"Everyone
loves Charlie"
While no one has ever claimed to have been greeted by a butler opening the door of the Sprague mansion there are visitors to the house who claim to have seen things! This guests talk of cold spots and of being touched when no one else is at arm’s length. People have seen 'ghost like' forms walking down the main stairway and a lady in black appears in the cupola during the night at midnight.
Ethel L. Duckworth, the wife of Cranston Print Works manager Harry Duckworth reported the first recorded ‘incident’ in 1928. She had been alone in the wine cellar when she felt someone brush by her arm. Voila Lynch told this to Mary Migliore, a reporter for the Providence Journal in 1970
When the Cranston Historical Society purchased the Sprague Mansion in 1966 they thought they were saving the 28 room house from being destroyed by the City of Cranston for a complex to house the elderly. How could they have known that they also acquired more then what was listed in the deed. Did the Cranston Print Works sell the mansion because perhaps they knew of the secret lurking the in secluded, cold, dark wine cellar. There were no disclosure laws about such things as hauntings in the 1960’s. The house was thought to be empty. Who knew in 1967 when the Society begin restoring the mansion that a lonely unknown lodger was dwelling within the walls of the 28 room mansion. Just ‘dying’ for contact.
One member who passed away some time ago and who shall remain anonymous saw a “filmy white thing” in a tiny enclosed room in what would eventually became the “doll room” and the “most legendary spookiest ” room of the mansion. He saw this vision in 1968 as members were painting and restoring the mansion to open it to the public.
The legend of Charlie the Butler began when Bob Lynch, Jr. and some friends were doing ‘night watchman’ duty at the mansion in 1967. They said strange things happened to them at night while they were trying to sleep. Blankets were thrown off the beds. The young men each claimed not to have been joking around and didn’t do it. The brave watchmen constructed a Ouija Board, a devise that is made for talking to the death or any spirits that might be so inclined to chat by spelling out words. “Tell my story!” The Ouija spelt out under thfingertips of the young men using the planchette. They had made contact with a ‘ghost’, and this entity had a name and a story to tell. He called himself Charlie and he had been butler to a wealthy family who had lived in the mansion. He had hoped that his daughter would be married to the son of his employer but that wedding did not occur and thereby dashed Charlie’s dreams of wealth and land. The Ouija kept spelling out the words, “my land, my land”. It seemed that “Charlie” had been “dying’ for some contact.
Charlie the Butler is our legendary ghost who has built up a reputation for himself. He has his own web page and puts on a Halloween party. Charlie is a terrible host, for he has yet to show up at his own party. Although guests to his party claim to have seen many friends of Charlie. They claim to have seen ladies in the fashion of the 1860’s. Apparitions in white have crossed the paths of a few guests. And of course, there are the bashful spirits who do not wish to be seen but want to let the living know they are about the mansion. Many people say they have been touched by a very cold hand while attending Charlie’s Party.
Stranger things have happened at Charlie's Parties! Does the spirit of 'lady who saved Sprague Mansion' now inhibit the house? Was her love for her husband so powerful that she called him to her at one of Charlie's Parties?
In October of 2002, at the orginal Charlie the Butler's Ghost Party. a group of ladies took a ouija board into the 'old parlor' of the mansion. These women had no way of knowing that the oil painting of the lady hanging on the wall was Mrs. Lynch, the lady who saved the Sprague Mansion from being razed or that the portrait was a painting of love by her heartbroken husband. Viola died in 2002. They told our curator, hostess of Charlie's Party, that they had a message from
VL, "Tell Bob, I need
himwas the message. Bob was the name of her husband Bob Lynch was active and in good health in October 2000. On February 8th, 2003, Bob Lynch died
suddenly. Maybe their love was one that continued beyond the grave and they couldn't be without each other.
Have you seen Charlie or the spirits that haunt Sprague Mansion? Please email charliethebutler@verizon.net and let us know.
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Update: The daughter of folk-lorist Michael Bell experienced a strange event on the evening of her father's presentation at Charlie's Vampire Party, a Halloween fund raiser at the Sprague Mansion. She received a cell phone call. The caller id showed her mother's phone number. Her mother was sitting right next to her and did not call her at all.
What other tales are waiting to be told from the Sprague Mansion that has been witness to so much history and tragedy?
Write to us at the Sprague Mansion, 1351 Cranston St, Cranston, Rhode Island 02920.
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