The Headless Chancellor

This is a modern fairy tale taking place in a historical setting before the widespread use of cell phones. The North Shore of Boston, Massachusetts, is an area unique in all the country, where countless changes have taken place over the centuries and where great philosophical, social, and economic contrasts exist side by side.Long ago, naive Yankees sold their pristine farms and woodlands to captains of industry and politically well-connected families who, from approximately 1844 to 1929, built magnificent mansions next to the modest, seventeenth-century saltboxes and cottages of farmers and fishermen.Here also, the past is deeply woven into the present. Ancient superstitions still hold sway in many descendants of the early settlers. "Old Yankees" are half-modern sophisticates and half-believers in the old ways, ways which break through to layers of other dimensions, to the unseen realities of the spirit world, be it for good or evil. Some swear that spirits still haunt the neighborhood's ancient forest called the Witch Woods for the poor souls who took refuge there during the Salem witch trials of 1692. Still believing in signs and omens, some parents warn their children that upon venturing into these woods, they must turn their jackets inside out for fear of fairies, gnomes, and elves.

-- Sylvia Stone Trefry