My friends and I were all sitting at a rustic
old table, drinking Guinness, and listening to the band that was playing at the
Charlemont Inn’s restaurant stage. The Inn was located in Charlemont, Mass., a
quaint little town of just around 1,000+ residents or so. The Inn was built in
1787, and had allegedly housed some distinguished guests like Mark Twain and
President Calvin Coolidge. The place was packed that night, not only because of
the good food and music, but also because many tourists stayed at the inn to
recharge from a day of hiking, biking, and sightseeing along the Mohawk trail.
My friends and I, well, we were doing a different, more unusual type of sight
seeing…
According to the stories “the inn is also host
to as many as six spirits, including a revolutionary war soldier, a past
innkeeper, and a young woman aged 16 or 17 called Elizabeth (though what her
name really was is unknown). Elizabeth slams doors, stomps on the stairs and
down the hallways, and takes small personal items then returns them to a
different place. Staff has seen items such as potato chips and coffee cups
launched across the kitchen.”
We were ghost hunting.
So, I want to get this out of the way, I am a
staunch skeptic when it comes to stories or personal experiences of the supernatural.
I think that most stories of apparitions in old buildings are clever marketing
ploys to scare up interest and revenue. But, when my good friend Chris
suggested the idea of a weekend road trip inspired by the book “Weird Massachusetts: Your Travel Guide to
Massachusetts' Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets” I was intrigued (and also in my early 20s
with nothing else going on in my life). Though skeptical we would encounter
anything, I figured that if I was ever going to have a brush with the
supernatural, it might as well be with a poltergeist that likes to throw food
at me.
The “Weird” travel series of books is a great
way to learn about local curiosities and legends, especially with Halloween
just around the corner. We toured the Hoosac Tunnel in North Adams which “is a
railway that burrows almost five miles through the Hoosac Mountain Range in
western Massachusetts
from the towns of North Adams
on its west side, to Florida, Massachusetts to the east. Construction began on
this large project in 1851 and finished in 1875. Over those 24 years, around
200 men died, giving it the nickname, ‘The Bloody Pit.’” Perhaps you want an
excursion that's a little less grim? We swung through Leominster to check out
the weirdly tiny replica of America’s first conservationist, John Chapman, AKA,
Johnny Appleseed (conveniently found on Johnny Appleseed Lane). What weird road
trip would be complete without a visit to the Bridgewater Triangle, New
England’s own take on the Bermuda triangle, which houses stories of Indigious
curses, UFO sightings, Bigfoot encounters, and so much more. Want a truly weird and surreal experience
though? Check out Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art,(Mass MoCA) in North
Adams, which offered a level of weird I will never be able to truly comprehend.
Why stop with Massachusetts though? A few
years later, Chris invited me to travel with him and another friend of ours to
Arizona. Now you’re probably starting to understand how my friend’s mind
operates; of course he booked our hotel in Arizon’s hotbed of UFO sightings,
Sedona. The one book we brought with us? Why, “Weird Arizona,”
of course! One of the most interesting excursions on our trip was to the “Petrified Forest” which
is, in fact, a national park. The Petrified Forest is known for its fossils,
especially fallen trees that lived in the Late Triassic Epoch, about 225 million
years ago. The fossils and the park are really a sight to behold and well worth
the trip out to see them if you’re ever in Arizona, however, don’t try to take
any home with you, because legend has it that the fossils are cursed. The Weird
U.S. website states that one visitor described a piece of petrified wood he had
taken more than 10 years earlier. "It was a great challenge sneaking it
out of the park," he wrote. "Since that time, though, nothing in my
life has gone right." Curse, or crushing guilty conscious? I will let you
decide.
Our “Weird” book inspired road trips were a
blast, and we learned a lot, too. No, I never got to have a food fight with
Elizabeth’s ghost or get abducted by extraterrestrials, maybe next adventure.
Perhaps you will have better luck on your weird road trips, and if you do, be
sure to let me know!
Ready to embark on your own journey, or learn
more about local legends? Here are some other books to help you along,
-Weird New England / by Joseph Citro
-Ghosts of Boston : haunts of the hub / by Sam
Baltrusis
-Massachusetts book of the dead : graveyard
legends and lore / by Roxie J. Zwicker
-Spooky New England : tales of hauntings,
strange happenings, and other local lore / retold by S.E. Schlosser
