Bottomless Ponds of New England: Monsters, Witches, and Dead Horses

I read a lot of books about local legends and folklore, and have discovered some weird things. I recently learned there are several bottomless lakes and ponds here in New England. Yes, you read that correctly. There are several bodies of water here that are immeasurably deep. And some have monsters in them...

One of these bottomless bodies of water is Hall's Pond in Brookline. Hall's Pond is located just off Beacon Street, one of the Boston area's busiest thoroughfares, and you can even take the Green Line trolley to it. Very convenient!

The pond is now part of Amory Park, and there is a nice boardwalk that leads you around it. The last time I visited it was teeming with fish, turtles, and birds. Hall's Pond used to be much larger and swampier, and is actually the remains of an ancient cedar swamp. The soil is quite peaty, and creates an oily sheen on the water. 

Hall's Pond in Brookline

The January 28, 1902 proceedings of the Brookline Historical Society, include the following information about the development of Amory Park:

The town's purchase was about eight acres, which includes a part of Hall's Pond, the dreaded hole and terror of youngsters, which was believed to be bottomless.

The 1954 - 1955 proceedings of the Society include the following reminiscence from one Mrs. Luquer:

The story goes that, in my childhood, one dark night, a man with his horse and buggy went down what he thought was Essex Street straight down to Beacon Street right down into Hall's Pond where there was quicksand and he was never seen again. I remember I often skated on the Pond and always wondered whether I was over the horse and buggy.

It's a grim story, but not as terrifying as the stories told about Dublin Lake in Dublin, New Hampshire. According to a July 26, 2017 issue of the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, in the early 20th century people thought the lake was bottomless. More contemporary legends say it is the home of hideous monsters who live in underwater caves:

Lore surrounding the lake monster dates back to the 1980s, when a free-diver allegedly went missing after a routine dive. The diver was found a number of days later, naked and incoherently babbling about monsters. 

Another version of the story states a diver was using a diving bell when exploring the lake’s bottom, but the tether was not long enough as he descended. 

After heading down deeper to find the caverns, the diver disappeared. A group of hikers found the diver in the woods naked days later, with the diver once again was babbling about monsters. ("The search for the Dublin Lake Monster," Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, July 26, 2017)

I think the whole "naked diver babbling insanely about monsters" is pretty creepy. Perhaps those monsters are from another planet, because another legend claims there is a spaceship or UFO at the bottom of the lake. 

Dinglehole, a small pond in Millis, Massachusetts, is also believed to be bottomless. Much like Hall's Pond, Dinglehole was once larger and swampier. In the 18th and 19th century, legends said it was haunted by a headless ghost who misled travelers. People also heard the ringing of a mysterious bell near the pond, giving it the name Dinglehole. (The bell went "dingle dingle dingle.")

Hall's Pond in Brookline

A headless ghost and mysterious bell are bad enough, but the the Devil and his witches would gather near Dinglehole to celebrate the Witches Sabbath. The witches arrived in the shape of weasels, raccoons, and other small woodland animals. 

One evening, a local hunter was walking home when he noticed a large raccoon watching him from a tree. Unable to resist such an easy target, the hunter shot the raccoon and hit it squarely in the chest. Nothing happened to the raccoon. It sat there unharmed. Did the hunter notice a slight smirk on its face? He fired several more shots, each time hitting the raccoon, which continued to ignore the bullets.

Finally, it dawned on the hunter that this was no ordinary animal. He plucked a branch from a nearby witch hazel shrub, a plant known for its magical powers, and fired it from his rifle like a small harpoon. It hit the raccoon in the face. The animal then vanished. Several days later, the hunter learned that Murky Mullen, a local woman suspected of witchcraft, had an unexplained injury on her face. Clearly, she (or her spirit) had been wandering the woods in the shape of a raccoon. (That story appears in Ephraim Orcutt Jameson and George James La Croix's 1886 book The History of Medway, Mass. 1713-1885.)

Hall's Pond, Dublin Lake and Dinglehole are just three bottomless bodies of water I learned about while researching other things. I assume there are probably others out there in New England. Of course, modern science says a bottomless pond or lake is an impossibility. After all, the center of our planet is hot and molten. If a lake reached all the way down to Earth's molten core it would probably be some kind of volcano, not a nice body of water you can swim in or skate on. 

I suspect the idea of a bottomless lake reflects an older view of the world, one in which the universe was filled with water. We now know that our planet is a sphere floating in the void of outer space. Many earlier civilizations believed the world was a flat disc that floated in an infinite abyss of water. For example, in the Babylonian creation myth, the only two beings that exist at the beginning of time are Apsu, the primal god of fresh water, and Tiamat, the dragon goddess of the sea. There is no land. It only appears after Apsu and Tiamat are slain and the god Marduk divides the waters using Tiamat's corpse. 

A similar situation is seen in the Biblical Book of Genesis, where God separates the waters from the waters during the creation of the world. There is water above the world, and water below the world.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

So in a traditional Biblical view, the world looks something like this:

The Earth is surrounded by water, both above and below. This is alluded to in the Flood story, where not only are the "windows of heaven" opened to make it rain, but "all the fountains of the great deep broken up" as well. God is letting all the primal waters back in, returning the world to its primal state of chaos. 

I think local legends about bottomless bodies of water might reflect this older cosmology, even if accidentally. The ponds and lakes in these stories are not only immeasurably deep, but they are also associated with terrifying things. Dead men and dead horses, lost in the middle of the night. Monsters so hideous they cause insanity. Witches, ghosts, and even the Devil himself. The forces of chaos are lurking just below the surface, ready to drag the unwary down into the fathomless waters. These things are probably just lurking in our subconscious, not in the water, but I'd still be careful. You don't want to wander too far from shore and get in over your head. Who knows what you might find there?

*****

I wanted to give you an update on my new book, Witches and Warlocks of Massachusetts. I got my author's copies the other day, and they look great. I'm really excited for people to read this one. 

It's currently available for pre-order on Bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million, Amazon, and most other places you buy books. It will be available on September 1, just in time for the fall and spooky season. 

Fireworks, UFOs and Anxiety: Weird Stories from The 1960s and Today

People across the United States have been reporting increased use of fireworks this spring and summer. The local, homegrown fireworks displays have started earlier in neighborhoods around the country and reportedly feature more intense explosives than in past years. A few different theories are floating around about why this might be. Personally I think it's because people are cooped up at home (and because Americans like to blow things up), but there have also been some conspiracy theories put forth to explain the increase in fireworks. As humans we like to find secret patterns in events. 

I won't repeat any conspiracy theories, but I will suggest something really bizarre: maybe extraterrestrials are behind this year's loud and extended fireworks display. They want you to be distracted by the noise and explosions so you won't see the UFOs hovering above us.

I'm just joking (mostly), but Satellite Internet has once again released its annual ranking of the states with the most UFO sightings. Based on data from the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Connecticut were all in the top ten last year. Way to go New England! Rhode Island was 14th in the ranking, while sadly Massachusetts was all the way down at number 39. We need to do better.

Overall, Americans saw nearly twice as many UFOs in 2019 as they did in 2018. I am currently reading George Hanson's book The Trickster and the Paranormal, and Hanson points out that people tend to experience more paranormal phenomena (including UFOs) when they are stressed, anxious, or experiencing chaos. 

Huh. I think that is a pretty good description of how life has been in the U.S. for the last few years. Things have only gotten even more stressful in 2020 with the pandemic and political events, and according to NUFORC's data UFO sightings increased by 112% over 2019 in just the first three months of this year. I can only assume even more people will see UFOs as things get more and more stressful. Let's hope the number of UFO sightings (and our stress levels) start to go down at some point. 

July 2 is often celebrated as World UFO Day to commemorate the alleged saucer crash in Roswell, New Mexico. Here in New England, the UFOs sometimes arrive a few days later, usually just in time for Independence Day and fireworks. For example, in 1960 a Massachusetts woman wrote to the United States Air Force inquiring about a UFO she and her boyfriend had seen over Revere Beach on July 4 of that year:

Could you please tell me whether anyone reported this sighting and whether it has been explained or not? Approximately 1,000 people might have been watching the same Fourth of July fireworks display and seen the same thing... 

My boyfriend... and myself were parked along the beach waiting for the fireworks to begin at about 10:00 pm. About 9:45 pm I noticed an orange disk in the sky a little right of center of (the) car. ... We watched it for about another 20 minutes before it moved swiftly down closer to the ocean where we were startled to see a reflection in the water of the orange disk above. It was hard to tell how low to the water it was or how big because is was out some distance. 

Eventually two more disks joined the first one, and then all three zoomed away "like lightning." The fireworks display began 20 minutes later. I don't know if the Air Force responded to the letter writer.

Strange objects returned to the Massachusetts skies in July of 1963. According to the July 9 issue of the Quincy Patriot-Ledger, two Air Force veterans saw a UFO over Dedham, Massachusetts on July 3. At least eleven other people had previously reported seeing something similar, mostly flying over towns on the South Shore. The object had a white light on top and an orange light on its bottom, which sounds a little like the orange UFOs seen in 1960 at Revere Beach. 

A few days later, on July 6, the Patriot-Ledger published an article by one of its reporters. In late June he had set up a camera in his Quincy back yard to photograph the motion of the stars. When he developed the film he saw patterns of lights on the photos as if objects had flown into view, hovered, and then left:

About two weeks ago I took a photograph that makes me wonder what is flying in our skies.  

The original purpose of the shot was to photograph the tracks left by stars passing overhead as the earth revolved.... 

This week I had the film developed. On the slide I immediately saw something which shouldn't have been there - a clear pattern of lights which moved into the camera's view, hovered in at least seven spots, then left the camera's view once more. 

The lights were orange, white and silver. A local UFO investigator claimed they were similar to lights seen by two teenage girls in West Quincy in mid-June. 

On July 11, the Patriot-Ledger reported that even more people had seen mysterious flying objects, which were often (but not always) described as having orange lights on the bottom and white lights on top. A total of 21 people reported seeing UFOs near the South Shore in June and early July of 1963. Gerald S. Hawkins, director of the Boston University Observatory and staff astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Harvard College Observatory, said the photos taken by the Patriot Ledger reporter came "very close to scientific evidence about UFOs."

Very close, but not conclusive. There weren't any more reports from the South Shore after July 11, and no one proposed a definitive explanation for what had been seen. As in so many paranormal events, the different accounts and data seem like they are pointing towards something - but it's never clear exactly what. Everything appears to be coalescing into a coherent narrative, but never does. 

Were the objects seen in 1963 the same ones reported in 1960? They sound similar, but not identical, and not everyone in 1963 saw UFOs with orange lights. In both 1960 and 1963, the UFOs were seen in coastal areas near Boston, but not exclusively - the two Air Force vets saw one in an inland town west of Boston. 

In both years the UFOs were seen around early July. Perhaps that's just because more people were outside in the warmer weather and looking at the sky, possibly for fireworks. Maybe there's some other reason these things were sighted in the same season three years apart. I don't think we'll ever know.  

Humans like nice tidy stories to explain why anomalous things happen, whether it's an increase in fireworks or a rash of UFO sightings near Boston in the 1960s. The universe doesn't always provide us with easy answers though, even if they would make us feel less anxious. 

*****

I found the information about the 1960 and 1963 UFO sightings on Loren Goss's amazing UFO history site. It's definitely worth a visit.