Cocheco Mills

A historic mill complex built over the site of the old Dover Mills, which burned down in a devastating 1907 fire that killed workers.

At approximately 6:30 p.m. on January 26, 1907, a wet leather belt on the fourth floor of the Cocheco Manufacturing Company slipped off its pulley, struck a belt box, and threw sparks into a pile of raw cotton. Under normal circumstances, the sprinkler system would have contained the blaze. But the fourth-floor sprinklers had malfunctioned, and the water supply to the third, fourth, and fifth floors had been shut off for repairs. The fire spread with terrifying speed through a five-story building filled with cotton fiber and oil-soaked machinery. Six people died. Firefighters battled the inferno for a day and a half in temperatures that plunged to twenty-six degrees below zero, the water from their hoses freezing almost as fast as it left the nozzles. The Cocheco Mills complex occupies a bend in the Cochecho River in Dover, New Hampshire, on a site that has been used for textile manufacturing since the Dover Cotton Factory was chartered in 1812. The Dover Manufacturing Company took over in 1823, and in 1827 the Cocheco Manufacturing Company was incorporated with a capital of $1.5 million. At its height, the company employed over 600 workers, many of them immigrants, producing cotton textiles in a sprawling riverside complex that defined Dover's industrial identity. What made the 1907 fire especially tragic was its preventability. According to the official report, three of the four workers who died inside the building had actually escaped safely at the first alarm and were seen in the mill yard or on the street. They went back inside, presumably to retrieve their clothing and personal belongings, and were trapped when the fire overwhelmed the upper floors. The company was bought out in 1909 by Pacific Mills, which discontinued all operations in Dover in 1937, ending over a century of continuous textile production. In 1984, the mill complex was purchased and renovated into office and business spaces, and it now operates as One Washington Center, a mixed-use building with apartments and commercial tenants. It is the current occupants who report the haunting. The paranormal activity concentrates on the upper floors where the fire burned hottest and the workers died. Tenants and visitors describe strange glowing lights hovering near the upper-floor windows, visible from the street at hours when no one is in the building. Lights in the basement switch on and off without anyone in the rooms. The sounds of old machinery, resembling looms and other manufacturing equipment starting and stopping, echo through the stairwells even though no such equipment has existed in the building for nearly a century. Disembodied voices are heard most frequently in the entrance to the two towers and in the stairwells, areas where workers would have rushed during the evacuation. The New England Legends podcast devoted Episode 12 to 'Dover's Haunted Mill,' documenting the paranormal claims. The Yankee Express newspaper published a detailed investigation in 2022 under the headline 'Otherworldly Voices and Forms Haunt The Dover Mills,' cataloging reports from multiple tenants. NH Magazine includes the mills on its list of the most haunted places in the Granite State. The six workers who died in the 1907 fire went back for their belongings and never came out. The sounds of machinery and voices in the stairwells suggest they may still be trying to find their way to the exit.