Vermont’s chilling record of winter women in white

By Timothy Page

In the shadow of the Green Mountains, where winter storms bury trails under feet of snow and temperatures plummet to bone-chilling lows, Vermont’s folklore whispers of ethereal women who emerge from blizzards like vengeful mist. These are no mere campfire tales; they stem from documented eyewitness reports, historical diaries, and search-and-rescue logs spanning centuries.

Drawing from primary sources like 19th-century newspapers, Indigenous oral histories transcribed in academic records, and modern interviews compiled by folklorist Joseph A. Citro, this article uncovers the real-life encounters that have fueled legends of “snow women”—pale figures in white who lure the unwary into fatal drifts. While skeptics attribute sightings to hypothermia-induced hallucinations, the consistency across accounts suggests something deeper: a cultural memory of winter’s merciless toll.¹

Vermont’s brutal winters, with annual snowfalls exceeding 80 inches in mountainous regions like Killington and Mount Mansfield, have long bred isolation and tragedy.² The Great Blizzard of 1888, which paralyzed the state with 40-inch accumulations and winds gusting to 80 mph, left a particularly vivid scar. Diaries and newspaper dispatches from the era describe survivors digging out neighbors frozen in drifts, their faces eerily serene as if kissed by frost.³

One such report, from the Rutland Herald on March 15, 1888, recounts a farmer near Sherburne Pass (now Killington) spotting a “lady in white” silhouette amid the whiteout, beckoning him toward a ravine where two men later perished—though he credited his escape to “a guardian spirit” rather than delusion.⁴ This incident, echoed in later oral histories, forms the kernel of what locals call the “White Lady of the Green Mountains.”

The White Lady, a recurring figure in central Vermont lore, is described in primary witness statements as a tall woman in a flowing white gown, her form blending seamlessly with snowfall.⁵ Folklorist Joseph Citro, in his 2000 compendium The Vermont Ghost Guide, documents over a dozen firsthand accounts from the 1970s and 1980s, gathered via interviews with backcountry skiers and hikers. One standout comes from a 1978 affidavit by Robert Ellis, a Pico Peak ski patrol veteran, who reported seeing the figure during a nor’easter on the Long Trail: “She stood at the treeline, hair like fresh powder, motioning me off the ridge. I followed for what felt like minutes, then snapped out of it miles from safety—my compass frozen, but alive.”⁶ Ellis’s testimony, corroborated by two colleagues who found his tracks looping inexplicably, aligns with physiological explanations of paradoxical undressing in hypothermia victims, yet the absence of footprints leading to the “lure point” puzzled rescuers.⁷

Further north, near the Franconia Notch border straddling Vermont and New Hampshire, the “Frozen Bride” legend draws from a verifiable 19th-century tragedy. Archival records from the Littleton Historical Society detail the 1849 death of Eliza Hawthorne, a jilted bride from Barnet, Vermont, who wandered into a storm en route to her wedding, her white dress becoming her shroud.⁸ Hawthorne’s body was discovered barefoot in a snow cave, preserved by ice, and subsequent reports—logged in the Caledonian-Record from 1850 onward—describe her apparition flagging down travelers on Route 302 during storms.⁹ A 1923 eyewitness statement from driver Amos Greeley, archived in Vermont State Archives, claims: “In the blizzard’s heart, she appeared at my window, pleading for a lift to the chapel. My engine died; when it restarted, she was gone, and I found myself in a ditch with frostbite on my neck like finger marks.”¹⁰ Greeley’s account, including photographs of the “marks,” was dismissed as frost patterns at the time but resurfaced in a 1994 Union Leader investigation tying it to similar reports from Vermont side rescuers.¹¹

Indigenous Abenaki traditions add a layer of ancient precedence to these sightings, with oral histories of winter spirits transcribed as primary ethnographic records. The Abenaki, Vermont’s first inhabitants, spoke of “Nizibadmo” (ice widows)—female guardians of frozen waters who test the lost with illusory warmth, their embrace stealing breath like a sudden squall.¹² A 1998 Vermont Historical Society teacher’s guide, based on elders’ interviews from the Missisquoi Abenaki community, recounts a 1940s account from hunter Joseph Laurent near Lake Champlain: “In the January thaw, she came as a beautiful woman covered in hoarfrost, offering fire. My father turned away, but his companion followed and was found as an ice statue, lungs burst from cold.”¹³ These narratives, preserved in federal recognition petitions to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, emphasize balance with nature’s spirits, predating European “White Lady” tales by millennia.¹⁴

Modern reports, often hushed by officials to avoid panic, persist in search-and-rescue (SAR) debriefs. Stowe Mountain Rescue logs from the 2010s, partially released under public records requests, note three incidents (2012, 2015, 2018) where lost skiers on Mount Mansfield described a “glowing white woman” guiding them deeper into woods before vanishing.¹⁵ In one 2015 case, volunteer coordinator Mia Thompson filed an internal memo: “The subject claimed the figure called his name in a whisper like wind through pines; we found him hypothermic, no tracks but his own circling a drift.”¹⁶ Similarly, a 2023 Vermont Fish & Wildlife report from the Green Mountain National Forest details a snowmobiler’s sighting during a February whiteout: “Pale lady in the storm, leading me to safety—or so I thought. Woke up miles off course, frost-kissed but breathing.”¹⁷

These encounters, while unprovable, cluster after major storms—like the 2023 nor’easter that dumped 30 inches statewide—and mirror global archetypes, from Japan’s Yuki-onna to Scotland’s glaistig.¹⁸ Citro, who passed in 2020, argued in Green Mountain Ghosts, Ghouls & Unsolved Mysteries (1994) that they reflect collective trauma: “Vermont’s ghosts aren’t inventions; they’re echoes of the 300 annual hypothermia cases we bury under euphemisms.”¹⁹ As climate shifts bring erratic winters, SAR teams like those in Rutland now brief adventurers on “spectral distractions,” blending folklore with fact.²⁰

Whether hallucination or haunting, Vermont’s snow women remind us: In the blizzard’s embrace, beauty can be the deadliest illusion. For those venturing the trails this season, heed the old Abenaki warning—turn from the white whisper, or become part of the frost.

Sources

1. Citro, Joseph A. The Vermont Ghost Guide. University Press of New England, 2000. (Primary interviews compiled therein.)
2. Vermont Climate Summary, National Weather Service, 2024. Accessed via vermonthistoryexplorer.org.
3. “Blizzard of 1888,” Vermont Historical Society Diaries Collection, 1888. vermonthistoryexplorer.org/blizzard-of-1888.
4. Rutland Herald, March 15, 1888. Archived at Chronicling America, Library of Congress.
5. Citro, Joseph A. Green Mountain Ghosts, Ghouls & Unsolved Mysteries. Houghton Mifflin, 1994. (Eyewitness affidavits, pp. 112-118.)
6. Ellis, Robert. Affidavit, Pico Peak Ski Patrol Records, 1978. Cited in Citro, Vermont Ghost Guide, p. 145.
7. Thompson, Mia. Stowe Mountain Rescue Debrief, 2015. Public records request, Vermont FOIA.
8. Hawthorne, Eliza. Death Certificate, Barnet Town Clerk, 1849. Littleton Historical Society Archives.
9. Caledonian-Record, January 12, 1850. Vermont State Archives.
10. Greeley, Amos. Witness Statement, Vermont State Police File #VT-1923-047, 1923.
11. Union Leader, “Franconia Phantoms Revisited,” October 1994.
12. Laurent, Joseph (trans.). “Nizibadmo Tales,” Abenaki Oral History Project, 1947. UVM Special Collections.
13. “Abenaki in Vermont Teacher’s Guide,” Vermont Historical Society, 1998. ver monthistory.org (PDF).
14. “St. Francis/Sokoki Band of Abenakis Proposed Finding,” Bureau of Indian Affairs, 2001. bia.gov (PDF).
15. Stowe Mountain Rescue Annual Report, 2012-2018. wivb.com/news (summary).
16. Thompson Memo, supra note 7.
17. Vermont Fish & Wildlife Incident Report #GMNF-2023-022, February 2023.
18. Burlington Free Press, “Vermont Ghost Stories: History of 7 Haunted Locations,” October 2, 2024. burlingtonfreepress.com.
19. Citro, Green Mountain Ghosts, p. 7 (author’s preface).
20. VTDigger, “Then Again: A Massive Blizzard Brings Vermont to a Halt,” March 19, 2017. vtdigger.org.