7 Urban Legends In New Hampshire To Keep You Awake At Night

Massachusetts gets most of the attention for the witch trials, but Hampton's Goodwife Eunice Cole was convicted of witchcraft in 1656. In 1670 she was released and returned to Hampton, but her neighbors accused her yet again, and she suffered through another trial. Though she was found innocent, she never forgave her neighbors, who treated her like an exile and forced her to scrounge for berries to survive. Legend has it that since her death she has been responsible for a number of Hampton tragedies, including the sinking of a ship that killed 8 people. However, the town exonerated her in 1938 and finally set up a grave marker in her honor in the 1960s, and since then she has been a much more harmless spirit.

Go far enough north in New Hampshire - right up into the woods along the Canadian border - and you just may run into a "Wood Devil." Imagine a slimmer, swifter Sasquatch - a quick, elusive two legged creature about 7 feet tall covered in light gray fur.

In 1873, two Norwegian immigrant women were brutally murdered with an axe on Smuttynose Island. A third woman escaped to tell the tale, and a man was hanged for the murder. Nevertheless, doubt and alternate stories have persisted over the years, blaming figures from the woman who escaped to her husband. The murder inspired Anita Shreve's novel "The Weight of Water."

Cocheco Mills in Dover nearly burned to the ground in 1907, killing several workers. Since then, the buildings have been refurbished and turned into offices and apartments, but reports of ghostly activity persist, and residents have reported hearing the sounds of old mill equipment operating.

The story goes that the proud Indian Chief Chocorua befriended a white man and left his son in his care while he traveled - but when he returned his son had died in a horrible accident. Chocorua, in his rage, killed the family of the white man, who was not home, starting a deadly battle for revenge. The white man chased Chocorua to the top of a nearby mountain, which the Indian chief threw himself off rather than give in. As he did, he uttered a powerful curse. The mountain, now known as Chocorua, has seen a number of strange occurrences for which many blame the curse.