We Did the Research, This Is Officially the Most Odd Hiking Trail Name in Rhode Island

Names of hikes aren’t typically meant to sound ominous. Challenging, sure. But not ominous, a word with a somewhat negative and scary connotation to it. Because who would choose to use a trail that scares them? Well, if there’s a shoe for every foot, then there’s a hike for every traveler. This is where the Dead Shed hike comes into play, or more specifically, the Dead Shed, Halloween, Hoover, Tar Bucket loop hike.

There’s no real answer to why the trails have been named as such, but the Northeastern part of the United States is known to have quite a few haunted areas. Although the Big River Management Area (the park that Dead Shed and the rest reside in) hasn't specifically had too many concrete haunted tales, there are a few little things that could provoke some spooky trail names in the area. 

One is that Nellie Vaughan, a woman famously mistaken to be a vampire, is buried nearby. She died in 1889 of pneumonia and was buried on a family farm before her body was moved to a cemetery. At the time, there was a panic in New England focused on the undead, so locals would occasionally exhume corpses to examine whether or not vampires lived in the coffins. It is believed that Nellie was confused with Mary Brown, one of the most well-known exhumed corpses from the area. Many did believe that Mary was a vampire, and since she lived only two towns over, was the same age at her death, had died two years after Nellie, and Nellie did have her coffin exhumed and moved, it was easy for the two to get confused. Interestingly, in recent years, locals actually believe that Nellie is a ghost and not a vampire, and that she haunts her former gravesite and pleads for her innocence in being mortal.

Another is that the nearby Varnum Memorial Armory in East Greenwich is famous for being haunted and has been on ghost-seeking television shows before. Then, finally, there’s the Field of Screams. This is a former haunted house which, ironically, started out on a Christmas tree farm and is now closed for the foreseeable future, but was very popular in its time. 

The hike itself is not monstrous or scary in appearance, with vampires lurking behind every tree. The wooded path is considered to be quite beautiful, with wildflowers, birds chirping overhead, and deer nosing at the grass. The Dead Shed trail is rather short, but the entire Dead Shed, Halloween, Hoover, Tar Bucket loop is just over 3.5 miles long and takes a bit over an hour to complete. It is extremely well maintained, although visitors claim it could be better marked, and has free parking and wide paths. In all truth, although hikers do walk the path and some locals choose it as their running spot, the little hidden rocks on the trail can cause more issues than one would think. Luckily, mountain bikers have no problem with this, and you can see them on the trail often.

But appearances can be deceiving, and perhaps one brave soul needs to be the one to find out why the hike has such an ominous name and maybe catch a ghost or two on film? In either case, looking for frights or just looking for a nice quiet hike, this trail won’t disappoint! But, if you have a spookier hike in mind with a much more terrifying name, use our nomination form and tell us all about it!