He said that historic records and personal records of people back then show there were never any encounters with Native Americans. He also mentioned that the story of people buried on the outside of the cemetery behind Mary Ritter's grave is just a legend. Upon listening to our audio clip (above), he feels this might have been a screech from a hawk as there are large fields across the street from the entrance of the cemetery.

However, he does state that he believes that Vale End Cemetery is active with unexplained happenings.