As the story goes, Ebenezer had lived an exotic life before he retired to his home town of Abington and met his unfortunate demise. As a young man he had a great passion for music and when he came of age he left Abington, traveled to Italy, studied music, and began a career as an opera singer. He became quite popular in southern Italy and was known in Naples as the “King of Tenors.” He only returned because he met and fell in love with the beautiful Spanish-born singer, Adelina Patti, and he followed her to New York City in 1859, for her American debut at the Metropolitan Opera. However, the relationship soon ended painfully and in 1860 she left him to further her career in London. Broken hearted and penniless, Whitmarsh decided to return to Abington to live out his last days in peace.

Unfortunately, he arrived just when the church was having one of its epic fights over music. The Ladies Sewing Society was campaigning to purchase the church’s first organ, and it was causing divisions in the membership.[2] The church was split between “traditionalists” who wanted to stay with the old-time instruments, like guitars, and “modernists” who wanted the exciting new sounds of an organ. The traditionalists called organs baubles that sound pretty but distracted worshippers from why they were there.

The young pastor at the time was the Rev. Frederick Abbe, who sided with the traditionalists. He disliked organs because they were too loud and because the peddles could be manipulated to create rhythm, and rhythm might attract young people who would enjoy the experience and not feel a proper conviction of their sins.  

When Whitmarsh arrived, tired and saddened by his lost love, he took a job as church Sexton and moved into the apartment just above what is now called the O’Brien Room in back of the Sacristy. His tasks were basically cleaning and setting up, but because of the controversy, he was also asked to be constantly vigilant for ill-doers who had become a threat to the organ-building project.

During the 1860s, the church had embarked upon a building plan to extend the sanctuary and make space for the new organ. However, following the controversy over bringing modern music into the church, there had been a series of mysterious acts of sabotage on the project by unknown shadowy persons who were trying to stop it. Some people apparently would go to any length to prevent new music from being brought into the church.

When Whitmarsh lived in Europe, he heard some of the finest musical instruments in the world and became a strong supporter of the use of contemporary music in churches, and Rev. Abbe was its most vocal opponent. Whitmarsh argued that the church had to change to meet the times and the pastor said that the times had to change to meet the church. And they often argued over it. Whitmarsh even wondered if Rev. Abbe knew more about those who snuck in after witches’ midnight to damage the organ than he was sharing, but he couldn’t prove it. So, to protect the program and help bring the church musically into the modern era, he walked the halls at night. He carried with him an ancient lantern given to the church by Paul Revere, who once lived in Abington and studied metallurgy at the Hobart Iron Works. Ebenezer used it to peer into every room and shadow, looking for intruders.

All of that came to an end on the night of September 8, 1869. The construction was completed, the organ was installed, and an inaugural concert was planned. And then the big hurricane of 1869 hit. It was a terrible storm that lasted for three long days. Climatologists today estimate it to be category 6, major hurricane. It hit Rhode Island first, going north east, with a path of destruction 60 miles wide, sinking vessels at sea and inflicting terrible damage on land.[3] By the time it made its way to Abington it still had ferocious winds and rain. That night, Ebenezer was visiting the family of Deacon John King, who lived in the hotel across from the church. As they looked out from the Deacon’s home at the raging storm, they saw mysterious lights moving in the windows of the sanctuary. Horrified that the phantom saboteur might have returned for a last attack, they rushed to the church, Ebenezer with his lantern and Deacon King with his gun. Mrs. King ran next door to the parsonage to get the pastor, but he was out for the evening. When the two of them arrived in the sanctuary they saw a man dressed in black standing near the new organ with an axe in his hands. The deacon fired a shot in the air and the man fled to the back of the church. They ran after him, but just then the winds of the hurricane slammed against the south side of the church and all of the windows exploded in on them and they were thrown to the ground. The winds screamed through the pews like banshees. The man in black jumped to his feet and ran into the Narthex and up the stairs to the bell tower. King leaped up and ran after him, but Whitmarsh had twisted his ankle and followed slowly. When King reached the attic he saw a hooded form crossing the beams of the ceiling over the sanctuary trying to get to Whitmarsh’s attic apartment. He hurried after him but about half way across he slipped and fell, trapping himself between the ceiling beams. The man turned and saw what had happened and came back standing ominously over him. King struggled to get free but was trapped and couldn’t pull himself from the beams on either side of him. Slowly the man in black lifted his axe in his hands. He swung it up and arched it over his head, intending to bring it straight down onto King’s body.

But just then Paul Revere’s lantern flew across the attic and hit the axe, knocking it out of the man’s hand, and King saw Whitmarsh limping across the beams toward them. The man in black staggered to get his balance and then ran the rest of the distance of the attic to Whitmarsh’s apartment, escaping. When Whitmarsh reached his friend, he pulled on his arm finally freeing him from the beams. But just then the entire building began to shake. Once again the winds pounded the church walls with horrendous force. Shingles and boards were flying through the air. The entire bell tower and steeple weaved and lurched and finally was ripped from the church entirely and flew up into the sky. It created an incredible suction that for a moment pulled Whitmarsh high into the air and then just as suddenly slammed him down violently onto the ceiling beams. They gave way under him and the entire back end of the ceiling, including Ebenezer Whitmarsh, crashed downward, seventy feet to the floor.

Within the next week, the storm subsided, a crew started work rebuilding the church, and the organ got its concert debut by playing for the funeral of Ebenezer Whitmarsh. “He died to set me free,” said Deacon King in the homily, and he meant it. Rev. Abbe was regretfully unable to attend due to pulled muscles he’d acquired during the storm, but he didn’t explain how.

Over the following years, rumors arose that Ebenezer was somehow still with us, that late at night he still stalks the hallways, searching the shadows for intruders, still carrying the lantern given to the church by Paul Revere. Occasionally he does scare people, but basically he means to be helpful. Some say that when you hear a moan or wail in the walls of the O’Brien room, it is just him practicing his arias, up in his apartment, with a voice and throat seriously compromised that fateful night when he fell through the ceiling and his head was parted from his body. Some say that the sounds are his muffled words of encouragement that the present church might be ever vigilant, ever moving forward, ever trying out new ministries and new music. And some say simply that the sounds are the cries of a broken heart, still missing his first love, the lovely Adelina Patti, even now in his new “life” as a ghost. 

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