Horror Stories

12. Mary Hatchet

Mary lived with her father in a large rambling house on Stony Brook harbor, in what is today known as Head of the Harbor, New York. One can assume that Mary’s father was anticipating a large family, or perhaps more likely, he inherited the house. But either way, for him this wasn’t to be.

Mary’s mother died just after childbirth. It was a difficult delivery, and though the doctor was sent for, the isolation of the house meant it was hours before he made it. There were few options available during childbirth in the early 19th century. Quite often, to save the life of the mother, a doctor would be forced to perform an embryotomy, which was literally cutting the baby apart, often by decapitation while still in the womb, and removing the pieces. When the decision was made to save the baby rather than the mother, the results were equally ghoulish. At any event, when he arrived, he found a healthy baby girl, but her mother bleeding to death, nearly ripped apart from the birth. It is said the father never recovered from the loss of his wife, and held Mary responsible for her death.

Life was busy and hard, even for a man of means which Mary’s father certainly was. There were crops to attend to, and there was money to be made harvesting scallops, shellfish, soft clams and oysters from the harbor. Being an only child, and isolated from the other families in the area, Mary had few friends, and spent hours wandering in the woods and along the shore.

One of Mary’s favorite places was the springhouse along the harbor. Being made of stone and fed by a natural spring, the little building was warm during the winter and cool during the hot summer months. And it was in this little building that Mary’s father found her one afternoon, and her life changed from one spent in imaginative isolation, into a downward spiral into madness and horror.

Life was lonely for her father as well, and by this time Mary had grown into what at the time was considered a young woman, a fact which had not escaped him. He was a religious man, and it is often among such men that temptation strikes hardest, and for her father, still grieving the loss of his wife all these years later, and now seeing her face in Mary’s was more than he could bear, and he cracked. There in the springhouse he had her for the first time, before eventually moving her into his bed.

Mary Hatchet’s house at Head of the Harbor.

Mary was loyal to her father, and though she knew what he asked of her was wrong, there was little she could do. Her father was well thought of in the community and no one would believe her story if she told it. To run away was more dangerous than to stay, and so she accepted his advances, growing slowly and inexorably mad as time wore on. Until the day when what she had most feared became a certainty, and she knew she was carrying her father’s child.

Mary had spent many long hours in the woods, and the creatures she found there had grown used to her presence. It is said she had the power to draw these animals to her, which she did now as she sat in the springhouse, torn by guilt, torn by rage, and as they came to her she tore them limb from limb with the aid of the hatchet which was always kept there. It was then that she decided what she must do, and she went back to the house with the hatchet carefully hidden in the folds of her dress.

That night was a night like many others, and when her father called her into his bed, she came. She moved under cover of darkness, just a silhouette to her father, and standing over him as he lay there, brought the hatchet down into the center of his skull. Again and again her arm raised and fell, the weapon gripped tightly in her fist. Until eventually she stopped, climbed beneath the sheets and went to sleep.

And so Mary went on with her days as though nothing had happened, and each night climbed into the bed with her father’s now bloated and rotting corpse, and went to sleep.

Eventually the townspeople took notice of his absence, and a few of them rode out to pay him a visit. It was still early, and as there was no answer at the door they went inside. They could smell the stench of death, a smell that during those times would have been familiar to most. Up the stairs they went and pushing open the door they found Mary, sleeping peacefully next to her father’s blood-soaked corpse.

The townspeople, horrified by what she had done, and Mary far too mad now to defend herself against their accusations, dragged Mary from the house and down the hill to the tree which still stands alongside the road. And there they hung her and put an end to a sad tragic life.

The hanging tree at Mary Hatchet’s house at Head of the Harbor.

Though of course that’s not the end of the story, for though Mary was guilty of the crime which she was hung, the circumstances certainly merited a degree of mercy. And so Mary is seen sometimes, standing beside the tree where her life was cut short. She’s seen through the gates of the house, near the unmarked grave just inside the woods where she was buried. And of course she’s seen in the springhouse, where the water still runs clean and cool.

Through the years the little house has become a test of bravery. It is said that at night, only the bravest of teenagers will pee against it, and those that do will return to their car and find it won’t start. At least the lucky ones, for it’s also said that after pulling away they will meet their death on the curves ahead, forced off the road and into a tree by a young lady in white who runs from the darkness and into their path. And if you choose to drive by Mary’s house at night, look up the hill to the window on the top floor, and you’ll see a light burning. If you look closely, you’ll see Mary sitting there, looking out at the tree where she met her death.

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