Strange New England

It is night. Darkness has fallen over the September night as the half moon rises and the stars begin to fill the sky over Penobscot Bay. Sometimes the night falls so deeply here in this Maine  hamlet that it seems like the Sun might never rise again. It is a darkness full of potential.  The year is 1898 and you are walking along a dark path in the small coastal town of Bucksport, Maine. You are alone, quite alone. You are sure of it. In the distance, you can see the vague outline of ships in the harbor and lights in the windows of the townspeople in houses you know well, for you are worker, a cleaner, a hired servant willing to scrub and polish and shine the possessions of others to make your living. For some, this might be a happy lot, but not for you.  These people for whom you work could be your friends and compatriots, but that is not the case.   You are, and forever will be, from away. These people are not your people and you are not one of them, but as you walk carefully along the lane, you remember you

I know you don’t tell other people that you’ve had that experience, that one singular time when you were alone in your house and it happened: something inexplicable. Maybe it was when your parents first thought you were old enough to be left alone without a babysitter and told you that they would only be out for a little while. You’d had the drill - don’t open the door to strangers, don’t try to use the stove, keep the door locked and just be good - everything would be okay and they would be back before you knew it. You remember, don’t you, that time? It was nighttime in the autumn and you were glad to have the house to yourself, even excited by the prospect. But as the minutes turn into an hour and then another hour, you begin to feel the weight of the evening growing on your shoulders and soon enough, it begins to dawn on you that, no, it can’t be, you know it’s impossible, but you could swear that you’re not alone in the house. First you just feel it, the way you feel it when you know you’re being watche

John Bowman sat inside his mansion as evening fell and the light between the Vermont hills faded into dusk as he had done hundreds of times before. He had finished his dinner early and the servants had all gone their respective ways, back to their own homes in the village. He was alone in the house. As the light dimmed and the colors began to disappear, he couldn’t help but look out his parlor window toward the cemetery across the road. He lingered there for a long while, wondering, thinking...feeling. Would it happen tonight? Please, God, he thought, let it be tonight.As he wondered, the light of day finally shed its last rays and vanished. He was in the night country now. The moon was playing hide and go seek with the clouds, dark as pitch one moment and in the next, the entire countryside was awash with lunar light. How many times had he sat here, looking out where they lay? Had it really been years? So long to wait for a single, simple thing. The pain in his heart was as fresh as the day it happened for

Ten thousand warplanes flew from or over Maine during World War II. Over the course of the war, a total of 48 aircraft crashed in the state accounting for 143 deaths. The vast majority of those planes made it safely to their destinations, but it was certainly not unheard of for one of the thousands of planes in the sky to fall to earth before they crossed the ocean for the war. But there was a day, a single day, where two bombers crashed within four hours of each other, claiming the lives of 27 people. This day remains the worst day for aviation in the state's history. Aircraft 1: July 11, 1944 -Just after midnight, an 8th Air Force B-17G Flying Fortress heavy bomber (SN 43-38023) takes off with a 10 man crew from Kearney, Nebraska headed for Dow Army Air Field in Bangor, Maine, and then to Gander, Newfoundland, en route to a base in the English midlands, one of seventeen in a group, though it wasn't strange for Cast to be flying on his own - it wasn't actually common practice for pilots to fly in formatio

If you live in New England, sooner or later you’ll have this experience: you’ll find yourself driving down a road you’ve driven a hundred times before and you’ll notice something is different. At first, you might shrug it off, but the idea will dog you until you realize something is wrong: something is there that wasn’t there before, a small detail like a sign or a tree, or perhaps it’s something bigger, like a house or perhaps a road that branches off the main drag which you can’t believe you never noticed before.   If you’re curious or perhaps just plain foolish, you might just backtrack and turn down that road to see where it goes. What harm will it do, you ask? And where that road takes you might just be to a place from which you can never escape,not because you’re lost and can’t get back to your starting point, but because once you turn around and finally make your hurried way back home, you can never go back, because when you try to return down that road or to that house, you discover, much to yo

The cold wind blows across the empty fields. The trees have shed their rusted leaves and the moon plays hide and go seek with the thin and wispy clouds. It’s the time of year when night falls soon and you need an extra blanket on the bed to get you through the dark hours till morning. October is here and with it, the New England landscape dons a different coat, as though it too is bundling itself up against winter. If you’re easily startled, you might want to pull the curtains before going to bed and make sure the doors are locked tight. There are sounds in the darkness that leave you edgy. This is October and the hour is late. Time, perhaps, for a ghost story? There are so many lost highways in New England. You see them as you drive past, little narrow ways that lead into the woods, dirt tracks that go on up and beyond and though you’ve driven past a hundred times, for some reason, you’ve never turned and explored where it goes. Has it ever occurred to you to ask yourself, why not? Roads belong to everyone,

It is September 11, 1976. You are sitting quietly in a living room near Maine’s Old Orchard Beach. The sea air is strangely balmy as you settle down for a quiet evening. Your wife and children are out for a few hours and for once, you have the house to yourself. You are 58 years old and your name is Dr. Herbert Hopkins and your quiet life is about to encounter a road block that will send you careening into an area you’ve glimpsed but never visited before. Though you are a renowned allergist and have done research for years on the causes and treatment of multiple sclerosis, you have been going down a slightly different avenue in your career recently. For the past several weeks you’ve been engaged doing what you most enjoy: hypnosis. The most interesting work of your career has been consulting on a case of alleged UFO teleportation in Oxford, Maine of David Stephens in 1975, work you find both fascinating and difficult to dismiss. Lately, it’s been keeping you up at night, pondering the possibilities of such

It won’t be long now. The night winds begin to gather the chill that will eventually drill into our bones once the damp, grey skies of November gather overhead, anchoring us to the sunset and the dark. Trees are explosions of color and then nothing but skeletons, their gnarled hands reaching for the sliver of moon left to us - the only light left in the dark. October is a country full of spirits and innuendos of the unknown and we are no strangers to its paths. Some of us even enjoy the quickening of the heart that comes with the unexplained shadows and sounds from the dark corner of unlit rooms.  As Halloween arrives, I thought Strange New England might serve as a place to recall some of the stranger aspects of living in New England and how this landscape of long shadows keeps us in our place and makes us whistle in the darkness. Though we report the stories, legends and tales that populate the pages of Strange New England, I can only claim to have experienced the edge of normal a few times in my life.  It

How do we knew when a body is truly dead? Modern science shows us that the body dies slowly, not all at once as we used to suppose. It takes time. The body is a rather vast and complex ecosystem of enzymes, processes and functions that rarely, if ever, stop all at once. With our modern sensors and advanced medical knowledge, we usually determine the moment of death as the time when the brain ceases to show any sign of activity. However, if the heart stops beating and breathing ceases, there’s just no way that a body can function much longer. Today, an coroner always double-checks to makes sure the recently deceased is actually and fully gone, but in the past, not so long ago, we did not have the precise knowledge that we have today. What follows is a horrific example of what may have happened on a rather regular basis in the days before electricity. The thin line between life and death was often out of focus and those whose task it was to pronounce a person living to dead may have had a tough time getting it

The great 19th century American poet, John Greenleaf Whittier, composed a strange poem entitled "The Garrison of Cape Ann" that tells one of the strangest tales ever to come from colonial New England. The event he recounts for us is supposed to relate actual events that occurred during the same year that the Salem Witch Trials occurred - 1692. Whittier's poem isn't very long and relates the tale of a garrison of soldiers inside the Fort at Cape Ann, Massachusetts. What is so bizarre about this episode is the nature of the beings assailing them from outside the walls of the fort. Contemporary witnesses had difficulty describing these beings, unsure if they were men or something else. Whatever they might have been, a group of strange beings are attacking the walls of the fort, beings that seem foreign and evil. They wear strange garb, never-before-encountered suits made of a material that shines. They have a language that no one in the Fort can understand or even identify. They seem to possess weaponry like not

The three men made their way down the lonely trail that skirted the fields outside of Machiasport, Maine. These hills were wide open and bare, but the trees in the distance belied a deep forest toward the west and if they listened intently, they might have heard the waves in Machias Bay.  It was dusk and the last light of the setting sun burned a bright red gash across last grey light of day. One of the three was a skeptic, certain that the events which had been occurring for the past six years were nothing more than an elaborate hoax played out to fool the locals into believing that it was possible to speak with the dead. His mission was to stop this foolish dependence on chicanery and parlor tricks and get the people back to believing properly about the living and the dead. The other two had seen the spirit before, had even had conversations with it, but that had been in the confines of the cellar of Captain Blaisdel and his family. They knew it was real. They were there as witnesses. Besides, this meeting

Gold forms in the heart of dying stars and as a result of their explosions, or novas, it is spread throughout the cosmos as one of the heavier elements. All the gold on earth no doubt came from such an explosion, just as all of the matter for all of the planets and the sun did, too. Maine does, in fact, have some gold in its ground, the first being struck in 1854 in Madrid and later, gold and silver were found in Acton, too. Gold can be found in deposits in the earth, but also dissolved in the waters of Earth's oceans. Since 71 percent of the Earth's surface is covered with water, it might make sense that all one needs to do is find a cheap way to extract that gold from the water to make a fortune.  Maine is ideally situated for mining gold from water, if that was indeed possible, with its 3, 478 miles of coastline. But there is no method or invention to do the hard work of filtering out the gold. However, such a device was invented in 1897 and put into use in the small Maine town of Lubec. Why it worked and

We are visual creatures linked to the world through images, taking in most of our knowledge through our vision. The poets speak of the eyes as being the windows of the soul. Religious folk will speak of the eye as proof of a divine creation for surely, they claim, blind Nature could not have haphazardly produced such amazing and sophisticated sensors. We live in a world inundated with visual imagery in print, on screen, and to some extent, in our dreams. We have documented most of our world through satellite imaging. We've done the same to most of the planets and moons. We've even taken pictures of the roads of the world and the houses that line them with the wonders of Google Earth. We can travel the world and never leave the comfort of our chair through the videos freely available all over the Net. The world comes to us through our eyes. Over three million photos are uploaded to Facebook alone each and every day of the year, nonstop. We are recording so much of our world into digital imagery that there is

Boundary Pond is a small, unassuming body of water in the northeastern corner of Maine. It is almost touching Quebec, earning the pond it's name sake. It has an outlet called "Boundary Brook" that meanders from the pond and into Maine, where it fades off into land. It is ideal for "cold-water fish" according to The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Department, whose website displays a map of this and many more lakes and ponds carved out from ice-age glaciers. According to the Department's website, "Spawning and nursery habit is limited, but a few brook trout survive to maintain a fishery. Growth is good with no other competing fish species present. The pond is not stocked." Many Maine lakes and rivers now rely on  fish stocking operations, where fish raised in hatcheries are airlifted over lakes and rivers and dropped into the water.  This is said to contribute millions of dollars into Maine's economy through sustaining fishing pursuits. It also helps sustain Maine's ecosystem, which has been

In ancient times when the night was so much darker than it is today, stories were told that endure to this day. It's easy for scholars to assume that, because written records are a permanent way to record history of any kind, many folktales from literary cultures are assumed to be recent ones. Familiar fairytales such as the ones The Brothers Grimm recorded in their early research in the Black Forest of Europe feel familiar enough as to be from a more recent time in history and not from a remote age like Native American stories. However, The Brothers Grimm were convinced that the stories they researched were, in fact, as ancient as their Native American counterparts. Folklorists since have had difficulty believing this, however, because they are scientists, solid evidence is the only type of evidence they will consider. Recent research by anthropologists has confirmed that, perhaps, The Brothers Grimm were correct after all and the fairy tales that are so familiar to us have an older, more alien origin in la

It is that time of year again, and apart from the religious significance of the day, there is the secular aspect of days off, possible Christmas bonuses, money spent on gifts and travel, travel, travel. One thing that most people in New England take for granted is that we have a strong Christmas tradition in this part of the world and in some ways, we are among its greatest keepers. However, that has not always been the case and you should know the truth about the history of Christmas in Maine and Massachusetts. You might be interested to know that the modern idea of Christmas, and the associated days off, are fairly new creations, less than two hundred years old. We did not always make merry at Christmas. The original European settlers of these lands were protestant puritans, renegades from the Church of England and a people desperate to begin in a new land away from the shadows of religious intolerance they were subject to in Europe at the time. More than one historian as claimed that our founders were 'th

There are moments in your life that shine like stars in the darkness and light your path and as you remember your past.  Such memories are safely couched in the narrative of your youth and from time to time, they can send a message to you, from far, far away. One such moment occurred in the year 1977 when I was  fifteen years old. On a late May afternoon, I was perhaps the first person to see the movie Star Wars in the continental United States. Well, maybe. It's a big claim, I know, but since I have no way of determining the absolute place of the first viewing of Lucas' masterpiece in the U.S., I believe it is at least possible that I was the one of the first, to witness the spectacle and the wonder that is Star Wars. I had seen Lucas' American Graffiti twice at the Caribou Theater in Caribou, Maine in 1973 when I was only eleven years old. A callow Richard Dreyfus was desperately seeking the blonde in the Thunderbird all night long, roaming the California streets to the growling rasp of disc jockey Wolfma

Today, New Castle is a small town of 2.4 square miles at the mouth of the Piscataqua River in New Hampshire bordering the neighboring state of Maine. Today, only 968 people call the town home. Originally settled in 1623, this hamlet was originally populated by a small number of people, primarily fishermen and tradesmen. The island also included farmers from its beginnings and a certain tavern to welcome visitors and shield them from the cold and rain of a coastal New England climate. Though the town is called New Castle, the island itself is known as Great Island and it is the location of one the strangest set of poltergeist-like activity known in early New England. For a period, the small island's fame grew not only in the early colonies but back in England and Europe. It seems Great Island may have been the home of not one, but many devils. New Hampshire became an independent colony, separating from Massachusetts in 1680. To give you sense of the timeline, the following year, William Penn would be granted

No one knows his name. No one knows his motives. All that is known is where he lingers, what he looks like, how he haunts the living and the circumstances under which he appears. This is the stuff of nightmares, told around a campfire while the stars dance and the long shadows grow. What is known about him, whether it is from academic research or here-say, only creates more questions than answers. This spirit can be found on Route 44 at the edge of Rehoboth, Massachusetts. The ghost usually looks like a red-headed man wearing a red flannel shirt and jeans. He has a large red beard as well as red hair. He is usually 6 feet tall and described as 'well built' by witnesses. Sometimes, he is very clean cut in his appearance and has his shirt tucked in. Other times, he is dirty and disheveled. The circumstances under which this ghost appears are as specific as the location, but not uncommon or desolate. Most witnesses who find this ghost usually drive on a stretch of Route 44 that is at the end of Rehoboth, Massac

Have you ever known an extremely lucky person, a character so unlikely to be successful due to a perceived lack of wit, money, talent, and education as to be the poster boy for failure? Still, they thrive and persevere against all that the hand of Fate has set against them, perhaps in spite of it all. These people are not as uncommon as it might seem and their success is as strange a thing as we encounter in our daily, sometimes mundane life. Such is the case with one of New England's most interesting and nearly forgotten characters, the unlikely success known to the world as Timothy Dexter. Born in Maiden, Massachusetts in 1748, Dexter did not have the benefit of an education. By the time he was eight years old he was working on a local farm until the age of sixteen when he apprenticed out to a leather-dresser, coloring and preparing leather for working after the hides had been tanned. When he was twenty-one, the unlikely young man made his way to Newburyport in Massachusetts. Such was the simple fate of a