BOOKS Travel the state with 'Weird Massachusetts'

By Kaisa Holloway Cripps

Editor

We all know Massachusetts has its share of strange tales and finally there is a book that documents all the myths, legends and lores we have passed on from friend to friend, generation to generation.

In the book, Weird Massachusetts: Your Travel Guide to Massachusetts' Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets, author Jeff Belanger travels from P-town to the Berkshires sharing some of the more bizarre and well, weird, tales.

Locally, we all know about Lizzie Borden and the '40 whacks' (which isn't exactly accurate), but did you know the local legend of The Mary Celeste-Marion's Ghost Ship. Read 'Weird Massachusetts' for the strange tale of a 19th century ship.

More local legends, lores and tales are shared from the 'Floating Island' in landlocked Springfield, how the small rock on Plymouth harbor became 'the' Plymouth Rock, a lot of spooky stories about hospitals and mental institutions and ghosts on trial in Plymouth. A note to the reader, if you scare easily, you may not want to burn the midnight oil while reading some of the stories.

Regardless of your scare potential, the book is very interesting and would make an interesting road trip with teenagers who like the horror genre showing at local theaters; matching book with reality would definitely keep them interested this summer.

The book is very well summed up by its author, Jeff Belanger, "In my life I've had the opportunity to travel a pretty good distance from home. I've seen other countries, I've been all over the United States, and I've explored my own back yard. One thing I've discovered for certain is that we live on a very weird planet. To truly capture the odd folktales, ghostly legends, UFO sightings, and understand the cryptids lurking in a given area, you need to be local for a good deal of time. I was born in Massachusetts. I've lived in a few other states, but I came back. I know the locals and the locales. If I don't know the history or the witnesses, I know who to ask.

I spent most of last year exploring a bizarre place called Massachusetts. In my research I learned that life here in the Bay State was perfectly normal... right up until about 10,000 years ago. And then things started to get weird. Massachusetts has more than its share of ghosts; I knew that years ago. We're old New England, we embrace our history, and we're more apt to talk about our ghosts than some other parts of the country. But we also have our monsters: Pukwudgies, Bigfoot, the Dover Demon, Big Hairy, and the Thunderbird just to name a few. We have Salem — arguably the world capital of all things witchy. We have Cape Cod, full of sea tales, giant serpents, and Wampanoag creation legends. Every corner of the state has something unusual to share. Sometimes you just need to scratch the surface a bit."

Hardcover, 256 pages,

Publisher: Sterling (May 6, 2008)

• ISBN-10: 140275437X
• ISBN-13: 978-1402754371