Est. 1876 · One of New England's earliest and longest-running island resort hotels · Site of the 1715 town of Gosport, later annexed to Rye, NH · Nonprofit conference center run continuously since 1916 · Near Smuttynose Island, site of the well-documented 1873 murders of Karen and Anethe Christensen
Captain John Smith charted the Isles of Shoals in 1614, and permanent fishing settlement on Star Island began by the 1660s, growing into one of the busiest fishing communities on the New England coast. The town of Gosport was incorporated on the island in 1715, and a stone meetinghouse, Gosport Chapel, was built in 1800; its foundation and rebuilt structure still stand near the hotel today. The island was annexed to Rye, New Hampshire, in 1876.
The Oceanic Hotel was built on Star Island in 1876 by John Poor, part of the wave of large wooden resort hotels built along the New England coast during the era's tourism boom. In 1896, Unitarian minister Thomas Elliott and his wife Lilla began holding a summer conference on the island that became the Shoals Summer Meeting Association. The nonprofit Star Island Corporation has owned and operated Star Island since 1916, running the hotel today in partnership with the Unitarian Universalist Association and United Church of Christ.
The wider Isles of Shoals archipelago straddles the New Hampshire-Maine state line. On the night of March 5-6, 1873, two Norwegian immigrant women, Karen and Anethe Christensen, were killed on nearby Smuttynose Island, across the anchorage from Star. A third woman, Maren Hontvet, escaped and survived to identify Louis Wagner, a local fisherman who had lived with the family, as the killer. Wagner was tried, convicted, and hanged in Maine in 1875. The case, one of the best-documented 19th-century murder trials in New England, is often retold alongside the archipelago's ghost lore even though it took place on a different island.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Island_(New_Hampshire)
- https://starisland.org/
- https://starisland.org/visit/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smuttynose_murders
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_H._F._Wagner
- https://www.nhpreservation.org/events-calendar/2016/2/26/140-years-at-sea-the-oceanic-hotel-on-star-island
- https://ghost-hunters.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Island
- https://vaughncottage.wordpress.com/2012/10/31/ghosts-at-the-isles-of-shoals-happy-halloween/
- https://ghosthuntinginnewengland.com/2022/01/20/star-island-isles-of-shoals/
Reports of falls and unexplained touches in Cottage EApparition associated with the pirate's-bride monumentGeneral unease reported by seasonal staff in older buildings
The best-known Star Island legend concerns a small stone monument on the island that local tradition associates with a woman abandoned there, in some versions by the pirate Blackbeard, while he supposedly buried treasure elsewhere in the Isles of Shoals around 1720. No historical record places Blackbeard at the Isles of Shoals, and the monument's actual origin is not documented in any source consulted; it survives purely as an oral tradition repeated by island guides and visitors.
A second recurring story involves Cottage E, one of the island's older guest cottages, where legend holds that a 17th-century fisherman's young son fell down a set of stairs and died after being sent to play unsupervised. Guests staying in the cottage have reported the sensation of small hands on their backs and unexplained falls on the stairway.
The Syfy series Ghost Hunters investigated Star Island in an episode titled 'Star Island,' the second episode of the show's fifth season, which aired March 18, 2009. The team examined both the pirate's-bride monument and Cottage E, and Star Island's own recap of the visit, published on the organization's website, describes the investigation without endorsing any of the claims as confirmed. No independent paranormal research organization has published a separate case file on the island.
Notable Entities
Unnamed 'pirate's bride' tied by local legend to BlackbeardUnnamed child said to have died in a fall in Cottage E
Media Appearances
- Star Island (Ghost Hunters, TV, 2009)
