Stone Walls, Unmarked Graves, and a Green Light in the Pines
1951 Turnpike St, North Andover, MA 01845
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Free day use; camping $17/night for MA residents, $54/night for non-residents
Access
Wheelchair OK
Varied — paved ADA-accessible Healthy Heart Trail, stone dust paths, and rugged woodland trails across 35+ miles. Camping area accessible.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1916 · Massachusetts State Forest Heritage · Colonial Farming Community Ruins · Essex County Settlement History
The land that became Harold Parker State Forest was occupied by the Pennacook people before European settlement arrived in the late 1600s. Colonists established farms throughout the area over the following two centuries, creating a community of homesteads connected by the stone walls that remain the forest's most visible historical remnant. The farms were organized around the eleven ponds that dot the property, which provided water and supported modest grain and livestock operations.
By the early twentieth century, as New England's agricultural economy collapsed under Midwestern competition and rural depopulation, these farms were abandoned. The land reverted to second-growth woodland, but the stone walls remained, as did the cellar holes, domestic debris, and unmarked graves.
The newly-founded Massachusetts State Forest Commission filed thirteen deeds involving ten different families at the North Essex registry on April 14, 1916, establishing Harold Parker State Forest. It was named for the Commission's first chairman, who died that same year. The Commonwealth continued acquiring land between 1916 and 1934 at a statutory cap of roughly five dollars per acre. The forest today spans roughly 3,000 acres across Essex and Middlesex counties — 60% in North Andover, 30% in Andover, 8% in North Reading, and 2% in Middleton.
The park now offers 35 miles of trails, 11 ponds open to fishing and boating, and the 91-site Loraine Campground at 133 Jenkins Road in Andover. The stone walls of the former farm community run through the reservation, enclosing nothing, marking the outlines of lives that ended more than a century ago. Unmarked graves scattered through the property are documented but not comprehensively mapped — the informal burial practices of rural families who buried kin on their own land, a common New England practice before institutional cemeteries became standard.
Sources
The paranormal tradition at Harold Parker State Forest is threaded through the forest's own historical character — the stone walls, the cellar holes, the unmarked graves of people who worked this land before it was abandoned. The landscape already carries the texture of the disappeared, which may explain why the accounts that attach to it have a particular quality of belatedness: things witnessed from a distance, never confirmed at the source.
The green orb is the forest's most consistently reported phenomenon. Hikers and campers who have been in the reserve after dark have described a greenish light visible beyond the stone walls — not moving, not flickering, positioned at ground level or just above it. Those who have followed it toward its location have not found a source. The phenomenon is most frequently reported in the 3 a.m. hour, according to accounts that have circulated among the forest's habitual visitors.
The second account is more specific and more disturbing. Near one of the forest's small ponds — the exact location varying in different tellings — multiple independent visitors have described the same image: a woman, visibly distressed, walking from the bank into the water. She does not stop at the waterline. She continues deeper, her figure growing smaller, until she is submerged and gone. No one has identified who she might be or whether any drowning at this location is documented.
The footsteps heard beyond the walls — without a figure, without a source — complete the picture of a forest that its visitors have found populated with something beyond the merely historical.
Notable Entities
Harold Parker State Forest's 35 miles of trails wind through the ruins of an eighteenth-century farming community — crumbling stone walls, cellar holes, and unmarked graves embedded in second-growth forest. The trails where a weeping woman has been reported near a small pond, and where hikers describe a green orb after dark, are accessible from the Middleton Road and Jenkins Road trailheads.
91 campsites with fire rings, picnic tables, and water spigots set in woodland where green orbs and footsteps have been reported beyond the stone walls after dark. Eleven sites offer 20/30/50 AMP hookups. Reservations required via ReserveAmerica; no walk-ins. Camping season runs early May through Columbus Day weekend.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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