A nineteenth-century Ware cemetery and its surrounding residential streets
Pleasant Street and Aspen Street, Ware, MA 01082
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Public cemetery. No fees.
Access
Limited Access
Paved roads and grassy slopes
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1851 · Civil War Memorial (1867) · Grave of William Candy Cummings (Baseball Hall of Fame) · Charles Abbott Stevens Burial
Aspen Grove Cemetery occupies a parcel of approximately twenty-five acres at the intersection of Pleasant Street and Aspen Street on the south side of Ware, Massachusetts, in Hampshire County. The original land was donated by Orrin Sage to the Town of Ware for use as a public burial ground. Two later acquisitions from the Greenleaf siblings, one purchased in 1890 and one donated in 1910, expanded the cemetery to its current footprint.
A Civil War monument on a small rise above the entrance was completed in 1867 and lists the names of forty-five Ware men who died in the conflict. The cemetery also contains the grave of William Arthur Candy Cummings, a Major League Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher credited as the first to throw a curveball; his grave is in Section G. Former U.S. Representative Charles Abbott Stevens is also buried in the cemetery.
The surrounding residential streets the Shadowlands narrative references, including Aspen Court, Dale Street, and Vigeant Street, are private residential blocks. Some sections of Ware have seen documented disinvestment and housing turnover; folkloric reports tied to particular addresses in the neighborhood are not independently corroborated in any source accessed during research and should not be attached to specific currently-occupied residences.
Sources
Local internet folklore associated with the Aspen Street neighborhood in Ware traces back to an anonymous community submission in the 2000s. The submitted accounts describe a soft female voice heard inside a residence near the cemetery, presence-feelings on the wooded path along the cemetery's water frontage, photographs interpreted as showing a streak of light resembling a figure with a walking stick, and a general sense of unease attached to the Dale and Aspen intersection.
The original submission also attaches specific dramatic claims to particular addresses in the surrounding residential blocks. Because those addresses correspond to current private homes and those claims have not been independently corroborated by any news, historical, or paranormal-investigation source accessed during research, this entry does not repeat them. Visitors interested in the area should keep to the cemetery itself and to public sidewalks, and should not approach occupied houses based on online ghost-story claims.
The cemetery itself is the place to visit. Its Civil War monument, its baseball-history headstone, and its quiet wooded perimeter are worth a daytime walk; the broader neighborhood folklore is best read with the skepticism it deserves.
A twenty-five-acre cemetery donated to the Town of Ware in the 1850s, with a Civil War monument completed in 1867 listing 45 local men who died in service. Hall of Fame baseball pitcher William Candy Cummings, credited with throwing the first curveball, is buried in Section G.
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