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immediately struck and killed by a passing car.
    The legend goes that as you drive past the nursing home, if you tune your car’s radio station to 102.9 FM—the signal of the rock station the orderly changed the radio to each time—the signal will fade out and be replaced by classical music, as the old woman gets her way from the great beyond.
    From the moment I first heard this story, I knew what had sparked it; 102.9 FM, the dial setting for rock station WPXC is one step up on the FM dial from 102.5, which for about fifty-five years was home to classic rock station WCRB until that station moved down the dial in 2009. WPXC originates on Cape Cod, while WCRB broadcast out of Boston, and Fairhaven seemed like the perfect spot for the signals to become crossed somehow to allow one station to bleed into the other.
    When I went out to try it, that’s exactly what happened, and still does to this day—although 102.5 is now country station WKLB, and Nichols House has been renamed the Royal at Fairhaven. The names and station formats may have changed, but the legend lives on.
That Dam Woman
    Acushnet comes from the Wampanoag
acushnea,
which has been translated by some to mean “at the head of the river” or “resting place along the river.” One interesting translation, which comes from Maurice DesJardins, suggests that Acushnet in the Wampanoag means “a place where we get to the other side.”
    Now, if that doesn’t sound like a paranormal hot spot, I don’t know what does.
    If Acushnet is a place to get to the Other Side, it’s also a place that the Other Side likes to get to. Take, for example, the spectral woman who is often seen taking in the view around the Hamlin Road Dam. She is said to be seen in the early morning hours, just as the sun rises, and described as a peaceful and benign spirit.
    The same can’t be said for another ghostly woman seen farther up the Acushnet River. This spirit often frightens away those who see her, with her animalistic behavior along the shores of the river and a name that is crudely carved into her back, yet no one has been able to get close enough to read what it says.
The Samuel West House
    At a time when many men of God in Massachusetts were all about hellfire and brimstone, the Reverend Dr. Samuel West was of a different breed. Viewed as a liberal who was more akin to the later Unitarian movement, West would have made an imposing figure on the pulpit had he stuck to the Puritan preaching style. He was a large man—over six feet tall and weighed more than two hundred pounds, but often appeared disheveled and dirty. He was a man of little means, making a meager salary with the First Congregational Society in Dartmouth (in present-day New Bedford) after being ordained in 1761.
    The property that would come to bear his name passed hands quite a bit beginning in 1742, with the oldest part of the current building being built sometime prior to 1775. West came to own it in 1785, as he recovered judgment from a Thomas Crandon and took control of the property as part of that judgment—but whether he actually resided there is unknown. West had actually taken his congregation to court over his pay, and his ownership of the Acushnet property may have been related to that. It is believed that at one time, there was a church and a graveyard on the property, so he may have actually just been granted the property on which he was already serving in the church.

    The staircase at the Samuel West House leads to the haunted third floor.
Courtesy of Christopher Balzano.
    In the 1920s, the house was used as a funeral home but fell into disrepair when it became a private residence again years later.
    Katie and Johnny now live in the home with their three children. The upstairs is occupied by another couple, while the third floor—the attic space—is reserved for the ghosts. But that doesn’t stop them from coming down and interacting