The Maine coastline is dotted with islands, each with its own ghost story, pirate tale, or both! Today we set sail to Appledore Island, located 7 miles off the coast of Kittery, at the Isles of Shoals, to share one such story. Appledore Island is now a remote field station for the Shoals Marine Lab. However back in the 1600s it was a bustling fishing community. Some say one resident, Philip Babb, never left.

How Philip Babb came to live on the island is up for debate. Rumor has it that after retiring as Captain Kidd’s mate he moved to the island to avoid the hangman’s noose. What the evidence does clearly support is Philip Babb settled on Appledore sometime around 1653, and worked as a fishing master and butcher, while also serving as the constable. His home was located on the hill on the south side of the island near the cove, which now bears his name. We also know that Philip Babb died in 1671, without much fanfare. It is also claimed that near his home he dug a very big hole. It is the purpose of that hole that continues to be discussed, but Old Babb is protecting that secret!

For centuries the superstitious residents of the Isles of Shoals whispered about Babb’s ghost, and even refused to set foot on the island after sunset. However, it was famed author and frequent island visitor, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who first penned this ghostly tale for all to read in his American Notebooks after hearing Babb’s story in 1852. Hawthorne, who didn’t require spectral evidence to retell this tale, wrote, “This island is said to be haunted by a specter called ‘Old Babb.’ He was one of Captain Kidd’s men, and was slain for the protection of the treasure.” According to Hawthorne’s brief retelling, Babb’s ghost haunted the cove looking for his treasure. Which if this is the case, he’s not doing a very good job protecting it if he lost it! No wonder he can be grumpy when people see him.

Two decades later in 1873, island resident, poet and historian, Celia Thaxter fills in the details to this ghostly tale in her book, Among Isles of Shoals. Although Thaxter never personally saw Babb’s ghost, her neighbors shared with her his frightening legend. According to Thaxter, “He is supposed to have been so desperately wicked when alive that there is no rest for him in his grave.” As the story goes, he was known for wearing a striped butcher’s frock, with a sheath attached to a leather belt. For those unfortunate enough to encounter this spirit, Babb takes great delight in removing from this sheath, a large knife which he brandishes in their terrified face.

As one victim told Thaxter, in the evening as he was walking by the workshop when he saw “a wild and dreadful figure advancing toward him.” Being a rational person, he assumed this was someone playing a joke on him. After all many of the islanders were known for their unique sense of humor. The man called out that he wasn’t afraid! Yet the ghostly apparition with “ghastly face and hollow eyes,” continued to approach while holding his knife. The man fled to the nearest house, assuming it was that resident playing this awful trick. However, he was shocked to find that person quietly eating his supper! That resident never doubted the tales of Babb’s ghost again.

Years later, when Appledore Island became a popular tourist destination with it’s grand hotel, another victim shared his frightening experience with Old Babb. As Thaxter explained, “One spring night someone was sitting on the broad piazza at sunset; it was calm and mild; the sea murmured a little; the birds twittered softly; there was hardly a waft of wind.” Surely on such an idyllic night at the Shoals ghosts were the farthest thing from that person’s mind! Yet he happened to glance toward Babb’s Cove and saw a figure quietly approaching, despite the fact he was walking on a path covered in shells and rocks. As with the previous tale, this person called out to greet the figure, and even dared to go meet it. That’s when he instantly recognized the the butcher’s frock with it’s phosphorescent glow! But did he run? No! Undeterred by the “devilish expression of malice” he called out, “Who are you? What do you want?” To which, much to his relief and horror, the figure suddenly “grew indistinct, first thick and cloudy, then thin, dissolving quite away.”

Thaxter’s brother, Oscar Laighton, adds to this ghostly tale by sharing more details in his book, Ninety Years at the Isles of Shoals, first published in 1929. Laighton explains, “There has always been a story that Captain Kidd buried money over these islands.” In an effort to find this treasure, Philip Babb and a friend dug a big pit “thirty feet across and ten feet deep.” In it “Babb at last discovered a big iron chest at the bottom of the pit.” Being too heavy to lift, Babb used a hammer and chisel to open it. However, when it started to give way “smoke, like burning sulphur, came from under the lid; that when they at last burst it open, red hot horseshoes flew out.” Babb escaped that fiery trap unharmed. However, according to Laighton, following his death Old Babb could be seen haunting that cove, so that no one else could steal his treasure.

Laighton’s sister Celia Thaxter though had a different theory for why Babb’s ghost was restless that had nothing to do with pirate treasure. The bowling alley for the Appledore Hotel was built directly over the Babb family graves, and who could possibly get any rest with the balls rolling over their bones! Regardless of the cause for Philip Babb’s unrest his tale of terror has been retold countless times, even being depicted in a graphic novel for a local TV show in 2014. Today sightings of the ghost of Philip Babb are rare, but the students of the Shoals Marine Lab on Appledore Island make a wide berth around Babb’s Cove in the evening to keep it that way!