Haunted Explorations: Bridge Street Cemetery

The center of Bridge Street Cemetery, featuring the towering Bates mausoleum to the right.

To address one certain strange quirk about me, I have a passionate fascination with the macabre and the supernatural. Having this fascination denotes that I spend a lot of my time digging my nose into historical accounts of the supernatural and Googling directions to random cemeteries throughout western Massachusetts and beyond.

One such cemetery, and the first cemetery to be featured in my “Haunted Explorations” blog series, is Bridge Street Cemetery. Located on its namesake in Northampton, Massachusetts, the cemetery was first established in the city in 1663.

When Bridge Street Cemetery was first founded in 1663, it was not at its present location. It is not known where the exact location of the cemetery that eventually became Bridge Street was located, except that it was next to a meetinghouse somewhere near Northampton’s present-day courthouse. In 1680, the bodies buried at this location were exhumed and relocated to Bridge Street, after citizens of the town asked that no more dead be buried next to the meetinghouse. This relocation of the dead in 1680 is the first red flag for potential supernatural activity at Bridge Street Cemetery.

Three examples of table tombs in Bridge Street Cemetery.

Now, most of the folklore surrounding disrupted burial grounds stems from Native American ideology. It is believed that serious consequences can follow when sacred grounds, such as cemeteries, are disrupted by simple exhumation or by land and building construction. Furthermore, exposure to human remains and any kind of disrespect brought upon them is believed to result in “disastrous consequences” (KSL 4). Although this superstition has its roots in the folklore of our earliest settlers, there is no doubt that this belief could have been carried on to 17th century America from the Pocomtuc tribe, whose land spread along the Connecticut River and was prominently located in, you guessed it, Northampton, MA.

In my research thus far, I have found only one source alluding to supernatural activity occurring in Bridge Street Cemetery. You would think that with only one reference, there would be almost no reason to suspect any supernatural activity at the location at all. But I am, as always, inclined to think otherwise.

The belief in serious consequences stemming from the disruption of sacred land might play the most important role in the presumably haunted Bridge Street Cemetery, even though the two people involved in the cemetery’s only legend both lived and died more than a century after the cemetery was moved from its original consecrated ground to its present day role as a non-denominational city cemetery.

An example of a grave mound at Bridge Street Cemetery. The marker reads “Seth Wright’s Family Tomb 1815.”

This legend concerns Jerusha Edwards, the 17-year-old daughter of the renown Reverand Johnathan Edwards, and American theologian and pastor, and Reverend David Brainerd, a ministerial pupil of Jerusha’s father. In life, both Jerusha and David were devout followers of God, and it is this devoutness which is cause enough to believe their spirits haunt Bridge Street Cemetery.

It is common in many religions for those who practice to believe that the love shared between two people is everlasting and will live on, even when those people are gone. This is what the Edwards family, along with Brainerd, believed when David and Jerusha died five months apart in 1747 and 1748, respectively.

It would be ironic and yet almost entirely plausible that two people, living unshakably in their mutual devotion to God and to their faith, would be restricted from their awaited eternal life because of the fact that their bodies were buried in a non-denomination (unconsecrated) cemetery for the almost entirely foreseeable future. If I were a devout Christian who’d been buried in a non-denomination cemetery, you’d better believe my soul would be pretty upset.

The grave of Jerusha Edwards.

“Sacred to the memory of the Rev. David Brainerd, a faithful and laborious Missionary to the Stockbridge, Delaware, and Susquehanna Tribes of Indians, who died in this town Oct. 9*, 1747. Age 29*.”

In life, Jerusha was entirely devoted to God all throughout her short seventeen years on Earth, and this devotion meant caring for others in their time of need. When Brainerd fell ill with tuberculosis while staying with the Edwards as a pupil of Jerusha’s father, Jerusha immediately began caring for him, even going on long trips with him on horseback to make sure he got the prescribed amount of “fresh air” to cure his ailment.

Before David Brainerd died on October 9, 1747, Jerusha sat at his bedside as he “looked on her very pleasantly and said, ‘Dear Jerusha, are you willing to part with me? I am willing to part with you though, if I thought I should not see you and be happy with you in another world, I could not bear to part with you. But we shall spend a[n] happy eternity together!’” (“David” 3). This declaration of devotion shows that David was not willing to leave the world without Jerusha at his side, and maybe, somehow, he knew that she would follow him into the afterlife a mere five months later. Contrary to tradition, when Jerusha died of an acute fever in February of 1748, Jerusha’s father had his daughter buried next to the man she loved, but was not wedded to.

From left to right: the graves of Rev. David Brainerd, Jerusha Edwards, and the cenotaph of Rev. Johnathan Edwards.

Because the bodies of these immensely devout people were buried in non-denominational or unconsecrated ground, it is not surprising that a tale of ghostly activity has been established at their burial sites. While I have found only one prominent publication of this story of supernatural activity, there are a few blog posts detailing individuals’ encounters at the Edwards-Brainerd burial ground. Claims of feeling “cold spots” and “strong head aches” are about the only known unexplained manifestations of the souls of Jerusha and David mingling in Bridge Street Cemetery.

Today, Bridge Street Cemetery sits cozily on the outskirts of Northampton. Many of the gravestones are weathered, and a few are broken. Some are fallen and left to sink slowly into the ground, much like Jerusha’s own grave.

Jerusha and David may just haunt the land encircling their eternal resting ground at Bridge Street Cemetery. Their seemingly eternal love, coupled with their devotion to God and subsequent interment of their bodies in unconsecrated land, allows one to consider just who could be encountered on an overcast afternoon on Bridge Street. Many of the bodies buried there could very well manifest their restless spirits among the gravestones, considering many were shaken up from their move back in 1680. Whatever the case may be, Bridge Street Cemetery has garnered its own haunted reputation as a landmark of eternal and everlasting love and, more importantly, as a haunting ground for spirits who just wanted to be buried in the right damn place.

SK