What Ghosts Might We Encounter at Fort Adams This Saturday?

This coming Saturday night, we’ll be holding a Face Your Fears Night at Fort Adams in Newport, RI. In addition to being an awesome historical site, it’s also extremely haunted, and has been featured on television shows like Ghost Hunters. The Spooky Crew from Spooky Southcoast is going to lead you on a true paranormal investigation, complete with all the toys and gadgets you’ve seen on the shows, as well as some old-school stuff like dowsing rods and Ouija boards.

So who are some of the ghosts we might encounter at Fort Adams?

Well, author Kathleen Troost-Cramer has put together a fantastic book called True Tales of Life & Death at Fort Adams, and in it, she highlights some of the strange and sometimes mysterious deaths that have taken place at the fort since it opened in 1799.

Even during its construction, some of the workers perished and their spirits are said to remain behind, trapped on the property and doomed to relive their horrible fate over and over again for all eternity. And those who served at Fort Adams may still be on watch, even long after they shed this mortal coil.

Troost-Cramer wrote about the very first murder at Fort Adams, on July 4, 1819. That’s when, after a suspected night of drinking to celebrate Independence Day, Private William G. Cornell shot and killed fellow Private William Kane point-blank. Was it an accident? Was it premeditated murder? Perhaps Private Kane will speak to us and tell us his story…

During the Spanish Influenza outbreak of 1918, Fort Adams lost five residents to the virus. Perhaps the saddest two were Delia Geary and her baby girl, who was delivered prematurely as both mother and daughter were infected and died.

And what’s a ghost hunt without a good mystery to try and solve? On January 25, 1925, the frozen body of Mary Gleason—an Irish immigrant who was working in Newport as a maid—was discovered in an artillery ditch at Fort Adams by some children who had been sledding in the area. Private George Cordy confessed to her murder, claiming he was her former boyfriend and was jealous of her engagement to another soldier, Private George Henderson. Yet it turned out that Cordy wasn’t even in Newport that night, and after initially suspecting foul play, a coroner’s inquest ruled it an accidental death. So what exactly happened that frigid night at the fort? We may never know, but if we can connect with the spirit of Mary, maybe we can get some clues.

We reached out to some of our friends from Ghost Hunters to find out where the best spots are to investigate, and Dustin Pari suggested we try to reach out to the women and children who haunt the area near where the bakery oven was kept: