The Black Flash of Cape Cod

In the late 1930s, a frightening and phantomlike creature plagued Provincetown, Massachusetts. One October evening in 1938, so tradition speaks, a bizarre entity emerged from the dunes, dressed in black – all in black... The visitations of the phantom were to last seven years. Then, in 1945, its activity stopped abruptly and the entity disappeared without a trace, never to be seen again. It was named ‘The Black Flash’ because of its supernatural agility. Today, the legend of ‘The Black Flash’ that terrorized Provincetown in the 1930’s is remembered as a haunting tale of the bizarre. Several websites mention it, and they are more or less consistent in their summaries. Perhaps not surprising, as there are so few sources and with anecdotes sensational enough, that there is no room nor need for distortion or embellishment.

The tale of The Black Flash can be traced back to a small publication by Robert Ellis Cahill, folklorist and untiring Massachusetts collector of oddities. Cahill gave the Black Flash a second life with his retelling of the events that so plagued Provincetown in the 1930’s in his New England’s Mad and Mysterious Men, that was published in 1984. Vermont writer Joe Citro masterfully retold the strange affair in his Passing Strange: True Tales of New England Hauntings and Horrors (1996), thus keeping the tale of The Black Flash alive. In fact, were it not for Cahill and Citro, we would probably have never learnt of the capers of that strange phantom that in behaviour, as well as outfit, so echoed another dark phantom from our past: Spring-heeled Jack. Famous author of anomalies John Keel stayed in Provincetown in 1963; yet he did not come to learn of that local legend.


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