Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town

The area known as Dogtown—an isolated colonial ruin and surrounding 3,000-acre woodland in seaside Gloucester, Massachusetts—has long exerted a powerful influence over artists, writers, eccentrics, and nature lovers. But its history is also woven through with tales of witches, supernatural sightings, pirates, former slaves, drifters, and the many dogs Revolutionary War widows kept for protection and for which the area was named. In 1984, a brutal murder took place there: a mentally disturbe...