A ghost town comes alive

Part of the town of Wareham, Onset (named for a local Indian chief) sits beside a beach-rimmed bay at the head of Buzzards Bay. It has a year-round population of about 5,000 and more than double that in the summer.

Most villages claim to have spirit, but in Onset's case, spiritualists also helped make it what it is today. The core of the village is a 150-acre tract acquired in 1877 by the Onset Bay Grove Association, a group of Boston businessmen who wanted to create a spiritualist summer resort. In the years after the Civil War, when millions of Americans were still mourning fallen soldiers, interest in spiritualism -- the belief that it is possible to communicate with the dead -- was widespread.

The association laid out a well-planned community along

the bay. A large amount of open space was set aside for parks and picnic groves, and 700 house lots were available. At first, people camped on their lots, but soon mansard-roofed hotels and turreted mansions were built looking out on the bay, and gingerbread cottages replaced canvas tents. Most are still standing. Visitors arrived by railroad and pad-

dle-wheel steamer, and spiritualist camp meetings attracted crowds in the thousands to the village's waterside parks. By the late 1890s, interest in spiritualism had waned. Looking for a new source of revenue, the association began to subdivide and fence off previously public parks and sections of beach. This was vigorously opposed by the Onset Protective League, which is still an active property owners' association.

In 1915, after a long legal battle, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in favor of the league and decreed that "use and enjoyment" of Onset's beaches and parks belonged to the public and ordered the association to remove any structures it had erected.

"Our beach is open to the world and that's a wonderful thing," says John Salerno, who, with his brother, operates Marc Anthony's Pizzeria in the village.

There is no charge to use Onset Beach, and parking in the village is also free. Aside from a public bathhouse, the only building right on the beach is Kenny's Saltwater Taffy by Steamboat Wharf, which has been selling taffy and hot dogs to beachgoers since 1895.