Slightly Odd Fitchburg

This post was originally shared as a Facebook and Instagram "DID YOU KNOW" post. I share them and you can get in on the fun by liking my page at  Facebook.com/TheNewSlightlyOddFitchburg  and following me at  Instagram.com/SlightlyOddFitchburg ! Now onto the haunting story! Now, to be fair, these are all "know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy" stories. I can't verify a single one. Still, DID YOU KNOW Leominster has a haunted park? Leominster, Massachusetts, holds tales of the supernatural, particularly in Barrett Park , where fellers and fellettes whisper of two spirits said to haunt the area. The most well-known is the “Lady in White,” believed to be the ghost of a woman who drowned in the park's pond in the early 1900s. Witnesses describe seeing her spectral figure wandering the water’s edge at dusk, her flowing white dress glowing faintly in the twilight. Some claim she appears to be searching for something, or someone, lost to the depths. An...

This post was originally shared as a Facebook and Instagram "DID YOU KNOW" post. I share them and you can get in on the fun by liking my page at  Facebook.com/TheNewSlightlyOddFitchburg  and following me at  Instagram.com/SlightlyOddFitchburg ! Now onto the haunting story! DID YOU KNOW there’s a Christmas ghost of Route 2A ? Yeah, so, the stretch of Route 2A between Acton and Concord already feels like the kind of place where a ghost might wander out of sheer boredom, but every December it becomes home to a haunting that locals mention. They call him the Christmas Ghost of 2A, though older residents still prefer the name Lantern Man , as if giving him a title makes him easier to live with. The story traces back to the 1920s, when a traveling tinsmith named Elias Cutter vanished during a Christmas Eve snowstorm. He’d been walking the long road between towns, carrying a lantern he’d crafted himself, the sort of sturdy handiwork that could survive anything except, apparen...

This post was originally shared as a Facebook and Instagram "DID YOU KNOW" post. I share them and you can get in on the fun by liking my page at  Facebook.com/TheNewSlightlyOddFitchburg  and following me at  Instagram.com/SlightlyOddFitchbur ! Now onto the odd story! DID YOU KNOW the human soul was discovered right in Haverhill, Massachusetts ? Well, as long as you cross your eyes and squint hard enough, anyway. Dr. Duncan MacDougall was his name, and soul searching was his game! He set out to document the weight of the human soul back in 1901 , and his results have been a part of the public consciousness ever since. Duncan’s method was simple. He found six nursing home patients on the verge of death and put them on scales to measure their body weights at the moment of their expiration. His theory was that they would lose weight as their souls left their bodies and his results were, well, mixed. Four were suffering from tuberculosis , one from diabetes , and one from un...

This post was originally shared as a Facebook and Instagram "DID YOU KNOW" post. I share them and you can get in on the fun by liking my page at  Facebook.com/TheNewSlightlyOddFitchburg  and following me at  Instagram.com/SlightlyOddFitchbur ! Now onto the haunting story! DID YOU KNOW the Chelsea Soldiers' Home is haunted? Yeah, so, the Chelsea Soldiers’ Home has the sort of quiet that doesn’t feel entirely empty, the kind that settles in old military buildings where too many men once waited for news that never came. Staff have been reporting oddities there for decades, long before ghost hunters started showing up with gadgets that beep at dust. Nurses talk about footsteps in the hall after lights out, steady and purposeful, the way a man walks when he’s spent a lifetime following orders. They check, of course, because that’s what you do, and find nothing but the long corridor stretching ahead like it’s holding its breath. One orderly swore he saw a figure in a World Wa...