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 unexplained story! DID YOU KNOW The earliest documented Bigfoot sighting in Massachusetts occurred in 1765 in Berkshire County? According to historical reports, explorers in the Great Barrington area encountered a "monstrous" creature described as having long, dark brown fur and human-like features, often referred to as the " Beast of Barrington ".  Detailed in The Berkshire Edge , the incident featured a creature wearing a hide resembling a large bear. “Built like a horse!” the headlines screamed, “Farmers terrorized!” Fun, right? What do you think? Leave a comment below!

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...

Watch the video above or read the article below! 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 hand...

Watch the video above or read the article below! 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 t...

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...

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 hitchhiking ghost in Maine called The Girl in the Snow? Yeah, so if you’ve ever driven Route 2A through Haynesville Woods in northern Maine during the dead of winter, you know the kind of road we’re talking about here. They’re narrow, twisting, hemmed in by skeletal trees and just waiting for the next accident. It’s the sort of place where headlights feel more like flashlights in a cave than actual illumination. If you happen to be on this road in the winter, you might just meet the hitchhiker ghost that’s been terrifying truckers and travelers since the 1960s. The legend goes like that, on icy nights when the snow is blowing sideways and the thermometer has given up entirely, dri...

Watch the video above or read the article below! The Shrieking Thanksgiving Ghost This one brings us to Geneva, New York . That’s the state with that really big city that smells like the Dutch . Every other holiday has a ghost and Thanksgiving isn’t any different, it’s just a little surprising. I mean, nothing bad ever came out of that day for any person or group of people, right? Hold on, my producer is talking in my ear… Oh? OH! oh. Well, that was disappointing to learn. Anyway, let’s get into the ghost story! The When and Where Told you so. This ghost story takes place back 1902, a few years before the world was going to start having fun with the Great Worcester Airship Hoax . It was the night of Thanksgiving Day and a train was approaching Marsh Bridge in Geneva, New York. It's bad enough when you have to work on Thanksgiving, but things were about to get weird for the engineer and fireman driving this thing. They were both in the train’s… cockpit? Engine car? Drive...

Most people don't realize that I'm a professional writer who gets paid to professionally write professionally. The work covers a lot of different subjects and keeps me in vodka and Pop Tart money. One of the best sites I write for is OnOurWayTo100.com and I really want you to check it out. It's an exploration of life as we all live it and it's always being updated with think pieces and information on everything from Healthcare to why AI is just the worst. I've written many of them with the blood of my Pop Tart enemies coursing through my veins and a vodka soaked tampon up my nose. Anyway, I'm telling you all this because I want you to check out the site and explore what it has waiting for you. Just to show you I'm serious, I'm sharing one of my favorite articles right now! It's not about ghosts or Pukwudgies , but I just think it's the bee's knees! I talk about humanity and how we all got here. Hey, that's the title of this article! Wha...

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 that Pittsfield, Massachusetts has a ghost train? Back in 1958, a guy by the name of John Quirk was in the Bridge Diner which sat right next to train tracks. He was just minding his own business when a phantom train drove right by the place. He got a good look at it and told people it had five or six coaches, a baggage car, and a tender with coal in it. The same thing happened one month later at 6:30am and he contacted railway officials about it. They looked into what happened, since they had no idea why a steam engine was using their tracks and confirmed that a train running on coal hadn’t operated on them for many years. The whole thing played out again a few months later, and the ...

Watch the video above or read the article below! 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 funny story! DID YOU KNOW that Gladys Spooner was so mean she died twice? She was an elderly woman spending her twilight years in Cavendish, Vermont , and earned a reputation as the local shrew. She was one of those people who “tell it like it is” when no one ever asks them. It was said that a week never passed without her giving someone a piece of her mind and no one had it worse than her husband, the henpecked Harley. She passed away in 1919 and pretty much the entire population of Cavendish attended her funeral. It’s a safe bet they all showed up just to make sure she was dead, and her new widower spent the whole service quietly staring at the floor. The funeral ende...

Frostbite takes hold in fewer than 5 minutes. Numbness grips your limbs. Pins and needles race over your skin. Ice crystals form on your body. Your muscles stiffen. Your joints stop working. Your face turns white, then waxy, then hard. That’s what the cold does to you and the cold is New England. You can’t separate them. When a tourist comes in with smiles and words, you don’t have time for it. They get to leave and go back to the warmth. You, the New Englander, live in the cold . Do you really have to wonder why there are so many ghost stories to be told? Up in northern Maine , on the outskirts of Haynesville, there’s a stretch of road so lonely that it’s only named Route 2A. This is the extreme north of Maine in a forgotten piece of the United States that’s so distant from the rest that it gets its electricity from Canada. Not that it needs much power, though. The population of Haynesville, Maine is only 97 and it’s not set to increase anytime soon. There was a time, however, when th...

Watch the video above or read the article below! 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 that Newport, Rhode Island is home to a Christmas ghost? In the late 19th century, the Beechwood Mansion was a luxurious mansion, frequented by the elite during the Gilded Age, so the fanciest people of the fanciest time. One Christmas Eve, a maid named Abigail was found dead in one of the grand halls. Rumors swirled that she had been pushed from the staircase by a jealous lover, though her death was officially ruled an accident. Fancy people in a fancy time rarely get prosecuted. Anyway, since that fateful night, guests and staff at the Beechwood Mansion have reported strange occurrences every Christmas season. The scent of Abigai...

  Have you ever have one of those nights where everything seems fine, and then, boom! Your best friend betrays you, people get murdered, and now you’re a ghost forever wandering the rocky shores of a forgotten island? No? Well, welcome to Smuttynose Island, where the vibes are bad, the history is worse, and everything feels like the plot of an experimental indie horror film your pretentious cousin swears is life-changing. Let’s set the stage: it’s 1873. You’re a Norwegian immigrant trying to carve out a peaceful life on a chunk of granite in the middle of the Atlantic. Smuttynose, they call it. A name that sounds suspiciously like a bad insult from a Victorian middle schooler. But hey, it’s home. And if you squint hard enough, the rocky coastlines, endless sea, and isolation are kind of charming. It’s like Little House on the Prairie, except the prairie is made of sharp rocks, and you’re way more likely to die from exposure.   The Smuttynose Murders — A Real-Life Gothic Horro...