Milton – Obscure Vermont

November 4, 2015March 31, 2020

Milton Mysteries: The Tunnel Underneath Main Street

This old postcard may be one of my favorite finds from the Milton archives. Published by Raymond A. Coburn, who owned the pictured general store in Milton from 1908 until the flood of 1927. This image of “downtown Milton” depicted a cartoonish almost satirical image of what town had the possibility to be like in the future. That vision included blimp taxi service to South Hero, which I still think would be sort of cool. Today’s Milton of the future has a CCTA bus line. | photo: Milton Historical Society.

My thoughts on Vermont weirdness often drift back to Milton, my former hometown. I suppose this is where I would further enhance that sentence with an explanation, but to be honest, I’m having trouble coming up with an angle on this. It’s where I grew up, and something about spending a third of my life there has just tattooed it into my framework. It’s where my love of the weird and the offbeat began from inside a quiet suburban bedroom, and began to proliferate outwards – which would become one of my most distinguished aspects of my personality, and why this blog now exists.

I often tote the Milton Creamery as the first abandoned building I've ever explored and became fond of, but more accurately, it was this ramshackle barn on the North Road I used to pass when I'd ride the school bus home. As a kid, I awarded it the moniker; — I often tout the Milton Creamery as the first abandoned building I’ve ever explored and became fond of, but more accurately, the first forsaken place I would ever lay eyes on was this ramshackle barn on the North Road I used to pass when I’d ride the school bus home. As a kid, I awarded it the moniker; “the broken barn”, which wasn’t all that creative but oh well, at least it was memorable. My mom was even cool enough to drive a little 6 year old me there a few times so I could explore it. Today, the faded relic is barely recognizable as the forest has almost consumed it. This was taken circa 1994, and is a scanned photograph.

As I grew older, I let my burning curiosity get the best of me, and began writing down all the urban legends and stories from my childhood, and all the accounts told to me over the years. This was a ritual I began to love, because I was quickly finding out that Milton was a fascinatingly storied town!

Its geographical area is unassumingly large, ranking 10th largest in land area and 8th in population (10,352 bodies at the 2010 census). All of that space is a perfect for hemming in obscure things and historical oddities. In the 1920s, aviation enthusiast and innovative inventor Paul Schill built an airport in town, where Sears and Ace Hardware are today (which accounts for the pancake flat plot of land along Route 7). But his goal of putting Milton on the map as an aviation manufacturer hot spot died in the beginnings of the great depression after he declared bankruptcy. In the later half of the 20th century, we were one of the premier racing towns in the northeast, with the Catamount Stadium (something I’d love to write about in great detail) and a drag strip drawing enthusiasts from around the region. These things have also became faded ghosts with the changing of the times.

Over the years, Milton would be a place where I would begin to shake hands with a lot of ghosts. Some were metaphorical; conjured from inflicting wounds laid upon to me. I began learning a lot about my Aspergers diagnosis in this town and still remember my lonesome youth rolling and stumbling, figuring out how I processed information in different ways from the rest, and how I often felt powerless because I didn’t feel like I understood the world around me, learning the rules out with the wolves.

But some of these ghosts were real. A former friend once told me about how their Bert’s Mobile Home trailer was haunted by the ghost of a little girl, who particularly liked a long narrow hallway connecting the bedrooms behind the living room. Though I’ve spent quite a bit of time there in my past life, I never had a run in with her. But I do recall the hallway always being dark and creepy, even during the day, which is a good breading ground for spook stories. When I asked the family about the girl, it became more complex and amorphous like these stories always tend to do; there were no records of any young girls growing up or dying there, making this story a weird mystery. But, they somehow knew she was there.

There is said to be a house on Main Street where things literally go bump in the night, perhaps because it used to be a funeral parlor in the last century. Weird lights and objects in the sky have been reported around 900 foot Cobble Hill for a few decades, and local lore tells of a haunted island in man-made Lake Arrowhead where a young woman was murdered by her jealous stricken husband in the late 30s, when he became enraged after the men of town kept admiring her. And, I’ll always remember this arbitrary point of non-trivia about Hobbs Road. Though the paved thoroughfare was named after a farming family, my friend once joked to me as he was reading the directions I wrote down so he could find my house; “I noticed that your neighborhood was off Hobbs Road…did you know that Hobbs is an old name for the devil?”

The more curious I became, the more I began to take comfort in the quiet company of weirdness and lore. Some mysteries I would have the pleasure of investigating, others still remain lost somewhere in the haze. Either way, both sets of ghosts would successfully haunt me for years to come.

Underneath The Ground

One of the most impressionable stories from my childhood told of a clandestine tunnel that started in the basement of the Joseph Clark mansion and ran underneath several old homes on Milton’s Main Street.

The stately Joseph Clark mansion, perched on a slight rise above Route 7, used to be the town offices and library back in the 1990s, which was the time when I picked up on the story. According to some, one of the house’s long dead builders is still there, and may be responsible for the next part of the story.

Kids in the library used to do what kids do best, and venture into places they weren’t supposed to. One of those places was the tunnel. But some would come running back up the stairs, visibly shaken, and tell the librarian that they were chased away by a man in the tunnel they thought was a security guard, whose presence was announced by the sound of heavy footsteps approaching them and then a glimpse of his tall dark form. But, the librarians would be confused and explain that the library had no security guard.

Unfortunately, that was where the story went cold. Was there really a tunnel underneath Main Street, connecting many of the town’s oldest homes together? If so, what was it used for? Popular theories guesstimate that it was constructed for use in the underground railroad.

Lorinda Henry of the Milton Historical Society was kind enough to sit down with me and help me in my search for answers. Meeting in the Milton Museum, which is pretty much the town attic that sits in an old church, we dug through countless unlabeled binders and boxes, but sadly, any information containing the tunnel wasn’t in their archives, or had long been lost. But the builder of the Clark mansion, however, was well documented.

After Milton’s official chartering in 1763, settlement was lackluster for the next 30 years. West Milton on the lower Lamoille banks, became the first part of town to be developed. A few miles up the river was a part of town that was known as Milton Falls, which would be the area around present day Main Street. In 1789, Elisha Ashley would survey the first east-west road in the Milton Falls section of town, by running a straight line from the Westford/East Road intersection, to a stump on the Lamoille River. Noah Smith, one of Vermont’s first lawyers, owned most of the land around what would become Main Street and Milton Village.

Joseph Clark was one of the earliest settlers in town, and his business endeavors made him both one of the wealthiest and most influential residents in Milton. He came to Milton in 1816, a year known by Vermonters as eighteen hundred and froze to death, because of the unseasonably frequent snow and frosts that caused widespread crop failure across the northeast. It’s no surprise that some superstitious Vermonters saw this as the coming of the end of the world.

But while the crops were failing, Clark and his partner Joseph Boardman saw opportunity in the rich pine forests that covered most of Milton, and hired crews to harvest the fine timber. The logs were floated up Lake Champlain to Montreal, before they were shipped to England, many to become used by the Royal navy. By 1823, he would purchase a sawmill in West Milton to process the raw timber. But by 1830, woodlands were replaced by agricultural land, and Clark decided to invest in other opportunities. He would build a gristmill in Milton Falls, then move into the brick mansion on Main Street that now bears his name. Later, he would build himself a two story brick office building where Main Street meets River Street, today’s Route 7. Clark’s move and investment in Milton Falls would lure more people and business endeavors there, and make that the new hub of town.

Here, the Lamoille River and gravity worked together to form about 5 waterfalls in a few miles of one another constricted in a rocky gorge, before relaxing at West Milton. These falls were ogled and soon sought after for industry. Some however also envisioned bravado and a way to kill boredom. In the 1800s, a growing number of young people in the northeast were jumping in barrels and going over any waterfalls they could find, which would achieve both getting mentioned in the newspaper and sometimes death. I once heard many years ago that around that time, a local boy and self-described dare-devil went over Clark’s Falls in a barrel. But to my huge disappointment, I couldn’t find any verification or information on this man or his leap over the falls. I liked that anecdote enough to include it in this entry though.

Railroads were rapidly spreading their steel arteries across the United States, bringing people, opportunity and growth with them, and because these things were vital for business exploits, this caught Clark’s attention. Partnering with John Smith of the Central Vermont Railroad, they worked to get some tracks built through Milton. In 1845, Milton had a rail line and accompanying train station, and that benefited the town greatly. After the civil war, the railroad brought vitality to the town’s burgeoning summer tourism industry and industrial mainstays like the former Creamery, a building which has shaped my love of exploring and photography.

Clark would continue to remain active in town affairs until his death in 1879. The house was passed down to family members until 1916, when Joseph’s granddaughter, Kate, deeded the house to the town of Milton to use as the town offices, and remained so until 1994 when it was reverted back to a private residence.

Lorinda speculated that the former gristmill behind his mansion could have warranted the construction of a tunnel, which would have sat where present day Ice House Road is. The house was built on a slight ledge, which would have made the tunnel a more convenient way to travel from one place to another, especially in the grueling Vermont winters. But there was no way to know for sure.

The mill and most of the development near the river were washed away during the flood of 1927, making investigations almost impossible.

It was later told to me that someone knew of a “thick iron door” found in the basement of Joseph Clark’s former office building on the corner of Route 7 and Main. This was one of the few buildings on River Street to survive the flood of 1927, so that claim seemed pretty credible to me. (But if it were built at a later date, I would be really curious about that mystery as well)

Geography would aid me here. The building was built into a ledge that forms the beginning of Main Street hill. Right above sits the Clark mansion. This means that a door in the basement wall would have lead to some sort of subterranean chamber, which may have been a tunnel.

The historical society told me of a former resident and her mother who once lived there, and claimed to have seen the iron door themselves. The facts seemed to be finally adding up here, but it seems my request for information was a few years too late. The building has since been sold, and it’s current owner denies the existence of a door firmly and doesn’t want to talk about such things. I attempted to reach out to the previous owners who brought forth the iron door sighting, but they had told the historical society so long ago, that their contact information had since vanished.

The Irish Annie's building (now vacant) - where the supposed iron door is said to be. Main Street is to the right, which runs up the hill. The Clark Mansion sits behind it. — The Irish Annie’s building (now vacant) – where the supposed iron door is said to be. Main Street is to the right, which runs up the hill. The Clark Mansion sits behind it. Photo: Google.

Another suggestion illustrated that the tunnel once ran all the way up the hill to the abandoned creamery on Railroad Street. And sure enough, there is a walled up door in the basement that once did lead to a tunnel. Could this be the proof I was looking for? I did a little digging around (literally), and talked to a former employee. As it turns out, the door did lead to a tunnel, but it wasn’t the tunnel. It ran significantly shorter, just over to the brick building next door which was also owned by the creamery at the time (now converted to a private residence). But that tunnel also had its notoriety. Former creamery employees and older Miltonians wistfully admitted that they used to sneak down and party in that tunnel, those shindigs usually included spirits and cigarettes, while the creamery was in operation and even in the years after it’s closing.

The Creamery Tunnel, sealed off at it's other end. — The creamery tunnel, sealed off at its other end.

The tunnel story seemed to be disappointingly falling apart. Though it was cool to think about – practically, it didn’t make sense. If we stick to the theory of a tunnel running all the way underneath Main Street, why would such a long tunnel need to be constructed? What was it’s purpose? To further deteriorate the story, the stately homes on Main Street were all built around different times, meaning their construction most likely didn’t accommodate the existence of a tunnel. And to prove this, I had spoken with a few Main Street residents who had never even heard the story of the tunnel, but all assured me the only way into their homes were through the front or back doors.

Vicious Waters and Dislocation

It wasn’t until some time later, after this project had been pushed to the back of my to-do list that something came up which immediately pulled it from memory. A Facebook commenter who knew that I was attempting to get to the bottom of this sent me a message and shared a personal account with me. As a kid in 1960s Milton, he used to play with his buddies down near the river, and he recalled seeing a cave like opening set back in the cliffs near the dam. Popular labeling at the time dubbed it as a tunnel. He even remembers his parents admonishing him and telling him not to go near it because it was likely to be dangerous. He never did, but speculated that it may be what I’m looking for. He also said that some of his friends claimed to get inside, but couldn’t recall any more than that. For all we knew, they may have been embellishing the truth.

One gloomy summer afternoon in August, I set out with a few friends to dig around the Lamoille banks, trying to find the telltale opening. That part of town has long been awarded an odd moniker by local youth who call it The Vector, which is a robust sounding name, but I can’t seem to relate it’s actual definition to the rocky gorge spanning from the Route 7 bridge to the bottom of twisting Ritchie Avenue. But the name has proven very successful at sticking into the flypaper of local culture. I grew up knowing that area as The Vector, and still do.

While doing our amateur urban archaeology, we found a surprising amount of items along the river banks, in the waters and even stashed in crevices that ran like veins through the crumbling rock ledges. Broken pieces of China plates, old glass bottles, rusted tools and even the remnants of an old truck lay trashed down in the rocky gorge, things that blurred the lines of being considered an artifact or garbage.

I knew this area was hit hard during the flood of 1927 and artifacts, cars and even entire homes were swept up in swollen brown tides down this part of the river, depositing much that still rests below wet rocks and Hemlock trees today. I even was able to dig up old newspaper accounts that were printed when the disaster was happening. One vivid memory was reported by a woman, who watched an entire house be swept down the river, almost entirely intact. She said she was able to look inside a broken window and see someone’s bed that had been turned down, as if the person was just about to turn in for the night.

A better understanding of the flood also gave me a better understanding of the area I was going to explore. Not surprisingly, its popular with people who like to metal detect who are still finding things transplanted from the flood and years onwards, so seeing all of this rubbish down there wasn’t a shocker. But something didn’t quite fit. One odd find was that a certain crevice seemed to be filled with trash – but it was put there by someone. This wasn’t naturally occurring. Someone had been down there at one point, trying to fill it up…

After a while of picking at the pieces and dislocating rocks, we were able to catch a peek deeper into the crevice, which expanded far back into a dark rocky chasm. It was evident that there was, in fact, more to see, and it did extend backwards, but I knew it wasn’t what I was looking for. Granted, the space had long been filled in by dead leaves and garbage, but it seems too narrow for what could be considered a tunnel. No man could seemingly fit back there, without the aid of tools and a great deal of ensuing noise. Either way, I stopped my efforts.

DSC_0878_pe — The collection of items we were able to dig out of the crevice in the cliffs. All of the following photos were taken in the dying days of summer, 2014.

I came up empty on August’s exploration, but in October, another lead would unexpectedly manifest itself, and it was promising. Meeting up with childhood friend Zach, I found myself in a location I normally avoid, a hole in the wall bar and pool joint in Essex Junction.

I was there to speak with a friend of Zach’s, someone who grew up in the Clark mansion and knew the building well. The house still belongs to her family today. When Zach had mentioned I was interested in the Clark tunnel, she said she needed to meet me in person.

And, she happened to be the bar tender who served us our drinks. Those who know me well are aware of the great cosmic relief that I often feel far more in my element in a location that is “off limits” to society, as opposed to legally being inside a dimly lit bar underneath a perfume of cigarettes and sweat. But she was all smiles, and her enthusiasm put me in a good mood. “Oh man, that house is definitely haunted!” she exclaimed. Though that wasn’t exactly my crux, I had to chuckle. “As the story goes, the house might be haunted by Joseph Clark?” I questioned, now amused.

“Nope” she replied. “We actually think it’s a woman”. Old records state that Clark was once married to a Colchester woman; Lois Lyon, which possibly could explain this. Over the years, she and her family have heard the sounds of high heals clacking on hardwood floorboards upstairs, and of course, whenever one would go and investigate, the second floor would be empty. She also recalled the upstairs being creepy as a kid, a place she wasn’t all that fond of hanging around in. Other accounts like phantom cold chills and the unmistakable feeling of being watched upstairs she also said were pretty common. But damn it, was there a tunnel?

Much to my pleasure, the mystery was finally confirmed. There was a tunnel, and she has seen it! Now to get to the bottom of things.

Opacity

In the cellar walls of the Clark mansion is the clear outline of a door that sits well below the grassy lawn, now sealed up. But the distinctive outline of a door cleared up all skepticism. Also in the basement was another relic I found to be very cool – a massive cast iron safe that once belonged to Joseph Clark still sat in the wall. Though much of the mansion had been renovated over the centuries due to its many reincarnations, a few authentic pieces of the place still remained. She explained to me that the tunnel had to be sealed up, because local kids kept getting into the tunnel and using that as passage inside the building, where they would steal and break things. This happened even after the building reverted back to a private residence in 1994, so actions finally had to be taken. What a shame. By now, the tunnel is more or less unsafe to enter as well, due to neglect over the years.

However, I don’t want to deceive you folks. This information was directly given to me from the niece of the current building owner, that owner also declined my phone calls to seek a tour of the place, which disappointed me a bit.

So the fabled tunnel is now proven to exist. But where does it go? It runs down to the basement of the defunct Irish Annie’s Pub at the bottom of the hill. Its original purpose was so that Joseph could travel from his office to his house conveniently, but over the years, it’s very nature of being direct and discrete inspired a few other uses. During prohibition, it was reinvented as a smugglers’ tunnel, which allowed rum runners to transport goods into a speak easy that once operated out of the basement of Irish Annie’s. Astonishingly, the remnants of the actual speak easy can still be seen today below the building, which really hasn’t changed all that much. The basement is a traditional old Vermont cellar, low ceilings, stone walls, and filled with things that crawl. The old iron door into the tunnel is still there too, the very door I was told about so long ago.

Were there other tunnels? Maybe. But the affor-mentioned flood of 1927 and post-reconstruction completely wiped any other leads I could possibly have. And as for that tunnel or cave near the Vector, I wasn’t successfully able to find that either. Perhaps something is still there, just filled in with erosion or a rock slide over the years. Though my lead at The Vector was a bit of a disappointment, I soon found out about other caves in the gorge with their own lore. Some rumored to be the hideouts of smugglers in the embargo act days of the 1800s and dry 1920s, and transitioned as hangouts by local youth and now, cavers looking for a thrill. Some are only accessible by kayak, weather permitting, and offer creepy claustrophobic excursions into dark spaces.

This blog entry has been one of my favorite pieces to write so far. By trying to do research on what I assumed would be a straightforward topic, I kept stumbling on more information and stories that continued to morph and blurred whatever side of the line between reality and fantasy you wanted to be on, far too many for your blogger to fit in this already lengthy article.

One night while sitting in the living room of a former friend’s house, his dad told me their old farmhouse was built in the early 1900s, out of an old barn built in the 1800s, and was dragged to Milton by oxen from its former position where the airport in South Burlington is now. I guess the house contained many other cool details, but sadly we’ve since lost touch.

Another favorite find of mine was a few years back, when a WW2 medal belonging to a Nebraska man was found stuffed in a VCR cassette and stashed inside a tree. No one knew exactly how the medals ended up in Vermont, or why.

Milton is a cool town, and the people who live their have their share of extraordinary stories. I have quite a few other Milton points of interest and esoterica that I plan on writing about in the future. Until then, thanks for the inspiration Milton.

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If you missed it, I was recently interviewed by Stuck In Vermont and Seven Days. If you’d like to learn a little bit more about your blogger, feel free to check out my interview.

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August 25, 2014March 31, 2020

Milton Mysteries: The Indian Mound

On my quest to discover Vermont curiosities, weirdness and mysteries, I made the mistake of overlooking my former hometown of Milton, a community steeped in stories and legends. But Milton presented a challenge to me. While some lore seemed to be well recited among local residents, the actual stories behind the stories simply weren’t there. Over the past year, I began talking to people, writing down notes and choosing things I wanted to research further in detail. I wanted to bring these great stories to life once again, and through arduous research, I was finally able to fill in some missing pieces. This will be the first in what will hopefully be a few entries on Milton mysteries.

A year ago, I stumbled upon an old photo which fascinated me. The photo depicted a large mound of earth dubbed as “The Indian Mound”, it’s vague description locating it somewhere near the shores of Lake Champlain. Was there an Indian Mound in Milton?

I’ve traveled the many dirt roads of West Milton all my life, but have never seen a geological formation like this before. If there was such a mound, surely it would be of great importance. Why was it so discrete? Do people know of its existence? And, the most heavily weighed question, where was it?

An old photo of an alleged Indian Mound near the shores of Lake Champlain. Photo courtesy of The Milton Historical Society

Speaking with Lorinda Henry from the Milton Historical Society, she explained that the mystery about the Indian Mound was far greater than the information about it.

After digging through stacks of papers and unlabeled binders at the historical society, I was able to find my first clue; that the mound was located down near Camp Everest in Milton, a hidden area off a series of remote back roads that don’t receive much traffic other than locals, and a name that may very well be lost to many Milton residents today.

A vestige of the days when Milton was a summer tourist destination, Camp Everest was just one of the many large camps that would be built up along the shores of Lake Champlain.

In the mid 1800s, camping in summer cottages and tents would draw people to the shores of Lake Champlain. Milton’s lakeshore was a murderers row of natural beauty, complete with stony beaches, Eagle Mountain’s giant looming rocks, marshlands, and deep forests. Land owners began converting their properties into camps to take advantage of this, and as a result, camps Rich, Martin, Watson, Cold Spring, and Everest would open for business.

The camps all had farms, providing them with fresh food. Many of them boasted luxuries such as proximity to clear mountain springs, and the availability of fresh cream, eggs, milk and vegetables. The properties also offered many amenities such as recreation halls, lawn sports, fishing excursions and hayrides. Some camps even had handsome hotels built extravagantly and symmetrically, standing above the waters, with classic New England verandas, conical towers, decorative dormers and dramatic features that accentuated different sides of the buildings, almost to a point of tactility. Old advertisements for Camp Watson even boldly claimed that they had “positively no mosquitoes” – although, being quite accustomed to Vermont summers, I can’t help wonder just how they went around keeping that promise.

A hand drawn map of Milton’s summer camp colonies, and the area town known as Miltonboro. Photo courtesy of The Milton Historical Society.

The area along the lakeshore became known as Miltonboro, which included schoolhouses, a church and meetinghouse which catered to the campers and locals who didn’t want to travel all the way to Milton village. Today, most of Miltonboro has vanished, leaving only a small cemetery ringed by a stone wall, and a name on a map.

Camp Everest, the southern most of Milton’s lakeshore camps, was established in 1878 by Zebediah Everest and A.W. Austin, and they couldn’t have chosen a more splendid location. Bordered to the south by serpentine marshlands that now make up the Sandbar Wildlife Management Area, and to the north by the dizzying ledges of Eagle Mountain, with a sweeping view of South Hero island and the Adirondacks across the lake. The camp included a camp house, bowling alley and eight cottages, occupied by both family members and renters. It was here at Camp Everest where the alleged mound was located.

However, the information I read didn’t portray the mound as culturally significant, but rather in a bureaucratic sense – it was simply a piece of property. A camp was built atop the steep hill in 1927 by the Hutchins family, and named “Indian Mound”, perhaps romantically after what the earlier campers viewed the mound to look like. I was able to reach out to Barbara Hutchins, whose family originally owned the camp, and she was kind enough to give me further information.

She explained that the mound itself was probably formed during the glacier age, most likely a remnant of the Saint Lawrence Ice Sheet that once covered this part of North America. UVM did some digs around the mound in the 1950s, and found nothing of Native American significance, but they did find some old sea shells and fossils, evidence of the Champlain Sea, the tropical sea which covered what is now Vermont millions of years ago.

The Hutchins eventually sold the camp, and lost track of the property. I was able to dig up choppy pieces of information at the historical society – listing the names of various people who leased the camp throughout the years. The dates got sparse after 1970. Eventually, the information just seemed to cease. So, what happened to it? Was it still there?

Lorinda Henry explained that the state of Vermont wanted to hack apart the mound and use it to fill in a nearby swampland in 1948, but further research told me that because the area was prone to flooding, they decided not to, because the amount of dirt they would have gotten from the mound would have most likely been lost within a few years, leading me back to my original question.

The existence of an Indian Mound is also curious, because Vermont was never thought to be associated with mound building Indians. But then again, at one time, it was thought that Native Americans never settled in what is now Vermont. But Milton farmers would constantly find artifacts and arrowheads while clearing and plowing their fields. Arrowheads were also allegedly found when Andrea Lane, a small neighborhood off Route 7, was being constructed years ago. Lorinda Henry explains that because of native traces in the area, there are parts of the neighborhood that can’t even be developed because of archaeological significance. If that myth was debunked, than would the presence of an Indian Mound be that hard to believe?

On a breezy August day this summer, I took the beautiful drive back down towards Camp Everest, with the intention of solving this mystery. The camp is much different from it’s heyday, now a series of private camps, owned by various people. The bowling alley and other amenities have long vanished into history and the creeping forests.

With the hand drawn map featured above in this post as my only reference, I scanned the roadside and across the many meadows bordering the area, but the imposing sight of the Indian Mound was never seen rising above the various clover filled fields or cedar forests near the roadside. I ran into several people, some jogging, others washing their SUVs in their driveways, and they were all happy to talk with me. But sadly, none of them knew about an Indian Mound or a camp of the same name. Some were out of staters and weren’t aware of the area’s history. But then again, a great deal of the area’s history has long vanished over the years.

From the map, I was able to sort of pin point the general location of the mound, but the area is much different than when the picture was taken. I had assumed, the mound might be still existing, now deep in the woods and covered in vegetation. But shortly after publishing this blog entry, I stumbled upon some further information.

Laurie Scott, who is an Everest, explained to me that the mound was eventually purchased by the grandson of the Hutchins family. The Everest’s lease most of the land where the camps sit, but her grandmother, Ethel Everest, sold the mound to them. The mound and the camp are still there, and as I assumed, is now obscured, hiding successfully behind a Vermont forest – an ideal getaway.

An interesting footnote to this story is that while trying to solve the mystery of this “Indian Mound”, Barbara Hutchins recalls that she heard there were a few other professed Indian mounds somewhere in Milton as well, but as for their locations, she doesn’t remember, leaving this intriguing mystery currently ongoing.

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April 11, 2013March 31, 2020

What Dwells on Woodcrest Circle?

Recently, a good friend of mine just confessed to his childhood home being haunted, and if I had known then what I know now, I don’t think I would have ever dared step inside when I was a kid.

I had visited a few times before, and never thought anything strange about the place. I had no reason to feel uncomfortable there. But my friend could argue otherwise, and the things he finally relayed to me were nothing short of terrifying.

He grew up in the same neighborhood as me, a typical 1980s sub division of simple cookie cutter ranch homes built precisely around planned circles and cul-de-sacs all named after local trees that grow wild on the front lawns. Even today, as Milton continues to grow, the honeycomb of pot holed streets and homes that make up my neighborhood is still considered to be the largest development in town. A neighborhood so big, that most of my friends would often call me from their cellphones and complain that they were lost long after they had pulled out of my driveway to leave.

To understand what exactly went on in that house, it’s good to know a little of the history behind it. One of the first occupants of the small ranch house was your typical American nuclear family. A father, a wife and their children. Though almost nothing is known about the family who owned the house before my friend’s family did, the tragic events that exploded like find powder have seemed to forever linger in the atmosphere like oil on skin.

It was known that the happiness of that family had long been eroding, as the father spent most of his hours working his fingers down to dust, trying to provide for his family. But the problem was sadly beyond what a good paycheck could repair. One day, he came home from a grueling day of work, and noticed he was in the unusual position of walking into a quiet and empty house. His suspicious soon became fire as the night passed and his family still hadn’t returned home. Beginning to panic, he soon made frantic phone calls to just about everyone he knew, asking if they had seen his family. But no one had. A few days later, he would have his answer. His wife had waited until he left for work, taken the children, and left him for another man. To make things more devastating, he found that she had been cheating on him for several years. Unable to deal with his betrayal and shame, he went into the bathroom and shot himself.

Years later, my friend’s family moved in. Because they had 4 children, more rooms were needed and the basement was eventually converted into 2 makeshift bedrooms. My friend recalls the basement right after they moved in. He said his first impression of the basement wasn’t a great one, saying it made him feel uncomfortable the moment he set foot down there. Towards the far end was an area that was fenced off from the rest of the basement. It was a giant cage type room, with walls made from 2x4s and chicken wire walls. Their landlord informed them that it used to be a dog cage, but there was just something eerie about it still. Eventually, the space that was the cage was converted into bedrooms.

My friend developed a fear of the basement; more specifically, the part of the basement that was his room. Things seemed normal after they had first settled in. But slowly, strange things began to happen.

He first realized that no matter the circumstances, it was always cold in the basement. He would report feeling phantom breezes at night and frigid temperature drops that would leave his room freezing compared to the rest of the house. Before his room had a door, he used a sheet that had been nailed to the wooden frame around it. Some nights, he reported waking up to the sheet blowing in some sort of invisible draft that seemed to manifest itself from nowhere. More peculiarly, the breezes only seemed to disturb the sheet, and didn’t touch anything else around. With no open windows or doors that could act as the scapegoat, the source of these phantom breezes remained a mystery. But that was nothing.

After some time had passed, he woke up to hearing the sound of something moving around on his carpet. As he lay awake listening, he eventually pin pointed the location of the strange noises; they were coming from the broken plastic remains of a Plasma Globe that broke at the foot of his bed, the broken pieces lay scattered on the floor. Now, it sounded like something was crawling around inside the broken plastic shell. Getting up to turn on his light, he scanned the carpet and the broken globe for the mysterious culprit, and found nothing. Turning off his light, he got back into bed with the intention of getting more sleep, but was soon woken up again to the same noises, only this time, they seemed faster and more frantic. Getting up again, he picked up the shards and put them in the garbage. Thinking that was the end, he got back into bed and fell asleep. But for weeks after, he continued to hear noises at night. This time, he described them as what sounded like chirping noises, like a bird would make. They were soft and delicate, and could never be traced. But he knew they were coming from inside his room.

As time progressed, the strange noises stopped as mysteriously as they had appeared. Things once again were uneventful until months later, he awoke one night to the sound of his computer chair moving. Through the dim light coming from outside his room, he witnessed the chair wheeling itself from the computer desk across his room and stop itself right at the foot of his bed. The basement floor was poured concrete and was level, there was no explanation for why the chair moved on its own. He got out of bed and pushed the chair back underneath the desk. Sometime later, he awoke again to find that the chair was back at the side of his bed! Only this time, the back of the chair was reclined – an impossible position without human help, as if something was sitting in it, and it was facing him as if whatever was sitting in the chair was observing him. After a few minutes, the chair straightened back up to its natural position, as if whatever had been sitting in it had gotten up. He watched the chair roll by itself across the room and rest against the wall.

These events seemed to space themselves out unpredictably, and for the most part, innocuous. But soon, the strange phenomenon became more intense and more interactive. He began waking up in all hours of the night for unexplained reasons. Feeling horribly uncomfortable, he would scan the dark shadows of his room. Meeting his gaze was a “shadow figure” standing near the basement doors that lead to a staircase that went outside, staring at him with red eyes that he described as “like cats eyes”. The shadow was reported as being very tall, and reached from floor to ceiling. But this didn’t happen only once. This happened for years, to a point where he went from being absolutely terrified of this mysterious entity, to becoming accustomed to it. Eventually, he came to the realization that he would wake up every night and see it staring at him from his doorway.

He began to have terrifying and powerful nightmares on a nightly basis, so incredibly intense and aggressive that he didn’t want to talk about them. But, he did recall a few that he remembered vividly. Once, he dreamed that he awoke in the middle of the night laying next to a dead girl in his bed. His eyes would open and he would find himself staring into her dead eyes, which he described as calm and soothing. But the rest of her was anything but. Her mouth gaped open and was infested with crawling worms. Sometimes he would freak out and scream, and like lightning, she would begin to eat him until he woke up in his trembling skin.

Another dream he had involved the same girl, only this time he woke up to a rotting hand coming up from his bedside and clutch his chest. That soon was followed by another hand, and eventually, her dead and rotting face. She opened her mouth and let out an agonizing scream of misery and sorrow for what seemed like hours until he woke up. An interesting side note is that after every single nightmare he would suffer through, he would always wake up and see that familiar shadow figure with the cats eyes staring at him from his doorway. The figure would always be in the same spot, but would never come in the room. Could there be a connection between this strange entity and his dreams?

Another night, he awoke to the chirping noises again. At this point, it had been some time since he had last heard them, so he was a little surprised as his memory was revived. But there was something else now. In the desolate moonlight that lit up his room, he reported seeing something truly terrifying that seemed to crawl and shamble along his floor. Extending from the basement doors to the door of his bedroom, he said he saw what he can best be described as a giant human back, without arms, legs or a head attached to it. It withered and twisted and convulsed across the floor, it’s bones looked like they’d pop out of its skin at any moment. He turned his head away, far too afraid to stare at whatever he was seeing. When he heard the chirping noises quiet down, he forced himself to look at his floor again, and whatever he had seen had vanished into the night.

Now, all of this admittedly seems a bit extreme, if not Hollywood in character. But, my friend isn’t one for lying, and his voice was trembling with such emotion and sincerity that I simply can’t believe that he would be having a laugh at my expense. And as I would soon find out, my theory would be proven correct.

A few nights ago, myself and another good childhood friend were enjoying fine Long Trail Coffee Stouts underneath soft Spring breezes that seemed safe and cool. Sitting on two chairs on his back deck, we often would meet up and let our conversations continue into the night, a great way to unwind from the despairs of the day. And somehow, our conversation turned to nostalgia and strange experiences, and eventually, it lead to my friend’s house.

I had mentioned that I wasn’t sure what to make of the claims that were told to me, I was more than a little skeptical, but he intervened and stopped me.

“I had a really strange experience there when I used to spend the night” he told me. “So, you believe that it’s haunted as well?” I asked, almost incredulously. He wasn’t sure what to think. Like me, he tries to see things logically, and even though he was a firsthand witness to a bizarre encounter there, he still had a hard time admitting to himself that he believed what he saw.

Years ago, when he was spending the night, he rolled over on the couch he was sleeping on, and his foot banged into something. His eyes slowly opened, trying to read the situation. This was strange, considering he knew before he went to bed, there was nothing at all that was near the couch that his foot should have bumped into. Eventually, he sat up and noticed that a computer chair was sitting beside the couch. That was strange, because before he went to bed, he recalled that the chair was in fact tucked underneath the computer desk at the other side of the room, a good 6 feet from where he was sleeping. What was it doing over here? He didn’t think much of it, but he noticed that the room was much colder than it had been. On the back of the computer chair, a blanket had been draped over it. Wanting some extra warmth, he quickly snatched the blanket from the chair and pulled it over him. When he grabbed the blanket, the chair expectantly started spinning. But 15 minutes later, he sat there watching the chair incredulously; it was still spinning at a continuous yet slow speed and showed no signs of slowing down. Then to his horror, the chair began to spin faster. In a scene that would only appear to most people on the silver screen, the chair began to spin faster and faster as if pushed by an unseen force, only to come to a direct stop suddenly, the front of the chair facing him. Needless to say, he preferred not to spend another night in that house again.

But there were other strange factors at play here. My friend recalled that his step dad began to suffer from terrible mood swings shortly after they had moved in the house. He would become violent, irrational and his tongue sharp and serpentine. I only met him a few times when I was much younger, and I saw him as an unfriendly type of person, but according to my friend, he was acting “out of character, even for him”. Eventually, the marriage was dissolved and he left the house. But soon after, his mother would report waking up with a body like imprint in her bed, as if someone had been sleeping beside her the entire time.

In a case such as this, a lot of questions remain, and not surprisingly, far more that can ever be answered.

If we were to believe that these events happened with no logical explanation, was there more than one thing troubling my friend and his family? Was it just a series of bizarre occurrences that seemed all too real? And, what sort of person in life was the man who killed himself? Was he kind and troubled, or were his abusive motives a reason why his family had left him? Admittedly, I was having a hard time debunking these claims.

My friend admitted that one night, he tried speaking to the shadow figure outside his door. “Well, what happened?” I asked curiously, my mind not being able to even predict his response. But he simply shrugged his shoulders and nonchalantly said “nothing”.

One theory is that if haunts are the responsibility of the angry and wounded spirit of the man who killed himself, he seems to have a strong dislike towards men, which is probably why my friend seemed to get the brunt of all that happened. Or perhaps, it was personal…

That was years ago, and they have long since moved and grown up. A peculiar ending to this story is that eventually, the strange phenomenon seemed to die out well before they sold the house, but the strange feeling of being watched remained until the day they left. The house still stands today, and is currently being lived in. It’s been a few years now and it hasn’t been put up for sale, so my best assumption would be that maybe, whatever malevolent entity that plagued the house has perhaps moved on? But maybe the question is, if this is so, where did it go?

September 15, 2012March 31, 2020

Roads Less Traveled

Abandoned roads have a story to tell. They represent abandoned dreams and ambitious projects that reflect the growth and often tumultuousness of our society, or the irresponsibility of our governments, cracked asphalt scars that mar the landscape and are reincarnated into monuments of failure.

The Southern Connector

There is a stretch of abandoned interstate highway in Burlington’s south end, crumbling to pieces as the urban development around it was designed purposely to obscure the fact the blighted stretch of pavement even exists, with privacy fences and shrubbery. If you’ve approached town via exit 13 or have driven on the southern section of Pine Street where it ends at Queen City Park Road, you’ve most likely seen the incongruous graffitied space blocked off by jersey barriers. And maybe, you’ve wondered what it was, or why it was there.

In the 1960s, American cities were jumping on the massive urban renewal bandwagon, which was aimed at revitalizing communities long forgotten by neglect, and the de rigueur of American suburbia. Being Vermont’s largest city, Burlington was having an identity crisis, and figured that Vermont’s largest city should be something more than an unflattering image of blighted industrial waterfront and vacant downtown. So, The Queen City jumped on the urban renewal bandwagon. Their grand vision was a multifarious one which envisioned many future facing wonders; a shiny new downtown area connected to it’s environs by an efficient circumferential highway. They achieved this dream by using the power of eminent domain, and discombobulated an entire neighborhood of primarily Italian immigrants, to build canyons of featureless brick, glass and concrete, with loads of parking real-estate, which reflected the precipitously rising car culture obsession.

Stage two of the plan was to build a highway that would move traffic in and out of the city efficiently. Because Burlington was built on an awkward grid system from the 1800s, the city layout was never met to accommodate an unprecedented population rise or a society where everyone drove a car. Traffic was already piling up and into residential neighborhoods, which was frazzling local residents.

Construction broke in 1965, and the “Southern Connector” was started, creating today’s exit 13, aka, the Shelburne Road exit. But, the project quickly ran into problems.

Directly in the path of the proposed highway was a contaminated swath of swampland wedged between Pine Street and the lake.The Pine Street Barge Canal, a former industrial waterway turned Superfund site, was discovered to be highly polluted by the state of Vermont in the late 60s. If construction crews were to build over the canal, all of the trapped ground contaminants such as coal ooze and gasoline from irresponsible industrial disposal decades ago would all be released into the lake.

Because of this, construction halted, and a forlorn stretch of pavement was left stretching from Shelburne Road to Home Avenue. The only solution was to just block off the remained of the now unusable highway, and divert the exit to dump out onto Route 7. The project could go no further. Plans to finish the highway were proposed for several years, but it wasn’t until 2010 when plans resurfaced again. This time, it was recreated as “The Champlain Parkway”, and the reinvented idea was to merge the highway onto the south end of Pine Street, then turn the street into a 4 lane boulevard with updated pedestrian crossings and sidewalks, creating a main artery to and from downtown. But that too fell into problems, including concerns from south end residents who weren’t thrilled with the idea. Eventually, a compromise was made between city hall and opposed denizens, that include selective signage that only mark the anticipated parkway from certain directions, in an attempt to reduce traffic flow. But in the GPS era, I doubt that omitting signage in certain areas of the city will truly be a solution.

Today, the so called road to nowhere still goes nowhere, There are remnants of many homeless camps behind crumbling jersey barriers, and the local teen crew has converted much into a make shift skate park and a canvas for graffiti artists. It’s an interesting place to walk around on a warm spring day.

Places like this are special – an unusual contrast only separated from the dead eyes of the city by a chain link fence and new growth trees. Here it’s a different world, frequented by mysterious people of all types, all leaving their marks and appreciating what was otherwise left to rot.

The Milton Speedway

A few miles to the north of Burlington is the growing town of Milton, which is nostalgically remembered for being the former home of Catamount Stadium, a legendary stock car racing stadium and a now demolished staple of local culture.

In the 1960s and 70s, Milton had a reputation for being the “race town”, with a strong local culture and two lively institutions supporting it.

In the last century, Vermont had over 22 race tracks, with many being hastily created to assist the growing American car culture and it’s ripple effects. In 1960, the iconic Thunder Road would open in Barre, which was noted for it’s fine and thoughtful construction – something that resembled a modern track instead of the many crude and clumsy oval type tracks that were otherwise being built across the state. Thunder Road was such a success that the Vermont racing community began to brain storm. Building a track in a populated area near major transportation arteries would not only expand awareness of local racing culture, but give it’s participants more places to, well, race.

Milton’s proximity to New York, Quebec and Burlington and land which now was found to be conveniently suited for a racing track would be what would inspire Catamount to be financed and built by 1965 on farmland purchased from Kermit Bushey. A racetrack in town drew in lots of Milton locals and got them involved as racers, spectators or mechanics, which would prove to be one the things that would make the 1/3rd of a mile oval track such a success story.

The track was built to NASCAR specifications by excited local contractors and businessmen, and enjoyed considerable notoriety, those who remember it speak fondly of it. It hosted drivers of all skill, from nationally acclaimed to local heros, and would hold races of all varieties from circuit races to it’s grand finale of an enduro race, which many feel was an insulting way to go out. It was the type of place where car lovers and the curious could witness the latest trends in what would be racing on the track, or the more rigged homemade inventions and the characters that drove them. The locals would come with chips and a cooler full of beers, while the more prestigious could pay to sit in private boxes. All were there for a good time. One summer nights, the stadium could most often be found filled to capacity, and created a loyal fan base. The track would play host to adrenaline and voyeurism until 1987 when the Greater Burlington Industrial Cooperation, who curiously came in possession of the land, wouldn’t agree to renew the track’s lease, leaving Catamount with no choice but to shut down.

Apart from the stadium, Milton had another monument to man’s love of his car and pushing the limits of societal boundaries; a drag strip. In the 1950s, the young and reckless would find isolated stretches of road to drag race on. In 1963, the illegal sport’s popularity inspired local residents Herbert McCormick and Maurice Bousquet, owners of the former B&M Motors, to finance a drag strip of their own. At a quarter mile long, the track was a spectacle itself, located near the Route 7/West Milton Road interchange.

Billing itself as “The Milton Speedway”, it was apparently quite active in its heyday. Old newspaper clippings show that the speedway was an animated place, and boasted cash prizes and contests. It’s allure drew some notable clientele such as Shirley Muldowney and The Royal Pontiac GTO Racing Crew, who all raced in Milton at one point. But the drag strip’s existence was brief, as the phenomenal costs of resurfacing the road proved to be too much. It was closed by 1971.

In the 1980s, Milton experienced a real estate boom – with the lure of cheap land and close proximity to Burlington – the community soon found itself shedding its old skin as a farming town, and becoming a bedroom community. A few neighbors of mine talked about how they remembered the old stadium when they first built their houses around 1984. Even 4 miles away, they recalled standing on their back decks at night underneath the cool summer skies and hearing the howl of the engines being carried through the dark.

By 1987, partially due to the exorbitant cost of automobile and track maintenance, the stadium closed forever, a sad loss for Milton. The Catamount Stadium was appreciated by the entire region, and its closure was a bitter one. Catamount was very much a community affair. A few Milton residents who I spoke with recalled their fathers, friends and neighbors who used to race there over the years. Today an almost excessive plenitude of automobile related businesses still line Route 7 through town, a fading reminder of a dead era.

The Catamount Stadium grounds were redeveloped to the successful Catamount Industrial Park, which today among other things, houses a helicopter sales business, a warehouse for Burlington based Gardener’s Supply Company and a printing company.

But one relic of Milton’s automobile past does still remain, if you do a little searching. If you head into town on Route 7, towards the grungy stained cinderblock walls of the Milton diner, there is a large vacant and gravely weed chocked field on your right. If you look far back into the field, you notice a perfectly straight segment of roadway that seems to emerge from the otherwise dead ground, and cuts into the woods behind it, going back as far as the eye can see. The pavement is cracked and potholed, weeds are plentiful, and the entrance is blocked by a set of very old Jersey barriers. This is all that remains of Milton’s drag strip.

The drag strip is hard to find now because everything is so grown up around it, so it doesn’t come as a surprise that most people don’t realize this small piece of history still exists. And if they stumble across it, do they know what they are staring at? The overgrown footprint continues for a few miles, until it abruptly ends in crumbling asphalt and birch trees, its ghosts sitting in the branches that tangle over your head.

Today it is a somber place, sitting behind a building supply store and a local diner, pretty much forgotten by the locals. The few that do remember the old strip refer to neighboring Racine Road as “Racin Road”, because the road runs directly parallel to the former strip, and is perfectly straight. Not surprisingly, some like to occasionally race there.

Last I heard, condos are scheduled to be developed on the upper half of the drag strip.

Two stretches of abandoned highways, both with very unique stories to tell.

A great find on Youtube! The Milton Drag Strip, 1963. The identifiable shape of Cobble Hill can be seen in the background.

Links

If you are curious about the Catamount Stadium, or have fond memories of it, there is a great website devoted to it

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