A Werewolf in Natick? A Story for the Wolf Moon

On Monday, January 17, the Full Wolf Moon will rise at 4:13 pm and cast its lupine light across New England. Get out there and howl, folks! We're supposed to have a lot of rain here in Boston, so the moon may not be visible, but it will still be up in the sky even if you can't see it. 

In honor of the Wolf Moon, here is a story about a possible werewolf I found on Phantoms and Monsters. Phantoms and Monsters is a great site if you enjoy reading about paranormal encounters - check it out if you like weird tales.

The story goes something like this. In the spring of 2006, a group of friends from Natick decided to go camping. Rather than drive up to New Hampshire or out to western Massachusetts, they decided to camp closer to home. They chose a patch of woods behind some apartment buildings near an old, abandoned factory.

Oliver Reed in The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)

My first thought on reading this was, "That's probably not an official camp site." My second thought was, "Camping near an abandoned factory sounds like it would be spooky." My second thought was definitely correct.

The person who submitted the story wrote:

Now before I go further I must say that my area has experienced very weird sounds. Although in my opinion, they are very un-wolf like. They sound like a woman screaming crossed with long dog barks. A very indescribable and terrible sound. They come from various directions, though usually from the apartment area. (Phantoms and Monsters)

Coyotes? Maybe, or maybe not. But strange sounds in the woods just add to the spooky vibe.

The friends set up their tents and settled in for the night. After everyone had fallen asleep, one of the campers left her tent to urinate. She felt like she was being watched, though, so she woke up her boyfriend and asked him to come with her. He also felt they were being watched as they stepped away from the tents. 

As he stood watch, the boyfriend saw something moving through the trees away from the tents. It was tall, grey, and covered in fur:

He could see it through the brush... a large (approximately 6.5-7 foot in height) man-shaped figure, covered in grayish fur, sporting wolf-like features and a bushy tail swaying behind it. He was shocked and ran into the tent, leaving his girlfriend who came running in a moment later, after hearing the rustling of the creature.

They spent the rest of the night awake in their tent, occasionally hearing strange cries in the woods. They and the other campers quickly left the woods once the morning came.  

That's the end of the story. Like most monster stories, it's pretty simple. People see monster, people freak out, monster leaves. It's as if the monster just wants to be seen and acknowledged. Maybe the monster just wants to remind us that there are still weird things lurking out there in the world, even in a patch of woods near an abandoned factory.

An abandoned factory in the woods behind some apartments sounds like a liminal space to me. A liminal space is someplace that isn't quite one thing or another, a zone between one place and another. Liminal spaces are thresholds. 

It makes sense that the campers would see a werewolf in a liminal space. A werewolf is part human and part animal. It's both these things, and yet neither. The campsite was forested but formerly industrial, it was suburban and yet wild. It's the type of place where teenagers go to do forbidden things, and where campers would see uncanny creatures. It makes sense.

Did they really see a werewolf? I can hear some of you asking that question. I am a little skeptical that there are large, physical monsters roaming around our woods. (Of course, I don't go into the woods late at night!) I don't think that means the campers made this story up, though. There are lots of middle positions between hardcore skepticism and total belief. Maybe the campers inadvertently conjured up something from deep inside their psyches, or maybe they glimpsed the spirit of that land, what the ancient Romans would call a genius loci.

Happy Wolf Moon everyone!

The Flesher Witch: Menace in the Maine Woods

I'm always excited when I learn about a new weird legend, so I was pretty happy recently when I learned about the Flesher Witch of Haynesville, Maine. Thank you Jeremy for pointing this one out! The Flesher Witch legend is creepy, unique, and blends old and new folklore motifs into one gruesome package.

Still from The Incredible Melting Man (1977)

**********

Haynesville is located up in Aroostook County, and it's quite small. Like really small. The last census counted fewer than 200 people living there. Haynesville may be tiny, but it's rich in spooky folklore. A lot of it focuses on Route 2A. The stretch of 2A that passes through the Haynesville Woods is notoriously winding and treacherous, particularly in the winter, and has been the site of many fatal car and truck accidents. 

All of those accidents have earned this part of Route 2A a reputation as one of the most dangerous roads in America. Country singer Dick Curless even had a hit in 1965 with "A Tombstone Every Mile," which was a country song about the dangers of trucking on Route 2A:

All you big and burly men who roll the trucks along

Better listen you'll be thankful when you hear my song

You have really got it made if you're haulin' goods

Anyplace on earth but those Haynesville Woods

It's a stretch of road up north in Maine

That's never ever ever seen a smile

If they'd buried all them truckers lost in them woods

There'd be a tombstone every mile

Count 'em off there'd be a tombstone every mile...

Curless was born in Aroostook County and lived much of his life in Maine, so he knew what he was writing about. The song's bouncy and catchy, but there's nothing fun about driving on Route 2A during the winter. Because of all the fatal accidents it's said to be one of the most haunted roads in New England. Many forlorn lost souls have been seen wandering along Route 2A, including a hitchhiking woman in white who disappears once a driver stops to pick her up. She's a classic "vanishing hitchhiker" type of ghost. 

I'm not here to really talk about ghosts, though. There's more happening in Haynesville than just ghosts. I'm here to talk about the Flesher Witch, a terrifying being who supposedly lurks in the Haynesville Woods. 

According to a local story, in the 1800s a young girl named Annie Wilcox moved with her parents and brothers to Haynesville. Shortly after they moved in, Annie began to complain of strange things happening at night. She said he heard a scratching noise at her window, as if something were trying to get in. Her parents ignored her - young children have active imaginations - but the phenomena got stranger as time went on. Annie said something unseen pulled off the blankets while she slept, and she sometimes felt something (or someone?) biting her skin late at night. She also heard a voice softly whispering indistinguishable words in the darkness. 

Her parents thought she was just trying to get attention, but they changed their minds one night when Annie ran into their bedroom in tears. Her face was covered in bloody scratches. She said an old woman with a face like melting wax had attacked her. When they searched her room it was empty. They let Annie sleep with them that night. 

The weird phenomena in their house stopped after this, but it wasn't the end of Annie's ordeal. One day about a month later, the Wilcox family was walking through the woods. The parents realized that Annie, who had been bringing up the rear, was no longer visible. They heard a terrifying scream ring out, but despite searching for hours her family was unable to find her. She had vanished.

Some hunters made a gruesome discovery several weeks later. They found Annie's dead body in a clearing in the woods. Her face was missing. Lying next to her on the ground was the corpse of an old woman whose face looked like melting wax.  

The Incredible Melting Man (1977)

Annie's death devastated her family. Her mother hanged herself, and her two brothers drowned while swimming. Mr. Wilcox was the sole survivor, and he slowly lost his sanity, scratching endlessly at his face as if he wanted to remove it. He wandered off into Haynesville Woods one day and was never seen again.

People say the Flesher Witch still lurks in the Haynesville Woods, even today. An old woman with a melting face is sometimes seen walking among the trees, and whenever animals or children go missing she is blamed. No one know who she is, and no one wants to get close enough to find out. 

So there's the legend of the Flesher Witch. I like it. Some parts of it draw on classic New England legends. Witches are one of the most common topics in pre-20th century New England folklore, and the nighttime attacks on Annie are every similar to witchcraft stories from the 1600s. In older stories the witch is usually a curmudgeonly neighbor, but the Flesher Witch seems to be a purely supernatural being. She's not just some mean old lady down the road. I think this is an improvement because it means no one's going to get hanged for being a witch up in Haynesville. 

Other parts of this legend seem more modern to me. The melting face seems modern and possibly inspired by horror movies, as does the witch trying to steal someone's face. That's not something you'd hear in a legend before the mid-20th century. And that's OK. Folklore changes over time. People in the 21st century are scared by different things than our ancestors were. 

In some ways this story reminds me of the Freetown State Forest witch who is described in Christopher Balzano's 2007 book Dark Woods: Cults, Crime and the Paranormal in the Freetown State Forest. Like the Flesher Witch, the Freetown Forest witch menaces young people and also seems to be a purely supernatural being. Are these witches really ghosts? Demons? Particularly gruesome land spirits? Or maybe just the manifestation of how people feel about the place they live? The woods can be pretty scary.

These stories are fascinating. If you know about any other strange modern witch legends please let me know, either in the comments or by emailing me. And of course, be careful when you go wandering out in the woods. 

Pine Grove Cemetery: Murder, Legends, and History on Cape Cod

We were down on the Cape last week, and one day we decided to visit Pine Grove Cemetery in Truro. I had read about Pine Grove in the past but never visited since it is off the beaten track. With so many things shut down this year we had ample time to explore this old cemetery.

There are two aspects to Pine Grove: the charming historic side, and the creepy uncomfortable side. Let's talk about the charming historic side first. Pine Grove was established in 1794 by Truro's Methodist church. Although the church is no longer there, the cemetery remains and is still in active use. Like much of Cape Cod, Truro's open spaces have been reclaimed by the forest. The cemetery was once in an open field behind a church but is now hidden in the woods down a half-mile dirt road. 

Photo from Digital Commonwealth. You can see the cemetery behind the church.

Pine Grove Cemetery today.

There are no houses on the dirt road, and Pine Grove is totally surrounded by the Cape Cod National Seashore. This means the cemetery is isolated and very quiet. When we went we were the only people there for well over an hour. 

The oldest grave at Pine Grove is that of James Paine, who was buried in 1799, while the newest burial seems to be from this year. There are over 800 monuments in Pine Grove in a variety of styles. We saw one old-fashioned death's head, several winged cherubs, and many willow-and-urn motifs. Lots of notable Cape Cod families are buried here.

So that's the charming part: an old cemetery full of historic gravestone down a quiet country road. Now here, unfortunately, is the creepy part: four women were murdered and dismembered here in 1969. That dirt road in the woods and the isolated cemetery seem more unsettling once you know that detail.

On January 24, 1969, two young women from Providence, Rhode Island checked into a rooming house in nearby Provincetown. Patricia Walsh and Mary Ann Wysocki, both 23, were introduced by the landlady to another guest, a 24-year old local carpenter named Antone "Tony" Costa. Costa, who was tall and clean cut, helped Walsh and Wysocki carry their bags to their rooms. Walsh and Wysocki vanished shortly afterwards. Their car was spotted abandoned near a marijuana patch behind Pine Grove cemetery, but then it too vanished.

The police began digging and found four bodies in the sandy soil behind Pine Grove. Two of them were Walsh and Wysocki. The other two were Sydney Monzon, 18, of Eastham, who had vanished on Memorial Day of 1968, and Susan Perry, 17, of Provincetown, who had been missing since September 8, 1968. The families of Perry and Monzon had assumed their daughters had simply run off. It was the Summer of Love, after all, and many young people were leaving home to become hippies.

Coverage of the crime from Life Magazine, July 25, 1969

The police soon located the missing car in Burlington, Vermont, where Tony Costa was paying for its storage. He was quickly arrested and charged with murder. Many local women, including the daughter of novelist Kurt Vonnegut Jr., testified that Costa had invited them to visit his marijuana patch behind Pine Grove cemetery. Luckily they had declined. 

The details of the murders are grisly. The four women had been all been dismembered. Blood stained rope was found tied to a tree and in Costa's room at the boarding house. The local DA claimed that cannibalism had also occurred, but that was later recanted. 

Photo from Life Magazine

Costa was charged with murdering three of the four women, but during his trial other suspicious incidents came up. He had driven to Pennsylvania with two young women who disappeared, as did a woman he lived with in San Francisco. A woman he dated had been found drowned in her bathtub. Costa was ultimately suspected of murdering eight women, but was convicted only of murdering Wysocki and Walsh. He received a life sentence. Costa committed suicide in his cell at Walpole State Prison in 1974. He was 30 years old.

Those are the facts in the case, but as you might imagine these murders have entered local folklore. It's hard for a small town to forget something so grisly and legends are often how communities remember their past. 

The most persistent legend I've read is that Costa used this brick crypt to dismember his victims. I'm not sure if that story is true. The crypt is in the cemetery, and I think the actual crimes occurred in the woods behind Pine Grove. Still, the crypt is the main destination for legend-trippers. Anomalous structures (like an empty crypt with an unlocked door) tend become the focus of legends.

Note: I didn't enter the crypt, but only stuck my phone inside. I think historically this crypt was just used to hold bodies awaiting burial - no one is entombed inside it - but it still felt wrong to go inside. In 2007, paranormal investigators reported some strange things in the crypt, including Electronic Voice Phenomena and the sudden loss of power to their equipment. But were these just the normal ghosts one would expect to find in an old cemetery, or were they associated with the 1969 murders?

The grave in the woods where the women was buried is long gone, hidden away by the undergrowth and trees, but Tony and I still walked down the dirt road behind the cemetery. It was very, very quiet in the woods. The cemetery had been full of birds and grasshoppers, but the woods were completely silent. It was unnerving. Maybe the birds just like the cemetery's open landscape more. Maybe the woods hold a memory of what happened. Either way, we were alone nearly a mile from the main road where something terrible had occurred. It was not a good feeling. 

I took a photo of this crossroads we came upon. There have been legends and myths about crossroads for millennia, and they are said to be places where people can encounter ghosts, underworld deities, and the Devil. When I saw this I thought,"This would be a really creepy place to be at Halloween." Apparently I was not the first person to think along these lines. Evelyn Lawson wrote the following in The Provincetown Register in 1969:

"As Dinis (the district attorney) talked... I felt my skin prickle in dread and disgust. The place where the bodies had been found... was near an old cemetery, not far from a back dirt crossroad, the typical traditional site for the witches' Sabbath..." (quoted in Life Magazine, July 25, 1969)

Just to be clear, no witches were involved in these murders. Modern witches follow a spiritual or religious path and don't sacrifice people in the woods. It's probably just a coincidence the murders happened near a crossroads, but it does add some creepy resonance to the situation, and there have been rumors that people conduct sinister rituals in the woods. I didn't see any signs of ritual activity and I think they are just rumors. Costa apparently was interested in the occult and had books about magic in his cell at Walpole, which has probably added fuel to the rumor that Satanic activities happen in the woods behind Pine Grove. 

Would I visit again? I'd definitely go to the cemetery again, which is beautiful and historic. The crypt was a little off-putting, but nothing too scary. The woods behind Pine Grove were pretty creepy, though, and I'm not sure if I would go back. A little advice: if you decide to visit please don't go alone. Even if there aren't any ghosts it is still an isolated spot where something terrible happened. It's better to be safe than sorry. 

Encountering Fairies at Mount Monadnock

One of the many nice things about this blog is that people tell me stories about the strange things they've encountered. I've heard quite a few ghost stories, but it is very rare that people tell me stories about fairies.

Very rare, but it does happen. The other day some friends came over for brunch, and I showed my friend James a copy of Magical Folk, a book about fairy folklore to which I had contributed a chapter.  In response, James told me the following story.

*****

A few years ago James, his spouse Kevin, and one of their friends went camping near New Hampshire's Mount Monadnock. The campground at Monadnock State Park has around thirty standard campsites close to parking lots, plus five remote campsites that can only be reached by hiking. James and his companions chose to stay at one of the standard campsites.

After they set up their tents they decided to go for a hike along one of the trails that led to the more remote sites. The trail led them up away from the other campers and deeper into the park. After hiking for a while they still hadn't seen any of the the remote campsites, but instead found a beautiful clearing in the woods.

James described it as looking like a "fairy dell." There was a waterfall, and a small wooden bridge going over a stream, and lots of lush flowers. It was an idyllic space, but as they absorbed its beauty James became uneasy. Although they were ostensibly alone in the clearing he felt like there was someone there with them. James sensed that they were being watched. His companions began to fell uneasy too and they soon left, making their way back to their campsite.

A beautiful photo of Mt. Monadnock from Wikipedia. 

When James fell asleep that night he had a strangely vivid dream. He dreamed about his mother. She had cooked something really delicious and kept urging James to eat. In the waking world James had a very good relationship with his mother, but something didn't seem quite right in the dream. Although it looked like his mother, James had the uncomfortable feeling that the figure in his dream was not really his mother but was instead someone pretending to be her. She kept offering him food, but he kept refusing it. Finally he woke up.

Over breakfast he told Kevin and their friend about his strange dream. To his surprise, they both said they had very similar dreams that night. They had both dreamed that trusted, loving people from their lives had offered them food, but they both had felt that somehow things were not quite right. Neither of them had accepted the food.

*****

When James finished his story he said to me, "You know, in a lot of traditional stories the fairies try to get humans to eat fairy food. If a human eats it they're trapped in the fairy world forever. I feel like we encountered something in that clearing, and it wanted us to stay there. I'm glad none of us ate the food in our dreams."

I'll try to put James's story into a regional context. When the Puritans first came to New England they said that there weren't any fairies here. The Puritans had mostly come from East Anglia, a part of England that had a lot of witch lore but not much in the way of fairy lore. Unsurprisingly, New England has a lot of folklore about witches. And had a lot of witch trials.

However, the Indian tribes that lived in New England did have a lot of folklore about small magical beings that lived in the woods, mountains and rivers. This folklore became part of the mainstream culture in the 19th century when it was shared with anthropologists and folklorists. European immigrants from places like Ireland and Scotland also moved into New England around the same time, bringing their fairy folklore with them. People began to see fairies in New England. And in the 20th and 21st century, local fairies called pukwudgies gained prominence in the national media.

New England is no longer a place without fairies. Different cultures describe fairies in different ways, but they seem to agree on a few things: fairies live in the woods, fairies are tricky, and fairies try to entice people to join them. Did my friend actually have a fairy encounter in Monadnock Park? I can't say for sure, but his story is definitely part of a long tradition of people encountering strange things in the New England woods.

Uncategorizable Weirdness: Aliens, Mummies, Fairies, and Dark Swamps

When I write this blog I always enjoy categorizing the stories I tell. That one's a Bigfoot encounter, that one's a ghost story, that one's a witch story. Humans like to categorize our experiences, and those of us who write about legends and the paranormal are no different. We want to put things into neat little buckets.

However, reality doesn't always fit into neat little categories. We try to impose order, but strange phenomena are much less orderly than we want. They can be downright slippery. Here are a couple stories that illustrate this.

STORY ONE: LITTLE MUMMIES IN THE WOODS

The year was 1974. It was the night of August 20. Around 9:30 pm a man was driving near Derry, New Hampshire on Route 42. We'll call him Joe R., since his real last name isn't known.

As Joe R. was driving down the wooded road he saw a large object ("as big as a house," he later swore) flying across sky ahead of him. It flew from east to west. It was bright like the sun, white, and somehow blurry. It went down behind the trees between Exit 4 and Exit 5. Several similar smaller objects flew down after it.

Curious about what he had just seen, Joe R. pulled over and walked into the woods. He didn't find the shiny object, but he saw something even stranger: two small "mummy-like" humanoids walking in the woods. They were about 40 yards away from him. When he saw them Joe R. became scared and ran back to his car.

Joe later told his story to two UFO investigators, and their account was later found by Albert Rosales, the great collector of humanoid encounters. I found the story on a UFO site, and it is truly a UFO sighting in the literal sense of the term "unidentified." What was the bright shiny object? When I read the story my first assumption was that it was some kind of extraterrestrial craft, but that isn't really specified. Joe never saw a spaceship for flying saucer, but simply a glowing white light that flew across the sky and disappeared into the woods. There is no indication of where it came from.

And what of the two little mummy creatures? I suppose if the light were spaceship they might be aliens that came out of it, but again it's not clear if that's what happened. Joe R. saw a light go down behind some trees, then he saw two little creatures walking in the woods. The two phenomena seem connected but it's not clear how.

I am particularly hesitant to label this as an alien encounter because of the location. Derry has a long history of strange humanoid creatures. For example, folklore from the 19th and early 20th century claimed the area was the home of a fairy named Tsienneto. Derry was settled by Scotch Irish immigrants and they clearly brought some of their fairy lore with them. Tsienneto was supposed to be a beautiful fairy queen, but in 1956 a man named Alfred Horne saw a small green humanoid while cutting Christmas trees in the woods. The creature had floppy ears like a dog, eyes with a reptilian nictitating membrane, and stumpy toeless legs. Horne tried to capture the creature but fled when it let out an earth-piercing shriek.

The story of Joe R.'s encounter fits into Derry's weird history of weird humanoids. I have no idea what these creatures are (if the stories are true). Are they fairies? Are they aliens? Are they renegade Christmas elves? Are they all different beings that just happened to find their way to Derry? They don't seem to fit into any clear category.

STORY TWO: A DRIVE THROUGH A DARK SWAMP

Here's another case of a strange, unidentifiable humanoid sighting, this time from 1990. Two residents of Bridgewater, Massachusetts were driving down Route 138 en route to a dog track in Raynham. As they drove down the road they saw a strange man standing next to the guardrail:

His clothes were old-looking, dirty and dusty, his skin was pale gray and the detail that stood out most was his hair, very dry looking, thin and brittle, sticking off from the sides of his head in a strange manner. 

The two Bridgewater residents went past him to the track, but when they reached their destination they realized it was not open that night. They turned around and drove back the way they came. They  were surprised to see the man was no longer by the guardrail. They had only been gone a few minutes, and Route 138 at that area goes through a very dense swamp. There was no place for the strange man to go, unless he went into the dark, night-time swamp.

I found that story on the same UFO site where I found Joe R.'s story, so someone thought there was something weird about the man near the swamp, but what? He could have just been a homeless person living in the swamp. But once again the location is important.

Route 138 goes right through the infamous Hockocmock Swamp, which is a hotspot for paranormal encounters and is itself smack in the middle of the even more infamous Bridgewater Triangle. Given the location, this story's inclusion on a UFO site makes a little more sense. UFOs are often seen in the Bridgewater Triangle, although there wasn't one in connection with this story. The human mind wants to make connections. There must be something strange about a strange man in strange location. Maybe he was a ghost? A swamp spirit of some kind? A fairy there to lure people away from the road and into the darkness?

I don't think we'll ever know the answers to these questions. We have an urge to give order to our world, but sometimes the world has other, weirder plans.

Finding Witches and Demons in The Woods

I have been a city person all my life, but I do like walking in the woods when I can.

My favorite seasons to walk in the woods are fall and winter. For one thing there are fewer bugs to deal with, but I also appreciate how the landscape is more apparent in those seasons. The leaves are down, the undergrowth has died, and I can really see the undulations of the earth and how the tree roots writhe around in the soil. I also like how clearly the local boulders, deposited here by glaciers eons ago, present themselves in the treeless months.

Walking around in the woods makes me want to read and write about local folklore. There's something about a giant boulder, a murky pond or an abandoned stone wall that inspires me to read about witches, ghosts and weird humanoid monsters. Maybe that's strange, but somehow those old stories make me feel connected more to the land here. Conversely, reading those stories makes me want to go out in the woods and explore. I think the local landscape inspired the folk stories, and in turn the folk stories color how I see the landscape. The two are reflections of each other, physical and mental landscapes that overlap.

A cave a few miles from my house. Creepy, right? It looked like someone had been living in it.

So when I am in a folklorey state of mind the woods seem like they are filled with strange possibilities. Who knows what I might see? Just around that hill I could encounter a crow that looks at me with knowing eyes, or maybe I'll see a strange footprint in the mud next to a stream. Anything seems possible.

In 1662, Robert Stern of Hartford, Connecticut was walking in the woods outside of that town. He thought at first that he was alone, but he soon realized he wasn't.

Robert Stern testifiethh as follows

I saw this morning Goodwife Seager in the woods with three more women and with them I saw two black creatures like to Indians but taller. I saw likewise a kettle over a fire. I saw the women dance around those black creatures and whiles I looked upon them one of the women, Goodwife Greensmith, said "Look who is a-yonder!" and then then they ran away up the hill. I stood still and the black things came towards me and then I turned to come away... (quoted in David Hall, Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth Century New England, 1991, p.158)

There are a lot of ways to think about that passage. Historically, it comes from the Hartford witch trials of 1662 - 1665. Rebecca Greensmith, mentioned in Stern's testimony, was found guilty of witchcraft and executed. Elizabeth Seager, also mentioned, was also found guilty but ultimately had her sentence suspended by Governor John Winthrop Jr.

You can also think about this passage in a sociological way. The black creatures, clearly demons, resembled Indians. The 17th century New England Puritans had a deep fear of the local Indian tribes. They fought with the Indians over land, and also considered them (as non-Christians) to be in league with the Devil. The Puritans' racial fears colored a lot of other witch trial accounts, where the Devil and his minions are portrayed as resembling Indians. You could also argue that Puritan notions about sexuality led them to think that women were more likely to be witches than men.

Another cave in the same woods.

But this story still remains fascinating and a little creepy to me even though I understand the historical and sociological aspects of it. Robert Stern said he stumbled upon witches and demons dancing around in the New England woods. There was a cauldron cooking over a fire. Just think about that for a moment. The woods that surround your house, the woods where you walk your dog and play with your kids, were believed to be the habitation of demons and witches. Who knows what you might find even today if you stray from the path into the trees? It's like we live in the middle of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale.

I have never come upon a witches Sabbath in the woods, but sometimes it feels like I could. I don't think there are witches and demons hiding out there in the forest, but sometimes it feels like there might be. I guess that's what comes from reading too much folklore and living in New England.