The Ancient Stone Mysteries of New England Feature Focus

New Series of Shorts Debuts in August - 2024 In Review, Part Four

The Ancient Stone Mysteries of New England Feature Focus debuted on YouTube this past August, a new series of 5-10 minute-long videos, each focusing on a single stonework feature in depth. These are each new creations, freshly scripted presentations with up-to-date research which make use of new work and previously unseen and seen footage and photographs from my archives to shine a light on the chosen features.

The first was on a natural stone feature near Lake Champlain, in Vermont, an “anticline” known locally as The Oven.

My hope was that these might serve as sorts of “trailers” for the rest of my YouTube Channel, that someone might come across and like one of these short features and then dive further down the stonework rabbit hole (which sounds a bit like plunging into a well — careful). The “Yankee Lore” video had also been taking off, so I figured “new content” might get some new eyes on my channel.

The Upton Stone Chamber in Massachusetts was in many ways where this path began for me, so it was the subject of my next feature. Plus, everyone loves stone chambers…

As it was the height of Summer, I couldn’t really go see stonework in the field. It was still there, of course. But lush vegetation, the very green of our Green Mountains, grows up and over and obscures the rocks and stones from June through late September. So, it was a good time to make some videos.

I’d seen Vermont’s Calendar One Stone Chamber in my first summer visiting stone sites, when I didn’t know much about making videos, or shooting the stonework in the summer, or… much of anything, yet. I felt sort of compelled to do it, to document the sites. There was synchronicity or simply coincidence prodding me along, as I read the book MANITOU by James Mavor & Byron Dix and found myself getting invited to visit places I was reading about.

I kept making videos into the Fall because we then experienced what seemed to be a sort of Eclipse-Tourism Ricochet Foliage Season in Vermont, where we were overrun by hordes of “leaf-peepers” into mid-October. I figured word got out this was a cool place to visit when so many people poured up here for the Total Eclipse in April. And they came ba-a-a-a-ack…

Vermont’s Calendar Two was Video Short Three. This Stone Chamber is nearly as iconic as the Upton Stone Chamber. It’s beautiful stonework, and we’re all lucky it’s so well appreciated and preserved by its private owners.

It appeared to be a “successful” foliage tourism season in the state, in that it felt nearly impossible to get anywhere, when you got wherever you were going there was no parking and families doing their… thing, and going home then took forever due to the traffic on the two-way mountain and back roads. By all appearances, there were many, many visitors cruising around to see the fall colors.

Like out-of-state SUVs jamming into over-capacity trailhead parking pull-offs, in attempting to pack these short presentations full of information, sometimes there’s just too much for the space allowed. Had to cut the script for this Redemption Rock one down a bit, as I’d included too much on what’s known as King Philip’s War for the brief format.

Though these features were short enough in length that I could mostly visualize what the video might vaguely look like in my head, I needed to script them out, in part to include accurate facts, like the pre-Contact results of OSL — Optically Stimulated Luminescence — Dating on this Stone Assemblage in Hopkinton, Rhode Island.

Short, easily digestible, bite-sized… and, again, who doesn’t love Stone Chambers? This Central Massachusetts Stone Chamber struck me as too squared-off to be too early. Looked like regular, European-influenced stonework, to my eyes. Still, a cool space!

I was trying to present a variety of features, some man-made, some natural, all — hopefully — interesting. And while I was writing, producing, etc, all DIY except the music — still using the work of Composer and Performer Kevin MacLeod for that — I’d decided against appearing in my videos, figuring its not my face people want to see.

The Nashoba Brook Stone Chamber was actually the first Stone Chamber I set foot in, though I consider the Upton Stone Chamber, which I visited just after, on that same afternoon, to be the true starting point of my journey into the stonework.

This is still a very curious Stone Chamber, with its L-Shaped, almost U-Shaped, interior, but restoration and stabilization has smoothed away rough edges and perhaps some character. The Chamber is situated on the Trail Through Time in Acton, Massachusetts, and I featured Publicly Documented Stone Prayers there in the next video.

This Tunnel Stone Chamber was something to see. And since its location is a Secret shared with me by noted and notable expert on our state’s spooky and scary things, Vermont Folklorist and Horror Writer Joseph Citro, I can only show it to you in videos. Joe also took me over to see Calendar Two, so I give him my continued thanks!

In keeping with a mix of man-made and natural stone features, I thought the Champlain Thrust Fault, a Reverse Fault exposed above the ground on the Lone Rock Point peninsula in Burlington, Vermont, made an excellent subject. Many don’t know this gem is just next to the city’s waterfront.

After covering a known, geological stone mystery, I next turned to an unknown, speculative stone mystery, a recently re-discovered Potential Stone Prayer in Richmond, Vermont.

Though I’d been rolling these out through August and into September, in mid-September I started in on the “More Yankee Lore” video. I kept thinking about how none of the early colonists actually came from “stone-building country.” They were from unglaciated, Southern parts of Britain. I’d heard this in a NEARA presentation, but documented for myself for that video.

NEARA is New England Antiquities Research Association, and their 60th Anniversary Conference and its Field Trips led directly to my last two short videos, to this point, covering the Oracle Chamber and Sacrificial Table at America’s Stonehenge in Salem, New Hampshire, and a Receiving Tomb Stone Chamber in Deerfield, New Hampshire.

That is the series, thus far. I have a list of a few more I hope to do, when and as the snow prevents me from seeing stone sites this Winter, its white blanket an even more complete cover than Summer’s greenery. If there’s a Stone Feature you’d like to see me Focus on, please let me know in the Comments. Thank you for watching.