Halloween Treats: A Big Cat, Monsters in Leominster, and More Ghost Chronicles

It's hard to believe Halloween is only three days away. Here are a few treats to get you through the next few days that I've found in the media. 

ANOTHER BIG FELINE IN BROOKLINE

A few weeks ago I posted about an alleged mountain lion sighting in an urban section of Brookline, Massachusetts. I didn't really know what to make of it, but now I wonder if there really is some large cat roaming around town. On October 5, someone called the Brookline Police to report a bobcat on Shaw Road. Here is the item from the October 11 issue of The Brookline Tab:

Bobcat on Shaw Road: At 10:51 a.m., a caller reported seeing a bobcat cross the road and said the animal was "much, much larger than a domestic animal." The caller thought the area should be checked. 

Shaw Road is several miles from the location of the first sighting, and is also in an area with more open space (cemeteries, parks, and woods). While the first sighting happened at night, this second sighting happened in broad daylight. Bobcats can live in suburban areas so maybe one is indeed living in Brookline?

MONSTERS AND ALIENS IN LEOMINSTER

The Boston Herald ran an article about paranormal activity in Leominster, Massachusetts. The October 21 article titled "Talk of UFOs, ghosts turns Massachusetts City into 'Leomonster'" focuses mainly on Leominster resident Ronny LeBlanc who in 2016 wrote a book about his hometown called Monsterland. LeBlanc collected hundreds of stories for his book, so it sounds like something I should add to my holiday wish list. Here is an interesting quote from the Herald piece:

LeBlanc took the Herald to all the hot spots around Leominster, like St. Leo’s cemetery on Lancaster Street where in the 1960s, a couple witnessed a flying saucer emerge from fog, prompting them to call the police. The man who saw the saucer claimed his hand and body was frozen upon pointing to the saucer, only to be released when it flew away. 

Leominster State Forest, another spot mentioned in LeBlanc’s book, has yielded several reports of Bigfoot prints and Sasquatch sightings. 

LeBlanc said he isn’t completely sure why these encounters continue to happen in Leominster, but “it might be something that we don’t want to know.”

Another Leominster resident, Susan Spuhler, had this to say: “There are certain energetic lines that run around the earth. And Leominster, from what I’ve studied over time, has a certain energetic quality to it,” she said. 

Photo from Boston Herald. 

I applaud anyone who investigates the strange stories and folklore of their hometowns. Books like Monsterland are valuable records of what people in 21st century New England believe about the places they live. They are also good to read on dark autumn nights!

MORE GHOST CHRONICLES

Speaking of spooky books, Weiser Books kindly sent me a copy of Maureen Wood and Ron Kolek's book More Ghost Chronicles to review. Wood and Kolek are paranormal investigators who host a popular radio show called Ghost Chronicles, and their book highlights fifteen recent investigations. 

Twelve of them take place across New England. Wood and Kolek visit old lighthouses, haunted restaurants, charming inns (built next to creepy old cemeteries), and even a few places I've visited like Dudley Road and the Freetown State Forest. 

My trip to Dudley Road was relatively uneventful, but theirs is a little more lively. For example, here is an excerpt where Kolek and Wood try to communicate with the spirits of Dudley Road using a pendulum on a dark night. They are trying to figure out how many ghosts haunt the road.

The pendulum responded quickly, while Maureen continued her questioning. "Are there more than one, more than three? Are there more than five?" 

Once again, the answer was a yes.  

I asked, "Do they know the rumors about the haunting of Dudley Road?" 

Maureen nodded. "Yes. Yes, they do." 

I continued. "Do they play games with the people who come to look for them?" 

The pendulum swung back and forth. She laughed out loud. "Sometimes." (More Ghost Chronicles, p. 30)

Watch out for self-aware ghosts, I guess. Although my trip to Dudley Road was peaceful, I did find the Freetown State Forest to be kind of unnerving when I visited although I can't pinpoint why. Was it the sounds of gunfire from a nearby firing range? The group of drugged-out teenagers we encountered on a secluded path? The sound of dead trees creaking in the wind? All of these?

Or perhaps it was really the puckwudgies, small malevolent fairies who are said to live in the forest. Wood and Kolek have an even more unnerving visit than I did, with Wood becoming briefly and frighteningly possessed by the spirit of a puckwudgie. This is why I only go to these places during the day!

So, if you like good old-fashioned ghost investigations with creaking doors, rosaries that shatter, and misty figures advancing through the dark woods I think you will like More Ghost Chronicles. And at this time of year, who doesn't like those things?

Happy Halloween everyone!

A Mountain Lion in Brookline Massachusetts?

If you ever want to read strange things you should look through your town's police blotter. Many unusual occurrences happen every day and most people don't even notice - except for the police. For example, here are a few interesting things reported in the August 16, 2018 edition of The Brookline Tab, the local newspaper for Brookline, Massachusetts.

"Tuesday, Aug. 7 - Suspicious person on Harvard Street: At 7:28 p.m. a caller reported that a man wearing mask, aviator glasses, a skull head necklace and an American flag pin was harassing the caller's girlfriend.  

Wednesday, Aug. 8 - Assault and Battery on Beacon Street: At 5:31 a.m. a caller reported that at midnight  his roommate threw a jar of mayonnaise at the back of his head."

Those aren't the worst of it. Next to the list of police incidents is an article titled "Police: Man wearing nightgown and garter gropes woman." It describes how a "stocky man in his 20s wearing a black dress or nightgown with a lace garter belt" grabbed and groped a woman at the intersection of Washington Street and Salisbury Road early on the morning of August 6. Yikes!

Perhaps the summer heat is driving people to commit weird crimes. But I'm not sure what to make of this report:

"Wednesday, Aug. 8... Strange looking animal on Addington Road: At 10:01 p.m. a caller reported a strange looking animal walking back and forth in the area. The caller thought it might be a mountain lion as it was too big for a fox or coyote."

Brookline has a lot of wildlife (rabbits, geese, turkeys, coyotes) but as far as I know there aren't any large carnivorous cats roaming around. And to make things stranger, Addington Road is in the densely settled Aspinwall Hill area. It's only a few blocks away from the Green Line. It is definitely not a rural area. Could there really be a mountain lion in Brookline?

There are a few possible answers:

1. The caller was mistaken.
If you're a natural skeptic you'll find this the most appealing explanation. Ordinary things often look very different in the dark, and the caller probably really saw some other animal (a dog or coyote). Maybe they just saw a raccoon or skunk which looked bigger in the dark, or misperceived the shadows thrown by leaves and streetlights. 

Addington Road in Brookline

Humans have an innate tendency to see living beings in inanimate phenomena. For example, have you ever seen a stick in the grass and thought it was a snake? This psychological trait is called pareidolia and it seems to be an evolutionary survival from a time when humans always had to be on the lookout for predators. It's safer to think something is a mountain lion rather than assume it is just a shadow. You wouldn't want to blunder into a large hungry cougar!

2. It really was a mountain lion. 
Mountain lions were once common in New England but were exterminated by the European settlers. There are still mountain lions in the western parts of the country and in Florida, but none around here. Despite this New Englanders report seeing mountain lions to the present day. For example, in 2014 citizens of Winchester, Massachusetts reported seeing a large feline creature in town, as did people in Rhode Island, while in the 1980s a mountain lion reportedly terrorized parts of Cape Cod. There's even a bulletin board for New England mountain lion sightings.

However, local wildlife authorities claim there are no mountain lions in New England. Well, to clarify, they say there is "no evidence of a reproducing mountain lion population." To quote this official Commonwealth of Massachusetts site:

Mountain Lions became scarce in the East after a bounty system wiped out most predatory animals. Today, Mountain Lions are found in the mountainous regions of the West. There is also a small population in southern Florida. 

Despite this fact, Massachusetts residents continue to report Mountain Lion sightings. It is difficult to know if someone saw a Mountain Lion without any tangible evidence. 

Nowadays, many reports include photographic evidence, thanks to camera phones and trail cameras. There have been only two cases where evidence supports the presence of a Mountain Lion in Massachusetts. All other reports of Mountain Lions in Massachusetts have turned out to be other animals.

In April 199, a hunter found unusual animal scat near the Quabbin Reservoir; lab tests confirmed it came from a mountain lion. In March 2011, a forester photographed animal tracks in the snow near the Quabbin, which were again confirmed to be from a mountain lion. Those are the only two cases of authenticated mountain lion evidence in modern Massachusetts.

Totally excited for monster-hunting - just as long as I never find one!

However, in June 2011, a male mountain lion was struck by an SUV and killed in Milford, Connecticut. DNA testing showed that the animal had traveled all the way from South Dakota to Connecticut, a distance of 1,800 miles. Most mountain lions don't roam that far. Still, I suppose there is a very, very slim chance that a mountain lion made its way from a western state to New England and came into Brookline. 

3. Manitous, witches, phantom animals.
Maybe it was really a mountain lion. Or maybe the caller was totally wrong and mistook something ordinary for a large predator. It was either real or it was not. The answer is either yes or no, right?

I think there is a third possibility, though, somewhere in that weird realm where myth, folklore and psychology collide. People in New England have been seeing unusual (dare I say unnatural?) animals for centuries. For example, the Algonquins believed the forests were haunted by a black fox. The fox was often glimpsed by could never be captured or killed, even by the most skilled hunter. It was a manitou, or spirit-being. 

The Puritans saw equally strange creatures. Puritans didn't believe in manitous, so they associated these strange animals with witches and the Devil. Witches and their familiar spirits were said to assume the shapes of cats, pigs, birds and strange bestial hybrids. For example, on February 27, 1692 Elizabeth Hubbard was walking home from her uncle's house in Salem Village when she realized a large animal was stalking her. She thought it might be a wolf, although wolves were rare even in the 1690s. There was something unnatural about the creature and although it didn't harm her she thought it might be a witch in animal form.

On April 19 of that year, Abigail Hobbs mentioned unusual animals in her testimony before the Court of Oyer and Terminer:

"I will speak the truth," she said. "I have seen sights and been scared. I have been very wicked. I shall be better, if God will help me." 

"What sights did you see?" asked Hathorne.  

"I have seen dogs and many creatures." 

"What dogs do you mean? Ordinary dogs?" 

"I mean the Devil." 

(quoted in Marilynne Roach, The Salem Witch Trials. A Day-By-Day Chronicle of A Community Under Siege, 2002)

Even in our modern, post-Puritan world people continue to see animals. Cryptozoologists and paranormal researchers often call them phantoms since they leave little evidence behind. For example, in 1976 a large black dog terrorized the town of Abington near Massachusetts's infamous Hockomock Swamp. A police officer shot at the beast after it killed two ponies but it ignored the bullets and walked off into the swamp. 

I didn't see a mountain lion, but there were a lot of wild turkeys down this path. I turned back!

Perhaps more relevant to the Brookline sighting, phantom animals of the feline variety have also terrorized towns near the Hockomock Swamp:

In 1972, in Rehoboth, Mass., a "lion hunt" was organized by local police. Residents of the area had been terrorized by what they said was a large cat or mountain lion. Cattle and sheep n the area had been mysteriously killed and carcasses were discovered raked with claw marks. Police took casts of the animal's tracks and used dog and helicopter in an attempt to track it down. Nothing was caught. But similar incidents involving phantom cats have occurred in other places throughout the Bridgewater Triangle and across the nation. None of these mysterious felines has yet been captured. (Loren Coleman, Mysterious America, 2007)

Spirits, witches, phantom cats - I don't know what these strange animals are, but New Englanders have seen them for a long, long time. I think they'll continue to see them in the future. Perhaps the caller who reported seeing the mountain lion on Addington Street was just part of this long tradition. Weird things happen in New England all the time, even close to the MBTA.

Animal graffito in Brookline

The Truro Panther

This past weekend I was talking at a party to someone who lives in Provincetown. At some point in the conversation I mentioned that I write about local folklore. Eventually our conversation turned to the Truro Panther.

"I think I saw it once," he said. "It was late at night, and I was driving down Route Six past Pilgrim Lake into town."

That stretch of the road is really dark, I remarked. He agreed.

"I saw an animal run across the road in front of my car. I just caught a glimpse of it, almost like a shadow. Whatever it was, it had a long curving tail."

I asked him if maybe it had just been a coyote.

"No, definitely not. It had a long tail, just like a cat."

Had my friend seen the elusive Truro Panther? Maybe he had.

*****

The Truro Panther is also known as the Pamet Panther and the Beast of Truro. If you've never been to the town of Truro on Cape Cod, you might not understand why people think a panther might be living there.

Located on the outer Cape, Truro is very busy on summer days. Route Six is filled with cars passing through to Provincetown, and Truro's beaches are bustling with families of tourists. But the summer hustle and bustle is deceptive. There isn't really much of a town center in Truro, and most of the houses are surrounded by a dense scrubby forest of wind-stunted pines and oaks. Much of the town's land is part of the Cape Cod National Seashore and can't be developed. There are deer and coyotes in the woods, and seals and sharks swim offshore. 

Last year in August we saw a school of bluefish feeding on a school of minnows in the shallows off Longnook Beach. Then a group of seals arrived and began to feed on the bluefish. There were big pools of blood in the water. Needless to say, I didn't go swimming. Truro can feel like the edge of the world, particularly to a city person like me.

In the mid-19th century people in Truro reported seeing a strange creature lurking around their farms and in the woods. They couldn't quite identify it. Was it a wolf? Was it some type of big cat? Apparently some locals thought it might have been a lioness that escaped from a ship en route from Africa. Whatever the creature was, people called it the the Truro Hyena because of the eerie sounds it made at night. Livestock went missing. Paw-prints were seen in the sand. Women and children refused to leave their homes after dark. 

Eventually a hunting party was formed. Boys and men armed with guns searched through the woods and along the beaches, and although they found paw-prints they never captured the animal. The whole incident was parodied by Thomas Stone, a physician who lived in nearby Wellfleet, in a poem called The Hyena Hunt:

Some vow it is a lioness, bore
By ships from Afric's sunny shore,
That paces now our Cape sands o'er;
Moaning for whelps, most piteously.

Some still, a hyena, whose fearful howl,
Had shook the woods of Tonegal,
In company with the fierce jackal,
Fighting the Fellah, hideously.

Some unbelievers, with taunting sneer,
Swore 'twas a goat, a dog, a deer,
Whose footsteps, magnified by fear,
Had seized the fearful hearted.

But there those fearful footsteps stand,
Imbedded on Atlantic's strand,
And the moaning cry runs through the land,
As if from loved ones parted.

It was easy for Stone to characterize those 19th century Truro citizens as yokels. After all, even back then people knew there were no giant cats living on Cape Cod.

Well, no one told the giant cat, because in 1981 it reappeared. The first signs appeared in September, when about a dozen house cats were found dead across town. Police believed the cats were probably the victims of feral dogs.

Later that fall, William and Marcia Medeiros of Truro were walking on a path through the woods near Head of the Meadow Beach when they saw a large cat-like animal. It was broad daylight, and they watched the animal for about five minutes before it disappeared into the woods. They said the animal had a long curving tail and probably weighed about 80 pounds.

On December 16, Truro police officer David Costa returned home from duck hunting when he noticed that one of his pigs had been attacked.

"He was just barely alive. The claw marks were long and almost looked like someone did it with a razor blade. The marks were horizontal," he said, not up and down the pig's body, an indication that the attacking animal had jumped on the hog's back. (The Boston Globe, January 4 1982, "Is A Mountain Lion Loose on Cape Dunes?", p.13)

Costa's pig was so grievously wounded it had to be slaughtered. On December 20, two other pigs in South Truro were also attacked, but their wounds were much less serious.

Animal tracks were found near the South Truro pig pen, and state wildllife officials thought a single dog had carried out the attack. However, the soil was too sandy to tell for sure what had made the tracks. Dogs tend to hunt in packs, so would just one dog attack two pigs?

A woman living in North Truro was awakened in the middle of the night by an animal shrieking loudly outside her home. When she and her husband investigated the next day they found animal tracks around their yard. Again, the soil was too sandy to determine with certainty what made them. Later, a tourist visiting from New York called town selectman Edward Oswalt to report seeing a large cat-like animal in North Truro.

Various theories were proposed. The official one was that the attacks had been carried out by wild dogs, but many people thought the creature was a mountain lion. This could be possible (there is enough open space and game in Truro), but it's unclear how a mountain lion would make it all the way to the Outer Cape. The animal would need to either swim across the Cape Cod canal or walk over all bridge, and then make its way down to Truro. It doesn't seem plausible. And besides, Massachusetts wildlife officials believe that mountain lions are extinct in the state.

Other locals thought that perhaps a camper had set loose a pet mountain lion, and a rumor spread that  someone had been seen in Provincetown walking a panther on a leash. Maybe that panther had escaped?


In the end there was no clear resolution. The sightings and livestock killings stopped, and the creature became part of Truro folklore. Is something still lurking out there in the scrubby forests of the Outer Cape? My fried saw something strange crossing the road, so maybe there is.

Fall Phenomena: Mountain Lions, Vampires, Evil Clowns, and More!

As we get closer to Halloween, it seems like more and more strange things have been happening locally.

For example, a 26-year old man from Beverly, Massachusetts was arrested for trying to dig up a grave in Salem's Old Burial Ground on Charter Street. The man apparently is mentally ill, which is sad and not really the strange thing. The strange thing is that a group of tourists gathered around and watched him unearth the tomb in broad daylight. Apparently they thought it was just a normal part of the Salem Halloween festivities!

In other odd news, buried deep inside the October 12 issue of the Boston Globe was a short note that a woman in Burlington, Massachusetts called the police to say she had seen a mountain lion walking near some power lines. As is often the case with these sightings, the police investigated but found nothing conclusive.

It seems like weird creatures are often seen near power lines. Is this because of electromagnetic something or other, or simply because the undergrowth is cut low allowing clearer sight lines? One of my favorite power line sightings was this strange creature seen by Bill Russo in 1990 in Raynham, Massachusetts. And by favorite, I mean creepiest!

"Ee wah chu..." Image from The Bridgewater Triangle documentary.

I first learned about Bill from the recently released Bridgewater Triangle documentary. Bill has just published a book evocatively titled Creature from the Bridgewater Triangle. It is available on Kindle. I haven't read it, but it definitely has a great title!

Speaking of great titles, I'll be doing some readings and signings for my book Legends and Lore of the North Shore next week.

• Tuesday, October 21 at 7:00 pm: Tewksbury Library, Tewskbury, Massachusetts (reading and a talk)
• Saturday, October 25 at 3:00 pm: Boston Book Festival, Copley Square, Boston (book signing). I'll be at the History Press booth.

If you're not in the mood for reading, you might want to check out this new documentary about the New England vampire phenomenon. The documentary is from Connecticut's Historical Haunts LLC, and features Rhode Island folklorist Michael Bell.

Rhode Island folklorist Michael Bell.

The vampires of old New England weren't the bloodsuckers we see in movies today, but instead were the hungry corpses of people who died from tuberculosis. It was believed that they fed from their graves on the health of their surviving family members. I haven't seen this film but it looks like good, spooky viewing!

Speaking of spooky viewing, the TV show American Horror Story: Freak Show features a particularly terrifying clown called Twisty.

Twisty!

 Late this summer, before the show started, a creepy clown was seen lurking around at night in southern California. The trend now appears to be spreading nationwide. These evil clowns are all late to the party. Everyone knows the original evil clown scare started here in Boston. Once again, New England is a trendsetter! I just wish this were a better trend.

Finally, if you want to escape the evil clowns, vampires, and mountain lions, you might want to purchase the sylvan yet abandoned village of Johnsonville in East Haddam, Connecticut. The village is spread over 62 acres and was a former resort. Of course, you may encounter some strange phenomena since East Haddam is well-known for its mysterious subterranean Moodus noises and for witchcraft activity. Johnsonville also apparently comes with a resident ghost, but he doesn't sound too malevolent. The village is being sold at auction with a starting bid of $800K, which seems reasonable to me given current Boston housing expenses.

A Haunted Country Store, and Mountain Lions in the Smallest State

If you're up near Lake Winnipesaukee this summer,  you might want to stop by the Ellacoya Country Store in Gilford, New Hampshire. Or maybe you won't, depending on how spooked you are by ghosts. The owners claim the store is haunted.

According to manager Lisa Giles, the store has been haunted since it opened. Employees have glimpsed the ghostly shape of a man standing in the doorway, while others have heard a man whistling while there was no one else in the room. Some people have feven elt a hand touching their shoulder. The Ellacoya Country Store is in a building that dates from 1745, so I suppose a lot can happen to attract a ghost over 269 years.

The spooky shenanigans reached a crescendo on March 10. Employee Hedi Boyd was alone in the store and went into one of the side rooms. She heard a crash, and came out to find the lid of a glass cake dish had fallen on the floor. She didn't think much of it until she saw the surveillance video, which shows the lid being thrown onto the floor by unseen forces.

The video caused quite a stir when it was released, and was featured on New Hampshire's WMUR-TV and the Huffington Post. Debunkers have argued the lid could have been pulled over by a string drawn through a window behind the cash register, but it turns out the window doesn't open.


A psychic medium and a parapsychologist investigated the store on March 27. The medium said she felt a heavy presence, possibly that of an older woman. The parapsychologist was more noncommittal, saying only that something mysterious was going on. They plan to investigate further.

If this had happened in the 17th or 18th century people would blame it on a witch. If it happened in the 1970s and there was an unhappy adolescent around, we'd call it poltergeist activity. Our current explanatory framework is focused on ghosts. For myself, I'll just agree with the parapsychologist that something mysterious is happening!

On a different note, my post about the Winchester mountain lion generated a lot of conversation, and several people people mentioned mountain lion sightings in Rhode Island. It's a small state, but apparently not so small it can't hide a big cat. Here's an email I got from Karen, who lives in Mantunuck, Rhode Island.

On Saturday, July 30, 2011 at about 7:15 p.m., I was working in the vegetable garden in my front yard when I looked up and saw an animal looking at me. It was no more than 50 feet away. It had come into the yard from behind some overgrown vegetation. It looked straight at me for five or ten seconds, and then turned and ran back where it had come from…

The animal I saw was the height of a very large dog. It had a cat-like face. It was light tan in color. I got the impression that it was not an adult. It had the sort of heavy, blocky legs you see on a puppy. I have seen coyotes and I am sure it was not a coyote. I looked at photographs of bobcats, coyotes, and mountain lions on the National Geographic website and I am sure what I saw was a juvenile mountain lion. I later learned that a number of other people in Matunuck, the area of South Kingstown where I live, also have seen mountain lions, have seen mountain lion tracks, and have found hidden caches of mountain lion meals. At least one person photographed a mountain lion. The year after my sighting, my next door neighbor and her son saw an adult mountain lion in front of their house. Again, there was no question about what it was.

Another mountain lion was sighted in Mantunuck just a few weeks ago, but local officials say the proof (scat and footprints) are inconclusive. Thanks for the tip, Karen! Now I know not to go hiking around Mantunuck. I'm a vegetarian and I bet the mountain lion would find me tasty.

UFO Statistics, Mountain Lions, and Colonial New Year in the News

Here are a few folkloric things that have been in the media recently. I write a lot about the past, but strange things are still alive and well in New England!

UFO Statistics for 2013

MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network, has released their data on the number of UFO sightings in the year 2013. You'll be happy to know that although New England is a small region we still reported a sizeable number of strange things in the sky. Here are the number of UFO sightings by state:

Maine: 51
New Hampshire: 42
Vermont: 25
Massachusetts: 106
Rhode Island: 21
Connecticut: 73

It all adds up to a grand total of 318 UFOs seen here last year. The numbers from states like California, Texas and Florida are much higher, but on a per person basis New England fares really well. Maine and Vermont have some of the highest number of sightings per person in the United States. Spherical objects were the most commonly reported in New England, except in New Hampshire where people reported more star-shaped UFOs. This infographic from OuterPlaces explains it all:

I love reading about UFOs, but don't really have a firm opinion about what they are. Extraterrestrial craft? Ancient gods or fairies in a new disguise? Omens of the End Times? Manifestations of the collective unconscious? Any of those sound interesting to me. UFOs are still fascinating even if many of the sightings are hoaxes or misinterpretations. After all, what does it mean that we are willing to believe there just might someone (or something) out there in the universe?

Giant Cat Seen (or Not?) in Winchester, MA

On a more terrestrial note a large cat-like animal, possibly a mountain lion, was seen in Winchester, Massachusetts in late February and again in March.

No mountain lions have been confirmed in Massachusetts for more than 150 years, and Winchester, an upscale suburb only eight miles from Boston, seems like an unlikely spot for such a large predator to appear. However, a mountain lion was killed by a car in Millford, Connecticut in 2011. That animal had been tagged earlier in its life by biologists in South Dakota, so I suppose its not impossible for a mountain lion to make its way to Massachusetts.

The animal left tracks, and police sent them to wildlife experts for analysis. I don't know if the citizens of Winchester were excited or terrified when the police posted on their website that the tracks had been confirmed as mountain lion tracks. Yes, that's right, a mountain lion was stalking around Winchester.

And then things got murky. The wildlife experts claimed they had never said the tracks were from a mountain lion. Instead, they believed the tracks were from a large dog or maybe a coyote. Winchester police are sticking with their story, though.

So, just like with UFO sightings, there's no good resolution. Is that light in the sky the planet Venus or a spaceship? Did people see a large coyote or was it a mountain lion? For the moment we have to be comfortable with uncertainty (and lock up the pets if you live in Winchester).

Colonial New Year

For many years, the American colonies celebrated New Year's on March 25 rather than January 1. Although most of Europe had upgraded to the Gregorian calendar, England and her colonies refused to follow a Papish innovation (even though it was correct) and continued using the older and inaccurate Julian calendar. The Boston Globe has a nice article about how the change was finally made.

A Hyena on Cape Cod?

A few years ago, Tony and I went with some friends to Great Island in Wellfleet. After parking our cars in the lot, we all headed out to the beach. It took us quite a while to walk there (about 45 minutes), and we didn't see any other people on the way. The beach itself was deserted except for us and one Swedish tourist. For such a popular destination, it's surprising how empty parts of the outer Cape still are.

This lesson was reinforced a couple weeks ago when Tony and I visited Truro, which is next to Wellfleet. One afternoon we walked around the woods in the National Seashore for two hours, and one again we didn't see any other people. None. Not even a Swedish tourist! Some of the beaches in Truro were also empty, and it was the middle of summer. Again, there are some very empty places on the outer Cape!

A view onto Longnook Beach in Truro. Where is everybody?

Given all this emptiness, it's not surprising that weird things happen out there. I've already mentioned the Black Flash who roamed around Provincetown in the mid-20th century, but he's not the only monster who's been seen in that part of the Cape.

In the mid-19th century, Wellfleet was supposedly terrorized by a hyena.

A hyena at night, from a travel blog.

It sounds odd, but here are the facts. A large hairy animal was glimpsed lurking in the woods. Strange pawprints were found in the sand. Domestic animals and chickens were killed at night. An eerie howling was heard echoing across the hills, and women and children were afraid to leave their homes.

Eventually, the Wellfleet men armed themselves and set off in pursuit of the creature. They were unsuccessful at capturing it, but apparently successful in driving it away. The howls grew more distant and infrequent, and finally they ceased completely. The creature never returned.

Was this mysterious animal really a hyena? People who glimpsed it thought it resembled one, but had they ever seen a live hyena or even a photo? Perhaps the whole affair was just hysteria. The only written record of the Wellfleet hyena is The Hyena Hunt, an 1869 poem by local physician Thomas Stone. Stone writes about the hyena hunt mockingly in faux epic language, so clearly he thought the whole thing was some kind of joke.

I'm tempted to say the creature was really just a coyote, which are now as common on the Cape as ticks. But sometimes strange animals show up in places where they're not supposed to. For example, there are plenty of people in Massachusetts who swear they've seen large cats (cougar sized!) on Cape Ann and in the Hockomock Swamp in the southeastern part of the state. In fact, according to Loren Coleman's book Mysterious America, in 1972 the Rehoboth police organized a lion hunt to catch a large animal terrorizing their town. But although tracks were found, the lion eluded the police. It's like the Wellfleet hyena hunt all over again.

Was the Wellfleet creature just a coyote? Was it really a hyena that somehow escaped from a zoo? Was it a mountain lion? Maybe, but maybe it was something conjured up in the empty spaces from the wind, the water and the woods.