Happy Halloween, or as the historic newspapers have it, happy Hallowe’en, from VTDNP!

Halloween is today, and thus, it’s appropriate to share a ghostly tale that captivated Burlingtonians at the turn of the twentieth-century at the Queen City Cotton Mill on Burlington’s waterfront. Dozens of people attested to witnessing the apparition of a recently-deceased mill worker, Marie Blais, around the premise of the property.

Marie was hit by a train in June of 1900 at the Lakeside railroad crossing, and was killed immediately.

By that fall, stories of the female mill ghost became prevalent–the lights of the trains would flicker when passing over where Marie was killed, and people attested to seeing visions of the girl near the railroad tracks and of her working at her old loom in the mill at night. Some even attested to hearing screams near the track. Continue reading A Spectral Story: Queen City Cotton Mill Ghost →