The Voice That
Needed Witnesses.

The tradition · Historical context

The Nelly Butler accounts

The Sullivan-Sorrento Historical Society traces the tradition to reports beginning in 1799 at Abner Blaisdell’s home near Taunton Bay. A voice was said to identify itself as Nelly Butler, who had died several years earlier.

The society describes subsequent reports in 1800 and the collection of witness accounts by Abraham Cummings. These are historical claims about reported experiences; preserving them does not settle their cause.

Raina Sciocchetti, “Sullivan Ghosts and Other Stories,” October 29, 2021. Its Nelly Butler section cites Marcus LiBrizzi’s 2010 documentary history.

The source · Printed testimony

Cummings and the collected accounts

Abraham Cummings’s Immortality Proved by the Testimony of Sense is a historical text advocating a supernatural interpretation. Read it as an author’s presentation of testimony, with its own beliefs and purpose.

The boundary · Fact and fiction

A story inside the uncertainty.

The historical tradition provides the setting and the disputed haunting. The schoolmaster’s investigation, his private words, and his personal crisis are the imaginative work of this story.

The cover is cinematic illustration. It is not a historical portrait of a witness or a photograph of the reported events.