My friends and I were all sitting at a rustic old table, drinking Guinness, and listening to the band that was playing on the Charlemont Inn’s restaurant stage. The Inn was located in Charlemont, Mass., a quaint little town of just around 1,000+ residents or so. The Inn was built in 1787, and had allegedly housed some distinguished guests like Mark Twain and President Calvin Coolidge. The place was packed that night, not only because of the good food and music, but also because many tourists stayed at the inn to recharge from a day of hiking, biking, and sightseeing along the Mohawk trail. My friends and I, well, we were doing a different, more unusual type of sightseeing.

According to the stories, “the inn is also host to as many as six spirits, including a revolutionary war soldier, a past innkeeper, and a young woman aged 16 or 17 called Elizabeth (though what her name really was is unknown). Elizabeth slams doors, stomps on the stairs and down the hallways, and takes small personal items then returns them to a different place. Staff has seen items such as potato chips and coffee cups launched across the kitchen.”

We were ghost hunting.

So, I want to get this out of the way; I am a staunch skeptic when it comes to stories or personal experiences of the supernatural. I think that most stories of apparitions in old buildings are clever marketing ploys to scare up interest and revenue. But, when my good friend Chris suggested the idea of a weekend road trip inspired by the book Weird Massachusetts: Your Travel Guide to Massachusetts’ Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets. I was intrigued (and also in my early 20s with nothing else going on in my life). Though skeptical that we would encounter anything, I figured that if I was ever going to have a brush with the supernatural, it might as well be with a poltergeist that likes to throw food at me.

The “Weird” travel series of books is a great way to learn about local curiosities and legends, especially with Halloween just around the corner. We toured the Hoosac Tunnel in North Adams which “is a railway that burrows almost five miles through the Hoosac Mountain Range in western Massachusetts from the towns of North Adams on its west side, to Florida, Massachusetts to the east. Construction began on this large project in 1851 and finished in 1875. Over those 24 years, around 200 men died, giving it the nickname, ‘The Bloody Pit.’” Perhaps you want an excursion that’s a little less grim? We swung through Leominster to check out the weirdly tiny replica of America’s first conservationist, John Chapman, A.K.A., Johnny Appleseed (conveniently found on Johnny Appleseed Lane). What weird road trip would be complete without a visit to the Bridgewater Triangle, New England’s own take on the Bermuda Triangle, which houses stories of indigenous curses, UFO sightings, bigfoot encounters, and so much more? Want a truly weird and surreal experience though? Check out Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art (Mass MoCA) in North Adams, which offered a level of weird I will never be able to truly comprehend.

Why stop with Massachusetts though? A few years later, Chris invited me to travel with him and another friend of ours to Arizona. Now you’re probably starting to understand how my friend’s mind operates; of course he booked our hotel in Arizona’s hotbed of UFO sightings, Sedona. The one book we brought with us? Why, Weird Arizona, of course! One of the most interesting excursions on our trip was to the Petrified Forest, which is, in fact, a national park. The Petrified Forest is known for its fossils, especially fallen trees that lived in the Late Triassic epoch, about 225 million years ago. The fossils and the park are really a sight to behold and well worth the trip out to see them if you’re ever in Arizona, however, don’t try to take any home with you, because legend has it that the fossils are cursed. The Weird U.S. website states that one visitor described a piece of petrified wood he had taken more than 10 years earlier. “It was a great challenge sneaking it out of the park,” he wrote. “Since that time, though, nothing in my life has gone right.” Curse, or crushing guilty conscious? I will let you decide.

Our “Weird” book inspired road trips were a blast, and we learned a lot, too. No, I never got to have a food fight with Elizabeth’s ghost or get abducted by extraterrestrials- maybe next adventure. Perhaps you will have better luck on your weird road trips, and if you do, be sure to let me know!

Ready to embark on your own journey, or learn more about local legends? Here are some other books to help you along:

Weird New England, by Joseph Citro

Ghosts of Boston: Haunts of the Hub, by Sam Baltrusis

Massachusetts Book of the Dead: Graveyard Legends and Lore, by Roxie J. Zwicker

Spooky New England: Tales of Hauntings, Strange Happenings, and Other Local Lore, retold by S.E. Schlosser

Brian DeFelice is the Information Technology Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, MA. Look for his article in the October 24, 2019 issue of the Transcript and Bulletin.

In three days I depart for Ghana, bound for a rural village with no running water or internet access, to work on a construction project for two weeks. I acquired my mosquito net, anti-malaria meds, and a large packet of pre-departure materials. This is how I plan to spend my annual “vacation,” and right now I’m questioning my sanity.

The first time I ever left North America, I ventured to Duran, Ecuador on a high school volunteering trip. My Catholic school had a partnership there and groups visited annually to help out in schools and a soup kitchen, and embed themselves in the local community. In retrospect, we didn’t accomplish much of anything, but the value lay in exposure to the reality of life and hardship in a developing country. As a teenager, it opened my eyes to water and electricity shortages, unsanitary conditions, infant mortality, and other struggles experienced by the warm and welcoming people we met. Perhaps the experience sparked my interest in travel to off-the-beaten-track regions, and service abroad.

Over the years my passion for travel grew, and while working at a college, I spent several years co-leading service-learning trips to Nicaragua and Mexico. In that academic environment, surrounded by faculty well-versed in social justice issues, I questioned the benefit of these endeavors at times, and in many ways changed my point of view regarding volunteering.

Some circles have expressed a backlash against “voluntourism,” or “volunteer vacations,” on the grounds that they promote a “savior complex,” undermine local expertise and activism, and produce accolades and social media photo-ops without making a real difference. Some feel that any charity work must be better than nothing, but with increasing awareness of privilege and economic disparity, the debate continues. An excellent documentary available on Hoopla entitled H.O.P.E. Was Here profiles a group of college students traveling to Peru and insightfully exploring these conflicting perspectives. In my opinion, ethical volunteering abroad is surely possible. But if you’re going to do it, do it right! Here are some rules I try to follow:

Learn about a culture before entering it for the purpose of “helping.” I knew nothing about the history and politics of Ecuador before I went, very little about the people, and had zero Spanish language skills. How can one “help” people without understanding them? I urge anyone to read up before traveling anywhere, whether for pleasure or volunteering. Reading individuals’ stories including The Country Under My Skin before going to Nicaragua, Enrique’s Journey before Mexico, I, Rigoberta Menchu before Guatemala, and Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom prior to South Africa enhanced my experiences to these countries immeasurably.

Learn at least the basic greetings in another language before traveling; the library has free resources that make this easy. In addition to travel books and CDs, why not try our Mango language learning program by logging in from anywhere using your library card? Norwood’s library and the Minuteman network have hundreds of travel guides by Lonely Planet, Fodor’s, Moon, and others, which in addition to travel recommendations include primers on history and politics, tips on cultural differences, and useful foreign language words and phrases. I’m currently scouring the Bradt Travel Guide: Ghana, and borrowing Pimsleur’s Twi language CDs.

Regarding volunteering in particular, seek out programs that are locally led and administered. Rather than traveling with preconceived notions of how you may improve another community, respond to the citizens’ own identified needs. Make sure a project demonstrates sustainability; don’t start something the community cannot maintain after you leave. Do not engage in work for which you are not qualified. I used the book Volunteer Vacations: Short-Term Adventures That Will Benefit You and Others to select my upcoming Ghana placement. I chose the program because Ghanaians run the project and have an infrastructure set up for an ongoing flow of short-term and long-term volunteers coming and going, working alongside locals. Additionally, I had to be accepted to the program, submit to a background check, and sign off on a strict code of conduct agreement very attentive to cultural sensitivity.

The village also has medical and school projects that require participants to have some credentials in either field. Lacking these, I will do manual labor instead, mixing cement, bricklaying, and painting, from 8:30 – 4:00 Monday through Friday. Is it too late for me to change my mind?! It may seem obvious that volunteers should have qualifications to do certain types of tasks, yet I’ve heard of undergraduates on service trips helping to deliver babies, and seen high school students spending time in orphanages where they make bonds with already-traumatized children, only to depart after a week or two. I aim to avoid doing anything that would not fly at home, including things like picking up children and taking photos with them without an adult’s permission, or posting photos online that do not portray the subjects with accuracy and dignity.

In four days I will land in Accra, and transfer to a dormitory with bunk beds, outhouses, and intermittent electricity. For reading material I will carry The Door of No Return: The History of Cape Coast Castle and the Atlantic Slave Trade, since I plan to visit the infamous slave port on a weekend excursion. I’ll also read a fiction selection, Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi, which tells the tale of Ghanaian half-sisters, one of whom marries a colonial Englishman and lives a privileged life, while the other becomes a slave sent to the U.S. My contribution to the small village as a volunteer will be a drop in the bucket, but at least I will do no harm, and I will benefit immensely from a difficult but transformative experience and immersion in another culture. Although I may question the wisdom of my vacation choice, in the thirty years since that first trip to Ecuador, I have yet to regret a single volunteer travel experience.

Lydia Sampson is the Assistant Director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, MA. Look for her article in the September 26, 2019 issue of the Transcript and Bulletin.