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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on

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Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and We're back with Peter Muse. Author with

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Speaker 1: degrees in anthropology from Bates College and Brandeis University, has

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Speaker 1: been exploring New England legends, folklore and weird traditions for

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Speaker 1: twenty years. He's been blogging at the New England Folklore

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Speaker 1: since two thousand and eight. He's the author of Legends

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Speaker 1: and Lore of the North Shore. Another book is called

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Speaker 1: of Course. His work appeared in Sam Baltras's thirteen Most

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Speaker 1: Haunted Crime Scenes. Beyond Boston. Peter has appears as a

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Speaker 1: guest expert on the Travel Channel's Mysteries at the Museum,

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Speaker 1: which is in Warlocks of Massachusetts, another one of his works. Peter,

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Speaker 1: welcome to the program, Excited to be here and happy

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Speaker 1: Thanksgiving you too, my friend. And you're living out there

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Speaker 1: in the Boston area, I take it, I am. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I'm just outside Boston. I'm like three hundred feet from

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Speaker 1: the Boston border. I guess, so pretty close to the city.

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Speaker 1: My mother was born in Fitchburg, okay Yo. Yeah, we're

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Speaker 1: out out west yep absolutely and Worcester and all that.

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Speaker 1: They used to go out there as a kid every summer.

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Speaker 1: It's a great area. It's gorgeous. Yeah, it's we've had

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Speaker 1: a really like great fall here. Foliage wise, it was

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Speaker 1: kind of late and then it was really vivid for

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Speaker 1: two or three weeks and now finally all the leaves

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Speaker 1: are finally gone. So it's we're heading into the winter

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Speaker 1: vibe here I go, it is in winter and on

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Speaker 1: the New England area is winter for sure. Yeah, how

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Speaker 1: did you get involved in all these weird things? So

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Speaker 1: we're going to talk about tonight. Well, you know, I

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Speaker 1: guess when I was a kid, I was one of

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Speaker 1: those kids who was always really interested in mythology, in

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Speaker 1: folklore and things like that. So my parents, you know,

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Speaker 1: always had a lot of books in the house. So

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Speaker 1: we had books on Greek mythology, Norse mythology, Roman mythology,

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Speaker 1: all of that sort of stuff, and I really absorbed that.

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Speaker 1: I can remember when I was a kid, like having

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Speaker 1: a friend come over and ad dressed up on my

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Speaker 1: Star Trek actions like college at the same time, I

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Speaker 1: was a kid in the nineteen seventies and as you

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Speaker 1: probably know, like that was a time when a lot

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Speaker 1: of paranormal and sort of a cult each became popular

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Speaker 1: in the mass media, and so and I had an

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Speaker 1: older brother who was really into things like UFOs and Bigfoot,

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Speaker 1: so we just kind of I kind of absorbed it

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Speaker 1: that way. Shows about Bigfoot, UFOs, things like in Search

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Speaker 1: of shows about the Bermuda Triangle. All that was kind

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Speaker 1: of in the atmosphere at the time. So I kind

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Speaker 1: of had these two streams in my head. Had like

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Speaker 1: the folklore and the mythology. Then I had sort of

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Speaker 1: the paranormal and sort of the occult that was in

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Speaker 1: the pop culture at the time, and so both of

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Speaker 1: those kind of coexisted, you know. I went to college,

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Speaker 1: got a couple of degrees in anthropology, studied like world

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Speaker 1: folklore or world religions, mythologies, things like that, and then

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Speaker 1: really when I got out of college, I realized I

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Speaker 1: didn't know that much about New England, like the place

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Speaker 1: I lived my whole life, Like I didn't know much

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Speaker 1: about the folklore and the legends of the areas. So

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Speaker 1: it starts to research, and that's I'm still researching, Like

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Speaker 1: it's been a good twenty years and I have not

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Speaker 1: come to the end of what there is to learn

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Speaker 1: about the folklore and well it's endless out that way.

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Speaker 1: I mean, there's so much that we're going to talk

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Speaker 1: about tonight. I'm glad we're on for a couple hours,

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Speaker 1: but we'll also squeeze in some phone calls with you.

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Speaker 1: This being, of course, the EVA Thanksgiving Thanksgiving morning now

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Speaker 1: in some areas of our time zones. Let's talk a

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Speaker 1: little bit about tradition, Peter and Thanksgiving. You've said that

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Speaker 1: people used to dress up in costumes and go begging

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Speaker 1: for food and candy at Thanksgiving, not Halloween. How did

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Speaker 1: that all happen? This is true? This is true. Well,

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Speaker 1: New England was founded by Puritans, right, Puritans who came

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Speaker 1: over here from England, and they did not celebrate most

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Speaker 1: holidays that we celebrate today. So they didn't celebrate Christmas

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Speaker 1: because they didn't think there was any biblical basis for Christmas.

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Speaker 1: They didn't celebrate Halloween. That would have been viewed as

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Speaker 1: a very sort of a Satanic holiday to them. They

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Speaker 1: didn't really celebrate a lot of holidays, but they did

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Speaker 1: celebrate Thanksgiving. So for the Puritans, often Thanksgiving was almost

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Speaker 1: a substitute for Christmas. Sometimes it would be in November.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes it would even be you know, well into December.

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Speaker 1: There have been records of Thanksgiving being declared like December

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Speaker 1: twenty second, because it was not set on a sixth

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Speaker 1: state in the past. It was shift around and so

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Speaker 1: along with Thanksgiving you think of like in England at

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Speaker 1: Christmas time people would go out caroling, and caroling, you know,

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Speaker 1: in England was very different than caroling is now. It

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Speaker 1: was sort of like people from the lower classes and

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Speaker 1: young adults would dress up in costume and go to

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Speaker 1: door to door, often drunk, and they'd be begging for

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Speaker 1: food and alcohol and things like that. So that tradition,

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Speaker 1: which in England were there attashed to Christmas, came over

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Speaker 1: here but was attached to Planksgiving because there was no

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Speaker 1: Christmas year. And so you see records from the night

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Speaker 1: teenth century of you know, working class folks going door

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Speaker 1: to door to their neighbors' houses begging for food, which

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Speaker 1: they would you know, they would used to have their

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Speaker 1: own thanks getting feased. But also children of all social

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Speaker 1: classes and all social groups would dress up sometimes disguise

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Speaker 1: themselves as beggars and things like that. You go door

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Speaker 1: to door begging for sugar, begging for apples, begging for nuts,

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Speaker 1: all this sort of stuff. So this is sort of

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Speaker 1: like a precursor to trick or treating because there was

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Speaker 1: no trick or treating at the time. Interestingly, I mean

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Speaker 1: this is sound up and down different areas of the

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Speaker 1: East Coast, not just in New England, but it continued

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Speaker 1: in New York City until the nineteen fifties in some neighborhoods.

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Speaker 1: And if you look online you can actually see photos

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Speaker 1: of kids in the nineteen fifties dressed up in these

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Speaker 1: sort of beggar costumes. Why did it, Wayne Peter, because

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Speaker 1: of Halloween taking over? Probably Halloween took the place. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because that suddenly became the official time to trick or treats.

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Speaker 1: They moved to that holiday instead once that holiday became

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Speaker 1: popular in the late nineteenth century early twentieth Tree you

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Speaker 1: had mentioned the Pilgrims. Of course they landed at Plymouth Rock.

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Speaker 1: It is a very old old town. What's happening now

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Speaker 1: in that region now and then? It has had some

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Speaker 1: strange things in the hauntings and things like that, hasn't it. Oh? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean Plymouth, like you said, an old town. Sixteen

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Speaker 1: twenty is when it was founded. So that's you know,

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Speaker 1: the good four hundred years of that settlement there. So,

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Speaker 1: in addition to the all the folklore about the Pilgrims,

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Speaker 1: it's just has a lot of folklore about witchcraft, vampireism,

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Speaker 1: ghost stories, things like that. I was just reading about

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Speaker 1: a ghost account from seventeen, let's say, seventeen thirty four.

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Speaker 1: This wealthy sea captain named Thompson Phillips built a large

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Speaker 1: mansion in Plymouth up on a hill there, and he

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Speaker 1: married the daughter of a well known minister in Plymouth. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: the sea captain Thompson's ups he died at his seat.

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Speaker 1: He was swept overboard by a big way that he

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Speaker 1: was filling to Jamaica as to do you know trade.

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Speaker 1: And then his wife died shortly thereafter from smallpox. And

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Speaker 1: so the house, this big mansion he built, was left

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Speaker 1: to the wife's father, this minister named Josiah Cotton. And

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Speaker 1: so Josiah Cotton was like, I don't know what to

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Speaker 1: do with this. He tried to sell up. The economy

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Speaker 1: was bad. He couldn't sell the mansion, so he decides

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Speaker 1: to rent it out. So he rented it out to

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Speaker 1: probably like five or six different people. Was a big,

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Speaker 1: big building, and these people kind of would set up

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Speaker 1: in different parts of the building. Some of them are

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Speaker 1: working as carpenters inside of the building and things like that,

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Speaker 1: and so they were working there for a while when

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Speaker 1: they started to complain that they were hearing strange noises

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Speaker 1: in the building. And some people said the noises sounded

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Speaker 1: like the clones of a dying man. And they would

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Speaker 1: hear those noises coming from the walls. They'd hear the

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Speaker 1: noises coming from the closet, and of course, on they

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Speaker 1: open the closets, there was nobody inside the closet. They

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Speaker 1: would hear noises. It sounds like a cane, like someone

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Speaker 1: pounding a cane on the wall to night, but there

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Speaker 1: was of course no one inside. So this is sort

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Speaker 1: of familiar stuff, right. People still experience these types of things.

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Speaker 1: Doors would open and close on their own, all this

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Speaker 1: sort of stuff. And also some of their neighbors who

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Speaker 1: live next to this mansion would see strange lights in

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Speaker 1: the windows at night, Like there's a there's a record

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Speaker 1: of a neighbor waking up in the middle of the

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Speaker 1: night and she sees a strange light moving around the attic.

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Speaker 1: It's a blue light, which is kind of an odd color.

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Speaker 1: She sees this blue light moving around the attic for

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Speaker 1: like half an hour or more. So the next morning

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Speaker 1: she goes over with the mansion and ask one of

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Speaker 1: the people there, says, oh, you know, with someone up

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Speaker 1: in the attic last night with a candle. And they're like, oh,

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Speaker 1: nobody was awake last night at all. We don't know

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Speaker 1: what you're talking about. And so this house, this mansion,

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Speaker 1: gets a reputation for being haunted, and large crowds of

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Speaker 1: people start to gather outside of the house at night

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Speaker 1: to try to see the lights or hear the groans

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Speaker 1: or things like that, and the tenants all leaves, they

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Speaker 1: all move out. They say, we can't live in this

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Speaker 1: haunted house anymore. Interestingly, the reverend to own the house

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Speaker 1: is man named Josiah Cotton. He thought the tenants were

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Speaker 1: lying because they wanted to break their lease, and so

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Speaker 1: he took them to court to try to get him

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Speaker 1: to stop saying the house was haunted because he couldn't

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Speaker 1: rent it anymore because people were afraid to live in

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Speaker 1: the haunts at the court who would blame him right

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Speaker 1: right exactly, He took them to court for slander. So

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Speaker 1: he took them to court first for like a what

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Speaker 1: they called the inferior court, which is the low level

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Speaker 1: court in the seventeen thirty four, and they the tenants

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Speaker 1: were found innocent, the people on the church, so no,

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Speaker 1: we believe the tenants. We believe the house is haunted.

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Speaker 1: So the minute was like ah, So they moved it

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Speaker 1: up to the superior court. They appealed it, and at

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Speaker 1: that court also the court found the tenants innocent of slander.

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Speaker 1: They said, yeah, we believe and we think this house

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Speaker 1: is haunted. So finally the reverend just moved into the

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Speaker 1: house himself with his family and they lived there for

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Speaker 1: like five years and they reported no paranormal activity at all,

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Speaker 1: and the house is still existing because I don't think

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Speaker 1: it has a reputation as being haunted these days, but

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Speaker 1: it was haunted supposedly in this seventeen thirties. So I mean,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of stories like that. From Plymouth eighteen hundreds.

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Speaker 1: There was a vampire story out there, right, There was

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Speaker 1: a vampire story there, which is really interesting. I don't

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Speaker 1: know if you've read a book by a man named

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Speaker 1: Michael Bell. He's a folklorist from Rhode Island. He wrote

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Speaker 1: a book called Food for the dead. Then New England

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Speaker 1: vampire is called food for the dead by Michael Bell.

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Speaker 1: He's still alive, He is still alive, yes, yes. And

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Speaker 1: in the seventeen hundred and eighteen hundreds there was a

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Speaker 1: lot of tuberculosis in New England, which is as we

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Speaker 1: know now of bacterial disease, but at the time people

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Speaker 1: were not aware of what caused tuberculosis. So in tuberculosis,

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Speaker 1: it's transmitted often you know, in small, closed spaces, so

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Speaker 1: it will go through families, right, So if you know,

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Speaker 1: one son gets tuberculosis, then maybe the father gets tuberculosis

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Speaker 1: and the mother gets tuberculosis, etcetera. And in the seventeen

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Speaker 1: hundred and eighteen hundreds there was a belief in Parson,

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Speaker 1: New England that if somebody died from tuberculosis, the first

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Speaker 1: person dies of tuberculosis and then they're buried and then

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Speaker 1: you know, another one of their relatives starts to get tuberculosis.

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Speaker 1: There was this idea that the first person who died

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Speaker 1: from the disease was feeding on their family members and

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Speaker 1: from the grave somehow like draining their life force. And

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Speaker 1: so there were a few ways to kind of remedy

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Speaker 1: this situation, and the most gruesome one is that you

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Speaker 1: were supposed to dig up the body of the person,

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Speaker 1: the first person who would died from tuberculosis in the family,

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Speaker 1: and if they kind of looked like their corpse was undecayed,

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Speaker 1: like it was you know, fresh and rosy cheeks and

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Speaker 1: all this stuff, well that was a clear sign that

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Speaker 1: they were indeed feeding on their family's life force. And

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Speaker 1: then this is the gross car You would cut out

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Speaker 1: their liver and their lungs, burn them to ashes, and

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Speaker 1: then the sick people in the family were supposed to

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Speaker 1: either eat or drink those ashes supposed to kind of

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Speaker 1: cure the tuberculosis. I don't think it had a great

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Speaker 1: success rate, to be honest, but they had no other

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Speaker 1: medical options at the time. The other option, which was

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Speaker 1: less gruesome, is that you know, you unouted the body

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Speaker 1: of this tuberculosis vampire basically, and it's you know, fresh face,

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Speaker 1: and okay, clearly this vampire is feeding on the family.

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Speaker 1: Then you just have to turn the vampire face down.

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Speaker 1: You don't have to cut out as long as the liver.

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Speaker 1: You just turn it face down so it's facing the

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Speaker 1: earth rather than facing up. So apparently like directing its

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Speaker 1: attention downward prevents it from feeding on the family members.

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Speaker 1: So in eighteen oh seven, there was supposedly a case

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Speaker 1: in Plymouth, Massachusetts where the large family of like supposed

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Speaker 1: to be like some like fourteen children and plus a

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Speaker 1: mother and a father, and tuberculosis was just like going

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Speaker 1: through this apt yeah, going through the family like crazy.

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Speaker 1: And so it was down to like one son was

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Speaker 1: left and the mother, and so their neighbors are like,

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Speaker 1: you know, we have to do something about this. We

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Speaker 1: have to help you out. And so they dug up

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Speaker 1: the body of one of the people who died earlier

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Speaker 1: that they assumed was the vampire, and they saw that

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Speaker 1: she was, you know, had you know, rosy cheeks and

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Speaker 1: looked like she was asleep and not dead, and so

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Speaker 1: they assumed, okay, she is the vampire, and so they

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Speaker 1: flipped her body over face down so she wouldn't feed

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Speaker 1: on her family anymore. It didn't work there, I mean,

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Speaker 1: they documented that it didn't work. Supposedly, just seeing his

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Speaker 1: sister's dead body was like too much of a shock

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Speaker 1: for the one surviving son, so he like died a

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Speaker 1: week later, and then the mother just lived for one

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Speaker 1: more year before she passed away. But interestingly, that appeared

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Speaker 1: in a newspaper in eighteen twenty two. Someone wrote in

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Speaker 1: to say, I've seen this in Plymouth, Massachusetts. So primitive

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Speaker 1: and backwards up there in Massachusetts. It was like a

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Speaker 1: Philadelphia newspaper. After the break, Peter, I want to talk

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Speaker 1: about your book, which is in Warlocks in Massachusetts. But

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Speaker 1: there are a lot of other things that are tied

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Speaker 1: into Thanksgiving, like where did the breaking of the wishbone

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Speaker 1: for luck come about? That's yeah, that's a good one supposedly,

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Speaker 1: and you know, take it with a grain of salt.

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Speaker 1: I guess some people have dated this all the way

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Speaker 1: back to the ancient Etruscans, who were the people who

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Speaker 1: lived in Italy before the Romans. So that goes way back,

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Speaker 1: way back, right like before I don't know BC or

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Speaker 1: something like that. The Etruscans, the Greeks, the Romans, all

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Speaker 1: the people kind of in that part of the Mediterranean

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Speaker 1: put a lot of importance into birds, right, like particularly

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Speaker 1: for fortune telling, like you'd open up the entrails of

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Speaker 1: a bird to kind of read the future. With the

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Speaker 1: flight of birds in the sky could help you understand

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Speaker 1: what might be happening to you in the you know,

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Speaker 1: in the next week or so and so so. According

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Speaker 1: to some folklorist, the wishbone, which which was called the ferculo,

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Speaker 1: which means the little fork because of its shape, that

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Speaker 1: bone had particular power in birds. Perhaps that was some

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Speaker 1: of the power that you know was using the fortune

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Speaker 1: telling with birds. This is a little bone called the ferculo,

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Speaker 1: and so you know, having a fercula a wishbone was

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Speaker 1: considered a lucky thing, like this is a luckybone to have.

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Speaker 1: And so that supposedly the wishbone belief dates back to

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Speaker 1: the ancient Etruscans. And then as you move up to

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Speaker 1: I think the seventeen hundreds in England is where they

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Speaker 1: first find like breaking the wishbone, where people are kind

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Speaker 1: of fighting over who gets the locked right, who gets

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Speaker 1: the power of this magic bird bone. That dates back

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Speaker 1: to at least the seventeen hundred in England. So whoever

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Speaker 1: you know gets the biggest part of the bird bone

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Speaker 1: is the person who gets the luck from that magic bone.

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Speaker 1: And didn't they eat goose more than turkey in those days?

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Speaker 1: They would have, right, if you are like in England,

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Speaker 1: it would have been goose more than turkey. I remember

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Speaker 1: that from a Christmas, Carol, he went to the store

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Speaker 1: to get goose for Christmas, remember, right exactly? I mean here,

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Speaker 1: I mean like New England, it was more turkey, but

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Speaker 1: any they all have the same bone. So and that

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Speaker 1: bone though folklore about the fercula is not specifically about turkeys.

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Speaker 1: It's like any bird that has that breast bone, that

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Speaker 1: kind of forked bone will do. So you can do

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Speaker 1: it with a chicken, I guess, or a squab, whatever

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Speaker 1: you're eating. Does it work? I don't know. I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I'm a vegetarian myself, so I haven't done it in

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Speaker 1: a while. So if you do it this year'll let

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Speaker 1: me know how it goes for you. Pie cross and

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Speaker 1: apple peels or some kind of love magic? What were they? Oh? Sure, sure,

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Speaker 1: sure so um. There was a lot of folk magic

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Speaker 1: in the past, right, I mean there's still folk magic

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Speaker 1: around now. People recar out cards or experiment crystals and

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Speaker 1: things like that. But you know, in the nineteenth century

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Speaker 1: or earlier, people just didn't have all those material objects

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Speaker 1: the way we have them now, and so often you

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Speaker 1: would just do the folk magic with whatever you had

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Speaker 1: on hand. And so a lot of the magic was

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Speaker 1: about love and figuring out who you would marry. And so,

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Speaker 1: for instance, if you are peeling an apple, like to

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Speaker 1: make a pie, ideally you should peel the apple so

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Speaker 1: all the peel comes up in one long piece, and

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Speaker 1: then you're supposed to throw the apple peel over your

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Speaker 1: shoulder onto the floor. When you turn around and look

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Speaker 1: at the shape of that apple peel, it's supposed to

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Speaker 1: tell you it should form the first letter of the

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Speaker 1: person that you're going to marry, if you're an unmarried person.

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Speaker 1: So I haven't tried it myself, but that's another one

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Speaker 1: of these old folk stories. Also, there's a slightly spook

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Speaker 1: year one um that if a young woman wants to

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Speaker 1: figure out who she's going to marry, she should take

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Speaker 1: an apple and a candle, and at midnight she should

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Speaker 1: stand in front of a mirror and eat the apple.

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Speaker 1: And there's like a little chance she says something like, um,

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Speaker 1: whoever wants to marry me, come and share this apple

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Speaker 1: with me, or something like that, this apple staring into

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Speaker 1: the mirror, and then she's supposed to see in the

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Speaker 1: mirror the person who is going to marry her. That's weird,

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Speaker 1: a little Adam and Eve almost it sounds like you're right. Yeah, definitely. Also,

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Speaker 1: it's got it's a little spooky, right, Staring into mirrors

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Speaker 1: at midnight is not like the most comforting thing. Oh wait,

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Speaker 1: no exactly. Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every

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Speaker 1: weeknight at one am Eastern, and go to Coast to

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Speaker 1: Coast am dot com for more