In Episode 285 Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger cheer Westford Academy’s football team in Massachusetts. Their mascot is the Grey Ghosts. How they cam e to be called that has been a point of controversy in recent years, but part of the backstory leads us to the haunted Roudenbush Community Center in Westford where we explore a Civil War legend. See more here:  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-285-westfords-grey-ghosts/

Westford’s Grey Ghosts

In Episode 284 Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger head to Haddam, Connecticut, to a location officially known as Cremation Hill -- a place where they say a farmer used to hire farmhands for the season, and then murder them and burn the bodies instead of paying them. There’s some truth to the legend… this is the story and trial of Emil Schutte who was sentenced to hang on October 22, 1922, for the murder. See more here:  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-284-connecticuts-cremation-hill/

Connecticut’s Cremation Hill

In Episode 283 Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger explore the former Rhode Island State Burial Grounds in Cranston, searching for the place where Grave 599 was exhumed in November 1883. The remains of Caleb Brown were being retrieved by an undertaker hired by his sister to be reinterred in a family plot. When the grave was exposed it was discovered that Brown’s head was missing. Who took it and why (and how) is a mystery. See more here:  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-283-cranstons-headless-corpse/

Cranston’s Headless Corpse

In Episode 282 Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger head to Paris, Maine, to investigate the unsolved murders of Dr. and Mrs. Littlefield who were killed in October of 1937. Two men were convicted of the heinous crime, one of them likely didn’t do it. What seemed like an open-and-shut case turned into an event that rocked the otherwise small, peaceful town of Paris. See more here:  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-282-the-unsolved-littlefield-murders/

The Unsolved Littlefield Murders

In Episode 281 Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger stroll Heritage Park in Manchester, New Hampshire, in search of the statue of a man sitting on a park bench holding a small box with dials on it. The statue depicts Ralph Baer, who changed the world back in 1966 when he developed the first home video game console. From two lines knocking a small digital square back-and-forth, a $220 billion dollar industry was born. See more here:  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-281-the-man-behind-the-console/

The Man Behind the Console

In Episode 280 Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger take a week off for the holidays and reintroduce you to an episode from that vault that originally aired in December of 2020. We head to Jericho, Vermont, in search of snow. In 1885, Wilson Bentley figured out a way to attach his camera to a microscope and capture the first close-up photograph of a snowflake. In the coming years he would photograph thousands of images showing the intricate beauty of these ice crystals. His images would be published around the world and even hang in art galleries proving no two flakes are alike and earning Bentley the title: Snowflake Man. See more here:  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-174-the-snowflake-man-of-jericho/

From the Vault: The Snowflake Man of Jericho

In Episode 279 Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger head to the Roxbury section of Boston, Massachusetts, searching for the factory that produced America’s first Christmas cards. Back in 1875, Louis Prang took a chance that Americans might want to send Christmas cards like they do in Europe. His risk paid off. Within a few years 5 million cards per year were leaving his Roxbury factory, and sending holiday cards became an institution. Jeff and Ray wish you the happiest of holidays! See more here:  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-279-americas-first-christmas-card/ Listen to our past holiday specials: Episode 227 - Christmas Witch Sheep of Narragansett -  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-227-christmas-witch-sheep-of-narragansett/ The Mistletoe Bride -  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/holiday-extra-podcast-the-mistletoe-bride/ Episode 175 - Boston's Christmas Tree -  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-175-bostons-christmas-tree/ Episode 122 - New England's First Christmas Tree -  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-122-new-englands-first-christmas-tree/ Episode 70 - The Ghost Who Saved Christmas -  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-70-the-ghost-who-saved-christmas/ Episode 18 - The Jingle Bells Scandal -  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-18-the-jingle-bells-scandal/ Episode 17 - When Boston Banned Christmas -  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-17-when-boston-banned-christmas/

America’s First Christmas Card

In Episode 278 Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger explore a bungalow house on Lindley Street in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where in 1974 haunting activity was so profound the police, fire department, city engineers, and clergy got involved. Police witnessed a levitating refrigerator, chairs breaking with no one touching them, chairs piling up on each other, and a panicked family. And that’s when Ed and Lorraine Warren joined the case. In this episode we’ll hear from Ed Warren himself about this haunting from a 1997 audio interview conducted by Jeff. See more here:  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-278-the-lindley-street-poltergeist/

The Lindley Street Poltergeist

In Episode 277 Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger head to South Kingstown, Rhode Island, to check out a rock and 40-foot observation tower named after Hannah Robinson, a broken-hearted woman who once sat here in 1773 to take in the view of her childhood home one last time. They say her ghost still haunts the rock, but her story still haunts us all. See more here:  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-277-rhode-islands-broken-hearted-tower/

Rhode Island’s Broken-Hearted Tower

In Episode 276 Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger head to Lewiston, Maine, to search for a house that’s “ridden with ghosts” according to the headline of a December 1894 local newspaper article. A shadowy man whose neck appears broken in a most unnatural way had been reported throughout the tenement house for years. Some believe he was a harbinger of bad things. But he’s not the only ghost reported here. See more here:  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-276-the-broke-neck-shadow-man/

The Broke-Neck Shadow Man

In Episode 275 – the Thanksgiving Special – Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger search the White Mountains near Albany, New Hampshire, for Pamela Hollingworth, a five-year-old girl who went missing back in the Autumn of 1941. What followed was one of the largest and most closely-watched search parties to ever grace the region. For days New Englanders held their breath waiting for news of little Pammy’s fate.  See more on our Web site:  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-275-the-white-mountains-search-for-pammy/

The White Mountains Search for Pammy

In Episode 274, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger sail out of Gloucester Harbor in Massachusetts, aboard the fishing schooner Charles Haskell. In March of 1869, the Haskell was fishing on Georges Bank when a perfect storm knocked her into another vessel sinking the other ship and damning her crew. The ghosts of the sunken crew came back to haunt the Haskell. The story still haunts Gloucester Harbor. See more here:  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-274-a-ship-crewed-by-the-damned/

A Ship Crewed By the Damned

In Episode 273, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger hike into Ponemah Bog in Amherst, New Hampshire, searching for some strange carnivorous plants that grow in the region. These plants are downright deadly… to the right species. Like the Venus Fly Trap that grows in the Carolinas, Ponemah Bog is home to plants like Sundews, Pitcher Plants, and Bladderworts. Could these plants have inspired the classic story and musical Little Shop of Horrors? Seymour (get it?) here:  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-273-little-shop-of-ponemah-bog-horrors/

Little Shop of Ponemah Bog Horrors

In Episode 272, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger walk along the railroad tracks just south of Cavendish, Vermont, in search of the location of a horrible 1848 accident that launched an iron rod through the skull of railroad worker Phineas Gage. Gage became a medical miracle surviving the incident and becoming the subject of medical studies as well as a temporary living exhibit in P.T. Barnum’s American Museum. Today a monument in Cavendish commemorates the event and the doctor who saved Gage’s life. See more here:  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-272-the-phineas-gage-incident/

The Phineas Gage Incident

For Halloween Episode 271, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger remake an old radio drama called “The Shadow People.” Our friends Lorna Nogueira, Michael Legge, and John Wilbur join us to help recreate this spooky audio drama from the 1950s. We break our usual format for the sake of the most haunted holiday of the year. Enjoy! See more here:  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-271-halloween-the-shadow-people/

Halloween: The Shadow People

In Episode 270, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger search for a house in Berlin, Connecticut, that was once so haunted locals wouldn’t live there very long. Doors opened and closed by themselves, but most frightening, the last tenant was haunted by the ghostly cries of an infant, though no children lived in the house at the time. The haunt made the newspapers back in 1888. See more here:  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-270-berlins-crying-house/

Berlin’s Crying House

In Episode 269, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger search for the Sea Bird, a seaworthy ghost ship that beached near Newport, Rhode Island, in the Autumn of 1750. With no crew on board, and no sign of any trouble or theft, a legend was born. The captain and crew were never seen again. 135 years later, a plausible tale of mutiny and murder surfaced that made the newspapers, keeping us wondering what happened to the Sea Bird. See more here:  https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-269-the-ghost-ship-sea-bird/

The Ghost Ship Sea Bird

In Episode 268, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger explore the Bangor Public Library in Maine, in search of a couch where former Vice President Hannibal Hamlin drew his last breath. The couch has become a macabre attraction in the library due to its connection with presidential royalty… but you can’t sit on it! What happened? And how did it get here?

Bangor Library’s Death Couch

In Episode 267, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger cruise down Farm Street in Dover, Massachusetts, looking for a strange monster who made an appearance back on April 21, 1977. Bill Bartlett didn’t have a camera, but being an artist, he was able to draw what he saw. It was like no other creature anyone had ever seen before. By the following night, three more people witnessed this strange creature that Loren Coleman first chronicled and dubbed the Dover Demon. Was it a cryptid? An alien? Something else?

The Dover Demon

In Episode 266, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger explore the haunted Mt. Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. Built in the White Mountains in 1900 by Joseph Stickney, he didn’t live long enough to get much use out of the hotel. His widow, Princess Carolyn inherited the hotel and made a reputation for throwing lavish parties and always being the best dressed. In 1944, the hotel was home to a huge international conference that would give rise to the IMF, the World Bank, and conspiracy theories that suggest maybe darker forces infiltrated those meetings.

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