Slightly Odd Fitchburg

  Watch the video above or read it in article form, below! Fitch Bits: The Gloucester Sea Serpent DID YOU KNOW that Gloucester, Massachusetts has its own sea serpent cryptid? The waters around Gloucester and Cape Ann are said to be home to a 60 foot long, serpent-like creature with the head of a turtle! These sightings have been going on for many years, with the first occurring in the 17 th century. In 1638, just 18 years after the pilgrims landed in Plymouth rock, a feller name o’ John Josselyn made the earliest sighting. If you don’t know who that is, well, you’re not alone, but he was well-known in his time. He was a traveler to New England, and he wrote about what he saw and heard “with credulity.” Then there were a few hundred years’ worth of additional sightings, with the creature’s highest activity being recorded in the years between 1817 and 1819. These sightings were reported by fishermen and sailors with the descriptions always being pretty much the same. Sometimes t

  Fitch Bits: The Last Salem Witch Trial DID YOU KNOW that the last Salem witch trial took place in 1878? "Witchonthefloorsayswhat?"   Yeah, so most people think the Salem Witch trials ended in 1693 after 19 women and one man were executed but think again! Just because one kind of crazy gets shut down doesn’t mean another one doesn’t take its place. So, it all started in May when a woman named Lucretia L. S. Brown decided to accuse a feller name o’ Daniel H. Spofford of “attempting to harm her through his ‘mesmeric’ mental powers.” That kind of sounds like he was trying to seduce her, but that’s not the case. You see, both people were Christian Scientists and that’s where most of these shenanigans started. "Yes, my name is Lucretia. You got a problem with that?" Christian Science was founded by a hot little minx named Mary Baker Eddy. She also wrote The Christian Science Monitor, Christian Science Sentinel, The Christian Science Journal and, well, you get the pictur

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 Cap

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

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’s go! The Redheaded Hitchhiker and other Route 44 Attract

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: Boston's First Recorded UFO DID YOU KNOW that the first recorded (by the Western world) UFO sighting in the Americas happened in what would become Boston?   It happened all the way back in 1639 when, on March 1st, John Winthrop (yes, of the Winthrop Winthrops) wrote: "earlier in the year James Everell, 'a sober, discreet man,' and two others had been rowing a boat in the Muddy River, which flowed through swampland and emptied into a tidal basin in the Charles River, when they saw a great light in the night sky. When it stood still, it flamed up, and was about three yards square,” the governor reported, “when it ran, it was contracted into the figure of a swine.”   That's not

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 Angry Old Ghost of The Old Powder House DID YOU KNOW that The Old Powder House in Somerville, MA. is haunted by a very angry ghost? The building was constructed as a windmill around 1703 for the Mallet family farm. It was subsequently sold to Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1747, and turned into a powder magazine. That's where it got its name and it actually featured somewhat heavily in the Revolution. It was seized by the British because it held gunpowder and munitions for the colonies. One thing led to another and there was a battle fought over it. That's later than our story, though. Back when it was still a windmill, it was the scene of a grisly murder! At least that's the fo

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 damned story! Fitch Bits: Dudleytown - New England's Village of the Damned! DID YOU KNOW that Dudleytown, Connecticut might just be the real Village of the Damned? Despite its name, Dudleytown was never an actual town. It was just a part of Cornwall, Connecticut that was settled in the early 1740s by Thomas Griffis, followed by Gideon Dudley and, by 1753, Barzillai Dudley and Abiel Dudley; Martin Dudley joined them a few years later. More families came afterward and it turned into its own settlement. It's also in a valley known as Dark Forest Entry, so... you know. Things were never going to work out for it. Anyway, the legend goes that the founders of Dudleytown were descended from Edmund Dudley, an English nob

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! Well, the weather is certainly changing and it makes me miss walking around Boston Common and being assaulted by entitled squirrels looking for a handout. As such: DID YOU KNOW that Boylston Station is haunted? Yeah, so not only is it the very first subway station in the United States, it's also the location of a mass burial site! Workers uncovered between 900 and 1,100 bodies when they dug out the tunnel, and they were all British soldiers! Most people don't realize the entire Common was a British encampment during the war. The only good Redcoat is a dead Redcoat and they all had to get buried somewhere! Early trolley drivers used to report seeing apparitions of men in red coats in the tunnels around