Speaker 1: Mel Here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you,
Speaker 2: Jeff Bland, you're back with us. Author, podcaster, storyteller, adventurer,
Speaker 2: explorer of the strange and unusual. He's written more than
Speaker 2: a dozen books that have been published in six languages.
Speaker 2: He's the Emmy nominated host, writer, and producer of the
Speaker 2: New England Legend series on PBS and Amazon Prime, and
Speaker 2: hosts a weekly podcast with that same name. Jeff, Welcome back,
Speaker 2: my friend. Have you Ben?
Speaker 3: I've been great, George, good to be back with you.
Speaker 2: YouTube family good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everybody's great. Man getting older, which happens right You
Speaker 3: traveling a lot, you know, it's nice to be moving
Speaker 3: around again. Yeah. Post COVID, I'm getting around, especially around
Speaker 3: the northeastern US, so it's been great to get out
Speaker 3: there and stretch my legs again.
Speaker 2: How did you get involved in the unusual?
Speaker 3: So where I grew up in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, and
Speaker 3: I think growing up in New England, we just sort
Speaker 3: of have a love for, you know, for history and
Speaker 3: a sense of preservation. But I would be remiss to
Speaker 3: say that that's the town next to Monroe, Connecticut, and
Speaker 3: that's where Ed Lorraine Warren lived. So I knew them
Speaker 3: since I was about thirteen years old, and I'm sure
Speaker 3: that had an influence seeing them give their talks in
Speaker 3: the Fall. And that was back in the eighties, you know,
Speaker 3: that's before the Internet and everything. They were very much
Speaker 3: regional celebrities, and I was just intrigued at the idea
Speaker 3: that you could even make a living looking for ghosts
Speaker 3: and strange things all over And I went to school
Speaker 3: to be a journalist, started that way and loved covering
Speaker 3: these weird stories, and I guess the rest is history.
Speaker 2: Ed and Lorraine they were one of the best as
Speaker 2: they were.
Speaker 3: I mean, what a thing, you know, And I mean
Speaker 3: back then it was just it's so hard for people
Speaker 3: to understand because folks like that have their own TV
Speaker 3: shows today, you know, But back then they were really
Speaker 3: putting their necks out there to say, hey, I believe
Speaker 3: in ghosts, we go looking for them. We think there's
Speaker 3: demons and monsters and all kinds of strangeness out there.
Speaker 3: They were writing books and doing things. There are a
Speaker 3: few others, of course, Hans Holzer and Brad Steigers and
Speaker 3: folks like that. But but but these were my neighbors,
Speaker 3: you know, Lorraine went to our church, and so I
Speaker 3: think that you know, say what you will about what
Speaker 3: they've done, but I mean they were pioneers in a
Speaker 3: lot of ways.
Speaker 2: You mentioned Brad Steiger, he's passed away. Yeah, and in
Speaker 2: Lorraine they've passed away. Are we replacing these incredible UFO
Speaker 2: investigative haunting researchers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course we are. And you know, today, celebrity,
Speaker 3: the power of celebrity can't be understated, right, And I
Speaker 3: know that the folks we see on TV get most
Speaker 3: of the attention, but there's still tons of great people
Speaker 3: out there doing research. They're writing books, they're they're putting
Speaker 3: blogs and podcasts out there. I think they are getting replaced,
Speaker 3: and time will tell too, right. I mean, those folks
Speaker 3: did what they did for their whole adult lives. So
Speaker 3: I think part of it is going to be, you know,
Speaker 3: the test of time, how many people stick with it
Speaker 3: and keep doing the work and keep documenting it and
Speaker 3: being as objective as they can.
Speaker 2: I've got some great topics for you that we're going
Speaker 2: to go through tonight, Jeff, and we'll take calls with
Speaker 2: you next hour. But let's start with some haunted areas.
Speaker 2: The ram Tail Factory in Foster, Rhode Island. Tell us
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 3: This is one of my favorites, because we're going to
Speaker 3: begin at the end in you know today, there's just
Speaker 3: a bunch of stone ruins out there in the woods
Speaker 3: of Foster. You know, you walk by a stream and
Speaker 3: you're going through some trails and you see some old
Speaker 3: colonial stone walls and then some cellar holes. But what
Speaker 3: drew me there was a very boring book called the
Speaker 3: eighteen eighty five Rhode Island Census, and it's lifted with
Speaker 3: all kinds of very short listings. You know, this town
Speaker 3: contained these these three factories, this one had this farm,
Speaker 3: this many cows. But there's one listing that says Ramtail
Speaker 3: Factory and then in parentheses says haunted. That's it, and
Speaker 3: it's become Rhode Island's official haunt. In the census. It's
Speaker 3: the only time you see ghost or haunting or anything.
Speaker 3: And when you hear about the story, you realize why
Speaker 3: this is so compelling. So the Ramtail Factory was a
Speaker 3: water driven factory, a woolen mill that first opened in
Speaker 3: the early in the mid eighteen hundreds, and it was
Speaker 3: sorry I found. It was found in eighteen thirteen by
Speaker 3: four people, but one of them was Peleg Walker and
Speaker 3: William Potter, and these business partners started this mill and
Speaker 3: each day Peleg Walker's job was to ring the work
Speaker 3: bell to get people to work, and they would come
Speaker 3: in and do it. And eventually Pelig Walker got into
Speaker 3: some financial troubles and needed to be bought out, but
Speaker 3: he didn't want to leave his business. But basically his
Speaker 3: partner said, we'll buy you out. You'll have your money,
Speaker 3: but you're gone. You're out of the business. We want
Speaker 3: you out. And so Peleg had the keys to the
Speaker 3: factory and said, you know, the next time you get
Speaker 3: these keys, that will be out of the hands of
Speaker 3: a dead man. And that night was supposed to be
Speaker 3: his last night, and as he locked up the factory,
Speaker 3: he stayed inside and he took his own life. And
Speaker 3: the following morning, well, the bell didn't ring, and eventually
Speaker 3: people get curious, you know what, we're running late, what's
Speaker 3: going on, And then when they finally got inside, they
Speaker 3: found him. Now everyone was sort of spooked working at
Speaker 3: the mill after that. Strange things were happening at one point.
Speaker 3: One of the accounts was that the water wheel was
Speaker 3: running backwards to gravity, you know, was running against the
Speaker 3: stream and so on. But when the factory eventually burned down,
Speaker 3: people would still hear the bell ringing to call you
Speaker 3: to work. Even though the bell was gone, people would
Speaker 3: see a lantern moving through, you know, moving through in
Speaker 3: the night and in the dark. And Pillig's walker, his
Speaker 3: grave epitaph is so ominous. It says, you know, life
Speaker 3: how short, eternity how long? And we believe he's the
Speaker 3: one that's still out there. And even though the factory
Speaker 3: is long gone, there's nothing but woods and some cellar
Speaker 3: holes and some stone walls out there. Today people claim
Speaker 3: to still hear the bell. His grave can still be visited,
Speaker 3: not not too far from where the foundations are, and
Speaker 3: the story endoors and it's been known since eighteen eighty
Speaker 3: five as Rhode Island's official haunt.
Speaker 2: What caused the factory to burn down?
Speaker 3: You know, eventually it's sort of closed up, and when
Speaker 3: it's just left out there in the woods and it's
Speaker 3: you know, wood, you know, the fire was kind of
Speaker 3: unknown and mysterious. But what's interesting is it had the
Speaker 3: haunted reputation. It's you know, right there in the census book,
Speaker 3: and you can see old photos of people that would
Speaker 3: go out there in the early nineteen hundreds and they
Speaker 3: would picnic by the factory ruins, back when there was
Speaker 3: a little more to see. And I think people were
Speaker 3: intrigued even back then, not just that the woods are
Speaker 3: beautiful and the stream is nice, but that the story
Speaker 3: kind of calls to them. So that's the thing, George
Speaker 3: about a haunt. When I tell you, if you go
Speaker 3: to this place, this specific location, and it's haunted, you're
Speaker 3: intrigued enough that you want to go and find out
Speaker 3: for yourself. Right, you go and you say wow, even
Speaker 3: if you say I'm a skeptic, I don't believe. Well,
Speaker 3: but enough of you says but I'll still go. Look
Speaker 3: or maybe you look and you get more than you bargain.
Speaker 2: For Gardner Lake and Shalem, Connecticut.
Speaker 3: This is one of my favorite stories. This is a
Speaker 3: weird one man. And there's literally postcards to back this
Speaker 3: one up, old postcards from the late eighteen hundreds. It's
Speaker 3: the ghost story there starts as you'll hear a phantom
Speaker 3: piano playing, you know at night, especially in the winter,
Speaker 3: you'll just hear this piano noise and have no source
Speaker 3: for it. But the backstory is amazing. So there was
Speaker 3: a wealthy gentleman named Thomas LeCount and he was a
Speaker 3: grocer from Niana, Connecticut, and he had a two and
Speaker 3: a half story home on the south shore of Gardner Lake.
Speaker 3: But he also owned some land on the eastern shore
Speaker 3: of the lake, and he really wanted to move his
Speaker 3: home to the other side of the lake. It was
Speaker 3: done back then, very expensive, very tricky process, as you
Speaker 3: can imagine, to lift a home, get it onto you know,
Speaker 3: sort of some sort of a cart where you can
Speaker 3: move it with horses and so on. But that's when
Speaker 3: they came up with an idea. In the winter of
Speaker 3: eighteen ninety five, it was so cold that the lake
Speaker 3: had frozen more than ten inches thick, and that's when
Speaker 3: an engineer came up with the brilliant idea, We're going
Speaker 3: to just lift this house and we're going to put
Speaker 3: it on sleds and just drag it across the frozen
Speaker 3: lake to the other side to where your property is easy,
Speaker 3: no problem. This will be the easiest house move they've
Speaker 3: ever done. And it was such a cold winter, and
Speaker 3: sure enough, February comes long and they get the house lifted,
Speaker 3: they get it on skids and they start dragging it
Speaker 3: across the ice and it's going well, it's going pretty well.
Speaker 3: They get it maybe, you know, a few hundred feet
Speaker 3: out onto the ice, until they run out a day
Speaker 3: and they have to come back the next day with
Speaker 3: more horses. No problem, you know, this is all going fine.
Speaker 3: The next day they come back and the ice starts
Speaker 3: to crack, and uh, oh, there's a problem. And now
Speaker 3: the house is is breaking down into the ice and sinking.
Speaker 3: What they didn't know, and what nobody knew, is that
Speaker 3: there's there's a dam that controls some of the water.
Speaker 3: And while the process would have gone just fine. The
Speaker 3: dam was was released the night before to let some
Speaker 3: water down further down the stream, it was just enough
Speaker 3: to create create a gap between the ice on the
Speaker 3: lake and the water.
Speaker 2: Below now melted ice the well.
Speaker 3: Once you know, ice floating on water is a lot
Speaker 3: more solid than ice floating on air. So once there
Speaker 3: was a gap there, the house just cracked through and
Speaker 3: started to sink into the ice. And they George. They
Speaker 3: didn't even take you know, the bureaus and the furniture
Speaker 3: and the clothing out of the house. They left it
Speaker 3: all in there. They said, this will be so easy,
Speaker 3: just leave it in. We'll drag it to the other
Speaker 3: side and your house is in place, so then it's
Speaker 3: become a rescue mission. But of course the house had
Speaker 3: a piano in it, and it had a wood stove
Speaker 3: and things like that, things that were just too heavy
Speaker 3: to pull out of this house that just kept sinking
Speaker 3: and sinking, and for the rest of that winter people
Speaker 3: would ice skate around it. There were postcards made of
Speaker 3: this house, picture it going in at like a fifteen
Speaker 3: degree angle. And then of course spring came and the
Speaker 3: house just slowly sunk. And for years you could see
Speaker 3: this house out in the middle of the lake, just
Speaker 3: slowly disintegrating. But the piano was never rescued. And the
Speaker 3: story that endoors is that you can still hear the
Speaker 3: piano playing out on Gardner Lake.
Speaker 2: Who's playing it?
Speaker 3: Well, that's the question, isn't it. But what I love
Speaker 3: about these stories is that you start at the end, right,
Speaker 3: You've got a weird piano playing in the middle of
Speaker 3: the lake in the middle of the night, and it
Speaker 3: begs you to ask the question, well, what happened here?
Speaker 3: You know, what took place? Why would there be a piano?
Speaker 3: And then you go back in time and you see
Speaker 3: these amazing postcards and you see the pictures and you say, oh,
Speaker 3: this was a time where someone was trying to do
Speaker 3: something creative from an engineering point of view, and it
Speaker 3: turned into a disaster.
Speaker 2: Jeff well Land, you're with us as webs side is
Speaker 2: his name linked up at coast tocosdam dot com. Tell
Speaker 2: us about the Mount Washington Hotel in New Hampshire.
Speaker 3: The Mount Washington Hotel is a beautiful, beautiful place. Have
Speaker 3: you ever seen the Stanley Hotel? And so they are twins,
Speaker 3: except the Stanley Hotel is smaller, but they look very similar,
Speaker 3: the you know, big white turn of the century grand hotel.
Speaker 3: And the Mount Washington is right at the base of
Speaker 3: Mount Washington, which is New England's highest peak, in the
Speaker 3: middle of New Hampshire, in the beautiful white mountains of
Speaker 3: New Hampshire. It's gorgeous. When you come up to it,
Speaker 3: you see this sprawling, incredible, you know, white and red hotel,
Speaker 3: and then behind it is just these majestic mountains. It
Speaker 3: is absolutely gorgeous. I was built in nineteen hundred. It
Speaker 3: was a very expensive project built by Joseph Stickney. He
Speaker 3: hired two hundred and fifty Italian artisans for the construction,
Speaker 3: and he followed this old superstition to vary the number
Speaker 3: of steps to the second floor in order to confuse
Speaker 3: the ghosts. So there's two main staircases when you walk
Speaker 3: in today, one by the front desk and one by
Speaker 3: the ballroom, and there's a different number of steps, so
Speaker 3: the rise and run is just a little bit different.
Speaker 3: So you could say they were superstitious right from the
Speaker 3: get go. Now, Stickney had married a younger widow named Carolyn,
Speaker 3: and when Stickney passed away within the first year of
Speaker 3: the hotel being opened, Carolyn inherited everything and she became
Speaker 3: known as the Princess because she eventually married French royalty.
Speaker 3: And she would throw these lavish parties at the Mount Washington.
Speaker 3: She would invite all the fanciest people around who were
Speaker 3: coming to vacation and holiday in that region, and she
Speaker 3: always was last to the party. She used to like
Speaker 3: to look down over the balcony and see how all
Speaker 3: the other women were dressed, so she could make sure
Speaker 3: that she was dressed better than all of them, and
Speaker 3: then she would of course make her grand entrance. She
Speaker 3: would even stick there, stick around there in the winter.
Speaker 3: This is where she was happiest her This was her castle,
Speaker 3: and eventually once she passed away that first winter they
Speaker 3: used to close it up for the winter. Back then,
Speaker 3: that first winter they would say lights on and say, well,
Speaker 3: that's strange, we must have left something on, and they'd
Speaker 3: have to go back and check. But pretty soon they
Speaker 3: realized it's it's absolutely her spirit still floating around there,
Speaker 3: and seeing a woman peek over the balcony became commonplace.
Speaker 3: Her main suite is called the Princess Room that's haunted,
Speaker 3: and people requested months out in order to stay there
Speaker 3: and try to experience something. And when you check into
Speaker 3: the hotel today, there's a painting of her up on
Speaker 3: the wall and a kind of like a faux banister
Speaker 3: that they've put in front of the painting, so she's
Speaker 3: literally looking down on you just as you check in,
Speaker 3: and the stories just endure, you know, with so much
Speaker 3: time that's passed there, there's been so many ghost sightings
Speaker 3: throughout that building. You know, hotels are such transient places.
Speaker 3: Of course, some people go there with no intention to
Speaker 3: check out she was. You know, she's not the only
Speaker 3: ghost there, but she absolutely is the most prominent.
Speaker 2: What about Gloucester, Maine, Massachusetts? What's going on there?
Speaker 3: So Gloucester, Maine, there's a strange story called the Specter
Speaker 3: Leaguers of Gloucester. And you have to put this one
Speaker 3: into some context. This one dates back to July of
Speaker 3: sixteen ninety two. Sixteen ninety two, of course, was the
Speaker 3: same time of the Salem witch Trials, which is right
Speaker 3: next door to Gloucester. We're neighbors. And what people don't
Speaker 3: talk about enough with the Salem Witch Trials. People just
Speaker 3: think of, you know, some Puritans that were just you know,
Speaker 3: spooked and easily fooled and so on. But King William's
Speaker 3: War was raging just to the north in Canada, and
Speaker 3: this is a war between the Native Americans, French, and
Speaker 3: the British, and it's creating a refugee crisis. That's sending
Speaker 3: colonists and as they head south through what is now
Speaker 3: modern day Maine, they're coming to the region of Gloucester
Speaker 3: and the region of Salem. And so you've got refugees
Speaker 3: looking for shelter. You've got you know, Native Americans that
Speaker 3: are that are out there, you know, fighting for their land,
Speaker 3: and you've got preachers in the pulpit saying, you know,
Speaker 3: these these are heathens. They're there words not mine. Of course,
Speaker 3: they're saying, these are in league with the devil. And
Speaker 3: when you hear about a village being wiped out or
Speaker 3: a family being wiped out by by soldiers of Native
Speaker 3: American soldiers, it's not that much of a stretch to
Speaker 3: think that there really is evil out there, and so
Speaker 3: everybody's scared. So the Salem witch trials that that's the
Speaker 3: context for that, but that's also the context for what's
Speaker 3: happening in Gloucester. People are spooked, and it was the
Speaker 3: it was the summer July of sixteen ninety two when
Speaker 3: you have you have strange sightings around Gloucester. Now, at
Speaker 3: first they think they're just seeing French and Native American
Speaker 3: wars outs in town, which is cause for alarm, but
Speaker 3: then those scouts can never be found. Everybody's on high alert,
Speaker 3: you know, they've they've got the garrison armed, they've got
Speaker 3: people coming in, you know, looking for for any sign
Speaker 3: of trouble, and.
Speaker 2: No social media they'll let people know what's going.
Speaker 3: On no radio either, No, nothing right, it's just the
Speaker 3: Coconut Telegraph. It's just word of mouth, one person telling another,
Speaker 3: and so stories start to circulate of you know, of
Speaker 3: problems of happening. You know, things like Ebenezer Babson, who
Speaker 3: has a place there. He's a very well respected person
Speaker 3: and he was coming home one night and he saw
Speaker 3: someone running around his house and he runs in to investigate.
Speaker 3: He believes they're scouts that had broken in, either to
Speaker 3: steal something or get information. Chases the men down, but
Speaker 3: then they vanish. And you could say, okay, that's just
Speaker 3: that's just one example. Maybe you know they just got
Speaker 3: away and gave him the slip. But now everyone's on
Speaker 3: high alert and events like this keep happen. Pretty soon
Speaker 3: you're seeing more and more scouts. Soldiers are shooting at them,
Speaker 3: claiming I hit them. I'm sure I hit them. But
Speaker 3: then you go and there's no one there. And so
Speaker 3: eventually when you've got you know, night after night weeks
Speaker 3: of this of now garrison soldiers on the watch all
Speaker 3: the time saying we're seeing them, we're shooting at them,
Speaker 3: we're chasing them, and you can't find a single one either.
Speaker 3: Everyone's a terrible shot, or there's literally ghosts, literally ghosts
Speaker 3: that are hunting them down and keeping everyone on edge.
Speaker 3: So you've got the Salem Witch Trials, and next door
Speaker 3: you've got the Specter Leaguers of Gloucester that's got everyone
Speaker 3: completely scared all the time.
Speaker 2: Have you been to many of these places, Jeff, I've
Speaker 2: been to all of.
Speaker 3: Them is I've been doing this for so long now,
Speaker 3: And gosh, it was about six or seven years ago
Speaker 3: when I started my Newing the Legends podcast, but I said,
Speaker 3: all right, I'm going to challenge myself. Can I find
Speaker 3: a story every single week and go check these things
Speaker 3: out and start to just sort of chronicle I mean
Speaker 3: the tagline is chronicle every Legend in New England, which,
Speaker 3: let's be honest, if I live to be a thousand,
Speaker 3: I'll never do it. But it's a lofty goal, and
Speaker 3: I think we should set lofty goals. And as I
Speaker 3: started doing this, and as we started to build an audience,
Speaker 3: something sort of amazing happened. The stories became crowdsourced. People
Speaker 3: started telling hey, have you heard about this? Have you
Speaker 3: heard about that? And you start to realize just how
Speaker 3: powerful these stories are. I mean, they all belong to
Speaker 3: a community, you know, and the community identifies with it
Speaker 3: and takes ownership of it and shares that story with
Speaker 3: people that they trust, and it's a really profound and
Speaker 3: powerful thing, and it's a profound connection to our past.
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