Posts

Fitch Bits: Haunted Lake, New Hampshire

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Watch the video above or read it in article form below! 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 on to the haunting story! DID YOU KNOW that New Hampshire has a lake so haunted it's actually named Haunted Lake, in Francestown? Okay, first the legends! Two travelers met at the lake and decided to work together. Then, you know how it goes. You start fighting with a coworker, one thing leads to another, and you end up killing each other. Also, the year is 1741. Then there's a story about a feller name o' David Scoby from Ireland. He moved to the lake and supposedly found the remains of one of the guys in 1780, and now their sprirts can't rest. Scoby, at least, is real. He built and ran a gristmill on the lake for many years until the water claimed his life...

The Gravity Hill of Greenfield, Massachusetts

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  Watch the video above or read it in article form below! The Gravity Hill of Greenfield, Massachusetts Okay, so here we are! Halloween is around the corner, the leaves are changing color, Slightly Odd Fitchburg: The Odd and Haunted History of Central Massachusetts is available in both paperback and Kindle , and gravity is pulling cars uphill instead of down! Good stuff! Oh, what’s that last part? Damn. I was hoping you were going to ask about the book I wrote that was published by Weird Darkness Publishing instead. Whatever, that’s fine. It’s not like we put a ton of work into it or that you can find it on Amazon or through WeirdDarkness.com or that it's super fun and guaranteed to make you more attractive or anything. Yeah, let’s talk about the other thing instead. Le Sigh . So, yeah, there’s a hill in Greenfield that makes cars roll uphill when they’re just sitting there in neutral! It’s a whole lot of fun and there’s a video later, but first, let’s talk about the fact...

Fitch Bits: The Six Sailor Hangin'

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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 on to the odd story! DID YOU KNOW that six pirates were all hanged, on the same day in Boston, back in 1717? The whole thing revolves around the Whydah. That was the pirate ship captained by a feller named Black Bellamy. He and his crew of around 110 were transporting a stolen cargo of 20,000 LBS of gold which is, you know, a lot. Anyway, legend has it that Black B. had it bad for a woman named Maria Hallett of Cape Cod. He was supposedly stopping by to get his doubloons polished when a fierce storm rose up and sank the ship, along with its gold and crew. Black Bellamy, along with over 100 of his pirates were swept into the ocean and drowned. How do we know that? Well because the bodies washed up on the shores of...

Fitch Bits: The Danvers Witch Trials

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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 on to the odd story! DID YOU KNOW that the witching parts of the Salem Witch Trials actually took place in Danvers? Yeah, this is kind of like Salem's dirty little secret. Back in the 16 hundos, you had Salem Town and Salem Village. The town part was, well, filled with townspeople and seaports. The village part was where all the farms and such were. It was Salem Village where the girls claimed to be bewitched and where the accused mostly lived and were arrested. Salem Town is where the trials actually took place. About 60 or 70 years after those trials, Salem Village decided that it didn't want to pay taxes that were meant to support the filthy cosmopolitans and fishermen of Salem Town and became its own thin...

Fitch Bits: The Worcester Palladium

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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 haunting story! Fitch Bits: The Worcester Palladium DID YOU KNOW that the Worcester Palladium is haunted AF? Yeah, it's super haunted! It was built in 1928 and was the subject of a Ghost Hunters episode. It's said that you can hear disembodied voices in certain areas of the venue. There are also reports of a glowing orb floating around. It's about the size of a soccer ball and multiple people have seen it! It's very common for a theater space to be haunted but few of them have any actual reasons to be. Not the Palladium, though! It's rumored that several dead bodies were once found in a dressing room and that pretty much guarantees some angry ghosts! Anyway, this DYK is going to be a little light on ...

The Redheaded Hitchhiker and other Route 44 Attractions

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Watch the video above or read it in article form, below! Okay, so this post has been a long time coming. I was originally supposed to post it back in October as part of the Atlas of the Odd series. The whole concept was to give you haunted places that you could actually visit during the Halloween season, but, needless to say, that didn’t happen. I ended up coming down with COVID and that knocked me out for a month and a half. Then I came out on the other side of that just in time for the holiday season. Then I was just lazy. Anyway, here we are again in a new year and it’s finally time to visit Route 44 in Rehoboth! This is a story that you legally have to talk about if you write about ghosts and stuff. It’s pretty much been done to death, but hopefully I can give you some new information about it, or at least make it entertaining. Let’s just say that I want this post to get a big thumb up, and not just from a hitchhiking ghost! Get it? Wow, we’re off to a terrible start. Okay, let’...

Fitch Bits: New Hampshire's Famous Ice Hole

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  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...