Madame Sherri’s Castle

Antoinette Bramare was born in Paris in 1878. A seamstress and dancer, she came to New York in 1911 with Anthony Macaluso, and the couple took the stage name Sherri and made a living in the theatre trade. Madame Sherri designed costumes for Broadway shows, including the Ziegfeld Follies, and ran a millinery shop on 42nd Street. After Macaluso became ill and was institutionalised in 1924, she accepted an invitation to Chesterfield, New Hampshire, and by about 1929 owned some 600 acres of farmland on Gulf Road.

There she built what neighbours came to call the Castle, a three-storey party house with a bistro, a bar and a private top floor, fronted by a grand outside staircase. She lived in a nearby farmhouse without electricity or running water. Her income fell after the Second World War, the Castle was vandalised and stripped by 1959, and it burned on 20 October 1962. the wife of designer Charles LeMaire foreclosed on the land in 1963, and Madame Sherri spent her last years on public assistance in a nursing home in Brattleboro, Vermont. Ann Stokes bought the Chesterfield land on 20 October 1965, and Sherri died shortly after. In 1998 Stokes passed the property to the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, which keeps it as Madame Sherri Forest.

Her legend is flamboyant: a Packard with a monkey on her shoulder, wild parties, a walk down Brattleboro’s Main Street in a fur coat, the title “Madame” read by some as the keeper of a brothel. The Chesterfield Historical Society’s historian, Audrey Ericson, calls her a kind of folk hero and says the stories were likely embellished over time. The ghost story is thinner than the party stories. Websites list the ruins as one of New Hampshire’s most haunted places, mentioning strange noises, ghostly figures and a chilling atmosphere. The historical society, however, traces those descriptions to an automated search summary, not to first-hand witnesses, and reads the supposed sale of the land to Stokes on the day Sherri died as theatrics suited to her style.

That makes the Castle a useful case study in how a ghost reputation can form around a place with a strong story and a picturesque ruin. The stone staircase, columns and fireplace are real, and so is a risk: in July 2021 the top arch of the staircase collapsed after heavy rain, and the Forest Society roped off the area and asked visitors not to climb. The forest’s trails remain open for hiking.

Online lists report odd noises, shadowy figures and a heavy atmosphere around the ruins, and some versions say Madame Sherri’s party guests can still be heard. The historical society has found no first-hand accounts to support them.

The stone staircase, foundation, chimneys and fireplace near the Gulf Road entrance of Madame Sherri Forest.

The ruins are a well-known stop for photographers and hikers in the Monadnock region and feature in New England travel pieces and Halloween round-ups. The 2021 stair collapse drew national attention and comparisons in the local press to the 2003 fall of the Old Man of the Mountain.