In the autumn of 1889, Margaret Ashworth, a 31-year-old seamstress in Salem, Massachusetts, began experiencing something deeply unsettling. Renowned throughout Essex County for her wedding dresses, Margaret worked from a small shop on Federal Street, a building that had stood since 1703. But that September, after accepting a commission from young Cordelia Winters, strange things began to happen. A scent of dried flowers, with no apparent source, filled her workroom at night.
Then her hands began moving on their own, making changes to the dress she hadn’t consciously decided on. By October, during a fitting with Cordelia, Margaret briefly saw another woman’s face superimposed over her client’s—an older, dark-haired woman she did not recognize. Disturbed, Margaret began researching the history of her building. At the Salem Historical Society, librarian Cyrus Pemberton told her that in the 1700s, a dressmaker named Patience Good had lived and worked in that very space.
Patience died in 1734 under “troubling” circumstances, and her possessions were burned. Margaret soon discovered she was sleepwalking and sewing intricate, unfamiliar symbols into Cordelia’s wedding dress—stitches so precise she couldn’t replicate them while awake. She tried to destroy the dress, but her body refused to cooperate, as if compelled by an unseen force. During a visit from Cordelia, Margaret found herself speaking words she didn’t control.
She told her about Patience Good, who had once made a wedding dress for a merchant’s young bride. That bride died two days before her wedding, and Patience was whispered about as a witch. After hearing this, Cordelia canceled her engagement without explanation, humiliating her family. Margaret attempted to burn the dress but couldn’t.
She locked it away in a cedar trunk in her attic. Margaret never took another bridal commission. The smell of dried flowers remained, especially in autumn, but she learned to live with it. Cordelia eventually married a different man in 1892, in a dress made by another seamstress in Boston.
Margaret Ashworth died in her sleep on November 17, 1903, at age 55, of heart failure. Her trunk was discovered during the settling of her estate, containing the wedding dress, perfectly preserved, as if time had stopped for it. The dress was donated to the historical society, where it was studied and stored. In 1906, it vanished, with no other items taken and no explanation ever found.
The building on Federal Street still stands today, and residents occasionally report a strange smell of dried flowers—usually in November, usually at night, when they are working with their hands.