Michael Oldziej is a professional magician, but he’s also quick to point out that there’s only one genuine move in his bag of tricks.
“All of the stuff we do in the show is a lie, minus the straightjacket — that’s a real escape,” he said while playing with a deck of cards in a recent Zoom meeting.
Oldziej, who performs as Michael OJ and will appear Oct. 30 at Tilton’s Black Swan Inn, admits he can’t make a message from the dead appear on a blank slate, even if he’s great at making audiences believe he can. Nor, he continues, can any other of his brethren.
The video of him correctly guessing what animal an audience member was thinking about that became his first viral trick? It’s a clever ruse.
“I cannot read minds. I have no talent for it whatsoever,” he said. “We’re charlatans; all magicians are liars. We’re honest — that we’re lying to you.”
Such straight talk shapes An Enchanted Victorian Evening, a show calibrated to Black Swan Inn’s unique past. It blends parlor magic with history inside the 1880 mansion, as well as a skeptic’s take on the spirit mediums who swept the era. It’s his fourth Halloween at the inn, which first booked him for one of its Renaissance fairs and kept asking him back.
“His performance is incredibly captivating and fits perfectly with the atmosphere here at the inn,” Trisha Basiliere, who runs the inn with her husband, John, said in an email. “His show brings such a unique, magical quality to Halloween that our guests absolutely loved, and we knew we had to have him back.”
It’s Halloween, so costumes are encouraged.
The evening opens with close-up magic as guests arrive. Next comes a parlor show, with everyone gathered around a table in the inn’s Victorian sitting room as Oldziej explains how magicians of the period worked. The group then moves into the dining room for light bites, “spirited refreshments” and a larger stage set with bigger illusions.
Given the setting and his signature stunt, famous escape artist Harry Houdini looms over the evening.
“He’s like the Victorian performer,” Oldziej said. Houdini spent his later years exposing fraudulent mediums, and Oldziej re-creates their methods, like spirit slates, where a name would appear on a blank chalk slate, and tables that seemed to lift on their own.
“Here’s how they would lift tables, here’s how spirits would make contact,” he tells them. “I don’t have any supernatural powers, this is just the performance side of things.” The formal show isn’t the end of the night. Last year about 20 people attended, and eight or nine stayed in the parlor late into the evening.
“We’ll just do a very intimate show,” he said. “I’ll show some more experimental tricks.”
Raised in Glastonbury, Connecticut, Oldziej first tried magic at age 9 but decided practicing was a chore. Then at age 14 he saw a magician perform and thought, “I want to do that.” At 20, a Renaissance faire act canceled and friends asked him to fill in. Told they couldn’t pay much, he replied, “‘You’re going to pay me?’ Not the correct response if you want a business.”
The routine Oldziej finds most meaningful has roots in Krakow, Poland.
In 2022 he volunteered at a center for Ukrainian refugee families. While parents “shopped” for donated clothing, Oldziej entertained their children. Because he didn’t speak Ukrainian, he performed tricks that didn’t need words, like one with linking rings. Magic, he found, is a universal language. Afterward, a mother expressed gratitude for his show.
“They have to be adults now, but they got to be kids for a second,” she told him.
He still performs that routine with a child from the audience, telling the story and sharing QR codes for refugee charities, including A Drop in the Ocean.
“Magic is a way to spread a weird amount of joy,” he said. “I remember the first time I did a card trick. … We’re chasing that reaction.”
Enchanted Victorian Evening When: Friday, Oct. 30, 7 p.m. Where: Black Swan Inn, 354 W. Main St., Tilton Tickets: $65, eventbrite.com
For 350 days a year, candy corn plays no role in our lives. And then, for a week or so surrounding Halloween, candy corn is everywhere — the candy itself, of course, but also candy corn-colored sweaters, and candy corn decorations, candy corn candles, and candy corn iconography.
Krista Fisher, the bar manager for Local Street Eats in Nashua, finds herself defending candy corn surprisingly often.
“I love candy corn and I get shamed for it pretty often,” she said. “As soon as I hear ‘candy corn,’ I’m all in. It’s like a sugary little treat. I don’t know why people would hate it so much. I love it. When I brought [a bag of candy corn into the bar], my other bartender was like, ‘Is that for you or for some kind of experiment?’ I said both. She was shocked and I was shocked. But I am definitely on the pro side; I’m a fan. I’m a big nostalgia girly anyway, so it definitely reminds me of childhood candy. But I like any sweet treat. I do not discriminate against candy. I like it all.”
’tis the season
According to Chris Guerrette, owner of Lickee’s & Chewy’s Candies & Creamery in Dover, candy corn definitely has a season.
“Candy corn is happening right now,” he said. He agreed that it can be a divisive food, with some people loving it, some who don’t, and a smaller subsection of customers who like it but ironically.
“But most people just like it,” he said, “but only during this time of the year. It used to be a product that we would carry year-round and we would get folks asking for it in May and December. Now there’s of course the silly versions of it. There’s Christmas candy corn and reindeer candy corn and five different flavors of fall candy corn like a s’mores flavor and things like that. During this time of year we bring in a few different versions of [candy corn] just to make our fall offerings broad and interesting.”
According to Jaime Metzger, the manager of Granite State Candy Shoppe in Manchester, candy corn suits this time of year.
“It is the perfect time of year,” she said.
Metzger said that at first glance it might seem candy corn sells better with older customers — it would make sense, since it has been around a long time and would be familiar to them.
“But kids get it, too,” she said. “It’s a mixture of ages. If a kid is whining, that’s what a grandparent will give them a lot of the time. It’s also more reasonably priced than, say maybe chocolate, and that’s a selling point, too. We’ll carry it through to the end of the year; then afterward it will likely go to the outlet store.”
“There are changes happening in the world of candy corn,” Guerrette said. “I’m not sure if you know the history, but the very first company that made candy corn was the Goelitz Corporation way back in I don’t know how long ago [1898, as it turns out]…. They were the first ones to ever make it, and that company … was eventually bought by Jelly Belly, which is a big jelly bean company. That’s big time. They owned it, and their candy corn was better. It had just a touch better recipe to it than most highly commercialized brands like Zachary and whatnot that you might find at Walmart. And it was really good. But, unfortunately, this year they announced they’re not going to make it anymore. Jelly [Belly] itself, as a corporation, was sold to an even larger candy corporation … and that corporation’s making changes. So something that is decades and centuries old is not going to be made by that company anymore.”
Guerrette said his plan is to sell traditional candy corn through the rest of this season, then see how its availability stands after things shake out. In the meantime, he said, “we actually have something interesting: We have a candy corn fudge that we make now. So it’s three layers that look like candy corn, and it’s a fudge, and it has a touch of a candy corn flavor to it.”
Candy corn flavor
And what is the flavor you taste in candy corn?
“Well, I actually think it’s just a little bit of vanilla,” Guerrette said.
“In our shop we have three different flavors; we have a selection,” Metzger said. “At our store in Concord they sell it in bulk, because they have more room up there. Here we just do it in [individual] bags, but we have a couple of different flavors. We have your standard candy corn — which in my opinion is sort of like a butterscotch flavor. We have s’mores corn, which obviously is a marshmallow-y flavor. We have Harvest Corn, which is kind of like a caramel-y flavor. And then we’ve got Caramel Apple, which tastes like caramel and apples! And people really buy it — the standard type goes quickly. But people love different flavors. I mean, who doesn’t love s’mores? My gosh. People get excited for that one.”
According to the website CandyNation.com, varieties of candy corn available in the world include gummy candy corn (presumably with a chewier texture); green, white and red Christmas candy corn; Valentine candy corn in shades of pink; Easter candy corn in pastel colors; blackberry cobbler; raspberry lemonade; caramel apple; s’mores; caramel; candy corn-flavored salt water taffy, and licorice-like candy corn sticks. Visit candynation.com/candy-types/candy-corn.
Making an ‘ear’ of candy corn
“By the way,” Guerrette said, “have you ever thought about why it’s called ‘candy corn’ in the first place? Because it looks like little kernels of corn, right? But did you know … that you can take pieces of candy corn and arrange them in a circle with the tips all pointing to the middle? It looks like a cross-section of an ear of corn!”
Once you’ve heard of the possibility of making a cross-section of an ear of corn, the idea becomes a surprisingly persistent one.
“Ear” of candy corn. Photo by John Fladd.
You will need:
• Two bags of classic candy corn — not a harvest mix with pumpkins in it or anything. No neon colors. Just standard old-fashioned candy corn.
• A microwave oven
• Popsicle sticks to stir hot sugar syrup with
• A microwave-safe cup that you have no particular emotional attachment to, because when you get done, it will have sugar bonded to the inside, harder than construction adhesive.
Spill a handful of candy corn out onto your kitchen counter. Arrange a dozen or so pieces in a circle, with all the tips pointed inward to make a circle. Unless you have very pointy candy corn pieces — each an acute triangle — the circle will be a bit larger than you had anticipated, with a larger hole in the middle.
Now put a small handful of candy corn in your melting-cup and heat it in your microwave oven until it has almost completely melted — 25 seconds, maybe. Quickly take it out of the microwave, give it a brisk stir with a popsicle stick, and dribble a little sugar-glue on the tips of the candy corn in the circle. The sugar will seize up pretty quickly, so you’ll probably have to heat it back up after three applications, for another 15 seconds. Keep doing this until you have glued all the tips together and you have what might pass for a cross-section of corn after a long evening of candy corn cocktails.
It is at this point that you realize that this process will probably go more smoothly if you add each additional candy corn individually. You can scoop a small amount of melted sugar onto the tip of a piece of candy, then quickly press it into place, and repeat that process once or twice more before the sugar sets up too much to continue without reheating.
The bad news: This project will take a very long time and will require at least a bag and a half of candy corn. You will also burn yourself.
The good news: It really does look good. “Rustic” is a plus in a project like this, so even if you were to give up on it halfway through, looking crooked and unfinished, it would be just about right for the seasonal aesthetic. You also don’t have to do everything in one session. You can glue two or three rows, then go for a run or binge a vampire show for a while, then come back and tackle more of it, until you’re satisfied.
Candy corn on the rocks
If you’ve ever eaten so much candy corn that your blood sugar has spiked and you’ve felt goofy and intoxicated, you might have asked yourself the question, why aren’t there any candy corn cocktails?
The bartenders at CodeX speakeasy in Nasha are a step ahead of you. The staff at CodeX use aliases in case of a 1920s-style raid. Bartender Rusty said the staff has been thinking deeply about The Candy Corn Problem, as they call it, for several weeks.
“Whatever we end up doing with a final recipe,” he said, “will usually be vodka-based, because it’s pretty neutral, and you don’t want to mess with moonshine; it’s got a higher proof that you don’t want to add any shots to. It just gets to be a little too much. When we’re working with candy, I like to use Starbursts. They’re really easy to work with. The sweetness is already there. The flavor is already kind of neat. So, seasonally, usually I’ll make a pink one — like a strawberry flavored one for Valentine’s Day. We call them Love Shots. With Halloween coming up, I have a sour apple watermelon pineapple Starburst [vodka]. I know it’s kind of wild, but it works. It turned out a nice green color that I used with some candied pineapple vodka that I was already working with. It was fun”
Mary Beth Carcellino, the owner of CodeX, said her other bartender, Stretch, has really embraced candy corn this year. “He wanted to be able to separate his candy corn infusions by color,” she said, “so we spent a couple of hours here the other night carefully cutting each piece of candy corn into pieces and separating them by color. He infused each into vodka, and now he’s got orange, yellow, and white candy corn vodka — THAT ALL TASTE EXACTLY THE SAME!” she shouted toward the kitchen before being reminded that this was Stretch’s night off.
Rusty’s piece of advice for infusing candy corn into alcohol is to find a way to contrast the candy’s overwhelming sweetness.
“You might want to add a little bit of citric acid, malic acid, depending on what kind of infusions you’re making, to kind of balance out the flavor so it’s not super harsh or super sweet,” Rusty said, “especially if you’re working with like a lot of fruity and citrus kinds of flavors.”
Krista Fisher is the bar manager at Local Street Eats in Nashua. She took on the challenge of developing a pair of candy corn-themed cocktails for the Hippo. She said she took her cues from the candy’s color and its mild (honey) flavor.
“I kind of ran with a little bit of both,” she said. “I think when I told anyone … they thought I was going to make something layered, to look like that, but I thought that was a little too — pun intended — corny. I didn’t think the route to go was the actual look of it. Plus, there was just a lot of oranginess,”
“So I went more for flavor and vibes,” Fisher continued. “I still leaned toward a fall theme, a fall feeling. The one that was most obvious to me was the old-fashioned, for sure, because nothing says fall like bourbon. So you get that sweetness from the candy corn still that kind of is in place. And then orange bitters will still just bring it all out. That was a no-brainer for me, honestly.” She made the candy corn into a syrup. “There is a sort of processed taste that is part of the attraction,” she said. “There was almost like a waxiness that was part of the charm.” Fisher recommended using a cup of candy corn to a cup and a half of water to make this sort of syrup. “That gives it a little viscosity to it,” she said.
Her second candy corn cocktail required a little more thought, Fisher said.
“I saw that there were a couple of things — I kept thinking about how to get a creaminess aspect without adding actual cream, so I went the route of treating this drink like a sour. I added an egg white in with some gin, that candy corn syrup, and then I had some toasted almond bitters also, which is kind of like, not a flavor you see all the time, but it’s a little more mellowed out than angostura. That was really good. It added another layer that seemed like fall and I think just complemented that sugariness that comes with the candy corn. And then I just muddled in a bunch of fresh orange so that there was a bit of freshness added to all the sugar aspect.”
“And that one was just phenomenal!” Fisher said. “The egg white gives everything this silky texture and this froth on top. That one was a killer. I was a really big fan of that drink actually. Every ingredient had a reason to be there.”
Boozy candy corn recipes
Candy Corn Vodka
1 cup (most of a large package) of traditional candy corn — not Harvest Mix, or something with pumpkins, or imaginatively colored candy. You want plain, traditional, yellow-orange-white candies, which will give you a lovely final color. If there are green pumpkins or xenomorphs or anything in the mixture, the final color will be brown. And let’s face it, color is about 90 percent of what candy corn has going for it in the first place.
1 750 ml bottle of plain vodka — again, the candy corn has a subtle flavor to it that we don’t want covered up by acai berries or whatever else they’re putting in vodka this week.
Candy Corn Old-Fashioned and Candy Corn Sour developed by Krista Fisher of Local Street Eats.
In a large, lidded jar — take the lid off before you add anything to the jar — combine the candy and the whole bottle of vodka. Stir the mixture well, then put the lid back on the jar and store it someplace cool and out of direct sunlight. It might take up to 24 hours for the candy to completely dissolve into the vodka, at which point it is ready to drink. There is no aging process for this particular infusion. Strain any tiny bits of sugar or wax or who-knows-what out of the mixture and use a funnel to fill a slightly larger-than-750 ml bottle. This almost certainly doesn’t need to be refrigerated, but the idea of putting it in the freezer to do ice shots with is intriguing.
Candy Corn Old-Fashioned
This is one of two candy corn-inspired drinks developed for the Hippo by Krista Fisher, bar manager for Local Street Eats in Nashua.
2 ounces bourbon
2 dashes of angostura & orange bitters
3/4 ounce candy corn syrup
Stir until well-chilled and strain into a rocks glass with a large ice cube.
Garnish with a few candy corn resting on top of the cube.
Candy corn syrup is a 2:1 syrup easily made in a pot on the stove, stirring constantly until all candy is dissolved.
I’m calling this Candy Corn Sour ‘Mischief Managed’
This is the other candy corn-inspired drink developed for the Hippo by Krista Fisher, bar manager for Local Street Eats in Nashua.
2 ounces London Dry Gin
1 muddled slice of orange
2 dashed toasted almond bitters
1 ounce candy corn syrup
1 egg white
Dry shake all ingredients to incorporate the egg white.
Add ice to your shaker and vigorously shake again.
Strain into a coupe or Nick & Nora glass.
The egg white will create a thick layer of foam on the top and a wonderfully silky mouth feel.
For more than two decades, He Is Legend has been one of active rock’s best-kept secrets. The Wilmington, N.C., band’s mix of metalcore crunch, Southern-rock swagger and psychedelic groove has earned it a devoted, almost cultish following.
On Thursday, Oct. 22, the band brings its Time Travel tour to Jewel Music Venue in Manchester.
Justin Marcotte is a veteran booker who began working with Jewel earlier this year. He has a good feeling about this show.
“I’ve probably booked about 500 national tour packages in my life,” he said in a recent Zoom interview. “So it’s not every time that I book a tour package that I know everything about them.”
He liked what he found in He Is Legend.
“This is more of a rock ’n’ roll show,” Marcotte said. “I do primarily book a lot of metal stuff, but I love rock ’n’ roll, and I wish there was more of it, honestly. So this is right up my alley.” The band has a broad appeal, he added. “They attract metalheads and they attract rockers. So they’re kind of great for everybody.”
Lead singer Schuylar Croom, guitarist Adam Tanbouz and bassist Matty Williams have played together since high school. Their 2004 debut, I Am Hollywood, was done in Westfield, Mass., and co-produced by Killswitch Engage’s Adam Dutkiewicz. Their 2006 follow-up, Suck Out the Poison, drew more from the Southern rock it grew up on.
After a five-year hiatus begun in 2009, the band returned with the fan-funded Heavy Fruit in 2014, which became their highest-charting album, followed by few in 2017, then 2019’s White Bat, hailed by critics as a career high. The band called their most recent LP, 2022’s Endless Hallway, its most aggressive yet.
In recent years, He Is Legend has been looking back.
The band toured for the 20th anniversary of I Am Hollywood and then for Suck Out the Poison, playing both albums front to back. This year, the latter record also came out on vinyl for the first time. The Time Travel tour widens the lens, with songs from every album and EP in the catalog.
The two-stage Jewel show is billed as a Halloween party, with costumes encouraged. Along with the headliners, the lineup includes In Angels and Excide, a pair of bands that are new to Marcotte’s ears. “I gotta be quite blunt, I don’t really know a lot about them,” he said. “But after checking them out, I was completely blown away.”
Marcotte had more to say about the regional bands rounding out the bill. On the second stage are Rear Percussion, Dead Fiction and Socially Problematic Children. Parts Per Million will kick things off on the main stage, and he called them “one of the greatest bands I’ve ever worked with, hands down, in 20 years.”
Beginning as a teenager, Marcotte has promoted New England shows, festivals and tattoo conventions for 24 years, spending nine years as entertainment manager and talent buyer at Fete Music Hall, a 1,000-seat club in Providence. He’s also booked The Vault in New Bedford, Mass. He continues to live in and commute from Rhode Island.
“It’s worth it,” he said of the long drive, adding, “live music is unlike anything else in the entire world.”
He brings a fan’s energy to booking shows, and works hard to weave in regional talent.
“It’s important to remember that every national act starts as a local band,” he said, adding praise for Jewel owner John Crosson, who opened the music-centric bar in 2014. “He genuinely cares about the place, and he puts a lot of work into it.”
He Is Legend When: Thursday, Oct. 22, 6 p.m. Where: Jewel Music Venue, 61 Canal St., Manchester Tickets: $25, ticketleap.com, 18+ Also appearing: In Angels, Excide, Parts Per Million, Dead Fiction, Socially Problematic Children, Reapercussion
• Jerry’s man: After joining the Jerry Garcia Band in 1980, Melvin Seals spent 15 years with the Grateful Dead guitarist. Upon Garcia’s passing in 1995, he carried on JGB’s tradition, while moving it forward and putting his own stamp on the sound. Thirty years on, the Hammond B-3 wizard is still doing it, with sets mixing “Cats Under the Stars,” “Sugaree” and Motown covers. Thursday, Oct. 22, 7:30 p.m., Nashau Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua, $46 and up, etix.com.
• Loaf love: The only band endorsed by both Jim Steinman and their late namesake, Bat Out of Helloween pays tribute to Meat Loaf, reaching all the way back to his early Rocky Horror Show days. Steinman called singer Andrew Polec, who originated the role of Strat in the London West End’s Bat Out of Hell production, “phenomenal, the definitive embodiment of the rock-and-roll spirit.” Friday, Oct. 23, 8 p.m., The Colonial Theatre, 609 Main St., Laconia, $46 and up, etix.com.
• Seattle song: Earning a 2013 Emmy nod when his song “Day Is Gone” appeared on Sons of Anarchy, Noah Gundersen broke out the next year with Ledges, an expansive album with standouts like the haunting a capella “Poor Man’s Son,” the countrified “Boathouse” and “Cigarettes,” a love-as-addiction gem. A deluxe edition of the Washington native’s latest LP, Rites of Spring, arrives Oct. 30. Saturday, Oct. 24, 7:30 p.m., BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord, $40 and up, ccanh.com.
• Drag fright: Putting a Halloween spin on things, Brewery Babes: Boo Bash is hosted by “All American Goddess” Ivy League along with fellow drag performers Raya Sunshine, “Boston’s Barbie Doll” Chanel Thee Angel, Destiny, and Violencia! for what’s billed as “a night of tomfoolery” paired with songs and spectacle. Saturday, Oct. 24, 6:30 p.m., Backyard Brewery & Kitchen, 1211 S. Mammoth Road, Manchester, $25, eventbrite.com.
• On track: Originally scheduled for September, but postponed due to high winds, the Off the Rails Festival is back on with headliner Lil’ Yachty, a Grammy-nominated rapper (for contributing to DRAM’s hit “Broccoli”) and the on-screen manager of WWE wrestler Trick Williams. Also performing are stoner rockers Peach Pit, DJ Jullee, and the Maintenance Band. Sunday, Oct. 25, 4 p.m., University of New Hampshire, A Lot (Main Street), Durham, $57, usnh.evenue.net.
When Ethan Tapper began the follow-up to his New England Book Award winner, How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World, he was aiming for something lighter, like an almanac. His 2024 debut made the case that cutting trees, spraying invasive plants and hunting deer can be acts of devotion.
This one, he decided, should go down easier.
“I was like, I just want to write a book about how much I love birds, flowers and seasons,” Tapper said in a recent Zoom interview. However, he realized, “It’s impossible to write about loving all that stuff and not also address what we do to take care of it. If we go deep enough on this topic, it invariably becomes about stewardship.”
Tapper will talk about and read from his new book, The Forest Year: Finding Hope in a World Worth Saving, at Gibson’s Bookstore on Saturday, Oct. 24. He’ll also sign copies and take audience questions. The evening completes a busy day in Concord that begins with a UNH event, “How To Love An Urban Forest” at the Society for the Protection of NH Forests.
Like his first book, The Forest Year’s focal point is Bear Island, a 175-acre parcel in Vermont he purchased in 2017. The previous owner had high-graded it — logging the healthiest, most valuable trees and leaving the rest. Tapper recalled it as the most degraded forest he had ever seen, and set out to revive it. Today, it’s “diverse, beautiful and healthy,” he effused.
His model for the latest book was Aldo Leopold’s 1949 classic A Sand County Almanac, a work he believes still sounds radical. Leopold helped popularize phenology, the tracking of the seasons through nature. “It’s this cool practice of, like, observing the first serviceberry flower of the year, or when I hear the first warblers singing,” Tapper explained.
At the core of his stewardship argument is a rejection of two “delusions”: that ecosystems can continue to be exploited without consequence, and that forests battered by invasive species, deer overpopulation and climate change can heal simply by having a fence put around them. In some, cutting, culling or herbicides are warranted; in others they aren’t.
Tapper calls The Forest Year a book about hope, not alarm.
With protections for endangered species, public lands and wetlands under pressure, he worries about despair turning into apathy. “That’s one of the scariest and least helpful things human beings can do,” Tapper said. “When we’re hopeful, we actually do stuff …. I’ve started to believe that hope is a practice, and it’s also a responsibility.”
That responsibility doesn’t require a private forest, he continued — people can do it in their own backyards.
At his UNH talk on urban forests, he’ll suggest homeowners plant native species and make yards “more complex and rich with life than just a mowed lawn.” He also urges people to connect with local land trusts and conservation groups. As a county forester, he had a hard time getting people to show up.
Now audiences ask him where to start.
“I’m so glad to hear that, because your conservation community has been waiting to hear from you, and they’re ready,” he said. “The other part is connecting with those local conservation organizations, local land trusts and community groups, seeing where you can do the most good with advocacy and also with volunteering.”
The Forest Year’s central theme is staying, committing to one place, though Tapper acknowledges the irony of preaching this as he moves from one speaking engagement to another. “But I always come home,” he said, noting that travel, like his social media channels, helps build “the biggest platform possible from which to advocate for ecosystems.”
His online presence has grown to 400,000 followers, but it began as a line in his first book’s marketing plan.
Tapper’s DIY streak suits his punk band, The Bubs, still very active. “It’s the only thing I do that’s not about forests,” he said, adding, “If we only did things that were necessary, we wouldn’t make any music.” He makes a similar case for independent bookstores like Gibson’s, whose existence in an economy built on convenience is almost an act of resistance.
“These bookstores aren’t just going to magically be here,” he said. “The same thing is true for forests.”
Ethan Tapper – The Forest Year When: Saturday, Oct. 24, 6:30 p.m. Where: Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord Tickets: RSVP at gibsonsbookstore.com, 224-0562 Also: “How To Love an Urban Forest: A Conversation With Ethan Tapper,” 1:30 p.m., The Society for the Protection of NH Forests Conference Room, 54 Portsmouth St., Concord, register at ethantapper.com
Featured photo: Ethan Tapper. Photo by Corey Hendrickson.
Up a slope called Mystery Hill, amidst stone tunnels and megaliths with eerie names like Oracle Chamber, Tomb of Lost Souls, and a flat rock that most call The Sacrificial Table, on a site carbon-dated to 4,000 years old, a group of dedicated spirit hunters are on a quest to speak with the dead.
America’s Stonehenge in Salem has a history of visitors from beyond.
“There are too many strange occurrences to ignore,” Ron Kolek of the New England Ghost Project wrote in 2005. That’s why Paranormal Investigators of New England, PI-NE for short, booked a private twilight tour on a recent Saturday. They came to explore, bringing tools of the trade for detecting electromagnetic field disturbances and translating ghostly messages. Some had plans to stargaze in search of UFOs.
The sun had barely set when PI-NE appeared to make initial contact with the spirit world.
First, however, they checked the dirt floor for spiders. The Tomb of Lost Souls is a narrow curving tunnel with a dirt floor, and while PI-NE New Hampshire Assistant Director Deb Dutcher ain’t afraid of no ghosts, creepy crawlers in dark caves are another thing entirely.
As an investigator laid out an array of devices, including something called a REMPOD that lights up when it detects activity, a few other team members launched an app on their cell phones called Necrometer.
“What would you like us to know?” Melissa Roberge of the New Hampshire PI-NE chapter queried into the darkness.
Her phone lit up. “Her name is Michelle,” she reported to the group. “She said, ‘You shouldn’t be here.’”
At the next stop, everyone in the group introduced themselves to any and all spirits. Roberge said she was excited to visit America’s Stonehenge at night, having spent many days there during her New Hampshire childhood. All were deferential, though some told their invisible hosts, “It’s OK to touch me, but please don’t follow me home.”
Another New Hampshire investigator, Samantha Bravoco, said, “I’m hoping that you’re comfortable with us, and whoever’s here wants to communicate a little bit.” Bravoco studied psychology at Salem State University, choosing the school, her bio on the pi-ne.org website explained, “strictly because of witches, ghosts and goblins.”
What followed was a conversation carried out with EMF bells and glowing lights from a REMPOD operated by PI-NE team members. They said the spirit belonged to a young man who was around when Mystery Hill was a stop on the Underground Railroad, helping enslaved people to freedom.
The content of the exchange proceeded with fits and stops, but engaging with a spirit isn’t ever easy or predictable, investigators say. Ultimately, at least a small belief that there’s something out there and it wants to talk is what brought the group together and keeps them questing.
A reassuring voice
Deb Dutcher’s path into the spirit world was guided by someone she knew and loved.
After her mother died unexpectedly, Dutcher left Vermont and moved to Colebrook, her childhood home in New Hampshire. That’s when her mom became a presence.
“I started seeing things, hearing things,” she said in a phone interview. “She visited me. I heard her voice.”
Ghost Hunters was on TV at the time, and Dutcher found herself quickly hooked.
“It just really piqued my interest,” she said, adding that she’d always wanted to belong to a team of investigators. About three years ago, she saw an ad seeking investigators for PI-NE’s New Hampshire division. She applied and passed interviews, along with a background check. A year later, Dutcher was running the chapter.
PI-NE was founded in 2004 and is based in Essex Junction, Vermont. It’s Vermont’s member of the TAPS Family, the network of teams affiliated with The Atlantic Paranormal Society, the group behind the same Ghost Hunters series that hooked Dutcher. Its brief covers hauntings, UFO sightings and even cryptozoology.
The service is free, and most clients are homeowners, with some businesses in the mix. The work commences with a background check on whoever is asking for help.
“We don’t want to send investigators into a bad situation,” Dutcher said. “There have been a couple times we’ve actually said no.”
The most common query is a simple one. “I just received a request that I need to call later on this afternoon, and it says right in it, ‘I just need to know I’m not crazy,’” she said. “We hear that a lot.”
Often, Dutcher believes, once the answer is found, it isn’t frightening at all. Children especially are scared by what they don’t understand. “It is so nice to be able to … make the connection that, hey, this is Grandpa or Grandma, just looking out for you,” she said. “It makes them feel so much better.”
Learning the poltergeist is mice under the floorboards can be just as comforting, even if it introduces a new problem.
“If you can easily debunk something, that takes away the fear as well,” Dutcher said, pointing to orbs as an example. “Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time, it’s bugs or dust.”
TV investigators Dustin Pari and Brian Cano helped fuel her skepticism. She’s learned to avoid devices with built-in word banks, saying, “I want whatever’s coming through to be legitimate.”
The team often travels beyond New England. At the Hinsdale House in New York a few weeks ago she tested whether spirit-box listeners are just fitting random radio fragments to the questions. Two listeners wore separate headphones while questions were asked from another room, and the answers didn’t match the questions.
“However,” she said, “they both wrote down the same exact words.”
Closer to home, some of her most memorable experiences happened in public libraries. She saw things “frequently” in the basement of the New Hampshire State Library during seven years working there.
In the basement of the Woodsville Free Library, a teammate who is a medium described a World War I soldier and a talking teddy bear began responding on camera. Upstairs was a display honoring a young local man who served in that war. “When Kathy went over to look at the display, she goes, ‘That’s him,’” Dutcher said.
The work has changed her, too. “Sometimes I’m facing something that I’m kind of daunted by, and I’m like, ‘hey, look, I can walk in all by myself in a dark asylum,’” she said. “I can do this.”
A veteran ghost hunter
With more than 25 years of chasing ghosts, Ron Kolek has learned to not sell certainty. The founder of New England Ghost Project in Dracut, Mass., lets the work speak for itself.
“We never tell people whether their house is haunted or not,” he said in a recent Zoom interview. “We just give them whatever we find.”
Kolek, who has a degree in environmental science, came to the subject grounded in science. In 2000, however, an accident cost him several fingers. A pulmonary embolism that followed put him in intensive care — and gave him a vision. “While I was there, I was somewhere else,” he said. “It was a place that was very, very white.”
There were figures, and what he describes as angelic music. “I always refer to the Madonna song ‘Like a Prayer,’” he said. “There’s a line in it that says, ‘It feels like home.’ That’s what it felt like.” Then it all fell together, “like the closing of an iris,” leaving only the hospital room and his heartbeat on the monitor.
Recovering, he took a TV production course through Media One that required a final project. Inspired by his near-death experience — “I don’t know if it was the drugs they gave me or not,” he said — and a manufacturing company he owned that employees, including his son, swore was haunted, he made a decision.
“I said, ‘You know what, I’ll do it on ghosts.’”
Rounding up a couple of collaborators, he quickly got to work, investigating his own “walk to the light” experience with all the objectivity he could muster. Before he knew it, Kolek was in deep. “I couldn’t explain some of the stuff that I experienced there,” he said. “That’s how I got hooked.”
He set up New England Ghost Project to prove or disprove the paranormal, but soon decided he couldn’t.
“Some people, every light that flickers is a ghost,” he said, while with others, “If a spirit slapped them across the face, they’d rationalize the whole thing away.” So he documents and lets people decide. Beyond that, he’s talked about the paranormal on the radio for 23 years, including a podcast with British parapsychologist Steve Parsons.
Like many investigators, Kolek does most of his work in private homes, where he says he’s encountered more than a few affirmations that the spirit world is real. At one Lakes Region house, a former speakeasy, a camera on a stairway landing somehow ended up at the bottom of the stairs; the footage showed nothing.
At another home about to be foreclosed on, medium Maureen Wood sensed a little boy. As midnight neared, Kolek followed his EMF meter out of the house and into the woods, to a small cemetery with two tiny graves. The names on them matched the ones Wood had picked up.
Kolek has had further encounters of his own in Portsmouth, at the now-shuttered Molly Malone’s Irish Steakhouse, and Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse, where Kolek sits on the board. During a fundraising ghost tour in the adjoining fort, he watched a woman pass from window to window toward the door. No one came in.
“I saw whatever I saw as clear as day,” he recalled, noting the Coast Guard, whose base the lighthouse sits on, has long reported a woman on the wall. Historian Jeremy D’Entremont later learned that a woman died in an explosion at the fort; all that was ever found was a scrap of her dress.
Kolek’s skepticism persists. He’s not easily fooled by fantastic stories, like a Pembroke homeowner who once told him a medium had sent “400 Revolutionary soldiers” into the light.
“The idea that … you can go in there, wave your magic wand and you send them on to the happy hunting ground is a big misconception,” he said. This logic applies to the practice of burning sage to ward off bad energy. “I’ve gone on exorcisms with the Catholic Church, and trust me, it ain’t so easy.”
His advice for the curious is simple. “Don’t do anything that you’re not comfortable with,” he said, while adding with a laugh that visiting the house in Pembroke did yield his favorite-ever recording, an EVP he heard during setup: “It’s the Ghostbusters.”
Young guns
Alan Guin used to be the guy rolling his eyes when someone raised the subject of paranormal activity.
“I used to think it was all fake. I never once believed in it,” Guin said in a recent phone interview. He spent 10 years as an Air Force combat medic. “I thought everything had an explanation.”
Then one night he tagged along with a former partner to a Christian-themed park in Connecticut with a dark past.
SoulSeekers. Courtesy photo.
Sitting in a cave with only a flashlight, he saw what he calls a giant black smog cloud. “It just kind of showed up in front of me, kind of hung out for a second, went over to my partner at the time, and then just dissipated into the wall as clear as day,” he said. He recalled thinking, “Science cannot explain what I just saw.”
In 2021, Guin formed SoulSeekers Paranormal NE with Austin Harley and Corey Marshall, friends he met exploring abandoned buildings. Harley and Marshall had both dabbled in the paranormal recreationally, while Guin added scientific method to the mix, along with “the nerdiness of all my tools and editing skills.”
The group started with five members, and came back from a pandemic-induced break as a rebranded trio.
“We were more intention-driven,” Guin said of their return, noting that five early episodes from their YouTube channel “will never see the light of day again.”
Harley now lives in Rhode Island and Marshall in Tennessee. How do they get together? “Cars and planes, man.”
The self-taught Guin shoots and edits everything, but the finished work doesn’t look it, rivaling Ghost Hunters for production values. But he draws a line between paranormal research and entertainment, eschewing reality fare for in-depth investigation work. “We’re not over-the-top screaming and provoking, none of that cringy TV garbage.”
The team carries more than $10,000 in gear, including repurposed tools like an electricians’ EMF meter and a SLS camera that he says reveals ghostly apparitions as stick figures, a device normally used for Xbox gaming.
Like most groups, SoulSeekers usually answers calls from people unnerved in their own homes, and works for free.
“One of the most rewarding things is bringing validation to people who … get looked at kind of with a stink eye that they’re crazy,” he said.
Sometimes the validation is that nothing is there. At a location in Massachusetts, reports of wailing and loud bangs in the basement turned out to be wind-driven garage doors. “The owner was very relieved to know that it wasn’t somebody in the basement.”
One of the group’s most striking cases was at a restaurant in Milford. Their autumn 2025 investigation centered on a basement well and an odd little closet. On two visits, the team got the name Elizabeth and a plea: “I can’t find my baby.”
They were stumped until they learned an important detail tied to a centuries-old tragedy.
The restaurant had bought furniture from Country Tavern before it was torn down in late 2021. That Nashua pub was said to be haunted by Elizabeth Ford, who in 1797 was locked in a closet by her sailor husband after he’d learned she had an out of wedlock child while he was at sea. He killed her baby, then murdered her and threw her body down a well.
“The same name, the same fate, the same story came with the furniture,” Guin said, adding that the well and closet at the Milford restaurant were eerily similar enough to confuse the spirits into hitching a ride to a new home. A two-part episode about the investigation is called Whispers from the Well.
The team recently completed an investigation on a site in Epsom, now a private home that Guin called “incredibly active.” They also explored a location in Temple, where equipment was knocked off shelves. He has a theory about why.
“These energies, whatever they are, exist in a matter that our brains don’t have the software to process correctly.”
A theory loses steam
Everyone involved in paranormal investigations is mindful of false positives; skepticism is in their blood. That’s despite an obsession with finding things a lot of people view the same way Guin did before his first visitation. A good case in point can be found at Endicott Furniture in Concord.
For years, a mischievous spirit was said to throw pillows around the showroom at night in this business that’s been around since 1925, but lately not so much. Owner Eric Reingold, also a member of JamAntics, a band that played many Halloween Howls back in the day (and will reunite Nov. 6 at BNH Stage), says the reason’s kind of prosaic.
“Back when steam heat was the way downtown heated their businesses, there was much more paranormal activity,” he said recently. “Banging and clanging, weird hisses … we can’t fall back on that any longer so there’s not much more to report.”
What’s in the bag: The ghost hunter’s toolkit
Alan Guin of SoulSeekers Paranormal NE says his team brings “well over $10,000” worth of equipment to a site. Deb Dutcher of Paranormal Investigators of New England (PI-NE) owns “four cases plus.” Much of it was built for electricians, contractors or gamers, not ghost hunters.
Here’s what investigators carry and how they say they use it.
Electromagnetic Frequency (EMF) detector. Measures fluctuations in electromagnetic fields. “It wasn’t made for ghost hunting,” Guin said. “It was made for electricians.” Investigators look closer at sudden spikes with no wiring nearby.
EMF bell. An EMF detector built into a bell. It rings only when the reading hits red, the top of its scale. Teams set a code, such as one ring for yes and two for no, and then ask questions. Guin’s team uses one called the Dead-Bell. “If you figure out how to use it, show us,” he tells whatever might be listening.
REMPOD. Puts out its own small magnetic field and sounds an alarm when anything disturbs it. A similar but not identical piece of equipment called the Omnipod v2 works the same way, while also logging touch, temperature, vibration, barometric pressure and magnetic changes, and sends them to a phone app.
Thermal camera. Shows a room by temperature alone, from cold in blue to hot in red. People show up orange-red. Guin says spirits can register blue-green.
SLS camera. A structured-light sensor first built for Xbox gaming. It reads depth and draws any human shape as a stick figure on screen, even when the room looks empty. Dutcher uses a phone-app version when she travels.
Infrared cameras and audio recorders. These do most of the work. Dutcher says PI-NE has switched from wired cameras tethered to a monitor at “home base” to wireless infrared units on battery packs that can go almost anywhere. Ron Kolek of the New England Ghost Project picks gear to fit the complaint: footsteps on the stairs call for a recorder, not just a camera. Recorders listen for EVPs (electronic voice phenomena), voices nobody heard in the room that turn up on playback.
Spirit box. A radio that sweeps AM and FM stations in rapid bursts while investigators listen for words that seem to answer questions. In the Estes method, one investigator wears a blindfold and headphones and calls out whatever they hear. The rest of the team asks questions the listener can’t hear. “It gives the spirit a method to talk to you if they want to,” Dutcher said.
Envoy. Dutcher’s go-to talking device answers yes or no or spells out words. She avoids gadgets that pull from a built-in word bank. “It just seems like they’re always saying, oh, the devil or death.”
Local haunts?
Here’s a list of some area spots that have a reputation for strange occurrences.
• Concord Public Library (45 Green St., Concord) According to an Around Concord story from Sept. 17, 2019, Concord Public Library director Todd Fabian told a tour group: “Personally, I don’t like to be in this building alone late at night after we close.” “I feel like at 7 a.m., if I’m alone, the ghosts are sleeping in. In the evening … well, I’ve heard all kinds of strange sounds that I cannot explain,” he said in the article.
• Gilson Road Cemetery (Gilson Road & Tanglewood Drive, Nashua) According to a The Cabinet Press story from Oct. 24, 2013, the cemetery “has a considerable reputation in paranormal investigation circles.”
• Island Path Road (Off Route 1A, Hampton Beach) Eunice “Goody” Cole was twice accused of witchcraft — in 1656 and 1671, according to hamptonhistoricalsociety.org. “On March 8, 1938 at the 300th Town Meeting the citizens passed a resolution restoring Eunice ‘Goody’ Cole to her rightful place as a citizen of Hampton,” the website said. According to HauntedPlaces.org: “… reports say Goody Cole’s ghost haunts the residents of Island Path Road. Folks see apparitions, flickering lights, objects that move around, and mysterious vanishing of neighborhood cats.”
• Lorden Plaza (586 Nashua St., Milford) At this modern shopping plaza, witnesses have described an apparition of a man wearing blue jeans, a plaid flannel shirt, and a tape measure on his belt walking along the property and disappearing into a plywood wall, according to hauntedplaces.org/milford-nh.
• Margaritas Mexican Restaurant (1 Bicentennial Sq., Concord) According to Atlas Obscura (atlasobscura.com), from 1890 to 1975, the spot was the home of the Concord Police Department, hence the jail cells that are still part of the dining area. “… [L]ocal legend holds that the restaurant is haunted by a spirit named George, and ghost hunters, including the Paranormal Research Society, have visited…,” the website said.
• The Music Hall (28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth) One of the state’s oldest theaters and a stop on more than a few ghost tours. According to an NHPR story in 2018, cold spots, twinkling lights, music coming from an empty stage, footsteps on an empty staircase and audience members wearing clothing from other eras are among the eerie sightings there.
• Tilton Inn (255 Main St., Tilton) Built in 1875, the building has burned down three times, according to the Inn’s website at thetiltoninn.com. “One of these … fires is said to have claimed the life of a 12-year-old girl, named Laura, who is suspected to have never left…. There have been many encounters with her both upstairs in the rooms, and downstairs in the pub and restaurant,” the website said. The Inn was featured on television’s Ghost Hunters. • Vale End Cemetery (772 Isaac Frye Hwy., Wilton) The story goes that the ghost of Mary Ritter Spaulding, who died in 1808, appears as a blue light over her headstone, according to a 2017 story in The Cabinet Press.
• Windham Restaurant (59 Range Road, Windham) The restaurant embraces its spectral history, with events like an afternoon with medium Patricia Griffin and a recent seance. According to its website, windhamrestaurant.com, “Long before it became a restaurant, this property was part of a working farm in 1729. The Colonial-style house that stands today was built in 1812, carrying over two centuries of history within its walls.” A New England Ghost Project, neghostproject.com, post about the location talks about two visits the group made to the site and the odd occurrences people reported.
