#massachusetts represent

[labete-du-gevaudan]

I visited the Pink House today before it was gone. Despite community efforts to save it, the Pink House is set to be demolished by March 31st, 2025. Despite this, there will still be a 100th anniversary event for this beloved house in June of 2025, even if the building itself is gone.

The Plum Island Pink House is one of the most famous spite houses in Massachusetts. The house was reportedly built in 1925 and was a husband’s last way to get back at his ex-wife. As a part of their divorce agreement, the husband was required to build an exact replica of their home and give it to her. However, the documents left out a specific location for the house to be built. So the husband obeyed the paperwork and he build the home - on top of a large marsh in the middle of nowhere.

The spite house was actually lived in and had been owned by the same family since the 1960s. The house has been rented several times throughout the years but since the early 2000s, it had been left abandoned. Community groups had been the main thing that had stopped the landmark from being demolished until its final days.

[labete-du-gevaudan]

According to the Cape Ann Musuem, this image of the Gloucester Sea Serpent was created sometime in the 1880s or 1890s. This particular depiction of the Massachusetts sea monster is one of the most famous and widely shared.

In tiny text below the image to the left reads “Reproduced in collotype for the Naval Historical Foundation from a print owned by Rear Admiral Henry Williams”.

The larger words in the center read “SEA SERPENT engraved from drawing taken from life as appeared in Gloucester Harbor August 23, 1817. Originally published in Boston by E. J. Lane and J. How.”

This creature was first seen on August 6th, 1817 off the coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Sightings continued until 1822. It was commonly described at being 80 to 100 feet long, with a head “as broad as a horse”, a horn coming from its head and scaly serpent skin. The eyewitnesses said it was “full of joints and resembled a string of buoys on a net”.

[labete-du-gevaudan]

The Plum Island Pink House is one of the most famous spite houses in Massachusetts. The house was reportedly built in 1925 and was a husband’s last way to get back at his ex-wife. As a part of their divorce agreement, the husband was required to build an exact replica of their home and give it to her. However, the documents left out a specific location for the house to be built. So the husband obeyed the paperwork and he build the home - on top of a large marsh in the middle of nowhere. The spite house was actually lived in and has been owned by the same family since the 1960s. The house has been rented several times throughout the years but since the early 2000s, it has been abandoned. Community groups have been the main thing that has stopped the house from being demolished. 

[labete-du-gevaudan]

The Old Spite House in Marblehead, Massachusetts is just as its name states: a house built out of spite. The home still stands as a residential property to this day. It was originally built in 1716 by a sailmaker named Thomas Wood. While the definite reason for the odd building is unknown, a handful of legends spread about it. One story says that the two separate halves of the building were occupied by brothers that hated each other. Another tells that the “spite bit” of the home was built out on purpose to block the view of other houses around it. Others tell of a story of brothers who were given land to share by their father; the brother that got the smallest part of the land, purposefully built the home to block the view of the water from his siblings. 

[labete-du-gevaudan]

In 1641, Obadiah Turner described a mysterious sea serpent he witnessed off the coast of Lynn, Massachusetts.

“Some being on ye great beache gathering of calms and seaweed wch had been cast thereon by ye mightie storm did spy a most wonderful serpent a shorte way off from ye shore. He was big round in ye thickest part as a wine pipe; and they do affirm that he was fifteen fathoms [90 feet] or more in length. A most wonderful tale. But ye witnesses be credible, and it would be of no account to them to tell an untrue tale.”

[labete-du-gevaudan]

There is supposedly a Bigfoot lurking in Massachusetts’ Bridgewater Triangle. The Bridgewater Triangle is an area of Massachusetts that has had an extreme number of different paranormal encounters and experiences. The Hockomock Swamp is located in the western portion of the Triangle and is said to be the home of a Bigfoot-like creature. This creature has been sighted in the area multiple times since at least the 1970s. It is described as being around 7 feet tall, humanoid, with long scraggly hair. Local enforcements went to search for a bear after they received so many reports in the ‘70s, but no bear was ever found. 

[labete-du-gevaudan]

The Black Dog of Bridgewater, also known as the Abington Black Dog, was actually seen by a policeman named Frank Curran. According to Curran, he saw the giant black dog as it he was patrolling by the local railroad tracks. He reported to face off with the dog and fire a shot from his gun at it. The dog was unfazed as the bullet soared past it. It then simply turned, and walked away from the officer. 

[labete-du-gevaudan]

This hoax photograph was claimed to be of the Ipswich Sea Serpent (or Cape Ann Sea Monster). The image was created by well known Ipswich photographer George Dexter (1862 - 1927) in 1910. The caption claims to the be the “Only photo of the Sea Serpent posed expressly for Residents at Little Neck Ipswich Mass”. Dexter even edited the image to show a person in the creature’s mouth. The monster itself had been seen by witnesses as early as the 1630s.