Slightly Odd Fitchburg

This post was originally shared as a Facebook and Instagram "DID YOU KNOW" post. I share them and you can get in on the fun by liking my page at  Facebook.com/TheNewSlightlyOddFitchburg  and following me at  Instagram.com/SlightlyOddFitchburg ! Now onto the sad story! DID YOU KNOW that Ruth Blay was the last woman hanged in New Hampshire?   Say hello to Ruth Blay. She was the last woman to be hanged in New Hampshire and all she did was give birth to a stillborn child out of wedlock. There’s a lot going on here, so I’d like to talk in more detail later, but here’s a quick rundown:   Ruth Blay was a teacher and seamstress in 18th-century New Hampshire. She was born on June 10, 1737, and remained unmarried into her 30s. That would turn out to be a very bad thing for her.   She came down with a severe case of being pregnant in late 1767, which was a taboo thing for an unwed woman to do back in olde timey days. She continued to teach and carry on with her life u...

Welcome to this month’s patron exclusive post ! If you’re anything like me, you’ve already learned something new in the title, and there’s plenty more! Portsmouth, New Hampshire History Portsmouth, New Hampshire was first explored in 1603 and found to be home to a natural harbor that would allow big ships to use as well, a port. It was incorporated as a town in 1653 and given the name “Portsmouth”, but not for the reason you think. You see, it wasn’t given that name because it was a port, oh no. It was given that name in honor of the colony’s founder, John Mason. You know, John Mason, Portsmouth, makes sense, right? No? Oh yeah, that doesn’t make any sense. Wait, hold on, here it is! You see, John Mason used to be the captain of the English port of Portsmouth, Hampshire, England! Now it’s all coming together. They named the new town after his old workplace! It also turns out that ports have captains! You really do learn something new every day. Like, just yesterday, I learned that...

  This post was originally shared as a Facebook and Instagram "DID YOU KNOW" post. We share them weekly and you can get in on the fun by liking us at  Facebook.com/TheNewSlightlyOddFitchburg  and following us at  Instagram.com/SlightlyOddFitchburg ! Now onto the odd story! Not the actual photo. It just looks like an ice hole.   Fitch Bits: New Hampshire's Famous Ice Hole! DID YOU KNOW that Wakefield, New Hampshire is home to a famous hole?   Okay, so it was back on January 10, 1977, when a farmer, name o' William McCarthy, looked out over his pond. Most of the body of water seemed normal for a New Hampshire winter. It was frozen so solid that, according to Willie himself, you could drive a tank over it. That was, of course, except for the perfectly circular three-foot hole in the middle of it all!   This was a private pond on a private farm, so there was just no explanation for it. It couldn't even be explained away by blaming it on an ice fisher becau...

This post was originally shared as a Facebook and Instagram "DID YOU KNOW" post. We share them weekly and you can get in on the fun by liking us at  Facebook.com/TheNewSlightlyOddFitchburg  and following us at  Instagram.com/SlightlyOddFitchburg ! Now onto the odd story!   Fitch Bits: Concealed Shoes DID YOU KNOW that your old New England home might have shoes in its walls?   Although it's not unique to New England, there happen to be more instances of it here than anywhere else in the country. It's even more common in New England's prequel: England, England. That's why the phenomenon is most likely an immigrant from the U.K. and Europe.   They're called concealed shoes and there's no single consensus as to why they were put in the walls. It could go all the way back to ritualistic sacrifice on new foundations to protect and bless new homes and public houses. As sacrifice fell out of fashion, the tradition stuck and people used leather shoes (animal sk...

This post was originally shared as a Facebook and Instagram "DID YOU KNOW" post. We share them weekly and you can get in on the fun by liking us at  Facebook.com/TheNewSlightlyOddFitchburg  and following us at  Instagram.com/SlightlyOddFitchburg ! Now onto the odd story! Fitch Bits: The New England Man in Black DID YOU KNOW that New England has its own Men in Black stories? The most famous one happened to a fellier by the name of Dr. Herbert Hopkins in Old Orchard Beach in Maine. He was putting supposed UFO abductees and witnesses under hypnosis and studying their cases. He must have gotten a little to close to some form of truth because a Man in Black showed up at his house on September 11, 1976! He was your typical Man in Black with a black suit, white shirt, and black hat. His skin was pale, his lips were too red, and he lacked any hair; eyebrows and eyelashes included. He knew facts about Hopkins that he had no business knowing, including that he had two coins in his ...

This post was originally shared as a Facebook and Instagram "DID YOU KNOW" post. We share them weekly and you can get in on the fun by liking us at  Facebook.com/TheNewSlightlyOddFitchburg  and following us at  Instagram.com/SlightlyOddFitchburg ! Now onto the odd story! The Lake Winnipesaukee Mystery Stone DID YOU KNOW that there's a mystery stone in New Hampshire? Sometimes known as the Lake Winnipesaukee Mystery Stone, this thing was pulled from six feet of earth, by laborers, digging holes for a fence in 1872. The owner of the property, one Seneca Augustus Ladd immediately caught it and examined it. It's very clearly not a natural formation, but that's pretty much all we know about it. Theories have it being created by anyone from the Inuit to the Celts. Ladd never tried to make money off it, so a hoax seems unlikely. It made its way to the New Hampshire Historical Society in 1927, where it remains to this day. So, was it made by ancient Celts visiting North A...

This post was originally shared as a Facebook and Instagram "DID YOU KNOW" post. We share them weekly and you can get in on the fun by liking us at Facebook.com/TheNewSlightlyOddFitchburg and following us at Instagram.com/SlightlyOddFitchburg ! Now onto the sad story! The Hartford, Vermont Railroad Disaster DID YOU KNOW that Hartford, Vermont is home to one of the country's worst railroad disasters in history? It happened in the winter of 1887 and claimed the lives of 37 passengers. A further 50 people were injured in the accident. Just like a few days ago, Vermont was in the middle of an arctic blast that froze the White River solid,  below the Woodstock bridge in -18 degree cold. The Montreal Express, out of Boston, was over an hour behind schedule. Ordered to make up for lost time, the engineer hit the bridge at a higher than usual speed. The rear passenger car hit a break in the track and that was all it took. It went over the bridge and took two additional cars wit...

"I'm gonna GIT YA!!" Okay, it's a brand new month and this is when I'd normally be sharing a brand new post on the odd and paranormal. In fact, there should have already been a post on personal stories about Route 81 and Rehoboth to read. Well, that's still coming, but the fact is that the entirety of Slightly Odd Fitchburg has COVID right now. We made it three damn years into this pandemic and thought it was going to be a clean getaway. Well, here we are. Most things ache and everything else tastes like copper. It happens, I guess. Anyway, I'm not one who likes to keep people waiting, so here's something I came up with: The Bigfoot/COVID chronicles! If you don't follow Slightly Odd Fitchburg on Facebook then you're missing out! We like to take long hikes in Central Massachusetts and use them as an opportunity to pretend to be Bigfoot hunters! Now, none of this is meant to be taken as real. It's also not meant to be mean spirited in any ...