Strange New England Podcast

The problem with ghost stories is that they, like ghosts themselves, are only barely there. They’re witnessed by one or two people. What is witnessed can take many forms:  a…

“Yesterday upon the stair,I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today I wish, I wish he’d go away… When I came home last night at three…

NOTE: The following story contains description of a suicide and may not be suitable for younger listeners.  Ghosts are old companions. They’ve been with us since the very beginning. Go…

I was ten years old when my grandfather died. He died in his sleep during the cold February night with his rosary in his hands. My cousin had to break…

It’s a warm July Sunday in 1745. You’re sitting in your pew at the First Church of York, Maine, waiting for the service to begin. It is a quiet time,…

A ghost story is usually a solitary thing. It lives by itself and doesn’t go out much and by its nature, is solitary and lonesome. A ghost story is the…

You’ve heard a lot of stories about the old days in the deep woods of northern Maine, when river drivers cut the trees and moved the logs into the rivers,…

There are trains in the forest that run on their own schedules, trains whose origins and destinations are as mysterious as forest itself. These are some of their tales.

When I was a boy, my father told me a story about a ghost town. I come from northern Maine, Aroostook County, a place of endless trees and potato fields…

Loring Air Force Base, which itself is now only a memory. The bunkers we walk among are easily viewed on Google Earth but at one time in the early 1950s, this was one of the most secure and secret sites on the planet. Inside this strange and haunting set of structures half buried in the earth, the United States stored enough nuclear warheads to destroy the earth several times over. These are the depositories of doom and they are as quiet as the grave. They stand today as a testament to a period of time in our history when the words ‘the end of the world’ were no longer a metaphor. This was the place where the end of the world could easily have begun.

Three score years and ten. It says it in the Bible, our allotted time upon this planet, the time we can expect to wander and walk and wonder, because nobody…

It looks like a small desk without any legs, just sitting there on a table, a well-fashioned rectangular wooden box containing within it a drawer that pulls out to reveal…

It happens several times a day to everyone I know, usually at dinner time. Sitting quietly, minding your own business in the comfort of your own home and the phone…

My name is George Miller Beard and I have a strange tale to tell you, a story so bizarre and truly unbelievable that I am certain people will doubt my…

You find yourself alone on a journey, feeling somewhat lost as the houses seemed to have disappeared from the side of the road and all you have seen for the…

Elbert Stevens owned a sawmill in Bridgewater Corners, Vermont at the turn of the last century. His people had been in the area for time out of mind and he…

The wind is blowing. It seems like the wind is always blowing here on this rock, like a constant companion, the sea breezes wafting lightly or heavy, but always, the…

Lieutenant Gustavus Drane awoke from his stupor to find himself chained to the floor. It was dark, so dark. Where was he and what was that sound? How did I…

 There is a legend in the northeast of a man condemned to ride the storm for all eternity. When folks first started describing the man and his conveyance, he was…

It is dusk of a late summer day and you are standing quietly on a shoreline. There are bits of gnarled tree roots washed ashore here and there, pebbles, and…

When I was a young boy living in Caribou, Maine, back in the 1960s, we had two rocking chairs in our living room. I spent a lot of time in…

Not everyone can claim that they were born in Purgatory, but Andrew Tozier could, on February 11, 1838. Purgatory is a town near the Monmouth-Litchfield line in central Maine and…

[Please note – some of the descriptions in this article/episode are graphic. Use discretion with younger readers/listeners] You are lying in your bed on this hot July night. It has…

It is night. Darkness has fallen over the September night as the half moon rises and the stars begin to fill the sky over Penobscot Bay. Sometimes the night falls…

I know you don’t tell other people that you’ve had that experience, that one singular time when you were alone in your house and it happened: something inexplicable. Maybe it…

He has waited for entrance into the mausoleum for well over a hundred years - learn the real story behind the enternal mourner of Cuttingsville, Vermont.

Ten thousand warplanes flew from or over Maine during World War II. Over the course of the war, a total of 48 aircraft crashed in the state accounting for 143…

If you live in New England, sooner or later you’ll have this experience: you’ll find yourself driving down a road you’ve driven a hundred times before and you’ll notice something…

The cold wind blows across the empty fields. The trees have shed their rusted leaves and the moon plays hide and go seek with the thin and wispy clouds. It’s…

It is September 11, 1976. You are sitting quietly in a living room near Maine’s Old Orchard Beach. The sea air is strangely balmy as you settle down for a…

It won’t be long now. The night winds begin to gather the chill that will eventually drill into our bones once the damp, grey skies of November gather overhead, anchoring…

How do we knew when a body is truly dead? Modern science shows us that the body dies slowly, not all at once as we used to suppose. It takes…

The great 19th century American poet, John Greenleaf Whittier, composed a strange poem entitled “The Garrison of Cape Ann” that tells one of the strangest tales ever to come from…

The three men made their way down the lonely trail that skirted the fields outside of Machiasport, Maine. These hills were wide open and bare, but the trees in the distance…

Gold forms in the heart of dying stars and as a result of their explosions, or novas, it is spread throughout the cosmos as one of the heavier elements. All…

We are visual creatures linked to the world through images, taking in most of our knowledge through our vision. The poets speak of the eyes as being the windows of…

Boundary Pond is a small, unassuming body of water in the northeastern corner of Maine. It is almost touching Quebec, earning the pond it’s name sake. It has an outlet…

In ancient times when the night was so much darker than it is today, stories were told that endure to this day. It’s easy for scholars to assume that, because…

It is that time of year again, and apart from the religious significance of the day, there is the secular aspect of days off, possible Christmas bonuses, money spent on…

There are moments in your life that shine like stars in the darkness and light your path and as you remember your past.  Such memories are safely couched in the…