It's no surprise that remote Martha's Vineyard is home to a significant population of ghosts. There are the strange entities that just may have played a part in the notorious accident at the Chappaquiddick Bridge. There is the ghost of aristocratic Desire Coffin, called back from the Other Side by the power of music and the memory of lost love. And at one haunted inn, Room 8, accessible only by way of a cramped hidden staircase, is the focus of strange events—including the total disappearance of one guest. After twenty years in print, this classic is now updated and expanded with new information and new stories.

Martha's Vineyard has always been known as a charming seaside destination. But on this island, a cautious tour reveals darker tales that lie beneath its familiar exterior. Walk by the House of Correction, where Old Joe patrols the cells in the afterlife. Savor spirits at the Kelley House, where the ghost of the widow of a whaleman rolls Christmas ornaments across the floor and appears by the fireplace. Meander into the Victorian Inn, now The Christopher, where a honeymooning couple was spooked by towels flung on the floor and a rug that wiggled from beneath their four-poster. Local author and historian Thomas Dresser explores haunted happenings from all six island towns, as well as tales of pirates, murder and the afterlife.

Holly Nadler, the ghost lady of Martha's Vineyard, won lots of attention for her collections of ghostly accounts on the island in Haunted Island. Now, in her second volume, Nadler brings her sassiness and spunk to investigating and delivering the dirt on even more eerie happenings on an island that is home to the rich, famous — and, yes, the otherworldly. In fact, she says, Martha's Vineyard is America's most haunted island.

Generations of women have traveled to Martha's Vineyard to find solace in its calming waves and varied shoreline. Many prominent and capable women set down roots, contributing to the fabric of the community on the island. Learn of the brilliant poet Nancy Luce, who lived in isolation with her chickens. Emily Post, whose name is synonymous with good manners, sought respite from her personal struggles on the Vineyard. Famed horticulturalist Polly Hill left a perennial legacy for islanders with her tranquil arboretum. In the twentieth century, novelist Dorothy West captured the beauty of Martha's Vineyard with her work. Historian Thomas Dresser provides a series of biographical sketches of these extraordinary women who were bound by their love of the island.

Celebrated local historian Thomas Dresser unearths the little-known stories that laid the foundations for the community of Martha's Vineyard. Behind the mansions and presidential vacations of Martha's Vineyard hide the lost stories and forgotten events of small-town America. What was the island's role in the Underground Railroad? Why do chickens festoon Nancy Luce's grave? And how did the people of the Vineyard react in 1923 when the rum running ship John Dwight sank with the island's supply of liquor aboard? Delve deep below the surface of history to discover the origin and meaning of local place names and the significance of beloved landmarks.

Martha's Vineyard became an integral part of the whaling industry at the beginning of the eighteenth century and inspired a lasting romantic enthusiasm for life on the open ocean. From shorewhaling to daring voyages into the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans, the insular whaling community offered a tempting path for many young Vineyarders to rise from cabin boy to captain. Local businesses were enticed by the potential profit from whaling voyages, and many reaped generous rewards from successful whale oil harvests. Through memoirs, music and memorabilia, author Thomas Dresser recounts this dramatic history of the bygone era of whaling on Martha's Vineyard.

With its rocky coast and treacherous shoals, shipwrecks were a common occurrence in nineteenth-century Massachusetts. Few claimed as many lives as the City of Columbus. The night was clear and the route familiar for Captain Schuyler Wright and his experienced crew as they sailed a ship equipped with the latest technology. Yet with all this, the City of Columbus went down with 103 souls. Over a century later, Eric Takakjian and the Quest Marine Services team located the wreckage of the City of Columbus on the north ledge of the Devil's Bridge, off the southern tip of Gay Head. Historian Thomas Dresser takes us into the icy waters of the Atlantic as he recounts the terrible chain of events that led to disaster on that fateful night.

In the author's words, her book includes the island's fabulous collection of historic and contemporary tidbits, including those about people who come to the island in secret; celebrity scandals, as seen from the point of view of people who live on Martha's Vineyard; unsolved murders; sea monster sightings; paranormal events; shipwrecks; and some only on the Vineyard eccentrics and crackpots from the last 350 years.

Trapped in an isolated old house on Martha's Vineyard in winter, Diana Barlow is either seeing ghosts or losing her mind ... After an estrangement from her parents, Diana came to Martha's Vineyard to start a new life with her husband Ford and young daughter Samantha. The beautiful Victorian house that Ford inherited seemed the perfect home for a fresh beginning. But in the winter, when the tourists go home and the island is deserted, Diana is afraid she's going crazy. Specters of people long dead flicker in and out of her vision. The antique dolls in her house never stay where they're put. Samantha suddenly has a whole group of imaginary friends who live in the house and tell her terrible things. And Ford is becoming increasingly moody, unpredictable, and violent. While Diana investigates the horrifying history of the house, the past, the present, the living and the dead fatally intertwine, and Diana realizes she and her daughter must escape -- if Ford and the house will let her.

This book follows the nation's presidents chronologically, from George Washington to Ronald Reagan, with stories about their ghostly manifestations, their experiences with unexplained phenomena, and odd encounters involving members of their families.