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.
Stafford Springs, CT
A recovered steel beam from the World Trade Center stands outside the West Stafford Fire Department. The memorial particularly honors two local residents who were crew members aboard United Airlines Flight 175.
Waterbury, CT
Tiny stone houses, miniature stairways and a strange little throne sit nearly swallowed by the woods beside an old service road. Local stories have connected the handmade ruins with fairies or elves, although their actual origin is much more earthly. Reach the area only by lawful public access and do not park on Old Waterbury Road.
Hartford, CT
Hartford's oldest surviving cemetery holds generations of the city's earliest residents in an increasingly compressed downtown landscape. Thousands were buried here, sometimes in layered graves, while later city development transformed the land around the burial ground.
New Haven, CT
The former Knights of Columbus Museum now centers on the life of founder Michael McGivney while retaining exhibits on the Catholic fraternal organization's history and religious material culture. It is a specialized museum in an unexpectedly monumental downtown building.
Norwich, CT
A distinctive blue-green bronze woman watches over a grave in Yantic Cemetery. The statue has inspired local stories about who she represents and what she once held, and after being stolen in 2010 she was recovered and returned to the cemetery.
Winsted, CT
Winsted's 1890 Soldiers' Monument looks less like a conventional obelisk and more like a small Gothic castle tower, complete with a soldier standing on its parapet. The hilltop structure overlooks town and opens for interior tours only on selected commemorative days.
Hartford, CT
Samuel Colt built an enormous nineteenth-century industrial complex and planned community around his firearms factory. Its most immediately strange feature is the bright blue onion-shaped dome topped by a gilded colt, still visible above Hartford's skyline.
New Haven, CT
When Center Church was constructed over part of New Haven's old burying ground, the builders preserved a section of the cemetery beneath the building. The resulting basement crypt surrounds visitors with 137 marked gravestones and additional burials believed to remain beneath the floor.
New Haven, CT
A tall nineteenth-century war monument crowns East Rock above New Haven, reached by road or trail depending on seasonal access. The summit setting makes the ornate monument feel more like a hilltop shrine than a conventional downtown memorial.
Windsor, CT
The 1644 gravestone of minister Ephraim Huit is generally regarded as Connecticut's oldest surviving dated headstone and one of the oldest legible dated grave markers in the country. Its unusual carved inscription has survived for nearly four centuries.
Hamden, CT
A tiny patch of land at a shopping-center corner is officially dedicated to Hamden-born actor Ernest Borgnine. Its modest size compared with the Oscar-winning actor it honors is part of the charm.
Hebron, CT
The forest hides stone foundations, cellar holes, a small cemetery and mill ruins left by an abandoned settlement that became known as Gay City. Stories of unexplained deaths and hauntings grew around the vanished community, but the physical ruins themselves are real and can be reached from public park trails.
New Haven, CT
Former Yale president Arthur Twining Hadley was reportedly buried wearing a Japanese samurai costume given to him during his travels. The grave itself is understated, but the bizarre burial detail has made it one of New Haven's stranger cemetery stories.
Bridgeport, CT
Charles Sherwood Stratton, the internationally famous performer promoted by P.T. Barnum as General Tom Thumb, is buried in Mountain Grove Cemetery. A life-size statue of the diminutive entertainer stands atop his monument, making the grave immediately recognizable.
Groton, CT
Gungywamp is a baffling archaeological landscape of stone chambers, walls, rings and other features representing centuries of Indigenous and colonial activity. Its unusual structures have also inspired plenty of speculative theories. Access is controlled and should be through an authorized guided program rather than independent exploration.
Hartford, CT
A memorial marks the location of the July 6, 1944 Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus fire, one of the deadliest circus disasters in American history. The memorial stands near the former big-top site and preserves the names and memory of the victims.
Danbury, CT
A bronze hatter commemorates the industry that once made Danbury one of America's great hat-making centers. The cheerful-looking monument has a darker undertone: mercury used in felt production caused serious neurological illness among hat workers and helped popularize the phrase 'mad as a hatter.'
Danbury, CT
A crumbling stone castle built in the 1890s stands inside Tarrywile Park. The surrounding park is public, but the deteriorated castle itself is fenced and closed to entry, making this a legal exterior-view ruins stop rather than an urban-exploration site.
Newington, CT
A dramatic bronze monument recreates the famous flag-raising on Iwo Jima and specifically honors Connecticut servicemen who fought in the battle. The park was developed with the involvement of surviving veterans and includes additional memorial elements.
East Haddam, CT
A nineteenth-century mill village of old houses and industrial buildings survives along the Moodus River after decades of abandonment and repeated attempts at redevelopment. The village is now private property, so OddWay visitors should view only from lawful public roads and never enter buildings or grounds without permission.
New Haven, CT
A jumble of boulders in West Rock became the hiding place of English regicides Edward Whalley and William Goffe after the restoration of King Charles II. The natural shelter is now marked as Judges Cave and can be reached by park trails.
Bristol, CT
Operating since 1846, Lake Compounce is widely recognized as the oldest continuously operating amusement park in the United States. Its mix of modern rides and surviving historic amusement-park traditions makes it a useful OddWay stop beyond the normal theme-park angle.
New Haven, CT
Louis' Lunch claims to have served the first hamburger sandwich in 1900 and still cooks its burgers vertically in antique cast-iron broilers. The tiny restaurant also famously resists ketchup, preserving an unusually strict piece of food history.
Norwich, CT
A stone monument marks the area traditionally associated with the 1643 killing of Narragansett sachem Miantonomo after his capture during conflict with the Mohegan. The isolated marker preserves a grim episode from southern New England's colonial and Indigenous history.
