A Magical Mystery Tour: Prologue

 

Yesterday morning was exactly as I had hoped: overcast, cool, and just blustery enough to herald Halloween, now days away—an ideal backdrop to a day-long guided tour of some of the lesser-known haunted locales in the Berkshires.

 

My fearless adventure guide: Joseph Durwin, hobbyist historian of the strange and macabre and author of "These Mysterious Hills," a regular column published in the AdvocateWeekly from 2004 to 2007. (Today, as it happens, marks the five-year anniversary of his inaugural story in the series of local lore, which includes a fan-favorite piece on “what is surely the most thoroughly haunted location in all the Berkshires,” the Hoosac Tunnel in North Adams (more on that later).

 

Durwin, a Pittsfield native and a friend of mine, has been skulking around sketchy spots in our region for fifteen years, jotting notes, maintaining files, and amassing a veritable encyclopedia of local creepiness, much of which lives in the Local History department of the Berkshire Athenaeum. His research spans everything from unsolved murders and UFO sightings to records of fringe religions and witchcraft.

 

 

“For the records, I'm not really a ghost hunter,” he admits. “What I do is less than 5 percent about actually trying to experience ghosts or paranormal phenomenon. In my experience, a small of amount of real weirdness goes a long way. Lives are what interest me—human dimension stuff, separating what can be established historically and what is rumor, and how legends grow and change.”

 

Still, in the spirit of the upcoming holiday, we sought to be spooked. Our ten-hour journey was by no means comprehensive, but rather represents a sliver of the eerie legends that live in our truly mysterious hills.

 

Continue to Part I....