Dear Friends and Devoted Fans:

If you have been attending The Nantucket Haunted Hike since it's inception in 2003, you will have seen a number of changes since then. The costume has gone from a sweltering black cape and full tuxedo to a black ensamble that turns red when it catches the light just right. The stories have gone from everyday tales known for generations to brand new stories told to me only in the previous months before telling it to you. The route has changed every single year so that the same stories do not compound in your mind every time you come and the new ones are fresh and exciting. The most wonderful change, however, have been you, the fans, that have come to see me every year and I truly thank you for your attendance.

If you have been attending the past four years, you have also seen things that have not changed for the better concerning the treatment of The Nantucket Haunted Hike. It has ranged from underhanded dealings presented from competing tours, to attempted discreditation from town offices, to downright harassment from people that live along the routes we travel. Not to mention that the economy of Nantucket has overpriced it's self to the point where the average person cannot afford to visit.

With these factors in mind, it is with a heavy heart that I announce the closing of The Nantucket Haunted Hike after four years.

Nantucket has always held a place for me, having grown up here and having done the research on local ghosts since I witnessed my first at the age of eight. My family founded this place, going back thirteen generations to Captain Gardner and Peter Folger. Up until 1976, my grandparents were local hotel owners. And now, the last of my line, Nantucket has found a way to push out even a popular tour like mine.

Beginning in 2003, it really started with Bill Jamieson, the first person to start a ghost tour on Nantucket. The town never gave him any grief due to what he did, even though his tour was performed in a droning monotone as he was dressed in his little running shorts and knee socks. Yahoo Travel once said of him that he was "scary in a mom told me not to take a ride to school from you kind of way." it was no surprise to me that I realized I could do somehow better. I proved it by becoming a threat to his monopoly that first year. He was so threatened that he would throw out my flyers, vandalize my truck, break into cars to leave his flyer in them and frighten people that would be approaching my tour. In the end he even managed to get a sympathetic reporter at The Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror to write a scathing article about me making me look like the bad guy by making up things they claimed I said, including, "He's just trying to blame me for the failure of his tour." In the end, all his underhanded mess did not stop the New Orleans Ghost Tour from hiring me that winter.

But that third year, my book, Haunted Nantucket Island had come out. It was well received and purchased by many of you. I thank you for your patronage more than you might possibly know. Yet, when the book came out, both Ed Niskern and Patti Hanley were upset that they couldn’t use any of the stories without paying me a royalty. Patti scoffed and walked away when she found out, and Ed just shouted at me to get away from him. Sadly, Ed had made up all of his history and ghost stories, and even approached me with a copy of The Ghosts Of Nantucket, asking me where the places were. The truly disgraceful thing was that by making up all his things, he disgraced his grandfather Edouard Stackpole, who was once the town’s historian. I even had people approach me to complain about his tour, asking me if I “Actually told ghost stories” on my ghost tour. People were being constantly ripped off by Ed and very upset about it.

2005 also brought me the first time I had to file a complaint with the police department on relentless hecklers. 118 Main Street was constantly shouting as loud as they could, swearing and shining high-powered lights in our eyes every night, making it impossible for us to hear what I was saying. After I had had enough, I phoned the police and the people in the house pretended to have been asleep all night even though they still came to the door like June Cleaver, fully clothed and in pearls. In 2006, after getting the police involved, 118 Main had been silent, but 98 Main took over where they left off. When I knocked on their door and asked calmly to stop harassing me, I was met with a telephone call to the police because I was “On private property.” Yet, after them calling the police on me, they quieted down as well.

As soon as 2006 rolled around, I was again given trouble by Tracy Bakalar, as she sent three police officers up to arrest me for being on Main Street on Daffodil weekend. With nobody in town government willing to listen to me, they forced me to move on, and when I went to the station to complain, Charles Gibson (Libby’s husband, incidentally) told me that the Nantucket Police Department was “an equal opportunity pain in the ass.” At the end of the day, however, Bakalar had achieved her goal. I had zero attendees.

Yet, as the 2006 season progressed, I had seen many of the same faces coming to the show. I continued to try to entertain you as best I could and saw the same smiles and looks of fear on your faces that I have appreciated for years. Unfortunately, the economy of Nantucket is on a downhill slide and I was down in revenue from where I was the previous year. In 2005, I had a competitor that was actually competition, Patti Hanley, but she left Nantucket right after Daffodil Weekend because she, “Finally found a real job.” Even I could hear the anger in her words. Yet Patti got out while the getting was good. As it is, even with her disappearance, my numbers and money were down from where I was in 2005.

When I returned, I found that Jamieson was still bitter and angry, even going so far as to contract and finance four new tours in an attempt to over-saturate the market in a vain hope that it would push me out. He did manage to get three of the most perfect people to give me trouble to start up tours. There was Chad Anderson, who by all accounts was not a nuisance, but rather someone that tried everything I was already doing to try to get his tour going, even going so far as to call his tour The Nantucket Haunted Trail and dress in similar clothing to myself. There was Ed Niskern, of "Original" Ghost tour, who changed his name to Starbuck in an attempt to tell tourists he had family going back 11 generations, when all I can find is 3 at the very least. Then there was Patti Hanley that began a tour called THE Ghost Tour, where THE apparently stood for Truly Haunting Experiences.

As it was, that second year was worse than the first where the town was concerned. Ed Niskern, in an attempt to get rid of the sign I had, decided to call the Historic District Commission (the people that made it so the joke, I live next to the white house with the gray trim, came into being) and they went on a rampage to stop only ghost tours from having signs that explain their tours. It backfired on Niskern, since he lost his sign as well. In the end, I realized that by putting someone in a sign, it was considered clothing. Since I did that, the HDC has passed legislation that sandwich boards are illegal now as well. In the end, Niskern called the Department of Social Services to get the kid wearing my sign to not wear it anymore, and it worked. However, much to his chagrin, I had an adult in it later the same day.

Patti Hanley also gave me trouble, telling me how I can and cannot run my tour. She told me I could not use humor because “People will hear your joke and then think it’s true, then they’ll come on my tour and think I’m lying.” She even approached many times with photocopied pages of books and told me, “This is what you’re saying that’s wrong.” She was a librarian that moved to Nantucket and everything she knew of or ever learned about Nantucket came right out of a book. Having grown up here, I knew that much of what was written was exaggerated especially in the way of Madaket Millie or even Tony Sarg. Yet to Patti Hanley, it was canon if it was written down.

That year, I still managed to be the top tour, and was again the next year, but the underhanded dealings continued. The hecklers got worse and worse, even going so far as to attempt to run some of us over with their cars. One woman on Fair Street, who I will now identify as Virginia Ivey, thought that because I stood next to her house and showed off another up the street, it was acceptable to hose down the tour because she didn't like the story I told for five minutes every night. Yet if I had taken the hose from her and watered her down, I am certain that I would have been arrested for assault. Due to her being a local realtor and having a few million under her belt, she got away scott-free. I was also struck in the head by a bar of soap that year by a man on Orange Street. The only reason he was not arrested was because he paid for everyone on the tour to get a T-shirt. But the heckling and assault was nothing compared to town government.

Someone went into the Board of Selectmen and complained that “We have to put a stop to these ghost tours. There were five this year, what do we do next year when there are ten?” to which Town Manager, Libby Gibson was quoted as saying, “We have had some complaints and now it’s become an issue.” When I went in to protest two weeks later, she denied saying that. I was told to make an appointment with her so that I could voice my concerns, and was denied one every time I called. When I went in in the spring to talk to the board again, she made it seem like I was not tenacious enough and said, “To my knowledge, Mr. Alexander only tried to make two appointments.” The point is, I should have not had to attempt the second appointment. Instead I was told in November that she would not be able to see me until February, then in February, I was told that she couldn’t see me until April or May. I got the clue, I was being pushed aside by a misguided prejudice. In the end, she decided that every walking tour guide had to have a street performer’s license in order to do what they do.

The Nantucket Historic Association was upset with me over this. I had no sympathy because had they been behind me instead of opposing me, the licensing never would have happened. Instead, Frank Milligan, the former head of the NHA had even printed in their newsletter, “It’s getting warm again and it’s time to start going on walking tours, and none of those made up ghost tours.” He had even been overheard telling people that he “would not rest until all the ghost tours on Nantucket were out of business.” In the end, in an effort to save $2000, the NHA discontinued it’s walking tours that had been in operation since time immemorial.

The third year began and I was approached my very first weekend by Tracy Bakalar, director of the Chamber of Commerce and told to “Get off Main Street,” because during the Daffodil Weekend parade, I would be “The center of attention.” I refused to comply with her for the simple fact that I had just as much right as Patti Hanley, who was now on Main Street and a member of the Chamber. Bakalar didn’t see it that way and gave me enough trouble, but I still refused to move. At the end of the season, Bakalar again tried to cause trouble for me at Christmas Stroll by calling the Chief of Police and asking to make sure I “Was not on main Street that day.” He told her that I had every right and managed to not let her have her wish. When the night was over, I had severely beaten Patti Hanley in attendence (Her 6, me 63), which I am sure got under Bakalar’s skin.

I also saw many of the same faces saying some horribly despicable things as they drove by. They shout out cursewords at me while there are tons of small children on the tour, they screamed and slammed on their horns, they even turned their radios up as loud as they will go as they drive past, then turn them back down once clear. The heckling from those on the routes had gotten even worse as well. It progressed from a simple ghostly moan all the way to high powered flashlights, and even in 2006, people putting towels over their heads and running through the crowd as they come out of their homes wreaking of cutty sark or come right through the crowd and stand less than an inch from me with fingers wagging in my face saying, "Woooo!" and smelling equally intoxicated. A couple that came on the tour this season even told me that they have done ghost tours in seven different cities and the heckling is the worst they have ever seen on Nantucket. That has to say something about the people that own the houses on the routes and those that drive by us every night. They may be “upper class” but they are most certainly lower lifeforms.

At the end of August, 2006, David Goodman, with the Inquirer and Mirror wrote that people have nothing better to do than come see me. He spoke out the same orifice he sits on and told people I don’t do my research and only took my stories from Blue Balliett’s two books. Any of you that have come on the tour know that this is not true even in the slightest hint. If nothing else, you all know that what I do is no more than entertainment. I do not try to convince you of what I believe, I just tell you that I do believe and then tell you the story I have been told. Especially when people go by in their multi-hundred-thousand dollar cars and tell you I’m lying or a hoax, it makes me think that they are the ones that need education and pity. Poor little rich kids, so to speak.

Even Ed Niskern decided to keep up his antics during my last year. He hired children to throw out my flyers and harass my signbearer. He has gone so far as to tell people that I “suck” and not to go with me because he’s much better even though he still gives the same made up tour. He’s donned an eyepatch in an effort to have kids think he’s a pirate. My response to that is that he is ripping you off and he does does smell like rum, so in that regard, he is a pirate. I highly recommend letting the ghost industry die now that I am gone because financing such an obvious fraud will only hurt your pocketbook and it will not give you the same level of enjoyment you always had with me.

But with the intolerance, and the high school like attitudes of those on Nantucket, the prejudices I have encountered because I tell ghost stories, and now the cruel-hearted attempts from the summertime throngs who have more money than sense, I have decided to close my doors so to speak. I have been hired to work with The Philadelphia Trolley Works and Big Bus Tour Company in Philadelphia, PA., making more than I did on Nantucket with a lower cost of living. The management of this company saw my act on Nantucket, was impressed and moved me out to work for them. I have even been refered to as an "Asset to the company" on more than one occasion. Much like my time in New Orleans, I am sure that I will enjoy myself much more than I have during my tenure on Nantucket. At least in Philadelphia, they can't deny my business permit due to personal political views concerning my tour.

So to those of you that have been devoted fans and patrons for the past few years, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming and joining me. You are what made my days on Nantucket a joy, even in the face of overwhelming opposition from those we pass by and those in town government. I will miss you.

My special thanks for the most incredible memories go to the children, Courtney, Kellyn, India, Lilly, Juliet, and even little William (who owns my very first tophat!) you have all made my work a joy. If I have inspired you to even look into something, or I have planted a seed of knowledge in your heads, then I have achieved what I set out to do. As for the rest of you, my loyal fans and customers, thank you. Thank you for making my heart feel excited to see you again. Please feel free to contact me, I'd love to see how you are doing as well...

Goodbye from Nantucket.
Hello from points on the horizon.

Will Alexander