Everything OddWay knows about. Narrow it down by what you're after, or where you're going.
Real events too strange to have made the textbook.
Boston, MA
Hidden among the rocks and trees of Forest Hills Cemetery is a group of tiny stone buildings representing occupations such as architect, grocer, musician and poet. The miniature village is easy to miss inside the enormous Victorian cemetery and feels more like woodland folk art than a graveyard feature.
Boston, MA
Five-pointed Fort Independence dominates Castle Island at the edge of Boston Harbor. The present granite fort dates largely to the nineteenth century, but military defenses have occupied the site since the 1600s. The surrounding park is open broadly; interior fort access depends on seasonal tours and events.
Hull, MA
Overgrown coastal-defense ruins sprawl across Peddocks Island, including concrete batteries and abandoned military structures from the harbor's defensive network. The island is reached seasonally; closed structures and unsafe interiors should not be entered.
New Bedford, MA
Multiple generations of coastal defenses occupy this New Bedford peninsula, including granite Fort Rodman, concrete batteries and underground-looking military structures. Much of the park can be explored from public paths, while individual fort interiors and restricted areas open only under current park rules or special programs.
Boston, MA
Stone walls and arches survive from an Olmsted-era field house in Franklin Park. The shelter burned in the twentieth century and later became a setting for outdoor concerts before settling into its current life as a picturesque public ruin along park trails.
Worcester, MA
A century-old hot-dog institution preserves a vintage Art Deco interior and the local tradition of Coney Island-style dogs. The neon, stools and old signage make the restaurant feel like a still-functioning piece of roadside food history.
Boston, MA
Fort Warren occupies much of Georges Island in Boston Harbor, with granite corridors, casemates and defensive works open to explore during the ferry season. The fort is also tied to the legend of the Lady in Black, one of Boston Harbor's best-known ghost stories.
Auburn, MA
A modest rocket-shaped obelisk marks the field where Robert H. Goddard launched the world's first successful liquid-fueled rocket on March 16, 1926. The flight lasted only a few seconds, but the experiment helped lay the groundwork for modern rocketry and spaceflight.
Peabody, MA
Albert DeSalvo, who confessed to being the Boston Strangler, is buried in Puritan Lawn Memorial Park. DNA later linked him to the murder of Mary Sullivan, although historians and investigators have long questioned whether he was responsible for every killing attributed to the Strangler. Visit only during cemetery hours.
Berlin, MA
Don Featherstone, designer of the iconic plastic pink lawn flamingo, is buried beneath a marker decorated with a flock of flamingos and an inscription crediting him as their original creator. It is an appropriately kitschy final memorial for one of America's most recognizable lawn ornaments.
Sharon, MA
William Rosenberg, founder of Dunkin' Donuts, is buried in Sharon Memorial Park. The otherwise conventional grave gives Massachusetts travelers a physical endpoint to the story of a regional doughnut-and-coffee business that grew into an international chain. Check cemetery access rules before visiting.
Charlton, MA
John 'Grizzly' Adams, the nineteenth-century mountain man and animal trainer, is buried beneath a monument topped by a carved bear. His traveling menageries and exaggerated frontier image helped turn him into a lasting American folk character.
Worcester, MA
Harvey Ball, the Worcester artist who created the familiar yellow Smiley Face in 1963, is buried beneath a granite marker displaying his own cheerful design. Ball reportedly created the image in minutes for an insurance-company morale campaign and was paid only a small fee. Visit Notre Dame Cemetery respectfully from dawn to dusk.
Amherst, MA
Astronomer David Todd repeatedly traveled around the world chasing solar eclipses only to encounter clouds and other failures, while his wife Mabel Loomis Todd became crucial to the publication of Emily Dickinson's poetry. Their unusual memorials incorporate astronomical and botanical imagery tied to their lives.
Framingham, MA
Two men killed by the same lightning strike in 1777 are remembered with neighboring stones. The paired graves preserve the bizarre shared fate of John Cloyce and Abraham Rice inside Framingham's historic burial landscape.
Boston, MA
A small marker near the North End waterfront remembers the 1919 Great Molasses Flood, when a storage tank burst and a wave of molasses tore through the neighborhood, killing 21 people and injuring scores more. The understated plaque marks one of Boston's strangest and deadliest industrial disasters.
Charlemont, MA
A bronze Native American figure faces east with outstretched arms beside the Mohawk Trail. Installed in 1932, the monument was created by the Improved Order of Red Men and reflects an older, non-Native fraternal interpretation of Indigenous imagery, making its history more complicated than the striking roadside silhouette suggests.
Boston, MA
A plaque on the Harvard Bridge commemorates Harry Houdini's 1908 leap into the Charles River while shackled in chains. Thousands reportedly watched the escape artist make the stunt, and the small marker preserves a surprisingly dramatic piece of Boston spectacle history.
Hawley, MA
A remarkably intact nineteenth-century stone charcoal kiln sits along a short woodland trail. The beehive-shaped structure once converted huge amounts of local wood into charcoal for industry and is among the best-preserved examples of its type in New England.
Taunton, MA
The grave of three-year-old Pearl French is marked by a carved stone rocking chair, an unusually intimate Victorian-style memorial. Local stories later attached ghostly movement and other paranormal claims to the chair, but those remain folklore. Visit the cemetery respectfully during open hours.
North Adams, MA
This eighteenth-century cemetery is filled with unusually sculptural monuments, including tree-shaped stones and the elaborate Tinker Mausoleum. It functions almost like an outdoor art museum despite having few nationally famous burials.
Holliston, MA
This American sycamore grew from a seed carried around the Moon aboard Apollo 14 in 1971. Massachusetts received two Moon Tree seeds for the Bicentennial; the other tree died, leaving Holliston's specimen as the state's surviving living link to the mission.
Florida, MA
The nearly five-mile Hoosac Tunnel earned the nickname 'Bloody Pit' during its brutal nineteenth-century construction, when roughly 200 workers died. Stories of apparitions and unexplained voices followed the disaster history. The tunnel remains an active railroad: view the portal only from a safe lawful area and never enter or walk the tracks.
Hull, MA
A small lifesaving shelter survives on isolated Peddocks Island from the era when shipwreck survivors needed emergency refuge along Boston Harbor. Reaching it requires seasonal island access, making the journey part of the stop.
