Fairies of New England: The Little People of the Hills and Forests

Yesterday I went to Ninigret Park in Southern Rhode Island to see the giant trolls that Danish artist Thomas Dambo has constructed out of recycled wood. Two trolls are on display at the park: “Greta” and “Eric.” Six other Dambo trolls can be found in New England, five in Maine at the Coastal Botanical Gardens and one in Vermont. More trolls are apparently on the way to Northern Rhode Island.

On my way down to the coast, I couldn’t help thinking about the one New England tale I’ve heard about a real-life troll: the story of the “Somerville Troll,” a being said to have inhabited the cellar of 35 Hall Avenue in Somerville, Massachusetts.

“Greta” by Thomas Dambo in Ninigret Park, 2024.

I learned about the Somerville Troll from my good friend and author Sam Baltrusis (he once lived on Hall Avenue opposite the three-story home). I later read about the building’s haunted history in the 1986 book The Ghostly Register by Arthur Myers. The story (as it’s related in that book) concerns two women who experienced various supernatural phenomena in the home: the basement kept flooding, objects moved or went missing, lights turned on of their own accord, a bed shifted in the night while its occupant was sleeping, and an eerie presence was felt along the back wall of the house. One of the women described the presence as:

“almost like an animal, as though it had claws or wanted to bite me.”

Based on the women’s reports, we appear to be dealing with a classic haunted house or the occurrence of a household spirit. In particular, the story evokes an age-old tradition about household spirits—that is, the spirit’s tendency to reside in one special area of the home. We see this in the description of the home’s “back wall,” the author explaining that the occupant

got an uncomfortable feeling when she went near the back wall of the house, in bedrooms on the second and third floor.

Regarding the tendency of a spirit to gravitate to a particular location in a home, Claude Lecouteaux (in The Tradition of Household Spirits) explained:

What emerges from all these accounts [of homes with household spirits] is that every house possesses a demonic spot that could be any number of places: a hole in the roof beam, a dark corner under the stairs or in the attic, a room, . . . the hearth, the threshold and so forth.

The “demonic spot,” then, is the location in a haunted house from which supernatural phenomena appear to emanate. One might call this the spirit’s “home” within the larger home. Based on the occupants’ descriptions of the haunting and what we know about household spirits, we might conclude that 35 Hall Avenue was home to an angry spirit whose “demonic spot” was the back wall of the house, particularly the space between the second and third floor.

A psychic investigates. . .

This is far from being the end of the story. The women who lived in the house invited a local psychic healer, Chaya Sarah Sadeh, into the home to assess the supernatural phenomena. It should be noted that, after the psychic’s arrival, the story of the haunting appeared to subtly change.

The psychic felt that the home’s negative energy, rather than being found primarily along the building’s back wall, emanated from the cellar. The reason the cellar kept flooding, she said, was that the home had been built over an ancient spring: the spring’s resident troll was apparently stuck in the cellar and was deeply unhappy about it. All the supernatural phenomena in the home reflected the troll’s unhappiness.

Having diagnosed the problem, the psychic performed a “ritual releasing” of the troll and sent him to “another plane” where his “energies could be transformed into a more positive and fruitful existence.”

“Eric” by Thomas Dambo in Ninigret Park, 2024.

From household spirit to troll. . .

What should we make of the psychic’s reinterpretation of the home’s supernatural phenomena? Based on her assertions, the home’s occupants were no longer dealing with an angry household spirit manifesting mainly along the back wall of the house (on the second and third floor) but with a troll located in the cellar! Not only had the nature of the spirit changed in the psychic’s account but even the location of the haunting.

It’s surely no coincidence that eight months prior to Arthur Myers’ publishing of The Ghostly Register, Empire Pictures had released the popular horror movie Troll. In that movie, a troll appears in an apartment building’s basement (just like the Hall Avenue cellar) and spreads magic through the building, turning it into a kind of fairyland.

After the Hall Avenue occupant learned that her household spirit was a troll, she described an encounter with the being in which he appeared (in her mind’s eye) as a “furry little creature with claws,” a description quite similar to the troll’s appearance in the movie. (At the same time, her description is also consistent with ancient depictions of household spirits, which sometimes resemble hairy little men.)

Whether or not a spring with a troll existed under 35 Hall Avenue, the psychic’s claim reflected an important aspect of the household spirit tradition: Throughout Northern Europe, one explanation for the existence of household spirits was that the house in which the spirit dwelt must have been built on top of an area inhabited by a nature spirit or genius loci (a spirit of the place). After the home was built, the genius loci, unable to leave the location, became a disruptive spirit or (if propitiated through offerings or rituals) a domesticated household spirit. The former created chaos for the home’s owners, whereas the latter performed helpful chores and protected the home, especially from invasion by external spirits.

The psychic in the Somerville Troll story evidently believed that the troll was the genius of the spring and ought to be freed. But in the tradition of household spirits, the spirit’s abandonment of the home is a fate much worse than poltergeist-like haunting. Once a home has been built on the territory of a genius loci, the health of the home is inextricably linked to that spirit. If the spirit leaves the home, the home is said to be without spirit. As Lecouteaux writes:

A home without a spirit is cursed, for the spirit is identified with happiness and good fortune.

Significantly, in the story of the Somerville Troll, the troll visited the occupant of 35 Hall Avenue and begged not to be released. The occupant felt great sadness at this show of vulnerability, but she maintained nonetheless that the ritual of releasing must go ahead. According to Lecouteaux, the traditional method of dealing with a household spirit is not to exorcise it but to propitiate it with offerings and respect the space where the spirit resides (i.e., the “demonic spot”). In the case of 35 Hall Avenue, this would mean the occupants refraining from sleeping against the back wall of the house, as that belonged to the “troll.”

However, by 1986, when the psychic visited Hall Avenue, New Age ideas about “other planes,” trapped “energies,” and “ritual releasing” evidently offered the residents of 35 Hall Avenue alternative ways to deal with a household spirit. This new approach differed markedly from traditional ways of engaging with such spirits, despite the underlying phenomenon remaining the same. Whereas the earlier tradition encouraged the coexistence of the human and spirit world, the later tradition seemed concerned to separate them.

Read about more New England fairies in my book New England Fairies: A History of the Little People of the Hills and Forests.