The Drowned Forest

I recently had a lot of fun voyaging around the tiny angle that is New Hampshire’s 18 miles of seacoast! I haven’t been down towards the Granite State’s coast since I was 10 years old, so the nostalgia was stimulating and the sunburn was painful!

A few friends were tandem on this seacoast excursion, and one of the few goals I had for this trip was doing a bit of oddity hunting – and I was pleased with the few curios that I had eagerly put on my list. Beyond that, we just had a blast shunpiking around random coastal towns in both New Hampshire and Maine.

The environment is a bit exotic to me, in a sense that serpentine salt marshes and beaches on a waterbody you can’t see the other side of aren’t found up in Vermont (but we do have lighthouses!). This part of New England also has redolent history and mystery that have been fermenting far longer than Vermont has existed! I was definitely imbued with some unabashed excitement the whole time.

After all these years I’d never forgotten just how great of a drive New Hampshire State Route 1A was.

Before we checked into our hotel in Portsmouth, I suggested we took the requisite tour up Route 1A (known as Ocean Boulevard for most of New Hampshire’s seaboard) and the shore with the windows down and the breezy salt air coming in (and our music blasting out).

Starting in the brashy and tawdry beach burb of Hampton Beach and its famed 3-mile titular stretch of sand that are both long-established New England summer destinations, we then ventured northwards around a few rocky points with squinty views of the faraway rocks that are the Isle of Shoals – a group of forlornly not-quite-barren islands split between Maine and New Hampshire that are famed for their isolation, and grim and mysterious folklore – the spectrums of which include murder, shipwreck, ghosts, and a treasure – all suitable footnotes of any northern New England ocean island. I’d like to take a ferry ride out there next time I’m in the area.

We then passed through scenic Rye, with numerous state beaches, tidal wetlands, and ostentatious money enclaves that line Ocean Boulevard, and then ended up in Portsmouth.

*iPhone photo. The rad shield for New Hampshire State Route 1A – the numbers represented within the silhouette of the “Old Man of The Mountain” – which was formerly a naturally anthropomorphic rock outcropping above Franconia Notch said to look like its name implies, which has since crumbled ironically due to its old age, and is now kind of an awkward state marketing icon. I had fun explaining this to one of my friends who is from the Midwest.

Portsmouth, New Hampshire is a rad little city. As its name implies, it started out as a colonial shipbuilding hub and morphed into a rowdy naval port town where the Piscataqua River junctions with the Atlantic around the island town of New Castle.

The Pisaquata River also has a pretty great Google review!

The name was minted by the local Abenaki people and might mean something close to; “a river with a strong current”, which I’d say is pretty dead-on, but the details are a bit hard to parse, and because of that, there is a lot of speculative lore behind its name! It’s also the third fastest-flowing navigable river in the world. Though the city has long declined from being an employed port, the oldest naval shipyard in the new world is still active here on an island in the Piscataqua – which once launched some of the most important American warships and the first nuclear submarines. Now the shipyard is kinda moribund, but still functioning.

And speaking of submarines – there’s one in a hole right off the Route 1 Bypass! It had me and my friend exclaim: “Hold up… that’s a motherfuckin’ submarine!” when we passed it.

It’s the new home of the USS Albacore! Lauded as “the forerunner of the future” in its heyday, this vessel was built by the skillful laborers at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in 1953 and was intended to essentially be a paramount experiment of both its physical design and technological wizardry – one that the Navy was really depending on. Its teardrop-shaped body became the standard design for all subsequent submarines – and proved that submarines could actually sustain themselves and function while being submerged!

It became the world’s fastest submarine in 1966 when it set an underwater speed record of 40 miles per hour, and, it was used to innovate sonar equipment!

Now, it’s a neat roadside oddity and museum that we didn’t expect to see. Though it was closed when we pulled up as dusk hummed in, it was worth getting a few mediocre iPhone shots of!

One of the most memorable features of the navy’s island lair – and the region itself – is a notorious abandoned naval prison designed as a dismal gothic nightmare – intentionally, I’m sure.

I guess it’s an unwritten cultural rule that if a prison is built on an island, it’s gonna eventually be known as “the rock”.

Like Alcatraz, the intimidating Portsmouth Naval dungeon also shares the same tag, even though it’s technically across the state line in Kittery, Maine – and when in operation, was one of the nation’s most feared military lockups that could hold a surprising 86,000 inmates. The guards, too, had something to fear, because according to folklore, if they let a prisoner escape, they would be finishing out the rest of the escapee’s sentence. And you’ll have something to fear if you decide to try and explore it, because you’ll most likely wind up being locked up (though probably at another facility). I have no doubt that there are other gristly tales of this “the rock” – and most likely, those are forever classified.

I’m a bit bummed that I didn’t get a shot of it while in Portsmouth, but it wasn’t until afterward that I discovered that there was actually a pretty good vantage point from a bridge that leads into New Castle. Oh well, I’ll have to get my shot next time I’m in town!

Via Wikimedia Commons

Nowadays, Portsmouth is a hip tourist town with loads of charm that front squiggly roads and brick sidewalks – part of that charm comes in the form of loads of colonial architecture that was the result of the burb being one of the most successful port cities in early America. It also comes from the fact that after the city was being gradually consumed by a multi-decade period of decline, a whole bunch of Portsmouthians found their civic pride in the 1950s, when the “urban renewal” contagion was spreading around America – which meant a proposal to bulldoze half of the city’s historic neighborhoods so they could put modern stuff in its place. Thanks to locals loathing that idea – the city has a fantastic array of impressively preserved old buildings from the city’s various stages of life that couldn’t be more archetypal New England, and lacks the antiseptic, banal, and cheap architecture that plague so many other American city centers today.

It also gives Portsmouth a wicked creepy vibe after dark when things get shadowy behind old houses, arboreal-tunneled streets, and replica historic gaslights. You definitely start to wonder what sort of fiendish monstrosities lurk in the black voids and eerie stillness that slides over the city from ocean mists.

And speaking of creepy things at night – this is a good time to transition into my first oddity excursion…

Grave With A Glow?

Back at the hotel room, I was doing some research a few hundred years deep into local cemetery records, trying to track down a particular corpse. Well – actually – her gravestone. You see, Portsmouthians have a mystery among them – an inexplicable phenomenon that might be solely unique to their city. As far as I know, anyways.

According to the vague legend – there’s a light coming from within Portsmouth’s sprawling south street cemetery at night – the result of 5 old rotyards eventually colliding into one over the centuries that Portsmouth has existed.

This is a radiance that might be preternatural, for it’s said to come from a tombstone.

Yup, I was trying to find a grave that glows, which was a bit of a task. There wasn’t a lot of chitter-chatter about this curious claim. I first discovered a brief snippet of it within Curious New England: The Unconventional Traveler’s Guide to Eccentric Destinations by Joseph A. Citro and Diane E. Foulds and was finally able to dig up a bit more sustenance on a blog entry I found, that now seems to have vanished.

What I found so intriguing about the claim is that the reason for the luminosity seems to be a mystery. There are no specter stories and it can’t be blamed on floating orbs or a reflective surface that mirrors nearby shine. I guess it’s an intrinsic feature.

The grave’s occupant, too, seems to be a rather unremarkable person, in a sense that she doesn’t seem to have any disquieting history to support her grave’s peculiar behavior. The usual plot twists to New England cemetery supernatural shenanigans don’t apply here. She wasn’t accused of being a witch, and she wasn’t done some sort of great injustice that made her utter a posthumous curse (though making her headstone glow for eternity seems like a pretty silly way to achieve retribution if you had that sort of power).

Though some morphed local lore takes a stab at answers and proposes that the stone glows because; it’s the grave of a murderer, a murder victim, or even that the gravestone itself has uranium (!) or a luminescent particle in its mix. Uranium in a gravestone is still amusingly easier to believe than this story is.

It just does its thing, apparently, and it has been for some time.

That’s another interesting detail – I haven’t been able to find any information on exactly when this marvel started to happen, or how long it’s been doing its thing for, or even any accounts of people who’ve seen it. Even a few locals I mustered up the courage to ask about it had no idea what I was talking about. It’s just been acting in that fashion for a while it would seem…

The naysayers who are aware of this tale scapegoat sources like the light of the moon, streetlights along Sagamore Avenue and South Street, the traffic light at the intersection of Miller, Sagamore, and South, or reflections from the sizable pond within the cemetery grounds, that for some reason, leap a considerable distance and hit just the one headstone. But if this is all to be believed, then even skeptics have to concede that it can’t be the moon, for the stone is said to glow perpetually, even on moonless nights.

With such a mysterious sensation allegedly happening within a few minutes of our hotel, how could I miss out on witnessing it for myself?!

One of my friends decided to humor me and come along, while the other one raised an unimpressed eyebrow at me and opted to stay at the hotel.

My skepticism was as thick as the summer humidity outside that night and I felt a little guilty, so to appease my friend for joining me on my midnight legend-chase that would most likely have no payoff, I told him we could get some night shots of the city afterward, which he was pleased to agree to.

Navigating Portsmouth’s gridless grid, the old-fashioned wood frame houses ominously glowing with jaundiced light from the streetlamps soon ended and the vast graveyard thick with indifferent shadows extended beside us behind its low delineating stone wall. It was really dark in there.

Despite how nearsighted I know I am, a greenish/white glow within an otherwise dark cemetery should have been easy to spot – but as far as first impressions went, we didn’t see anything except for the waning rectangular shapes of rows of headstones coupling with panoramic umbrae that seemed to be extra nebulous for some reason. It was actually pretty creepy.

From within the cemetery, we could discern the distance-weakened streetlights and an occasional flash of passing headlights, but there was nothing I could see that I’d mistake for an unceasingly glowing gravestone. It was a good thing that I did the research beforehand, too, because finding a grave in that cemetery at night would have been an unlikely task. Unless it glowed.

“What’s the name on the grave?” my friend asked as we walked around in the dark.

“Burns”

“Wait… seriously?”

“Yup, we’re gonna see if Mrs. Burns, burns”.

“Oh god, Chad…”

Our experience in the cemetery can be summarized succinctly; there were no glowing tombstones. Or tombstones doing anything that could be considered eccentric. We then drifted over to the Portsmouth waterfront, reveled in glorious summer weather as the water bells tolled distantly, and called it a night.

We did return the next day en route to another oddity I’m going to get into below, so I could get some documentation shots of the headstones for this blog post.

There, in broad daylight, were a set of 3 tombstones with the surname Burns on them joined at their base – 2 of them bonded by older looking stones and a third and unevenly distanced one on a newer concrete foundation. They were more or less unremarkable and dimmed by age and weather. In the middle was the anomaly – the grave of Eunice Burns, who died in 1884. The epitaph “mother we miss thee” engraved below her lifespan was actually kind of sad and made me wonder how she turned into a local folkloric figure.

We also had a brief wander around the cemetery – a sprawling yard of little grave capped hills and a long pond, and observed a fantastic array of weathered old headstones and their memento mori and stories – dating all the way back to the 1600s, when Portsmouth was spelled as “Portsmuth”.

“So, it didn’t glow last night?” asked my other friend facetiously as I was putting my camera gear back in my bag.

“Nope. But who knows, it might be glowing right now and we just can’t tell because it’s sunny out”.

These are just a few shots of some headstones that I found to be interesting as I was leaving!

The Drowned Forest & The Transatlantic Telegraph Cable

More often than not, some of the most interesting things come to me completely by accident.

This is one such case, while traveling the fantastic New Hampshire State Route 1A through the town of Rye years ago.

My obsessive observational habits mean that I try to take in everything around me at once when I travel. Studying the landscape and reading every sign I see.

As we came across a small marshy area along Route 1A, I noticed a standard New Hampshire state historical marker standing a ways back from the road in the yellowed tall grasses. I’m a huge fan of those state historic/points of interest markers installed on roadsides and usually try to glance at them if I see them.

But this wasn’t the typical sign denoting a battle or historical event. Instead, it had two words that seemed to jump out at me; “Sunken Forest“.

I wasn’t expecting that, and almost immediately, my mind began to percolate.

After all, the term “sunken forest” does provide a lot for the imagination – conjuring up eerie images of giant pines and cedars submerged in a viscous, murky world of diffused light, their branches sullenly and slowly swaying with the mercy of the tides, fish encircling places where only birds could once perch and ship keels making their way over their crowns. 

Did something like that exist in New Hampshire?!  

Well, sort of.

After doing some internet research,  I soon discovered that the reality was a little less phantasmagoric, but still pretty awe-inspiring!

Rye’s sunken forest is the extant remains of a living forest of Hemlocks, Cedars, and Pines – reduced to a range of slimy tree stumps and contorted roots in thick peat mud, many of them barely noticeable and almost always obscured by high tides most of the year.

The traces of former forests and other things that the oceans have adopted into their secretive world can be found along the northeastern coast from Massachusetts as far up as Nova Scotia – and sometimes, a particularly low low tide can reveal these things, or give them back.

This fossilized forest is from a time when the New England coastline extended approximately 75 miles outward, thousands of years ago! When the giant ice sheets that covered North America began to melt, sea levels increased and changed the coastal signature of the area, and eventually, the once-great softwood forest found itself unable to adapt to its new environment; underneath the ocean.

New Hampshire’s inundated forest is one of the easiest to view of all the still-surviving ones, which makes it all the more unique and tantalizing to track down.

But, “easiest” still means little here. The visibility entirely depends on the tides, which means actually seeing them is a rarity. And if the conditions are more ideal, the arrangement of nudged sediments, stones, and mud might also work for or against your efforts.

This oddity is bisected into 2 parts, which are either collectively known as “The Sunken Forest”, or isn’t. The one I tracked down, is the more frequently surfaced depending on the season and the tides, and is known to some as “The Drowned Forest” – which is mostly submerged in a rocky cove near the storied Odiorne Point. I like how graphic and violent sounding that name is, so I usually just go with that one. It also makes more sense logically to me, because the whole reason this oddity exists was because it was literally drowned.

Spring and summer are the best times to detect it, because in the latter part of the year, the low tides are only at night. Also, luck and persistence will help a lot too. Seriously. This was my third attempt at trying to see this – and not being from an area that has ocean frontage, this was also a required opportunity to teach myself about the tides.

The more of a chore-to-view is called “The Sunken Forest”, and is southwards down at the northern end of broad Jenness Beach – which mostly Houdinis itself except for once every few decades if conditions are just right. But, the Jenness Beach portion is also the best-preserved – with the stumps actually looking more like stumps, as opposed to up at Odiorne where centuries of ocean movement have grounded down the stumps almost level with the earth.

But when they are exposed, they have been carbon-dated to around 3,600-4,000 years old – and using dendrochronology, some of the tree stumps were shown to reach around 100 years old before they met their fate!

Finding this patch of remarkable flora was the main persuasion for me going to the New Hampshire shore – and it also was the thing that managed to twist my arm towards a beach. Not that I don’t like pretty places, but I’ve never been much of a beach person, mostly because I don’t really dig crowds or heatstroke.

By the time we arrived at Odiorne Point to meet low tide, though, it was already on the cusp of 100 degrees, and that heat just sucked the life outta me.

But I couldn’t contain my excitement as I made my way out into a rocky cove that wreaked of the fragrances that come with low tide. This was a special kind of ocean controlled oddity, sort of like when old shipwrecks will surface every now and then off, or on, New England beaches, so being able to actually behold it for myself was pretty rewarding – even more so knowing that within an hour or so, it would all be submerged again.

Scores of parents and even more kids were roving around the stony banks bracketed by seagrass stands and splashing around in the tide pools – most of them having no idea that they were in proximity to 2 very cool curiosities. But me – I was roaming around with my camera and prattling about seaweed-covered mounds that I was trying to differentiate from either being the oddity I was looking for, or just a regular sodden lump.

Some of the stumps and exposed contorted roots were almost inconspicuous in muddy sediments and other remains were found but sort of veiled below ankle-deep water with surface sun glimmer in the shifting tide pools.

Odiorne Point unassumingly has quite the history – many of the ruins that mark the point’s fluctuating timeline can still be detected – scattered through the state park that now occupies the land around the point.

The Abenaki and the Penacook gathered here for the copious resources like muscles and clams found in the tide pools, and It became the first spot in New Hampshire that seafaring Anglos set foot on a few centuries ago.

While century-old gravel pitting operations obliterated any traces of those original settlements (besides the oldest known cemetery in the state!), the brawny vestiges of a vital World War 2 coastal defense fort still exist within the park’s woods, as well as a conspicuously curious watchtower that can be seen 83 feet above the shingled homes of a small neighborhood off Route 1A that once was a satellite of the fort and was used for intelligence.

It’s the lone extant survivor of New Hampshire’s original 14 coastal World War 2 watchtowers, and is, for the most part, closed to the public. The tower is named after a neighboring natural landmark – Pulpit Rock – a jutting flat-ish topped rock formation that thrusts into a bouldery range of shoreline.

We had originally wanted to go check out the old gun mounts and batteries (and investigate rumors of secret tunnels), but by the time we were done with the Drowned Forest, I guess the heat had gotten to us and our enthusiasm, and we opted for the air conditioner in the car instead. I’ll be sure to put them on my itinerary the next time I’m in the area. Just look at these photos!

This turned out to be a conjoined oddity – the second item on my agenda happened to have been coincidentally laid down right through the Drowned Forest, and was much more obvious to detect!

You’re looking at the rusted umbilical of one of the first transatlantic telegraph cables – the first one to be installed on United States soil!

Landing of the Direct United States Cable at Rye Beach, right through The Drowned Forest – circa 1889. Notice how much more girth those stumps had then! | Via Atlantic-Cable.com

The 19th century was the sparking point for a wondrous period of advancement and invention for America. Communication – being one of the seminals of the human existence – was naturally pulled into the gravity of the changing methodology.

The telegraph could cut delivery of information from weeks to a matter of hours, or even minutes, by transferring a pattern of electrical signals called Morse Code between 2 receiving stations via a special wire, which would then have to be deciphered.

American businessman Cyrus West Field knew absolutely nothing about telegraph cables, but he had a lot of faith in their prospect, bellwethered that the telegraph was going to grow in importance, and wanted to capitalize on it in a way that nobody else was doing.

By the 1850s, underwater telegraph cables were beginning to run in small dimensions, like from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia, and across the English Channel.

Field utilized this information and thought bigger, literally. He wanted to establish a telegraph cable across the Atlantic – linking North America and Europe.

The idea also became a good way of international flexing, and the governments of America and The United Kingdom jumped on the bandwagon and helped fund the endeavor.

Because the cable was too large/heavy to load on a single ship, 2 appointed ships would sail from opposite ends of the ocean; Southern Ireland and Newfoundland, Canada, and meet in the middle to splice the cables together.

But, so many calamities bedeviled the journey that both governments and investors began to feel like fools after 3 failed attempts in 8 years.

Eventually, though, the first transatlantic cable finally happened in 1866, and it was a moving affair – with both governments lauding it as a paramount shift in human accomplishment. But, it took upwards of 2 minutes to send a single character because of the length, and then the cable was debased early on because of the voltage sent down it was too high. But, eventually, they got the kinks worked out, which pushed the project’s legitimacy card.

But – any messages destined for America still had to be sent down from the boonies of Newfoundland, which was often a slow or clumsy process. So, the Direct United States Cable Company was formed in 1873 by the Siemens Brothers, which routed another underwater telegraph cable down from Nova Scotia to Rye Beach, New Hampshire on July 15, 1874.

Because this was the first such cable to terminate on American soil – it was a big deal, and a huge crowd gathered at the beach the day of its installation – and garnished up some pretty dramatic Victorian newspaper illustrations in Harper’s Weekly with symbolistic ethereal light beams parting dark clouds onto the spot where the cable met the beach.

An official cable house was built that winter, which closed in 1921 when the cable’s usage significantly slowed down after its zenith during WW1 when it was kept busy practically 24 hours a day.

The cable house still cooly exists and is nowadays a nicely preserved private residence. It’s also why “Cable Road” has its curious name – something I wondered about when I read its name on Rye’s signature white and black street signs when I was a kid.

I tell everyone who feels like lending their ears that New England really is a special and strange place, maybe a few shades more so than the rest of this country’s iconic regions because of the comprehensive spectrum of spectacles that make themselves at home here, and these treasures are just a small representation of this. I was talking to a friend that lives in New Hampshire about The Drowned forest in particular, and he was delighted that something like that existed in his own backyard, and for years, wasn’t aware of it.

As I grow older, those are the types of discoveries that really fire me up more and more. Adventuring can really open up your mind. You don’t always need to go poke around a behemoth of an over-Instagrammed ruin to have a “real adventure”. The magic is kinda what you make of it.

The rusted remains of Rye’s transatlantic telegraph cable can still be spotted at low tide!

Here are a few links:

There’s a pretty fascinating documentary on the design and installation of the first transatlantic telegraph cable that I’ll link you below for your pleasure!

ALSO – if this kind of thing strikes your fancy – then definitely make sure to check out the website atlantic-cable.com – which was an integral part in my research on this curiosity!

The blog “Cow Hampshire” also has a good and more succinct blog post on it.

And – there’s another neat article on Hackaday

The Rye, New Hampshire Historical Society has some neat photos of the Drowned Forest from the 1800s.


Are you from New Hampshire or a fellow Vermonter? I’m looking for weird, wild, or hilarious stories, wonderous and odd places, incredible people, and especially abandoned locales! So if there’s something you’d like to share with me, I’d love to hear from you!

I’d also really love to grow this blog and present unique, meaningful, and extraordinary content that’s a departure from the same regurgitated stuff you find everywhere else online, and your help would be hugely appreciated!

Feel free to drop me a line at chad.abramovich@gmail.com

Also – if you appreciate me and this blog, perhaps consider making a donation at my PayPal below? The pandemic has hit my finances and my mental health pretty hard, so any amount is humbly appreciated. I’m also on Venmo if that works better.


Since 2012, I’ve been seeking out venerable examples of Vermont weirdness, whether that be traveling around the state or taking to my internet connection and digging up forsaken places, oddities, esoterica, and unique natural features. And along the way, I’ve been sharing it with you on my website, Obscure Vermont. This is what keeps my spirit inspired.

I never expected Obscure Vermont to get as much appreciation and fanfare as it’s getting, and I’m truly grateful and humbled. Especially in recent years, where I’ve gained the opportunity to interact with and befriend more oddity lovers and outside the box thinkers around Vermont and New England. As Obscure Vermont has grown, I’ve been growing with it, and the developing attention is keeping me earnest and pushing me harder to be more introspective and going further into seeking out the strange.

I spend countless hours researching, writing, and traveling to keep this blog going. Obscure Vermont is funded almost entirely by generous donations. Expenses range from hosting fees to keep the blog live, investing in research materials, travel expenses and the required planning, and updating/maintaining vital tools such as my camera and my computer. I really pride and push myself to try to put out the best of what I’m able to create, and I gauge it by only posting stuff that I personally would want to see on the glow of my computer screen.

I want to continuously diversify how I write and the odd things I write about. Your patronage would greatly help me continue bringing you cool and unusual content and keep me doing what I love!

 

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Ephemera

“Wow, how does a place like this even exist?” mulled my friend aloud, lost in her own luminous reverie. I had seen photos of this beautiful dereliction online, but I was just as awed, as the stagnant cold inside stung my hands.

The early morning wintry cold was still hanging over the misty hills of Bolton flats in a hundred shades of blue as we departed for southern New England. While we drove we sat in silence, with heated seats, coffee and the wonderful sounds of Caspian coming through my iPod. After a few hours, Vermont’s brown frozen hills gave way to eight lanes of interstate traffic and lots of Dunkin Donuts signs.

Thirty-two years of fluctuating New England weather and zero upkeep had rotted out the drafty interior. The metal stairwells became stretches of rusty spiderwebs, some were completely untrustworthy. The snow that fell through between broken roof was so loud that you would have thought it was thundering outside. The thick brick walls oozing with slime and glazed by ice blocked cell phone reception pretty well. I received a few texts sent by my friend asking me where I was, hours after she had sent them and on the road back to Vermont, which I guess meant that contact in case of emergencies would have been pretty unaccommodating.

The complex appeared to be a utilitarian and symmetrical layout of two large spaces adjoined by a central row of offices, bathrooms, and mechanical areas. But upon closer and intimate inspection, I was actually more and more surprised at just how many rooms and levels there were, packed in by a labyrinth of confusing staircases and elevated runways. Some spaces were more or less original to their inaugural construction at the turn of the last century, and in the throes of the shifty ways of time, more were accommodated. There were quite a few dank 1970s office spaces put up hastily in areas that contained the infamous giveaway vinyl wall paneling and drop down ceilings, all which were accordion-ing now thanks to precipitous moisture. Some spaces were utterly unidentifiable under the entropy, with collapsing floors and sketchy staircases that lead into ambiguous soggy blackness above. But it was the two main rectangular chambers and their brawniness of broken glass and steel that I was interested in. These cavernous spaces had quite the compendium of artifacts left behind; from magnificent and remarkably intact machinery, actual steel rails still embedded in the floors, to just about anything you can fathom that had somehow found it’s way inside and subsequently left there to waste away. There’s a lot for a person to think about as they walk along the crumbling floors inside this illusion of another world. Just watch out for nails. There are plenty to step on.

The most interesting of things left to rediscover was the extraordinary amounts of sordid books, paperwork and filing cabinet miscellany (and their accompanying filing cabinets) that had been left behind. I’m talking entire floors filled with wall to collapsing wall of old records mummified in decay. Most of the paperwork was illegible, but the oldest date I was able to find was 1931. Another friend and explorer had joked that a photo of mine was the literal embodiment of “squishy”, but as of now, no destination has been able to surpass The Pines Hotel as my “squishy-est” explore, though this place is definitely a contender.

Though we live in a world that has largely been explored, mapped and reclaimed, these human-made spaces become utterly fascinating after their functionality ceases to exist. The mystery continuum of their inner spaces become sort of last frontiers, as nature begins to reclaim everything that has been forsaken by us, transforming these spaces into something incredible. It’s on these explores that I like to attempt a little amateur forensic archaeology, and try to pick at the bones.

The suburban New England town I traveled too became the chosen plot of land for the formerly prestigious Boston & Maine Railroad to build their rail yards and repair/manufacture shops in 1913. What is considered to be one of American’s oldest suburbs was built up in the adjacent area to accommodate the growing need for laborers, many of the garden enhanced neighborhoods eventually were built up over old track beds that were once spur lines leading back towards the roundhouse, depot and loading docks. The continuously shape-shifting property grew to massive scales as the railroad industry became a future facing wonder, as growing mill towns and their populations created a ravenous market. That is, until the automobile became de rigueur.

The popularization of the automobile and the trucking industry seems to be the harbinger of death for a good amount of the ruins I visit, and this seemed to follow the same storyline, as both the automobile and leveling of the same manufacturing that created the demands for the railroad, murdered it. The railroad had grown so much during its boom years, that it went into unpayable debt for the miles of tracks they laid and smaller companies they acquired in the throes of good-natured greedy competition. Towards the latter half of the 20th century, the railroad industry indignantly stepped back into a darker corner of civic and popular culture, and the massive campus was now useless.

The B&M went bankrupt in 1970 and despite efforts to reorganize and restrategize, became a ghost by 1983, when it was bought by another regional rail company. By 1984, the complex was abandoned altogether because all that space simply wasn’t needed by the diminishing industry. But, not before they left a naively irresponsible legacy of destruction and negligence behind them, as the massive yards were also used for toxic waste dumps and a place to haul train wreck shrapnel over the years, which earned the place an official designation on the Superfund site list, a bone of contention that isn’t even expected to be taken seriously until 2031-ish because like everything else, the EPA doesn’t have the money. To the locals understandable displeasure, there was quite a bit of opacity about their houses abutting a literal toxic waste dump – information which wasn’t even made widely public until some neighbors did a little digging in the late 80s when a pervasive chemically smell began to waft through side streets near the industrial park, and became an uncelebrated normal.

I was able to find a few articles on the local public radio website that explained that the entire 553 acres are so swamped with pollution – ranging from asbestos, arsenic, cadmium, lead, selenium, petrochemicals and wastewater lagoons that it not only earned a spot on the national Superfund database list, but it’s one of the worst in America. “You couldn’t leave your house to go out and even have a nice barbecue because the odor was so bad”, said an interviewed resident recalling how bad it was a few decades ago. To makes things more apprehensive, The EPA says human exposure risk is still “not under control”, though it seems far more controlled today than when the report was written. I guess I can cross off walking around a toxic waste site off my bucket list, regardless of the fact it wasn’t on my list.

Today, most of the former property has been reincarnated as a shabby looking industrial park. The largest railway in New England has it’s main headquarters here still, that sits directly in the decrepit shadow of the abandoned shop buildings I was walking around, among a few other places with no-frills signage and creepy vacant looking front entrances. That being said, this is still an active industrial park, with employees, cops, and on my visit, guys who operate plows, that are present on a daily basis. Unlike me, who technically has no reason to be here other than curiosity. The rail lines that hem in the property are also still in use, and some of the industrial businesses in the park receive rail traffic.

There is always a certain reward to risk ratio that I use as the dichotomy or gauge of how I treat my explores. On this trip, my friend and I and my friend decided to simply walk towards the buildings with our cameras, as there was no way we could get inside without someone seeing us, and I didn’t drive through three states just to turn around. The man in the plow noticed us as he was relocating a snow drift. We all mutually nodded our heads in affirmation and confidentially walked inside. We were exploring for four hours or so, and the cops never came, which was great, because this fascinating locale has easily turned into one of my fondest explores. This is one of those places I could return to multiple times and have a different experience at.

But I wouldn’t take that one fortunate opportunity for granted. I know a few people who have been dragged out by the powers that be before, which is why brushing up on trespassing laws in other states isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Until some serious clean up and the accompanying scrutiny happens, these hulking and fetid ruins and all their soggy decay are more or less, in limbo.

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The Vanished Town of Glastenbury and The Bennington Triangle

Those who know me know that I’m a huge cartography buff. That love really perpetuated when I was 10, when my mother bought me a DeLorme atlas of Vermont, and I became enthralled with it, thoroughly memorizing every detail I could. But what is it about maps that are so irresistible to me?

Maybe because of their limitless potential, and their ability to unlock the mysteries of our world. Maps tell us how things in this world relate to one another, they take data and turn it into something tangible, something understandable, and maybe something that provokes thought or feelings. Several different types of information can be conveyed at the same time, melding several different ideas into a united idea. Lines to convey topography, more lines to convey boundaries between rock layers, towns, states and countries. More lines for faults, colors for bodies of water, forest land and types of climates. Maybe it’s because maps provide some sort of order, putting everything where it needs to be. Or just the opposite. They’ve always helped me make sense of my thoughts and ideas, and even draw ideas from things that haven’t been categorized or plotted yet.

I loved getting to know the great state I lived in. But one place really stood out to me.

A perfect square, that yellow dotted line indicating it was the boundary of a town, with the word “Glastenbury” printed inside. But inside the square, there was nothing but contour lines, indicating several mountains and rugged wilderness. I was enthralled by the fact that this town apparently had nothing in it. In the very top left corner, in small print, was the word “Fayville”, plotted on a dotted line that seemed to be a secondary road, meandering its way from Shaftsbury deep into the hills, and ending in the middle of nowhere. Even for rural Vermont standards, this was pretty desolate. I knew there was something different about this place, it challenged my young and naive view of the world. Why wasn’t there anything in Glastenbury like other towns around it?

It had a mystery to it, and I wanted to know more. My first act of familiarizing myself with Glastenbury was to make the trip down to that curious place on the map called Fayville. Myself and a few friends departed in his pickup truck and drove up the bumpy forest road into a strange clearing in the middle of the hills. Here, underneath summer humidity, we found old cellar holes almost entirelly hidden by tall grasses, beneath the shade of gnarled apple trees. At the bottoms, under layers of decaying leaves and dirt were iron bands, old horseshoes, and other various relics that hinted at human habitation once being way up here. It now made sense, Fayville was a long abandoned village that still appeared on maps.

The remains of the Eagle Square sawmill in Fayville, circa 2009-08. Photo: UVM Archives and The Landscape Change Program.
The Eagle Square sawmill in Fayville. Now, ferns, earth and rocks are filling in the foundation. Photo: UVM Archives and The Landscape Change Program.

As we were wondering around, the once sunny July afternoon became dark and cloudy, as a gusty wind picked up and tangled the long grasses. And it came fast, so fast that none of us were aware of a change in weather until things got dangerous. We were suddenly at the mercy of a freak ferocious thunderstorm that seemed to emanate out of nowhere, and became so violent that we literally retreated down the mountainside, in fear of the dirt trail washing out, leaving us stranded in the middle of the national forest. But when we got back down to the flats in Shaftsbury, it was sunny and dry. To make things far stranger, gas station attendants in Arlington were baffled that a thunderstorm – especially one of that magnitude – had passed through the area without them noticing it. Freak storms are common in New England, it’s by no means a rare phenomena here, but the conditions were just right to make this a head scratcher. I still have no explanation to this day.

Over the years, I began to dive into research, and soon would discover that I had stumbled upon one of the most interesting stories I had ever heard, which remains as one of the earliest examples of what got me interested in Vermont curio. Eventually, I decided that I wanted to write about this place that has long held my attention, to pay it reverence for having an integral part of my life, and also, because I love a good story.

A modern day road map of Glastenbury – which is a little misleading. The black lined “roads” that are represented are actually forest service roads/snowmobile trails. US Route 7 and a small portion of Glastenbury Road in the left hand corner are the only real roads in town.

But Glastenbury is perplexing and complex, and something I found a little difficult to write about, mostly because there was so much information to take in. I wanted to be tactful with how I approached it, balancing the resilient history, excellent folklore, and my own thoughts. When I was finished, the only conclusion I could draw is that there is no conclusion. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

An Introduction

In southern Vermont, northeast of Bennington, lies an incredible area of backcountry. It’s a vast area, roughly 36 square miles of unbroken wilderness, with 12 peaks over 3,000 feet in elevation, the centerpiece being Glastenbury Mountain at 3,747 feet. Mostly occupied by the Green Mountain National Forest, this is a surprisingly large stretch of wilderness for Vermont. It’s name sake comes from it’s largest mountain, and the ghost town that used to be there which also bore the same name.

Glastenbury seems to yield a prolific Google search, but despite the hits, the information about the vanished community is vague at best, with much that seems to be copied and pasted from one website to the next. That’s where Tyler Resch’s invaluable book Glastenbury, History of a Vermont ghost townemerged beaconlike in the darkness.

The town of Glastenbury was charted in 1761 by land grabbing Benning Wentworth, governor of New Hampshire. Wentworth was quite the character – granting as many towns in then unestablished Vermont as he could, with the intention to provocatively challenge New York, which also claimed the same land. Of course, Wentworth’s grants doubled as a lucrative endeavor, as he made sure to set aside some acreage for himself.

But Wentworth had no idea of the local geography, and simply drew lines on a map. Though Glastenbury tips it’s hat to a legendary place in England, Vermont’s titular community seemed to be ill fated from the very beginning. The rough and forbidding terrain and short growing season didn’t lure any settlement until the 1800s.

Because they had a mountain of wood to burn, the town embraced the lumber and charcoal industry, and began to slowly prosper as it lured settlement and business. Though Glastenbury town itself is a large area, it only contained 2 small settlements near the western border; the logging town of Fayville in the north, and later, the settlement of South Glastenbury. While Fayville is more known by people looking at a map, South Glastenbury is normally what is profiled in every article I’ve read. The two villages were never connected, the mountainous terrain was so steep that roads were never built.

South Glastenbury became the heart of town, and the headquarters of the majority of the charcoal operations, with 12 brick kilns erected along the cleared hillsides. A massive loggers boardinghouse, and company store – the only store in town, were built to serve the village. A few homes, a meetinghouse and a crude one room schoolhouse were also built for the few kids who grew up there. Because South Glastenbury sat at the confluent of two different branches of Bolles Brook, where the headwaters met and began their descent down the mountains, the small village became known as “The Forks”.

Life here was tough. It was a wild town, sort of a last frontier in Vermont. It was the kind of place where men out numbered the women, and the law often didn’t exist.

An 1865 Rice and Harwood Map of Glastenbury and Woodford shows the village of Fayville in the top left corner of town. South Glastenbury hadn’t been settled yet | via: oldmaps.com

I’m not willing to pay the $20 image purchase fee – but the website historicmapworks.com has an 1869 Beer atlas map of Woodford that you can check out – and this is one of the few maps I’ve came across to feature South Glastenbury in it. The map is sideways, so look for “District 2”, beyond the Woodford town line, and the black dots that represent buildings plotted around Bolles Brook.

A girl, a man and a boy outside Glastenbury Camp, 1933. Photo: UVM archives – The Landscape Change Program
he Loggers Boarding House, and several residents posing for a photograph.
The Loggers Boarding House in South Glastenbury, with several of the woodsman posing for a photograph. Photo: courtesy of Images From The Past
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A few of the brick charcoal kilns in South Glastenbury.
South Glastenbury
A strangely forlorn shot of South Glastenbury that really gives you an idea of what life was like for folks up there in the mountains. Primitive log homes and a charcoal kiln can be seen, with a few locals out front along the road. Photo: courtesy of Images From The Past

With a profitable timber industry came demands. People needed to get up into town, and lumber and charcoal needed to get down. The steepest railroad ever built in the United States was constructed as the solution, which started out as a sarcastic suggestion turned into a defiant reality. Starting in Bennington and ending at The Forks, The Bennington-Glastenbury Railroad was formed in 1872, the tracks climbing an astonishing 250 feet per mile at 9 miles long. But depending on a finite resource eventually created the end of the charcoal and logging industry and the mountains were logged until nothing larger than a sapling remained on the slopes.

But the railroad was still around, and they wanted money. The question was, what to do with it? In 1894, the railroad re-billed itself as The Bennington-Woodford Electric Railroad and the town reinvented itself as a tourist destination, using the railroad as a way to bring tourists up into South Glastenbury. The railroad switched over to using more reliable trolley cars instead of traditional rail cars, because they were stronger and more reliable, especially given the elevation they would have to climb.

Much time and money were invested into retransforming the town – turning the brawny old loggers’ boarding house into a hotel and the former company store into a casino. No details were overlooked, and both buildings became showpieces. They wanted Glastenbury to stand out from other summer resorts. After painstaking labor and expenses, the town opened up as vacation destination in the summer of 1897, and had a successful first season.

However, the barren mountains stripped of all their trees, were very prone to flooding and soil erosion. A year later, a devastating flood washed out the tracks, putting an end to the town for good. It’s high elevation and isolation ensured that no one tried to rebuild it, and the buildings fell into ruin under the silence of the mountains.

A trolley full of tourists arrives in South Glastenbury. The casino can be seen in the background. Photo Source
newspaper3
A newspaper flyer advertising the upcoming opening of Glastenbury as a tourist destination
A classic image of The Bennington and Woodford Trolley, filled with nicely dress women on their way to Glastenbury.
A classic image of The Bennington and Woodford Trolley, carrying a load of women who are dressed to impress, up into Glastenbury. Photo: courtesy of Images From The Past
he tourist destination of South Glastenbury, with the hotel on the left, and the casino on the right. You can see Bolles Brook and the Trolley line to the right of the brook.
The tourist destination of South Glastenbury, with the hotel on the left (old loggers boarding house), and the casino (former company store) on the right. You can see Bolles Brook and the Trolley line to the right of the brook. A walk up here today has almost entire eroded that there was once human habitation here. Photo: courtesy of Images From The Past
Glastenbury
The casino. Photo: courtesy of Images From The Past
Another hotel at Glastenbury. The identity of this one however remains a mystery. Vaguely dated between 1890 – 1930. Photo: UVM Archives and the Landscape Change Program
A group of individuals hiking on Glastenbury Mountain. When the group came back in the morning, they came back to water that was three feet deep. August 16, 1918. Photo: UVM Archives and The Landscape Change Program
This one is a mystery to me. The image is captured “On The Trolley Line to Glastenbury”. The roof of the building reads “Loafmore” Dated 1910, a decade after South Glastenbury had been abandoned. Photo: UVM Archives and The Landscape Change Program.

The population of Glastenbury dwindled down to almost nothing, which later got the attention of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not in the 1930s when they learned that all 3 members of the Mattison Family were the entire town, and held every office. Because of this, the state of Vermont disorgonized the town in 1937, the first time the state ever did such an act, and the area was reclaimed by the wilderness.

It’s even more interesting to think about that a town with such a galvanizing and unique history was actually so tiny in stature. Though many people who write about ghost towns robotically love to use descriptive terms such as “hub” or “thriving”, Glastenbury was really neither – it’s peak population climbed to around 241.

Apart from the town’s fascinatingly unique story line, it may be the obscure and inexplicable events that allegedly happened on it’s slopes that has really given the town it’s considerable attention. The area has since given birth to terrifying legends, if not actual monsters.

The casino, just a few years after its abandonment. It had already fallen into ruin by then.
The casino, just a few years after its abandonment. It had already fallen into ruin by then. Photo: courtesy of Images From The Past
Ripley's
A cartoon published in 1936 by Ripley’s Believe It Or Not featured the Mattison’s of Glastenbury.

“The Bennington Triangle”

While my love of maps inadvertently lead me to my interest of Glastenbury, their ability to organize information and draw conclusions was useless here.

Glastenbury Mountain and the surrounding area has long been considered one of Vermont’s most haunted places. In 1992, local author and folklorist Joseph Citro coined the term “The Bennington Triangle” to describe the area, and the designation not only stuck, it grew immensely in popularity. Over the years, the phrase has been been featured in books, websites and television shows, to the point where the name has taken a life of it’s own.

The theories and enthusiasm have quickly escalated and have continued to morph and stoke the fire. Many are quick to glamorize the region without being objective, only further propelling it into the blurred haze of fact and embellishment.

To better understand the hysteria here, let me try to summarize the more colloquial regional portrait for you.

It started with the native Americans, who refused to venture onto Glastenbury mountain. Fearing the land was cursed, they only used the land to bury their dead. But maybe it was because of a cross wind that met on the summit of the mountain. Even today, hunters will tell you that because of the disorienting winds, it’s very easy to get lost in the woods.

There is also a baffling legend of some sort of enchanted stone somewhere in the mountains, which is said to open up and “swallow” a human being in seconds if it’s stepped on. Another reason they avoided the place.

The weirdness continued when colonial settlers came to the area, whose vague and un-researchable accounts tell of weird sounds, noises and odors that would come from the mountain. But there are human things at work here as well, and those have been documented.

In 1867, there was an alleged wild man sighting, where a mysterious misanthropic specter would venture down from the woods (some accounts say he lived in a cave in Somerset) pull back his coat, and expose himself to unsuspecting women in Glastenbury and nearby Bennington. He was also said to brandish a revolver for intimidation. Whoever he was, he was eventually ran out of town and faded into obscurity.

On April 4th, 1892, Fayville mill worker Henry McDowell went haywire and murdered John Crawley by bashing him in the head with either a piece of wood or a rock, depending on the story. He fled town, but was later apprehended in South Norwalk, Connecticut, where he made a full confession. However, he was babbling on about voices in his head that wouldn’t leave him alone, and as a result, was sentenced in the Vermont State Asylum in Waterbury. But he escaped by hiding in a railroad car carrying a load of coal, never to be seen again. Some say he returned to Glastenbury, and others claim that he still remains hiding on the slopes to this very day. But by now, he would be an impossibly old man, which takes on an eerie resemblance to the tale of Doctor Benton coming from the mountains of New Hampshire.

On the opening day of Vermont’s first hunting season in 1897, 40 year old John Harbour, a respected Woodford resident, was mysteriously murdered at his deer camp in Bickford Hollow, a remote area in the hills south of Glastenbury. While hunting with his brother and family friend, they heard the blast of a rifle, followed by him crying out “I’ve been shot!”. They immediately turned around and searched for him, but it wasn’t until 11 AM the next morning when they found him, his legs protruding out from underneath a Cedar tree. However, something wasn’t quite right. His loaded gun sat neatly beside him, as if it was purposely put there. But something was wrong. His body was a distance away from where he was shot. They now knew that John had to have been moved. But by what? Did he crawl there after being shot? Did he receive human help, possibly by the shooter? There were no signs of him having walked or crawled to his final resting place, no clues at all.  The mystery remains unsolved to this day.

It was after these two murders that signaled both the beginning of Glastenbury’s slow decline, and the establishment of it’s reputation as a mysterious and haunted place. Sometime in the early 19th century, a stagecoach full of passengers were making their way over the mountains near Glastenbury, near present day Route 9 in Woodford. It was well past dark and a violent rain storm was washing out the road. The rain was coming down so hard, it soon forced the driver to slow down to a crawl as the thunder cracked the night sky. Things became so bad that the driver eventually came to a complete stop in the dark and wet mountain wilderness. As he hopped down from his perch with the lantern to get a good idea of the situation, he noticed something peculiar illuminated by lantern light. There were unfamiliar footprints in the mud just ahead of him.

The rain hadn’t washed them away yet, so they had to be fresh tracks the driver reckoned. His observations revealed that the tracks were widely spaced, suggesting that whatever had made them was tremendous in size. He noticed the horses were beginning to get spooked, but he just couldn’t stop thinking about those tracks. What made them? He soon hollered back to the passengers and asked for their opinions. At this point, the horses were going wild, which was spooking the driver. That meant that something was skulking nearby, and it might just be what made those tracks…

As the passengers began to step out, something dealt a savage blow to the side of the carriage. Now, all of the passengers scrambled out of the carriage, completely terrified. The blows kept coming, until the whole thing tumbled over on it’s side.

The quivering passengers and driver huddled together in the dark, the rain stinging their faces. Then the creature came into view. Though it was almost impossible to see, two large eyes could be made out staring at them. A vague detail described the brazen creature as roughly 8 feet tall and hairy, before it shambled back into the woods. Shortly after, whatever had attacked them had became dubbed as The Bennington Monster.

Another interesting theory suggests that the Bennington Monster is actually the horrifying transformation of the Glastenbury Wild Man. After he was chased out of the region, he took back to the woods and dwelled, becoming cannibalistic, deformed and insane, wearing animal firs and attacking lone stagecoaches coming over the mountains.

Strange Disappearances 

Giant hairy monsters that topple stagecoaches are all good for earning a place an official spook status, but it was the disconcerting events that took place after the town became disorganized in 1937 that have really cemented the area into the public’s imagination and paranormal concrete.

Glastenbury is where one of Vermont’s most frightening mysteries took place, and what’s more captivating is that it really didn’t happen all that long ago. Beginning in the last cold months of 1945, people from the area began to vanish without a trace.

The first one to disappear was 74 year old Middie Rivers. He was a native to the area and worked as a hunting and fishing guide. Because of his job, he was completely familiar with the woods. One day, Rivers led four hunters up onto the mountain. Things were going fine, until their trek back to camp. Rivers got a bit ahead of the group, and vanished completely. Expecting to catch up with him at the camp, the hunters began to panic when they didn’t see him there upon their arrival. Police and a group of volunteers combed the area for hours. But Rivers was an experienced woodsman, so they were fairly confident they would find him in no time. But search attempts continued for over a month, and no trace was ever found. Local lore has it that Rivers disappeared near Bickford Hollow, the same place John Harbour was murdered.

The next person to vanish is the most infamous of all the Bennington Triangle disappearances, the case most talked about. on December 1, 1946, 18 year old Paula Welden decided to take a hike on the Long Trail. she left her dorm at Bennington College and walked into the woods. She was easy to spot, because of her bright red coat. Plenty of people saw her that day, including on the Long Trail itself. But Monday came, and Paula didn’t show up for her classes. The college called the sheriff’s department. 400 students and faculty members assembled to help look for their missing classmate. A massive search party of 1,000 people, bloodhounds, helicopters and even a clairvoyant, combed the area diligently for weeks. A $5,000 reward was even offered! But on December 22, all efforts came to an end. There was no body, no clothes, no evidence, nothing. The quality of Paula Weldon’s search party was met with scrutiny, and because of this, it lead to the formation of the Vermont State Police. Another interesting detail I uncovered was that to this day, there are people who think it’s bad luck to wear red while hiking Glastenbury Mountain.

The third person to disappear was on Columbus Day in 1950. 8 year old Paul Jepson was waiting for his mother in his family’s pickup at the dump they were caretakers for. But when she came back, he was gone. Like Paula Welden, Paul was wearing a red jacket, so he should have been easy to spot, but Mrs. Jepson couldn’t find him anywhere. Frantic, she called for help, and another search was launched.

Hundreds of townsfolk joined the search, scanning the dump and the surrounding roads, even the mountains. They implemented a double check system, where as soon as one group finished searching an area, another group would search the same area. Even coast guard planes were brought in. But all was useless. Bloodhounds borrowed from the New Hampshire State Police lost Paul’s scent at the intersection of East and Chapel Roads. Local lore says that Paul’s scent was actually lost at the same place Paula Welden was last seen. After the search had been called off, Paul’s father disclosed a peculiar piece of information. Paul had mentioned that he had an inexplicable “yen” to go into the mountains lately. Paul’s disappearance made him the third to go missing in roughly the same area. Was there a pattern here?

Maybe. Or maybe not. It was said that there were pigs at the dump his family were caretakers for. One popular theory at the time which the newspapers suggested, was that Paul wondered off and was eaten by the pigs, thus explaining his disappearance.

Others speculate that Paul was actually abducted near East and Chapel Roads, carried away in a car. That would explain why the bloodhounds lost his scent. But we’ll never know for sure. Either way, the newspapers did what they do best and ran wild, and soon, others started to wonder what was going on here?

Two weeks later, On October 28th, 53 year old Freida Langer had left her family’s camp east of Glastenbury Mountain near the Somerset Reservoir to go hiking with her cousin. She was an experienced woodsman and was completely familiar with the area. About a half mile from camp, she slipped and fell into a stream. She decided to hike the short half mile back to camp, change her clothes and catch back up. She never returned.

When her cousin got back to camp, he was startled to learn that not only had she never came back, but no one even saw her come out of the woods.

Local authorities were quick to launch another search, alarmed at another unfathomable disappearance in the area. Once again, all efforts proved to be hopeless. They found nothing. The Bennington Banner picked up on the story, and raised a disturbing question: How did Langer disappear completely in an area she was so familiar with?

More Disappearances

On December 1st, 1949, James E. Tetford had been visiting relatives in northern Vermont. He boarded a bus in St. Albans, en route to the Bennington Soldiers home, where he lived. But he never arrived. Somehow, he had vanished without a trace without ever getting off of the bus. Even the bus driver had no explanation!

This account seems to be continuously accepted as proof of paranormal happenings, without further questioning the events. It’s worth mentioning that by the time James was actually reported missing, it was at least a week after the fact, when the Bennington soldiers home finally decided to call his relatives to figure out if he was actually coming back or not. By the time the police were involved in the investigation and got around to interviewing the bus driver and other passengers, it had been two weeks, and no one really remembered anything. But some information did arise. James was last seen by a friend of his when his bus made a stop in Burlington, and guessed he might have gotten off there, offering another possible explanation to his whereabouts. But regardless, his disappearance still remains a mystery. I don’t really see a connection here to the other disappearances, but I guess because it happened around the same time frame and James did live in the area, it has just been lumped into the big picture.

And perhaps one of the most arcane disappearance took place on November 11, 1943. As Author David Paulides tells in his book Missing 41137 year old Carl Herrick went hunting in the woods of West Townshend, about 10 miles northeast of Glastenbury. At some point during the hunt, Herrick and his cousin, Henry, were separated. Henry eventually made it back to camp, but Carl didn’t show up. As dusk began to fall and Carl still hadn’t arrived, Henry immediately contacted law enforcement, just as the snow began to fall.

The search for Carl lasted three days without finding a trace. But towards dusk on the third day, Henry stumbled upon Carl’s body. He was laying on the ground in the woods, motionless, his loaded rifle found leaning against a tree seventy feet away. Henry reported finding “huge bear tracks” around Carl’s body, but the official postmortem was baffling. Carl was reportedly squeezed to death, his lung was found to be punctured by his own ribs. What sort of bear squeezes a human to death? It would be an impossible act.

In Joseph Citro’s Passing Strange, (which was another heavy source for this article) he further mentioned a Burlington Free Press article dated October 25, 1981 reported that a trio of hunters disappeared somewhere near Glastenbury, and not surprisingly, that too remains unsolved.

Snowfall over Glastenbury from Route 7
Snowfall over Glastenbury from Route 7

Additional Theories and Searching for Answers

If you take these other accounts into consideration, this raises the number of disappearances from four to nine, which begs the question, what happened here? Where could nine people vanish to without a trace?

This is what we do know. The victims ages ranged between 8 and 74 and were evenly divided between men and women. Time is also a pattern. The disappearances all happened during the same time of the year – the last 3 months – and many of them were last seen between 3 and 4 PM. The rest is up for debate.

Because of the vast scope of the wilderness area and it’s inaccessibility, the task of finding a body is difficult. The conditions could easily ensure that someone’s remains would never be found again, regardless of cause of death. Depending on who you ask, there is a pattern there.

Speculations abound, adding many more layers to this fabled region’s already weighted and transgressive reputation. Could the Bennington Monster still be stalking the slopes, carrying its victims to some cave on the mountain? Maybe. As recently as 2003, Winooski resident Ray Dufresne saw something peculiar on his drive down Route 7, near Glastenbury. What he first thought was a homeless man stumbling around in a snowsuit, turned into an alleged bigfoot sighting upon a closer look. That story immediately blew up and was even picked up by local news stations. While some skeptics dismiss it as a prankster in a Gorilla suit, others aren’t buying it, and plenty more sightings have been passed down by word of mouth from the Bennington area, all which remain unaccounted for.

Or maybe, could these unfortunate people have accidentally encountered that enchanted Indian stone, and were swallowed in seconds?

Alien abduction is another hypothesis. Many reports of UFO sightings and strange lights in the sky have been spotted over the Glastenbury wilderness over the last century. Most notably, a “flying silo” shaped anomaly was see over the skies of Bennington by Don Pratt in 1984, which seems to be the go-to example for extraterrestrial sightings in the area.

But my personal favorite was designated by John A. Keel, an American journalist and influential UFOlogist, who used the term “Window Areas” to describe these places, or, some sort of inter-dimensional doorway or vortex into another world. New England seems to have a fair share of them. The legendary Bridgewater Triangle in Massachusetts which has similar phenomena, and the summit of Mount Washington are two of the most notable.

Perhaps the most tangible answer could be something all too familiar, a serial killer. “The Bennington Ripper” and “The Mad Murderer of The Long Trail” were all monikers given to the possibility of a sinister suspect that lurked in the wilds, but no evidence was ever found to prove this. The police during that time were not familiar with serial killers or how they operated, so even if it was the work of such a killer, the facts would have gone undocumented.

Adding to the seemingly ever growing list of theories, this one might be the most plausible. Near the former village of South Glastenbury, there are a few old wells. Some speculate that Middie Rivers accidentally tumbled down a well while on his hunting trip. His party, being unfamiliar with the area, never thought to check. As for the others….

An odd footnote to all of this; the body of Freida Langer did eventually appear, seven months after she had vanished. But sadly, this wouldn’t be of any help. It was in an area that search parties knew they had combed thoroughly, near the flood gates of the Somerset Reservoir. It was a completely open area, and anything there would be impossible to miss. And yet, here she was. Or, what was left of her. Her remains were in such gruesome condition that no cause of death could ever be determined.

Even More Strangeness

Enigmatic situations aren’t contained to the past, things reportedly continue to happen here to this day. Countless internet searches have dug up numerous unusual tales posted on message boards and blogs from hikers, hunters and curiosity seekers.

In the book Haunted Hikes of Vermont, Author Tim Simard mentions a one time incident of hearing a ghostly train whistle while hiking along the West Ridge Trail, miles away from both any functional railroad track, and the old rail bed that runs up into South Glastenbury.

One harrowing account I was able to dig up took take place on Columbus Day in 2008. This time, 2 Long Trail hikers were making their way through the Glastenbury wilderness. While hiking, they ran into a young man named Dave, who helped rebuild fire towers along the trail. They started talking about the mountain’s reputation, which at this point seems almost impossible not to do if you’re visiting. They had heard about the disappearances and shrugged it off as out of control tall tales. But Dave had a weird story to tell of his own. Dave spent some time on Glastenbury mountain restoring the fire tower on the summit, and would work up there for extended periods of time.

While camping in Goddard Shelter, his friends reported that there were nights that he would sit up in his sleep and laugh uncontrollably, and other nights when he would wake up screaming. Dave was considered a down to earth and smart guy, so this behavior had his friends extremely concerned, and disturbed. He had never acted in such a way before. I’ll never know if Dave had any follow up episodes, or an explanation behind these bizarre actions, the thread ended there.

Another story I was able to dig up only adds to the unscrupulousness of the region. In the book Ghost towns of New England, Author Fessenden S. Blanchard spoke with Arlie Greene – the oldest surviving member of the Mattison family. Greene recalled the old days in Glastenbury, and one particularly enigmatic, and possibly nefarious, incident. Two local men went fishing on the Peters Branch – one went upstream and the other went downstream. One of them was never seen again. A short time after the disappearance of the fisherman, someone found a human skull sitting on a tree stump near the brook. Some speculated Panthers got to him, but others weren’t so sure…

Arcane Stone Cairns

Yet another mystery, dressed in the forest light and acting as silent witnesses to times gone by. This enigma is far more benign than the previous ones I’ve covered, but is still just as vexing. There are a series of inexplicable cairns scattered around the mountain, and no one is quite sure why they exist. There are theories to why they are there. Farmers built them long ago while clearing their pastures, or several passing hikers on the Long Trail built them, to act as beacons in bad weather. But nothing adds up. The cairns were built in high elevations where farming never took place, and most of them are located miles away from the long trail in heavily forested areas. So what are they? The work of the Bennington Monster? Perhaps playful hikers built them wanting to add another Glastenbury mystery? For now, these giant piles of stones offer no explanations.

One of the stone cairns on Glastenbury Mountain. Via rock-piles.com/Norman E. Muller. Photo: David Lacy

What About Today?

Though Glastenbury is a ghost town and designated wilderness area, it’s anything but deserted. A myriad of outdoor enthusiasts, hikers, snowmobiliers, college students, history buffs, paranormal investigators and hunters all flock here to the undisturbed wilderness – trekking up the expansive network of forest roads, hiking trails or silent waterways, all realizing just how special it is here.

Today, there are about 8 residents that chose to live in this strange paradise. They love it’s obscurity, and I can see why. There are no other towns quite like Glastenbury in the northeast – and with only one road in town, a winding dirt road that snakes its way in no less than 2 miles, privacy is in abundance. And if you know about Glastenbury, there seems to be a sense of pride that comes with your knowledge of this obscure area, if not something that conjures a romantic notion of fantasy. As a matter of fact,”Chateau Fayville”, the last original house in Glastenbury and the former Mattison homestead, was put on the real estate market – and it looks like a nice place.

But there are several people who aren’t all that enthusiastic about its menacing repute and “Bennington Triangle” folklore – mostly because they’re not a fan of ghosts, curses and the bad, inflated outlook it brings to the area. Skeptical people will be quick to assure you that everything has a perfectly logical explanation. As for me, I’m one of the skeptics.

So, is there truly something phenomenal about Glastenbury that has yet to be comprehensively explained? Do curses and monsters really claim their victims? Well….this seems to be a controversial subject of much enthusiastic debate. I’ve heard it all. At the end of the day, some people surmise firmly to their untenable thoughts. I suppose it’s all subjective.

During the height of the disappearances, the local media ran wild with the stories and theories, which not surprisingly, got out of hand, creating vicious accusations and conspiracy theories. If you’re a fact checker, it’s worth noting that Middie Rivers was the only actual person to vanish within the town of Glastenbury itself. All the others were in neighboring communities, many on the Long Trail in Woodford.

To add to this, Author Tyler Resch is one of those who thinks the area is widely exaggerated, and has created preposterous theories carried by inertia. He once noted that he was surprised that more people actually hadn’t vanished, because the wilderness is in fact so large, and it’s very easy to become hopelessly lost if you stray from the trails.

Others argue that numerous things could have happened to the missing hikers. They could have fallen down an old well, or gotten lost and frozen to death, perhaps taking shelter in one of the numerous caves on the mountain which few people ever venture near. Another theory is that they were the unfortunate meals of a Catamount or giant cat, which would surely dispose of any evidence of a body.

If you put all of these pieces that I’ve covered together and add the intrigue of a town attempting to survive against all odds but still vanishing into the wilderness, you can easily draw a conclusion about something creepy and supernatural existing here. After all, the region does have great triggers for spook stories. I’m personally awe struck that such a plethora of incidents are all linked to a single area.

But at the end of the day, everything is relative. 4 hikers did disappear, and people have claimed to see weird things in the woods. The only absolute truth about all of this is that people swear these things happened. Whether the culprit was something awesome and sinister or innate, is the quandary here. Who knows for sure.

In finality, the Bennington Triangle certainly isn’t in danger of being forgotten anytime soon.

Additional Stuff! (Because this entry wasn’t nearly long enough)

Youtuber Matt Garland made this awesome documentary on the Bennington Triangle, which is in my opinion, a great watch.

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To all of my amazing fans and supporters, I am truly grateful and humbled by all of the support and donations through out the years that have kept Obscure Vermont up and running.

As you all know I spend countless hours researching, writing, and traveling to produce and sustain this blog. Obscure Vermont is funded entirely on generous donations that you the wonderful viewers and supporters have made. Expenses range from internet fees to host the blog, to investing in research materials, to traveling expenses. Also, donations help keep me current with my photography gear, computer, and computer software so that I can deliver the best quality possible.

If you value, appreciate, and enjoy reading about my adventures please consider making a donation to my new Gofundme account or Paypal. Any donation would not only be greatly appreciated and help keep this blog going, it would also keep me doing what I love. Thank you!

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The Great North Woods

“NEW ENGLANDERS They buried their emotions deep, Long years ago, with care; And if a stranger dares to dig He finds but granite there. — Catherine Cate Coblentz — Driftwind, May 1925”

A few days ago, I was traveling through New Hampshire’s White Mountains, a compelling region that I wish I had taken the time to explore more of when I was a college student in the Northeast Kingdom, far before the ugly reality of adulthood trimmed the fat off things. While Vermont tends to have a more gentle feel at times, New Hampshire is crucially different, it’s north country is essentially one giant patch of wilderness, which some say is roughly the size of Wales.

Part of the great Appalachian chain, it’s difficult not to be in awe of the rugged magistery of the White Mountains, whose hulking mountaintops rise out of view above the clouds, or the deep V-shaped natural excavation of Franconia Notch, it’s walls carved from the oldest rocks around.

The small town of Bethlehem, New Hampshire, has been around since 1774, and in the last days of 1799, it would adapt it’s current moniker, shared with the city of the same name on the other side of the world, though the origins behind the naming of New Hampshire’s settlement are a bit of a mystery. A drive down Route 302, the main drag in town, reveals one of the most architecturally impressive Main Street’s I’ve visited. A great collection of showy Victorians with some of the most ornate and complex woodwork that I imagine a human mind could ever devise. Busy roof lines punctured by wandering tactile patterns that sat next to humble Bungalows that have been very well preserved. Bethlehem’s exceeding aesthetics can be owed to the town’s heyday as an early tourist destination.

In 1805, the Old Man Of The Mountain was discovered, and by 1819, a path was created that carved its way up to the summit of Mount Washington. The White Mountains, their fresh air, craggy and almost daunting landscape and the mystique of their geographic curiosities were beginning the shift into a tourist area, and Bethlehem found itself conveniently in the middle of it’s many prominent attractions, which proved to be good for business.

In 1867, the railroad came to town, bringing tourists from the urban hubs of Boston and New York City. By 1870, a building boom period began, which would eventually create 30 grand hotels that lined Bethlehem’s streets which were all fiercely competitive against another. Each establishment tried to out-do each other in garish grandness and opulence, and they had to, because with a lodging bubble, standing out from everyone else was paramount.

Seven trains a day roared into the village, dropping of scores of passengers at five depots. Bethlehem must have been doing something right, because eventually, well-heeled east coasters took notice of the mountain town and decided to build their “summer cottages” here, which were blown up to colossal sizes and scaled up the hillsides that rose out of town. This included the likes of the famous Woolworth family and the enterprising swindler P.T. Barnum, the fellow who allegedly popularized the phrase “there’s a sucker born every minute”.

So many affluents would build here that an event called “the Coaching Parade” was conceived, which was pretty much those aforementioned rich folk flaunting their wealth and by ornamenting their carriages as ostentatiously as possible, and then literally parading them around town, which drew larger spectator crowds by the year, and led Barnum to call “the second greatest show on earth”.

But the decline of the White Mountains would have the same story that parallels other American vacation destinations of the same era and caliber; the rise of the automobile in the early 20th century would be the beginning of the end, as tourists were now no longer limited to only seeing places the railroads could bring you. When the automobile and their infrastructure worked its way up into the formidable highlands, the grand hotels eventually became ghosts, and the tourism culture changed to what pretty much is today.

One of these hotels was The Maplewood.

The Maplewood Hotel, circa 1905. Via Wikipedia.

Opening in 1876, this hotel would soon become a showpiece, your textbook example of an incredibly lavish 19th-century resort which unabashedly marketed itself as “The Social and Scenic Center of The White Mountains”. It would eventually grow to ginormous proportions, encompassing its own 18 hole country club, casino, cottages, and was served by its own train station, Maplewood Depot. I guess I can see how their claim could hold it’s own. As a friendly New Hampshirite pointed out to me; in the glory days of rail travel in the White Mountains, the small Victorian station rivaled the most revered and fabled of north country stations, such as Crawford and Fabyan.

A historical postcard of Maplewood Station for comparison

Maplewood Depot was abandoned in the early 20s in the wake of the automobile, and the hotel it served would function for a few more decades, before burning to the ground in January 1963. Today, the grounds have been revitalized as the Maplewood Country Club, with striking views of the Presidential Range. But sitting in the woods behind the links, the old train station can still be found, now leaning at a dramatic angle in its slow decay, wasting away in silence as the town thrives around it.

Most of the details depicted in the postcard, such as the expansive porches and apex tower have long faded into postcard memory. The former railroad line had it’s tracks pulled shortly after the station went defunct, but the right of way can still be detected, a ruler-straight path that is slightly less overgrown than the woods around it.

The station truly appears ghostly, skulking in the middle of the woods. Minus a few new-ish looking armchairs that have been toppled over, and most likely an addition to the building after it’s abandonment, it’s completely hollowed out, with empty doorways and tall, narrow windows. Inside, time has not been kind to the wooden structure. Much of it had long succumbed to weather damage and vandals, and portions of the original wooden floors had been ripped upwards as the building slowly sagged over the years, forming a jagged rip that ran the partial length of the room. I was a bit surprised at how clean this place was still, completely void of the graffiti and beer can piles which are found in many abandonments. I was still able to climb the narrow wooden stairs that curved around a brick chimney, revealing three rooms that were more or less intact, apart from some holes in the floor.

It’s a spooky place, especially as the winter winds hit the building, creating strange noises. I’m sure it takes on a far different atmosphere once the leaves fill out on the trees, blocking out even more light from reaching it. It’s almost startling to think about the fact that this place used to be a train station, and today it’s nothing but a trembling corpse that gives almost no clues to it’s former life. And at the rate that the place is leaning, I’m rather amazed that it’s still standing.

Maplewood was also apparently featured in the short concept film American Ruinsand after glimpsing the short trailer, it’s completely sold me. The effects and videography are mind blowing, which no doubt took hours and hours and hours of patience, producing and editing. Maybe someday I’ll aspire to creating something great like this.

[vimeo 25832079 w=500 h=281]

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Over The Notch

Route 3 used to be the main route to get from the top to the bottom of New Hampshire, and still pretty much is, though it’s a bit quieter today in light of the construction of Interstate 93 which practically parallels the road. Both routes are pushed together when they run through mountainous Franconia Notch, joining to form the Franconia Notch Parkway, the main access road to all of the scenic points in Franconia Notch State Park, and the tourist attractions and motels farther south in the town of Lincoln.

Passing through the notch, I couldn’t help but gaze at the jagged stump where the Old Man of The Mountain used to be, now being battered by fierce mountain winds and the puffs of snow spray they send. The famous rock profile crumbled in 2004, and after much controversy, the state decided not to synthetically re-create it. Despite the formation’s disappearance, the Old Man is still used as a state marketing icon, and can still be found awkwardly on a variety of things from license plates to state route shields. It will be weird to think about there being a day where no one remembers seeing him in person.

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In Lincoln, I stopped at an Irving Station to get gas and a coffee, and got an unexpected surprise in the form of a rather large mural of what looked like a seemingly friendly alien who was hitchhiking, which took up a rather large chunk of wall near the entrance of the store. Not exactly what I’ve came to expect from a stop at a gas station. On the top of the painting were the words; “First Close Encounter of the Third Kind, Betty and Barney Hill, Sept. 19th, 1961.” I recognized the names. The Barney and Betty Hill abduction case is the most infamous in all of UFOlogy.

My amusement was carried from the wintery cold to inside the store, where I noticed the extraterrestrial theme continued in the form of wall to wall paraphernalia, photocopies of newspaper articles and other copied information related to both the Betty and Barney Hill case, other alleged incidents, and an assortment of fan images from science fiction TV shows and movies.

The shop owner who was behind the cash register at the time, caught me staring, and enthusiastically explained to me that right across the road from that exact store, was the actual site of the abduction. However, a friend of mine, as well as some commenters over Facebook, argued this fact, and said that it actually happened a further down the road, where Millbrook Road meets State Route 175 in Thornton.

Though I can really take or leave UFOlogy (more so on the leave side) I found this offbeat memorial and it’s fanaticism interesting enough to write about.

As the story goes, on the night of September 19, 1961, husband and wife Barney and Betty Hill were traveling South on Route 3 to their home in Portsmouth, NH, when, according to their claim, were followed by a spaceship near the present day Indian Head Resort, and eventually accosted by some sort of extraterrestrial crew, taken aboard their craft, examined, and then released on the side of Route 3 in the early morning hours of September 20 as the sun’s first rays would begin to grey the New Hampshire skies.

The collection I saw above me mounted on black poster board was originally smaller in size, and more of a quirky secret, formerly located on a wall inside their unisex bathroom. The current owner of the gas station has only owned the store for a few years now, and told me how disrespectful visitors kept stealing memorabilia and eventually, he grew sick of it and moved all of it around the store, so everyone could still enjoy it, but couldn’t grab a keepsake. As an extra precaution, they also outfitted the store with lots and lots of security cameras. They apparently get a lot of interested people who stop by, so they also sell alien key chains, bumper stickers, shirts and books about the Hills near the door. I neglected to buy a souvenir, but did get my coffee.

Have a weird encounter of your own? There is also a blackboard outside to the left of the mural, where you can share your own stories. I noticed that stuff had been written there, but nothing UFO related, which I suppose didn’t surprise me.

I didn’t think of this until after I had gotten back home and was writing up this post, but I have sort of a strange tie-in to all this. A location I explored last year reported seeing unidentified flying objects hovering above the skies shortly before Hill incident happened, but as for an actual connection between the two events, that remains subjective.

If you’re interested, just take Route 3 through Lincoln, New Hampshire, and look for the Irving Station near the Indian Head Resort.

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To all of my amazing fans and supporters, I am truly grateful and humbled by all of the support and donations throughout the years that have kept Obscure Vermont up and running.

As you all know I spend countless hours researching, writing, and traveling to produce and sustain this blog. Obscure Vermont is funded entirely on generous donations that you the wonderful viewers and supporters have made. Expenses range from internet fees to host the blog, to investing in research materials, to traveling expenses. Also, donations help keep me current with my photography gear, computer, and computer software so that I can deliver the best quality possible.

If you value, appreciate, and enjoy reading about my adventures please consider making a donation to my new Gofundme account or Paypal. Any donation would not only be greatly appreciated and help keep this blog going, it would also keep me doing what I love. Thank you!

Gofundme: https://www.gofundme.com/b5jp97d4

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The Strange Wampahoofus

photo: Ray Parizo

Mount Mansfield is literally the largest thing in Vermont. The state’s loftiest peak rises above everything at 4,395 feet, coming to an end on a wind-battered rocky summit anchoring the blinking lights of transmitter towers that serve area media companies, throngs of hikers, and one of the few places in the east that can support rare arctic alpine tundra – actual surviving vestiges from the ice age.

The sprawling ridge line’s anthropomorphic profile explains the names behind it’s distinct standout topographical features, such as The Forehead, The Nose, The Chin (officially the tallest elevation), and Adam’s apple, although not everyone apparently agrees on seeing a human face. Interestingly enough, the idea of seeing a human face in the rocks may just come from some Yankee competition around the 19th century, when neighboring New Hampshire officially decided that a rock formation in the White Mountains looked like an old man, turning it into a regional mascot and a symbol of state pride in a time when the mystic and science of geology was a growing interest. The best Vermont could do was to find one in the upturned profile of Mount Mansfield, but it was nowhere nearly as admired.

If you arrange the pieces of the face together, “the chin” is much higher than “the forehead”, so I guess it’s sort of a stretch of the imagination. On an interview with VPR, historian Jill Mudget had a humorous observation. During the 19th century, a time where new and radical ideas spread like wildfire, there was an introduced theory that you could tell a lot about a person’s intelligence by their facial features, which I suppose would mean that Mansfield’s profile isn’t very intelligent.

A frigid looking Mount Mansfield from the fantastic (Lower) Pleasant Valley Road in Cambridge.

The gargantuan landmass separates two counties, Chittenden and Lamoille, and it’s eastern slopes contain one of the more popular ski resorts in the eastern United States; the ritzy Stowe Mountain Resort. The rest of the mountain is forever protected by the Mansfield State Forest and Underhill State Park, which has spared the mountain from ruinous development, including one notable 1930s project when it was actually proposed to build a scenic highway that would have ran right over the summit! Today, a different sort of highway runs along the top of the mountain, the oldest long-distance hiking trail in America, the celebrated Long Trail.

Mount Mansfield is a grand mountain in many considerations, with a complex biography of history and myth, but perhaps one of my favorite aspects of the topographical area is how things here got their names.

It’s original Abenaki name, Mozodepowadso, was English translated to Moosehead Mountain when people began to settle closer to its slopes, but unlike other Indian names that have stuck around and worked their way permanently into local parle, Moosehead didn’t, and the mountain eventually became known as Mansfield. But the origin of the name is mysterious. Some speculate that Mansfield was named after the town of the same name, which was charted literally on the steep and practically inaccessible slopes, making development slow and survival far tougher than the surrounding towns.

Eventually, Mansfield, and the neighboring town of Sterling, became ghost towns, and were carved up into the present day towns of Stowe, Cambridge and Underhill, giving them their unusually large and weird shapes. Other theories speculate that the state’s most prominent feature may have derived from the name “Mans Field”, named after the burly and intrepid early settlers who endured strenuous labor to make a living in the harsh wilderness. Either way, the name stuck.

Another much smaller monument to mankind can be found along the summit. There is an innocuous cairn with an interesting name. Called Frenchman’s Pile, it marks the spot where a man was struck by lightning many years ago, and killed on the spot.

Hiking is one of my favorite activities to do, and with so many trails that snake their way over the mountain and such varied terrain, I always have some sort of new experience that keeps me wanting to come back and explore. While hiking the mountain a while ago, I came across the most peculiar name for a hiking trail I had ever seen in my time in the woods – Wampahoofus Trail. I had to stop for a second, the name wasn’t familiar at all. I couldn’t help but wonder, just what the hell was a Wampahoofus? What did it mean?

I took my search to the internet and got a wonderfully strange story behind the etymology. The name derives from an animal which is now extinct, and their story is a tragically ironic one. The Wampahoofus, (sometimes referred to as Sidehill Gougers), was a large mammal, that some say resembled a hybrid that was part deer, part wild boar. The only place in the world you could find one was limited to a certain area of Mt. Mansfield, usually between 2,600 and 3,200 feet in elevation, and some say the slopes of the deep and remote Chateauguay wilderness near Bridgewater. 

The Wampahoofus wondered around the mountainsides, moving in lateral directions across the slopes, and were well adapted to Vermont’s mountainous terrain, especially because of a peculiar characteristic. The males traveled in a clockwise direction, and the females in a counterclockwise direction, never deviating. Because of spending generations moving laterally in these patterns, their legs adapted, and one of them became much shorter than the other as a result, depending on the direction they moved. This also allowed them to graze quite comfortably on steep hillsides.

They stayed in their particular region, never venturing to the valleys below or the summits above, the females taking an especial liking to the Nebraska Notch area. The only time males and females interacted with each other was during mating season, and because of their odd traveling patterns and different sized legs, mating could only occur then, when they literally came in contact with each other as they traveled around the mountain.

They were said to move at haste speeds, theoretically making them very difficult to come across, but if you did want to encounter one, maybe all you need to do is travel straight up or down a slope?

Their unusual evolutionary adaptation wasn’t an issue for many generations – but unfortunately, it would eventually be their undoing. The males’ right legs and the females’ left legs kept getting shorter and shorter, until eventually, when a couple met to mate, they were no longer able too. As a result, the Wampahoofus died out, leaving these great terrestrial beings unceremoniously remembered by their name carved on a sign.

But how did this trail officially receive its name? That honor was dubbed by a Professor Ray Buchanan, when he saw a rock formation nearby that he thought resembled the profile of a Wampahoofus. (source: Joe Citro’s The Vermont Monster Guide)

As long as we’re on the topic of Mount Mansfield mysteries, The Abenaki told legends of beasts called Gici Awas, or, giant hairless bears that they said used to roam the mountain and were dangerous if encountered, but no trail is named in their honor. Perhaps Wampahoofus is just a catchier name?

Taken Fall 2017 from the fantastic Mount Mansfield Toll Road, which is one of the true great drives in Vermont, and steeply serpentines up the Stowe side of the mountain. I pulled over to take this areal view of Smugglers’ Notch, Vermont’s celebrity mountain pass. The notch was used by smugglers and rum runners from the 1800s until the great depression when the state built the now famous notch road (state route 108) through its boulder-strewn innards.
Taken on the Long Trail southbound on Mount Mansfield, as the clouds smoked around the summit.
Stunted boreal forests on the summit of Mount Mansfield.
State Route 108 – aka, “The Notch Road”, one of the most scenic drives in Vermont. A 1.5 lane road that corkscrews up and over Smugglers’ Notch, a 1,000-foot gouge between Mount Mansfield and Spruce Peak.
How to get there:

The Wampahoofus Trail can be reached via the Butler Lodge Trail from the Stevensville Trailhead in Underhill Center. Follow the trail around the back of the Lodge, pass the start of the Rock Garden Trail.

 Interesting Links:

The Wampahoofus: A Sad Evolutionary Tale

Wikipedia

Seven Days: What’s in a name?

Happy Hiker: My First Hike to Mount Mansfield – great account and pictures from a hike on Mansfield, that gives a better idea of the rugged mountain.

—————————————————————————————————————————————–

To all of my amazing fans and supporters, I am truly grateful and humbled by all of the support and donations through out the years that have kept Obscure Vermont up and running.

As you all know I spend countless hours researching, writing, and traveling to produce and sustain this blog. Obscure Vermont is funded entirely on generous donations that you the wonderful viewers and supporters have made. Expenses range from internet fees to host the blog, to investing in research materials, to traveling expenses. Also, donations help keep me current with my photography gear, computer, and computer software so that I can deliver the best quality possible.

If you value, appreciate, and enjoy reading about my adventures please consider making a donation to my new Gofundme account or Paypal. Any donation would not only be greatly appreciated and help keep this blog going, it would also keep me doing what I love. Thank you!

Gofundme: https://www.gofundme.com/b5jp97d4

Donate Button with Credit Cards

The Cold Spring House

It’s hard to describe a place like the deteriorating ruins of The Cold Spring House, especially if you’ve never had the experience of visiting it yourself.

The remaining residue of The Catskill Mountains and their heyday as a resort destination – hotels such as this one once catered to primarily Jewish clientele during the 20th century, looking for a little relaxation from the turbulence of New York City in the scenic Catskills.

Driving through the gripping, winding road through the Kaaterskill Forest, with wild rivers cutting through steep hardwood shrouded peaks that resembled worn saw teeth, it wasn’t hard to see the allure.

This is the first time I had ever been to the Catskills region before, and my target village of Tannersville made an attractive first impression, which I was incredibly relieved with after the problematic start to my day. It almost seemed like I would never make it to the Catskills, as numerous setbacks, construction projects, and traffic jams kept delaying travel time, each hour of precious daylight being swallowed by the oncoming October evening. Because we were making a 5-hour drive down from Vermont, I was determined to make this count.

Navigating the highways of New York, we passed by many derelict structures and sordid towns that were more depressing than anything, reminders of the decreasing amount of tourists in the region. It’s one thing to figure a portrait of a place from conversations with friends who grew up around there, and a few things I’ve read, but it was another type of cool entirely to gaze at what was coming through the view of the windshield.

As we approached Tannersville, the comedown daylight was filtered through a black sky foreshadowing fury that never seemed to come. The air was crisp, carrying the smell of dead leaves, as chilly mists began to settle on our faces. It felt like it was going to rain, but it never came, and the mists continued to be misleading.

There we were, staring up at the imposing ruins of the Cold Spring House, and it’s various stages of decay.

The slumping roofs and bending wooden frame ripped open several holes in the building, giving off dead weight that popped out windows and pushed various items through the glass. It was well into the evening now, but we had made it, with just enough light to photograph and do a little exploring. But the question was, where do I even start?

From what I know about the place, it was one of the earlier Catskills hotels, on the outskirts of the Borscht Belt, an area once a dazzling vacation-land now reincarnated as a collection of behemoth and storied abandonments. The Cold Spring House was a grand showpiece, which was very different from the closet cottages and revelrous resorts the area was known for at that time.

Built on what is now Spruce Street in the 1890s, it was the second largest hotel in Tannersville, as well as the first Jewish hotel in town – able to accommodate 200 guests at the base of mountains rising to around 2,200 feet. It started as a hotel called Bieber’s Cold Spring House but was sold in 1922 to Saber Khouri, and re-branded simply as The Cold Spring House.

According to a 1904 advertisement I was able to find online, the property featured expansive lawns, offering tennis and croquet grounds, surrounded by old trees offering comfortable shade on summer days. There were farms on the property that supplied the hotel with fresh milk and vegetables everyday, which were paired with what the ad boasted as excellent table service in the form of German and Hungarian cuisine. And of course, fresh spring water was offered – from the springs which the hotel derived its name from.

The hotel was also widely regarded for its popular classical concerts on the lawn. Two signature towers at opposite ends of the building, now slumping dangerously, were once observatories, giving guests extensive views of the mountains. Today, that view would be worth the price of your life.

What I found interesting about the advertisement was that it boasted such amenities as “sanitary plumbing and fire extinguishers on every floor” – items that we take for granted today, but around that time period, were new features and were only beginning to be enforced by laws. I’m sure that was a selling point – definitely a plus when I choose a hotel. But it makes sense. The time period was a time of transition. There was a nationwide push that required to implement such systems, but it was a costly expense to outfit these old buildings, and many old hotels couldn’t afford keeping up with the competition.

The advertisement also stated that the hotel was continuously expanding as it’s increasing popularity was luring more and more people to stay there each season. Older photos showed a much different building, with only one tower, and most of the western wing not yet added. The final product was a much larger and grander property – the brooding structure you see today.

But times certainly have changed. During the late 20th century, much of the region fell out of favor as a vacation destination. With an increase of automobile travel and an ever-burgeoning highway system, more Americans were driving, and could travel farther distances and see more places. Now, they no longer had to settle for the closest area available – a trend that I’ve seen so many times in humbled abandonments I’ve visited. Tannersville was no exception. Many vacation homes eventually were abandoned and hotels were shuttered. The Cold Spring House fell into the trend and was abandoned in the 60s, leaving quite the compelling ruin in its wake.

It literally hunches over Spruce Street in its old age, leaning in all directions. A symbol of human progress and the change of the times, something inevitable that tends to leave growing pains on the often bumpy road of advancement and the fodder of bandwagon fads. In an ironic sense, this more offbeat form of tourism can also serve as a poignant melding of public awareness, a chance to learn from our past.

Today, Tannersville is more known for it’s proximity to Hunter Mountain Ski Area than a summer destination, but while many Borscht Belt towns are still struggling, Tannersville seems to be in the middle of some sort of revival. As it was explained to me, people started to rediscover the town and were taken by its natural beauty. Old vacation homes began to be fixed up at expensive costs because of the bad shape they had deteriorated to, and more businesses have opened up on Route 23A.

As for the Cold Spring House though, I had the pleasant chance to speak with photographer Linda O’Donnell, who has been researching and documenting the building’s deterioration for the past several years. She informed me that the place has been scheduled for demolition since 2012, but demolition by neglect may happen before any actual bulldozers arrive on the property. It makes you wonder, when will the familiar become just history?

Dying Light

This was truly one of the most spectacular places I’ve had the chance to photograph (and a great change of scenery from Vermont!), but with its awe-inspiring profile came very tangible dangers. As I walked around and got to know the place better, I was able to recognize something very quickly. The building was far too dangerous to venture inside, and because of our late start, there was little daylight left. Peeking in through an opened window, I was met with an interior of collapsing floors, wooden walls intended to support the structure were crushed into an accordion-like resemblance, and various artifacts collected in indistinguishable piles of fragments covered in dust and lead paint speckles. The weight was so great in some places that many things had actually been pushed through the floor, which was already cracking on the added weight of my body. That musty old building smell wafted out from the opening, mixed with a heavy damp musk. To my far left, a staircase, illuminated by the dull light of broken windows, climbed above the wreckage and into the mysterious upper floors. Or what was left of them. Though I ached to go inside, that would have been an idea that probably would have been counterproductive to my travel plans, which were to leave intact and alive.

For a relatively rural back street, the traffic was thunderous, a constant roar of pick up trucks going by, and slowing down when they noticed me with my camera. Because New York State has very unforgiving rules against trespassing, and with me being in such a surprisingly public area where I would no doubt be trapped should I be caught, the odds were stacked against me.

I had no choice but to keep a safe distance. But the exterior alone was worth the drive. The tops of the building still wore it’s yellow paint job, the original color of the hotel, while the lower levels were weather worn into a dull grey and showed signs of various stages of rotten cavities that completely ate through the walls. Older photos showed a sign that read “Cold Spring” that hung over the porch near the front entrance, but when I visited, that was also long gone, the last clue to its identity.

Signs of human presence were everywhere. Graffiti was found on many of the upper windows, but not the good kind of graffiti. That also meant that some adventurous intruders made the trip to the upper floors…

I often find strange items left behind when I explore – and this was no exception. There was an interestingly large collection of abandoned records found all around the hotel, most on the front lawn, tangled in tall grass and cedar trees. Some of them were arranged specifically, with various items such as kitchen utensils and bottles filled with suspicious colored liquids in them, propped purposely around the sides. I didn’t recognize any of the artists – but some looked like they would have been right at home in some embarrassing 70s porno.

Just gazing up at the place and looking in the numerous windows offered many things to see. Radiators that had fallen out broken windows. A glimpse of a bedpost. Dark rooms with holes in the ceiling letting in the dying daylight. Old glass bottles left on windowsills. Then the wind blows, and the eerie creeks of a shutter can be heard, before it bangs loudly against a wall several stories above, you see the movement, and your pulse quickens as you jump to conclusions. Despite the reliable hum of noise outside, closer to the hotel, things faded into an uncomfortable silence that was almost loud in itself. It was quite startling considering it was just a short walk down the lawn that offered such a fast transition.

Not wanting to draw attention by staying too long, we left and began the journey back to Vermont, the Cold Spring House leaving a lasting impression.

ColdSpring
These are some great historical photos of the Cold Spring House in its heyday, which I found online accidentally and was kindly given permission to re-link by Flickr user Linda O’Donnell. Not sure of the dates, but it really gives you a sense of what this place used to be like.
ColdSpring2
Used with permission from Flickr user Linda O’Donnell
ColdSpring3
Used with permission from Flickr user Linda O’Donnell
ColdSpring4
Used with permission from Flickr user Linda O’Donnell

  The Cold Spring House Today

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Information:

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information on this place. Most of what I was able to compile in this post came from speaking with various people, and a good article I found online from the Register-Star 

There is also a group on Flickr I found, dedicated to sharing memories and photos of it.

This is one of my favorite things I came across while researching. Here is a fascinating article and photographic journalism piece about the Borscht Belt

—————————————————————————————————————————————–

To all of my amazing fans and supporters, I am truly grateful and humbled by all of the support and donations through out the years that have kept Obscure Vermont up and running.

As you all know I spend countless hours researching, writing, and traveling to produce and sustain this blog. Obscure Vermont is funded entirely on generous donations that you the wonderful viewers and supporters have made. Expenses range from internet fees to host the blog, to investing in research materials, to traveling expenses. Also, donations help keep me current with my photography gear, computer, and computer software so that I can deliver the best quality possible.

If you value, appreciate, and enjoy reading about my adventures please consider making a donation to my new Gofundme account or Paypal. Any donation would not only be greatly appreciated and help keep this blog going, it would also keep me doing what I love. Thank you!

Gofundme: https://www.gofundme.com/b5jp97d4

Donate Button with Credit Cards

House of the Syrup Folk

There is always that one place that stands out from the rest – and on a breezy August morning, I stood in front of what has to be the most unnerving house I have ever explored, and it was the question of why that really bothered me the most…

Skulking off a quiet backroad underneath the canopy of dense forests, on a slope with at least a 9 percent grade – this fading weathered house sits in the forest like an infected sore – a strange world where nature slowly undoes the deeds of man, with skin so thick, it’s empty eyes were like knives, not worried about who was receiving them.

The awkwardness started from the moment I got out of the car, and got a good look at the place over a forest of thorns and vines that had been tangled in the wind – a solitary trail sleuthed its way through the growth towards the house. Something had been through here recently. Staring up at it’s faded and splintery facade that almost matched the wilderness around it, there was something unsettling about the place. You could actually feel it’s age, and you could smell the smells – that typical old house perfume and rot that hung around the property like musk. Through the broken windows, the interior was pitch black, with secrets smothered in dirt. Though my fears weren’t routed in anything empirical, my skin was trembling.

Deciding to get a better look at the place, I proceeded to stumble through the grass. I was already regretting it. The thorns immediately sliced my arms and legs to ribbons, and I began to stumble over things that were previously hidden. Rusted trailers, oil barrels, broken glass and a knotted web of disused sap lines lay along the weedy floor, all covered in condensation which coated my boots, and made me slip more than once. Just getting over towards the place was turning into an adventure. Bees swarmed from flower to flower, and unseen creatures slithered in the grass, making the stalks snap and rustle.

Standing at the foot of it’s darkness, I noticed some things that immediately made me stop my pursuit. There was a new looking satellite dish on the side of the building, and an even newer looking utility box. But, there was no electrical hookup to the house. Some of the wires sat exposed, pulled out of the walls, and chewed on. Could someone actually live here? There were giant holes in the wall, and half the windows had long been shattered, but from my experience, that isn’t always evidence…

Upon closer investigation, I noticed an odd sight. Someone had actually taken the time to pick up the large fragments of broken window glass, and set them back into the wooden window frames. Other windows were barricaded from the inside, with chairs pushed up against them holding curtains in place. Someone made vague attempts to keep people out it seemed, but just around the corner, there was a door that was wide open, and a broken window would easily allow access. What was going on here? Peering inside a window, the interior of the house was cast in shadow, further and further, until there was nothing but strange land. A cold dampness settled on my face, and I could taste the musk as it settled in the air on my tongue.

I couldn’t explain it, I was incredibly uncomfortable at this point. I felt like something was watching me, like something was lurking just beyond the lens of my camera, offering no explanation. Though the inside of the house was smoldering in an entombed silence, there were strange noises coming from the places out of reach, like something was moving, something unknown saying, if I stay here, trouble will find me. To add to my unnerved state, tree branches around the house started to snap, but no one was around.

Eventually, I trekked back towards the road and rejoined my friend, who had opted not to go any closer to the place. I guess I couldn’t really blame him at this point. “I heard weird noises coming inside – I decided to leave” I said when I saw his questionable face. “Oh, I thought I heard something as well” he said. “I thought it was the syrup folk or something coming by” I stopped. “syrup folk?” He then pointed to the labyrinth of active sky blue sap lines that criss-crossed around the property. Though I now understood what he meant, there was something cryptic, almost ominous (and probably uniquely Vermont) about the term “syrup folk” that really stuck with me, hence the name for this blog post.

Though my trip here was discomforting, it’s these sort of experiences that often can be regarded as some of our finest ones – allowing you to discover what’s deep between your own skin and bones. And at the very least, they make for the best stories.

As we were about to leave, just to confirm my suspicions that something was inside, a raccoon popped it’s head out of the third story window, through a broken section of shutter, stared at us for a few seconds, than dipped back in to the deep cold darkness inside.DSC_0702_pe_pe_pe

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This conjured up a few "Breaking Bad" jokes.
This conjured up a few “Breaking Bad” jokes.

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—————————————————————————————————————————————–

To all of my amazing fans and supporters, I am truly grateful and humbled by all of the support and donations through out the years that have kept Obscure Vermont up and running.

As you all know I spend countless hours researching, writing, and traveling to produce and sustain this blog. Obscure Vermont is funded entirely on generous donations that you the wonderful viewers and supporters have made. Expenses range from internet fees to host the blog, to investing in research materials, to traveling expenses. Also, donations help keep me current with my photography gear, computer, and computer software so that I can deliver the best quality possible.

If you value, appreciate, and enjoy reading about my adventures please consider making a donation to my new Gofundme account or Paypal. Any donation would not only be greatly appreciated and help keep this blog going, it would also keep me doing what I love. Thank you!

Gofundme: https://www.gofundme.com/b5jp97d4

Donate Button with Credit Cards

The Caverly Preventorium

Though I’ve written about The Caverly Preventorium previously for The Rutland Reader, it wasn’t until a few days ago when I would actually get to set foot inside for myself. Meeting up with Paul Dulski from Haunted Vermont, we set out for the Rutland County town of Pittsford.

As tuberculosis gripped the United States of the early 1900s, there was a growing need for hospitals and places to treat the ever growing number of people falling ill to the terrible disease, as what was once thought to be the work of vampirism in 18th and 19th century New England was finally becoming understood more. Sanatoriums were soon constructed across the country to not only house and attempt to cure all those who were grieving from the disease, but to remove them from the rest of society.

Researching the storied and often troubling history about the hospital, as well as listening to numerous people telling me of uncomfortable and most often unaccountable events that they experienced inside the building, this abandoned tuberculosis hospital in the woods has long held my interest. It certainly is a unique place in the Green Mountain State. Even DeadFi productions offered strange accounts they remembered while filming there one night last fall. But it wasn’t until visiting the place that I truly had a better understanding on just how compelling it really was.

Pittsford Volunteer Fire Department members Cody Hesse and Ethan Nordmeyer, who also help run the Pittsford Haunted House, a Halloween attraction ran on the first floor of the abandoned hospital every October, were kind enough to agree to unlock the building and give me a first hand tour. Sitting outside, swatting away swarms of mosquitoes under summer humidity, I got my first look at the hospital. Already, it was firing my imagination, and I underestimated it. The building looked smaller than I had thought – and with the tacky Halloween props decorating the facade, I admittedly wasn’t taking my first impressions all that seriously.

However, I had subconsciously broken my first rule of adventuring, to come in with an open mind. And as I was soon to find out,  that would end almost immediately as they unlocked the basement door, and beckoned for me to step inside. I knew things were going to be interesting when I saw the amount of effort the fire department took to keep people out. Each entrance was outfitted with deadbolts and padlocks. Ethan explained that several people had attempted to break in recently. Some of the doors were damaged from where a forced entry via crowbar was unsuccessfully attempted.

Apart from renovations to create the different areas of the haunted house, the bones were still authentic. The basement was musty and dark, a labyrinth of side rooms and doors. A massive old boiler adorned with ornate decor on its cast iron door was illuminated by the beam of a flashlight, standing out from swirling dust. Old industrial porcelain sinks, and relics from the old hospital lay stacked up in piles, leaning against the old walls in silence.

Almost immediately, my camera began to act up, which was a rare occurrence for me. It refused to focus when I attempted to take a photo and my battery kept loosing energy. To the group’s amusement, they all laughed at my misfortunes, and nodded their heads in mutual affirmation. They had all seen this happen before.

Cody fiddled with another padlock and swung open a camouflaged side door, revealing the staircase leading up towards the second floor, an area that visitors aren’t allowed to see. Almost instantly, the atmosphere changed, and we went from black painted walls and hanging demon clowns set to spring at you, to a funereal atmosphere of peeling lead paint, pensive silence and dull light coming through dirty windows. This was what I wanted to see, this was the bona fide experience.

Almost immediately, I felt different, it was something tangible, something I noticed crawl underneath my skin. Our feet clomped up the wooden stairs, the aging planks groaning and cracking beneath our feet that seemed to crack the heavy silence. Gazing downwards through the beam of our reliable mag lights, the original hospital floor, which had long faded, could still be seen, covered in lead paint speckles, dust, and raccoon feces. Cody explained that they always found evidence of raccoon and other critters on the upper floors.

We were met with a long and narrow hallway, with lines of wooden doors leading in either direction. Most of the rooms were almost identical, and empty, with robust radiators sitting underneath windows, showered with more flaking lead paint. It was strange to think about how these decrepit spaces were once occupied by suffering children who knew all about agony, now vacant, lifeless, and miserable in a completely difference sense, haunted by silhouettes. Things that were once in order, now seemed so strange.

Through the stale air, we pressed on, flashlight beams momentarily brightening dark rooms. Walking around up there wasn’t for the faint of heart. With lead paint, animal feces and asbestos, it wasn’t a sanitary place to be, but there was another quality that smoldered within the empty halls, we all felt uncomfortable being there.

Parts of the building had been taken down or have collapsed over the years. Former porch areas had been razed, leaving doors on the second floor opening into nothing but a straight drop down to the lawn below. Other sun porches – which was once thought to be a tuberculosis treatment, were now rotted beyond repair and unsafe to tread on, barricaded by doors that had been screwed shut.

The main house was surrounded by three smaller cottages, which offered a similar landscape of grungy hospital tiles, awkward spaces and stale air, all sealed up like a tomb. It would honestly be quite easy to loose your mind inside one of these buildings. The entire time I was inside, I felt like I had been spending my time in dislocation.

After the grand tour, we all gathered again on the front lawn, and as Cody and Ethan swapped their own stories of strangeness, I had a better idea of why The Caverly Preventorium had such a dark reputation. It was one of the few places I’ve gotten involved with where most people openly and insistently admitted to experiencing something inside. Though I didn’t see any ghosts or witness anything baffling, I can honestly say that this was one of the most unsettling places I’ve ever explored, and it certainly left an impression on me.

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This is Mary's Room, the hospitals most famous haunt. While people speculate that several children who died here still wonder the halls and empty rooms upstairs, Mary is the only one who really has an identity. She was formerly a nurse here, who died tragically by either falling down the very staircase we walked up and broke her neck, or contracted tuberculosis while caring for the sick children and died in her room. Many people have allegedly reported run ins with Mary.
This is Amy’s Room, the hospital’s most famous haunt. While people speculate that several children who died here still wonder the halls and empty rooms upstairs, Amy is the only one who really has an identity. She was formerly a nurse here, who died tragically by either falling down the very staircase we walked up, breaking her neck, or contracted tuberculosis while caring for the sick children and died in her room. Many people have allegedly reported run ins with Amy, including seeing her staring down at visitors from her window. The fire department reported that light bulbs would mysteriously burst inside this room as well, with no accountable explanation.

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Behind the cottages, another vestige of the former hospital remain, a former swimming pool, now almost entirely filled in by mother nature.
Behind the cottages, another vestige of the former hospital remain, a former swimming pool, now almost entirely filled in by mother nature.

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Years ago, when the haunted house was being created and the fire department was touring the buildings, this room was filled with piles of old post cards and paperwork from the hospital's functioning days, a scenario which was very typical of any abandoned hospital of asylum.
Years ago, when the haunted house was being created and the fire department was touring the buildings, this room was filled with piles of old post cards and paperwork from the hospital’s functioning days, a scenario which was very typical of any abandoned hospital of asylum.

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Much of the hospital is used for storage, making you feel claustrophobic as you wonder around the halls and rooms inside. Underneath mounds of various items, original features can still be seen.
Much of the hospital is used for storage, making you feel claustrophobic as you wonder around the halls and rooms inside. Underneath mounds of various items, original features can still be seen.

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—————————————————————————————————————————————–

To all of my amazing fans and supporters, I am truly grateful and humbled by all of the support and donations through out the years that have kept Obscure Vermont up and running.

As you all know I spend countless hours researching, writing, and traveling to produce and sustain this blog. Obscure Vermont is funded entirely on generous donations that you the wonderful viewers and supporters have made. Expenses range from internet fees to host the blog, to investing in research materials, to traveling expenses. Also, donations help keep me current with my photography gear, computer, and computer software so that I can deliver the best quality possible.

If you value, appreciate, and enjoy reading about my adventures please consider making a donation to my new Gofundme account or Paypal. Any donation would not only be greatly appreciated and help keep this blog going, it would also keep me doing what I love. Thank you!

Gofundme: https://www.gofundme.com/b5jp97d4

Donate Button with Credit Cards

 

 

Ghost Hollow

West Haven’s Ghost Hollow is the only geographical location in the state named after a paranormal occurrence. Well, as far as I know.

The name is sure to fire up the imaginations of any curious traveler or map gazer. The tiny town of West Haven is on the extreme southern tip of Lake Champlain, where the lake joins the Poultney River. Surrounded almost completely by water on most sides, the town forms an awkward looking peninsula that dangles into New York State. There are no state routes or highways passing through town (with the exception of Route 22A clipping a tiny portion on the eastern border, near landmark Devil’s Bowl Speedway), West Haven is isolated from the rest of Vermont – a land of rolling farmland and hardwood forests, rising above deep bays and winding rivers of brown water.

Among West Haven’s assortment of quiet byways is a narrow and winding dirt road, barely wide enough for 2 cars, passing through quiet pastures and rocky ledges, called Ghost Hollow Road. But why the interesting moniker?

The story is an old one, dating back to the days before established roads and railroads linked Vermont together, Lake Champlain was the main highway between Canada and New York City. Rough communities sprung up around the water, building landing areas for boats. Once on land in West Haven, a long narrow rutted road spurred away from the wharf and into a wooded hollow, where even on sunny days, it was said to be dark.

It was on this unwelcoming path that a young man found himself sprinting upon one night over 2 centuries ago. He frantically made his way through the dark and cold woods to see his wife, who was in labor. Back in those days, the chances of surviving childbirth were poor, especially in rural locations where often the only ones to aid you were neighbors and friends, who were likely inexperienced with delivering a baby.

As the young man was racing ahead through the woods, he noticed something ahead. It was a figure, and it was approaching him. As he slowed down to assess the situation, he realized he was staring at a radiant young woman, dressed in the moonlight and paler than bone, in a white gown. A sudden realization gripped him as he grew closer. The woman in white was his wife! Almost immediately, he began to panic. As he raced over towards her, about to ask her what she was doing out of bed in a time like this, she vanished.

The young man’s curiosity and concern now turned into terror, and as he raced back home and stumbled in the front door, he was confronted by what he dreaded most, his wife had died in childbirth. The last time he ever saw his wife was that encounter in the hollow.

Ever since then, the area has been known as Ghost Hollow. Ghost Hollow Road itself is nothing like the legend alludes to. Today, there is nothing ghostly about it. It’s a pleasant back road that menders through beautiful countryside and hay fields with grass that undulates under summer breezes. It’s a quiet place, where all you can hear is the gravel crunching underneath your tires.

I was told that the street sign for Ghost Hollow Road was stolen so many times (it may possibly be found in some teenager’s bedroom) that the town of West Haven decided to create a solution, by printing the name of the road on a giant boulder near the intersection. I’d like to see someone try to steal that.

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To all of my amazing fans and supporters, I am truly grateful and humbled by all of the support and donations through out the years that have kept Obscure Vermont up and running.

As you all know I spend countless hours researching, writing, and traveling to produce and sustain this blog. Obscure Vermont is funded entirely on generous donations that you the wonderful viewers and supporters have made. Expenses range from internet fees to host the blog, to investing in research materials, to traveling expenses. Also, donations help keep me current with my photography gear, computer, and computer software so that I can deliver the best quality possible.

If you value, appreciate, and enjoy reading about my adventures please consider making a donation to my new Gofundme account or Paypal. Any donation would not only be greatly appreciated and help keep this blog going, it would also keep me doing what I love. Thank you!

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Mount Abraham; The Protectors Of The Gap And A Plane Wreck

Every story has to start somewhere, and in the case of Mount Abraham, which rises over the eastern edge of Addison County, it has compacted and intertwined layers of history and folklore that make up a layer of bedrock that can’t be studied by geologists.

Mount Abraham is the fifth largest peak in the state of Vermont, rising at a lofty 4,017 feet. It’s crossed by Vermont’s fabled Long Trail, and is the tallest peak in Vermont’s presidential range, a range within the Green Mountains.

At the mountain’s base is the small town of Lincoln, a gateway to the Green Mountain National Forest. From the back roads that mender along the narrow valleys, the mountains form an imposing wall that almost look impenetrable, as the hardwood forests slide into the evergreens as your eye travels up towards the ridge lines. It almost may come as a surprise to some when Lincoln Gap Road becomes steeper and steeper as it switchbacks up sheer ledges and stunted hardwood trees before finally going up and over Lincoln Gap, a steep and wild mountain pass at 2,424 feet – making it the highest gap road in Vermont. The road is narrow and considered so steep that many Vermonters consider it one of the most difficult drives in the state, and for that reason alone, it’s closed in the winter. In the summer, it’s common for you to find the already unnerving road clogged with parked cars and hikers.

The Lincoln Gap Road, from the Lincoln approach.

I love Lincoln Gap, it’s a real beauty. I love all of Vermont’s mountain passes, called gaps or “notches” here. For someone who loves road tripping and discovering as much of Vermont as I can, these clefts in the mountains offer great drives, scenery, and outdoor recreation opportunities. There’s just something so satisfying about driving over a mountain, for some reason. In the winter, the gap is a magnet for adventurous people who like to fly down a mountain on sleds, skis or snowboards – with a 1,000 foot drop achieved in about a mile on the Lincoln Gap Road.

But long before a road ran up over the gap and Vermont was an established state, this land was occupied and settled by another group of people, The Abenaki.

The Abenaki generally settled in the fertile lowlands of the Champlain Valley, where the rivers and lake provided excellent fishing and the rolling hills and their deep forests offered reliable hunting. They generally avoided going up into the mountains, not because of curses, but because they were sacred places, where their god, Gluskabe, lived, which translates interestingly into the title of “The Owner”.

Cuts in the mountains such as Lincoln Gap were used to travel means, routes linking hunting parties with the Mad River Valley to the east and The Champlain Valley to the west. But when the White Europeans came down Lake Champlain and eventually streamed into the valleys and built settlements, the Abenaki were eventually pushed off their land. Some assimilated into the new culture and adopted Christianity as their religion, while others sought refuge in the higher elevations, including places like Lincoln Gap, which were seemingly safe in that impenetrable Green Mountain wall. What I found very interesting was to learn that as late as 1940, Abenaki long house villages could still be found along the Addison County shore of Lake Champlain, before becoming a part of something largely forgotten.

Today, the Abenaki have held on and survived, and can be found living around Vermont, especially in the north west corner near Canada. But some people say that the ghosts of an Abenaki party have remained, skulking behind the trees and outcroppings of Lincoln Gap. Also known as “the protectors of the Gap”, these presences occasionally make their existence known. The smell of burning wood from campfires has sent hikers off the trails to investigate the source of the smell, only to find nothing. Some have reported that the scent of the fire changed directions when the wind changed.  Others shrugged it off as someone burning down in the valley, but did admit to them thinking that the fire sure seemed like it was close by. Other hikers have reported seeing eyes staring at them through the woods and fleeting shadows moving at inhuman speeds along the trails, but never getting too close.  Not much is known about this ghostly hunting party, but they’ve been written about in quite a few publications on Vermont ghosts and folklore. One theory is that they are trying to forever protect the wilderness of Lincoln Gap, one of Vermont’s last wild places.

Twisted Shrapnel and Sweeping Views

Somewhere below the wind swept summit of Mount Abraham lies another interesting part of the mountain’s history – the battered remains of a plane wreck, rotting below scented Spruces.

The story behind this interesting wreckage is rather uncomplicated. The plane is a Cessna 182N model, and it crashed on June 28th, 1973 when a pilot was trying to navigate a cloud bank and instead struck the slopes of Mount Abraham, just below the 4,000 foot mark. The pilot survived the crash. According to local lore, he climbed out of the plane and walked down the mountain. Not much is left of the wreck, apart from crumbled pieces of twisted metal. Most of the cockpit, the controls and the interior have been completely deteriorated. The engine is missing as well, possibly hurled further down the slopes, resting somewhere in deep scraggly forests not treaded in by humans in years. The fuselage may have been the most interesting thing about the wreck – completely carved with various graffiti of countless passersby who have all left their mark here. Thought the wreck might be a little underwhelming, it’s what the wreck isn’t that is the most fascinating. A representation of the ongoing story of man’s battle with nature, and the will to survive.

The mountains of Vermont are scattered with various plane wrecks, most people can recall the most famous one being on Camels Hump, but there are plenty others worth the adventure, all offering stories to tell to someone other than the mountain winds.

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Another interesting sight, the carved walls of Mount Abraham's Battel Shelter, located on the Long Trail just south of the summit.
Another interesting sight, the carved walls of Mount Abraham’s Battel Shelter, located on the Long Trail just south of the summit.

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To all of my amazing fans and supporters, I am truly grateful and humbled by all of the support and donations through out the years that have kept Obscure Vermont up and running.

As you all know I spend countless hours researching, writing, and traveling to produce and sustain this blog. Obscure Vermont is funded entirely on generous donations that you the wonderful viewers and supporters have made. Expenses range from internet fees to host the blog, to investing in research materials, to traveling expenses. Also, donations help keep me current with my photography gear, computer, and computer software so that I can deliver the best quality possible.

If you value, appreciate, and enjoy reading about my adventures please consider making a donation to my new Gofundme account or Paypal. Any donation would not only be greatly appreciated and help keep this blog going, it would also keep me doing what I love. Thank you!

Gofundme: https://www.gofundme.com/b5jp97d4

Donate Button with Credit Cards