New England Legends Podcast Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger

In Episode 194, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger head to Union Street in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, to search for the long-lost location of a haunted farmhouse that made the newspapers back in 1887. Though it was reported to be haunted before a tragic event left a final scar, after a child was lost inside, the building rotted away to nothing except a spooky story almost lost to the ages.

In Episode 193, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger explore the Boston Athenaeum in search of a rare book -- the 1837 memoirs and deathbed confession of thief and highwayman James Allen, alias George Walton (among others). Allen’s dying wish was to have one copy of the book bound in leather made from the skin of his own back. That one copy is embossed with the Latin: Hic Liber Waltonis Cute Compactus Est. -- This book is bound in the skin of Walton.

In Episode 192, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger dive into the legends of Lake Willoughby in Westmore, Vermont. From Devil’s Rock, to a giant serpent, to a mysteries underwater tunnel that may connect to another nearby lake, Willoughby is home to many strange legends. Devil’s Rock is still here, and we found newspaper articles related to the killing of the giant serpent, but could a descendant of that giant beast still be lurking in these cold waters?

In Episode 191, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger explore the woods around the Notchland Inn in Hart’s Location, in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, searching for the ghost of Nancy Barton. In the winter of 1788, Nancy left her boarding house in Jefferson, New Hampshire, to trek 30 miles through the snow to chase down her faithless lover who had stolen all of her money the previous morning. Not only are the nearby brook, pond, falls, and mountain named after her, but her ghost is still said to roam the are

In Episode 190, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger hike into the woods of Kent, Connecticut, in search of Molly Fisher Rock, a boulder with strange petroglyphs, with ties to an old folk healer from the late 1700s, and a possible connection to a cursed pirate treasure of Captain Kidd.

In Episode 189, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger visit a memorial off the side of the road in Alfred, Maine, that marks the site where America’s first elephant was gunned down in cold blood back in 1816. The elephant named Old Bet had toured throughout New England for eight years before a jealous farmer named Daniel Davis gunned her down as she approached the town of Alfred. Old Bet was part of one of America’s earliest circuses, and if not for the tiny memorial along Route 4, her legend may be lost forever.