Legend has it that a young man and woman were killed here while camping in the forest. There is said to be a rock near the entrance that tells the story, but this may or may not be true. Some say the forest really got its name strictly because the donor of the land in 1946 was named Arthur W. Blood. Another grisly rumor says that Mr. Blood was a mentally unstable killer and hanged the bodies from trees throughout the forest. Reports of phantoms and screams have been noted coming from the woods.
If you've had a paranormal experience here, or have any additional information about this location, please let us know!
Rate this Haunted Place
What do you think? Is this place really haunted? Voice your opinion here! Click "thumbs up" if you think its haunted, or "thumbs down" if you think its all just a tall tale.
Geographic Information
- Address:
- Brockelman Road
Lancaster, MA
United States
Get Directions » - GPS:
- 42.4743325793126, -71.70925995288695
- County:
- Worcester County, Massachusetts
- Nearest Towns:
- Lancaster, MA (2.2 mi.)
South Lancaster, MA (2.4 mi.)
Sterling, MA (3.6 mi.)
Clinton, MA (4.2 mi.)
Leominster, MA (4.4 mi.)
Shirley, MA (5.7 mi.)
Boylston, MA (5.7 mi.)
Bolton, MA (5.9 mi.)
Harvard, MA (6.7 mi.)
Berlin, MA (7.4 mi.)
Please note: It is your responsibility to acquire appropriate permissions before investigating any location listed on this site. Private property should be respected at all times, as should all posted signs concerning trespassing, hours of operation and other local regulations. Many "ghost hunters" have been arrested because they failed to contact property owners and/or local authorities ahead of time.
Share Your Experiences
Comments (22)
Share Your Comments
Disclaimer: The stories posted here are user-submitted and are, in the nature of "ghost stories," largely unverifiable. HauntedPlaces.org makes no claims that any of the statements posted here are factually accurate. The vast majority of information provided on this web site is anecdotal, and as such, should be viewed in the same light as local folklore and urban legends.
Here at blood forest 1245 am
I’ve heard about this place when I was in highschool. I use to go there a lot until I seen a white figure , human shape jump out of the trees and started running. Also heard a lot of wierd noises out there
Definitely a creepy place at night. Went rock hunting for Powerline cross stones AKA chiastolite there and found a few once. Very cool.
Do NOT go camping in this forest or partying. It is most def. Haunted!! I have never been one to believe in that kinda stuff until my boyfriend and I went camping in the woods here with a few of our friends. We ended up leaving early that morning at like 3am because none of us could take it anymore. Waay to scary for me. All night long weird things kept happening..we could notttt keep the fire going for the life of us and no it was not wet or rainy that night it was a regular hot dry summer night. After hearing voices all night and just laughing it off and yelling back at the voices thinking it was another group of people somewhere in the woods screwing with us..All of our camping lights kept on getting shut off and finally after fixing and turning one back on for the 10th time the light flew off our little foldable table we had and smashed into the ground and broke. From there we alll got creeped out and knew that there was no possible way that couldve happened. It didnt just fall..it flew as if it was thrown. We decided to just pack up and leave bcuz nothing was going right all night and now being scared we weren’t about to stay and find out what was next. My boyfriend and his other male friends are just goofing around this whole time mind you ..trying to act as if they werent scared and being “tough guys” if you will. We packed our things up and headed out…tommy, one of my boyfriends friends screamed out, and I apologize now for my language, “fuck you ghost ass niggas” not more then a minute later he “tripped” claiming “something fucking pushed me yo im not lieing i wouldnt have got this over a little trip dude lets get the fuck outta here” he was on the verge of crying if not already and he had a huge cut on face which he ended up getting 4 stitches for later that day. Was he telling the truth I still dont know for sure…but even still til this day he claims he was. All I do know for sure is I will never take lightly or play around with “haunted” places again.
I mean, I hate the language used and I advise not to say the full word and censor it, but aside that, that’s amazing! Where did you go camping in the forest, I would love to go camping there in the future with my paranormal team and it sounds very active and extremely cool! Thank you
I am looking up this forest on google maps and the map provided on this page is not synced with google maps. The placement is different. Which one is correct? You can see it if you compare the placement of Bartlet Pond and conservatory reserve.
All lies. I grew up in Blood Town Forest. Walking my dogs there now…
I walked my dog there once. After that he was never the same.
I am from a town that is fairly close to lancaster. I have heard all of the legends told about blood town forest. I was told not to go there several times from friends. One of them told me that he boyfriend and his friends went to blood forest one night and saw a little girl in a white dress. A few day later both friends that we with him got in a serious accident and were hospitalized .Probably a year later I decided to go despite my friends warning. First thing my friend said was that he saw a girl in a white dress when we were deep in the woods. I never told him that story… Besides that, I have never really seen anything myself but according to the people I know, it can be a scary place to go in MA
My step sister and a couple of her other friends recently went to the forest and reported hearing whispers before they got too freaked out and left. I’m not sure if they’re telling the truth or not for I was not present, but she seemed pretty sincere about the whole thing.
I was just there earlier today. I didn’t hear or see anything paranormal, but for a forest that’s supposedly evil, I felt strangely calm. A few things that I thought were odd though: there was an entire tree chopped up on the side of the main trail that was set on fire. Also, the trail design was really confusing. I wasn’t sure which blue mark was a trail blaze or not!
Beyond that, a very pleasant trip. Anyone else got some cool stories from this summer?
Steve — the Lancaster Town Forest Commission had a professional forester come in and mark trees with blue marks that will be harvested. The blue marks are NOT trail markings! They do that in the Lancaster town forest once in a great while to keep the forest healthy. The trails are cleared and the one from the gate at the main entrance on Brockelman road is the “Town forest main trail” and it connects to the old AT&T telegraph right of way. Off of that main road are several other trails. The person who is the chairman of the Town Forest Committee (not naming names in a public forum!) has several waypoints he’s mapped and I’ve imported them into google maps that documents all of the trails. You may be able to get the data from the town website. There are a lot of really great networks of trials throughout the Lancaster Town forest.
And by the way myself and one of the town forest committee members felled several trees along the trail that had orange marks slated for removal a few years ago for trail maintenance. We hauled them out of the forest and had them milled into lumber at a 100 year old mill in Sterling and then used the lumber to build a sugar shack on conservation land that is over off of Sterling road. One of the few remaining true meadow areas in Lancaster. It was a really cool project. A couple of the top sections of those trees we felled were left and we never got a chance to clean them up completely. It’s quite possible a lightning strike could have set one on fire — behind my house which borders the town forest on the other side from Brockelman there have been a few lightning strikes that have blown out trees and scorched them over the years. Also this past summer during the drought there were a few brush fires around town — with so many people frequenting the forest trails it is quite possible someone accidentally caused the fire.
I’ve seen a long robed-like man walking with what looked like a flashlight or lantern and then just disappear as soon as I turned around near the Trivium school. It was weird.
I had a similar experience in 1970. Late at night spotted a robed, hooded figure walking along the center of Lancaster near the Bullfinch Church. He(?) was carrying a lantern and there was something very creepy about him. I turned my car for a second go by and he looked at me. The eyes were red. Then the figure just vanished. After all these years the hairs on my neck stand up just thinking about it.
Do you have any further details or recollections to add? I always have questioned my sanity on this except another passenger in the car saw the same figure and had the same reaction. It is very interesting to me to hear of another encounter.
I lived next to Blood Town Forest for my teen years and spent many hours, both day and night in the woods, without ever experiencing any unusual activity.
I’ve heard of this place in high school but never really wanted to go and experience anything that would scare me enough to remember what happened the night we visited there in 1989 at around 2 in the a.m. The girls we were with used the bathroom behind a tree and while looking in the forest from a large parking lot I could see many trees a few hundred feet from my location all lit up and 25-40 people all dressed in robes and holding lanterns like Led Zeppelin’s album cover. Extremely scary and never returned.
I’ve never really acknowledged the idea of paranormal things or anything of that nature. But i went to this forest a few years ago with a group of friends. We decided to walk around the forest all night. we walked about an hour out into the forest and we found an area that opened up and the trees looked like they had been planted like neatly in a way but all of the trees in that area were dead and had a peice of black cloth nailed to it for some reason. we got kind of spooked and turned around. As we made our way deeper and deeper in the forest we kept leaving glowsticks in the paths we came from to find our way back. we encountered an intersection that didn’t have a glowstick and went in a direction we thought was the way back. about 10 minutes down that path we all heard a noise unlike any noise ive ever heard before. it was like the screech of an animal but not an animal ive ever heard and as it screeched it turned into someone laughing. I would think i was crazy if i wasnt with 4 other people who heard it. we took of running back in the direction we came and when we got back to the intersection there was a glowstick down another path. we followed it and it lead us back on out trail out…… needless to say not going back lol.
Like Grass0101 I encountered the long robed man carrying a glowing red lantern. He was walking along the road running past the Bullfinch Church. One minute he was there and the next he’d vanished. This was in the spring of 1970.
I would like to hear from anyone else who has experienced this.
The land was once inhabited by the local native american tribes and the land of blood forest holds spirits from that time as well. A few of the historical books noted that a few natives would dismember a victim and hang parts on the trees as a warming and there are stories that during the raids and burnings in the 1600 and 1700’s victims were buried where they fell and in the area of the rowlandson raid and in Neck road and on Goss lane several spirits have been seen I saw a girl in the basement of a home on goss lane and she looked like the daughter of mary rowlandson who was shot during the raid in 1675 and was kidnapped along with her mother and several others. The daughter sarah was about 11 or 12 and they were all walked along the area of the college and goss land to the area of the water tower on the 1st night of the kidnapping. Several spirits are seen in this area, on the same road as the spirit with the lantern. Many houses in Lancaster have spirtis too.
In the early 1970’s I saw the limbs hanging in blood forest when I drove through with friends during the day. The other two people with me didn’t see anything but I have abilities to see spirits all my life, enjoy the visits when they happen, don’t be scared unless you feel negative energy or bad vibes, abilities or not , get out! happy hunting!
I’ve heard of this place in high school but never really wanted to go and experience anything that would scare me enough to remember what happened the night we visited there in 1989 at around 2 in the a.m. The girls we were with used the bathroom behind a tree and while looking in the forest from a large parking lot I could see many trees a few hundred feet from my location all lit up and 25-40 people all dressed in robes and holding lanterns like Led Zeppelin’s album cover. Extremely scary and never returned.
My family is from lancaster. My mother and grandmother both told me about a tall man wearing a hat or hood was seen in their house on Main St. My grandmother had told me that the man lived in the house in the late 1800’s and she remembered him scaring her and other children by jumping out from behind the trees when they passed by on the way to school in the center around 1900 to 1910 and after he passed away my grandparents live in the same house from 1940 till 1985. I saw the ghost of the man myself as a child and mom told me she saw the same man when she was a child, he pokes his head outt from behind the kitchen door and scares kids. The room in the house was the sick room , made for births and deaths. I went to blood forest as a teen in the 1970s and saw the limbs hanging from trees and my firends didnt’ see them, I can see spirits and the native americans were the ones who put the limbs there as a warning to others to keep away in the 1700ls. . The area of lancaster by george hill has a lot of bloodshed from the 1640-1720 era. There were five forts or garrisons in the south lancaster neck road area.
I went here quite a bit when I was younger. I lived somewhat close to Lancaster, and brought different friends each time to see if we would have the same experiences.
Each time I had gone with someone different, after walking into the woods for about five minutes, it would start to drizzle and the ground was always damp. It made it impossible to ever start a fire to camp.
We would take trail markers, that would be gone every single time we decided to return. Sometimes we would be lost in the woods for hours trying to make our way back.
There were always sounds of others being present. We would stop walking, stop talking and just look around. Nothing else was there, but we heard them moving around us, at of exploring the woods as well, but there was absolutely nothing there.
The last time I had visited with some friends, by the time we had gotten out of the woods we were soaked from how long we had been in there wandering around while it rained. However, the entrance was completely dry and we were able to make a fire right there. The light from the fire caught the image of a man in a robe with a lantern walking away from us into the woods.
I figured since I had been there at least a dozen times already, and had so many similar experiences with so many different people; enough was enough. Each time we would get trapped within for hours, lost for losing the trails we had marked. I didn’t want to push it anymore.
Day or night walks through, it was always the same. I will never forget this place, or the awkward feeling it inspires when entering. It is strange, but when I remember it, it makes me think of home..