FtV - The Curse of Brunswick Springs
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Welcome, legendary listeners. Thanks for tuning in to From the Vault, a second look at some of our classic episodes. Look for a new episode every week. Now, can you go back and listen on your own at OurNewEnglandLegends.com? You bet. But you won't get the added bonus of an After the Legends segment featuring new commentary about that episode from your old pals Jeff and Ray. So let's open up the New England Legends Vault and revisit another legendary episode.

Hey kids, welcome to the vault. Welcome, we're so glad you're with us. We're going way back on this one. The Curse of Brunswick Springs, first aired February 22nd, 2018. Enjoy. Enjoy.

Jeff, my back has been killing me lately. I'm not sure how much further into these Vermont woods I can hike. Just a bit further, Ray, because I'm bringing you to Brunswick Springs in northeastern Vermont. For many centuries, people have believed these springs have healing properties. Then why don't more people know about this? They used to, but that was before the Abenaki Indian curse on the land went into effect. And now, it's haunted.

Hey there, I'm Jeff Belanger. And I'm Ray Ogier. Welcome to episode 27 of the New England Legends podcast, where each week we explore strange history and unique legends from somewhere in the Northeast.

Okay, Jeff, why have you brought me to this haunted stream that heals? Because it's a great story, with native peoples, wars, fires, death, curses, you name it. All right, now I'm listening. For centuries, the Abenaki Indians traveled to this network of streams in modern-day Brunswick because they believed these waters had the power to heal. They called this place Medicine Waters of the Great Spirit. And did it actually work?

The legend hunter in me says there must be something to its reputation. I mean, if you think about it, people in any region need to live around water. Of course. If this place garnered a reputation for healing, it would have happened over many generations. First, someone was sick.

tried the water, and said, hey, this place made me better. Hey, this place made me feel better. Just like that. Then others tried it. Hey, this place made me feel better. Hey, this place made me feel better. This place made me feel better. Hey, this place made me feel better. This place made me feel better, too. This place made me feel better. I get that. This place earns a reputation for healing over time. So you're saying that there must be something different about this water than, say,

streams a few miles away? That's exactly what I'm saying. Locations become sacred because some phenomena happens and it keeps happening.

Or at least it's perceived as happening. If I pull my back yesterday, try the water today, and feel better tomorrow, it's not necessarily the water. I mean, my back may have just been better tomorrow either way. That's very true. We'll learn a little bit later in this story that there actually are some unique properties to these brooks that make it different from other streams. All right, so tell me about the curses, fires, and death. Okay, okay.

Okay, so the story starts in 1784 when some Abenaki brought a wounded British soldier to the springs. The story goes that the soldier had a wounded arm that was miraculously healed by these waters. So after the war, the soldier returned to the springs to bottle and sell this stuff. Soon, word of the miracle medicine water spread outside of the Native American circles and into British and English settler circles. Ah, and if there's miracles, there's money to be made.

It's the American way. So this British soldier decides these springs could be marketed and sold for miracle cures, and he tries to set up a shop. But the Abenaki object to this crass act to capitalize on what the Great Spirit gave for free. A minor battle ensues.

And two Abenaki are now dead. An Abenaki shaman, the mother of one of the young men slain, steps forward to issue a warning. Any use of the waters of the Great Spirit for profit will never prosper. But the warning doesn't stop people from trying. By the early 1800s, colonization of New England was happening with great speed. Farms, villages, and towns are popping up all over.

Then lodging houses are built by the natural springs so travelers can have easy access to the healing waters. The legend is still growing. Well, what's so special about this water? Let's walk a tiny bit further up the hill. Okay, tell me what you see. I see an old broken up cement slab with six pipes draining into the stream. Each of those pipes is spewing forth a different mineral water. During the early 1800s, as locals began to capitalize on these springs, they analyzed the water and made a discovery.

Each stream was rich with different minerals. Wait, so each pipe is fed from a different spring? So this is the crazy part. Each pipe is from a different nearby stream, but the water source of the six streams is the same. Yet somehow, each stream offers a vastly different mineral composition.

In 1984, Ripley's Believe It or Not would call these springs the eighth wonder of the world. Yeah, it's not like these guys were prone to hyperbole. So what's coming out of each pipe? From left to right, we have iron, calcium, magnesium, sulfur, bromide, and arsenic. Wait a minute. Arsenic? Isn't that poison?

Don't people get murdered by arsenic? Yeah, one can be poisoned with arsenic, but soaking in it is believed to help arthritis, digestive problems, and some skin conditions. By the mid-1800s, the United States was going mineral springs crazy.

All over the country, people were flocking to soak in mineral springs and to buy mineral spring water because they believed this water helped restore their good health. Resorts around these springs also popped up in great numbers. These places and mineral water, like this, was marketed as medicine.

Call it health tourism. But do you really think there's healing properties to this water, Jeff? When I was in high school, my mother's closest friend was battling cancer. She was in stage four, and being a devout Roman Catholic, she asked my mom to take her to Lourdes, France. Ah, Lourdes, France. The Catholic boy in me knows this one. It's in the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains, and was a site of Virgin Mary sightings back in 1858. So people have been going there for more than a century and a half seeking miracles.

So my mom's friend Pat was no different. My mother took her to France. Pat wanted a miracle. Frankly, she really needed one.

They dipped her frail body in the icy waters of Lourdes, and Pat let out a yelp because the water was so cold that it shocked her. Well, did it work? Did Pat get her a miracle? No, she passed away a few weeks later. But damn it, she got to see France and have one more adventure, and that has to count for something. And here's the thing about Lourdes or any miracle spring. Everyone who goes there knows it doesn't work for most people.

But every once in a while, someone does win the miracle lottery, right? I guess that's true. So what about the rise and fall of the Brunswick Springs? During the late 1800s, the railroad had interconnected New England to the furthest reaches of Vermont. So as the legend of these medicinal springs grows, people came flocking. A man named Dr. D.C. Rowell opened a hotel here called the Brunswick Springs Hotel.

The hotel was an instant success. People traveled here to medicate and recuperate. Soon, the doctor opened a bottling plant to sell the mineral water to his guests. And that's when the Great Spirit and the Abenaki curse hits town. Any use of the waters of the Great Spirit for profit will never prosper. In 1894, Dr. Rowell's hotel burned to the ground.

But Dr. Raoul didn't give up. He rebuilt the hotel and named it the Pinecrest Lodge. That hotel hung in there until the doctor's death in 1910. After that, a local man named John C. Hutchins from North Stratford, New Hampshire, just across the state line, sees a potential gold mine here. Is that a mineral pond, Jeff? Ah.

I didn't mean it to be. I was being metaphoric. I'm sorry. Go on. So Hutchins buys Pinecrest Lodge and starts cashing in on the Mineral Springs business until September 19th, 1929, when the hotel burned to the ground again. But Hutchins doesn't give up either. He rebuilds. Crews work all through the winter to get the new four-and-a-half-story, 100-room hotel open for the summer.

But on May 15th, 1930, one month before the hotel was set to open, a night watchman sees smoke pouring out of one of the storage rooms. He runs to call for help, but the phone lines have already burned, cutting him off from the town.

The fire burns all night and into the next day, reducing the brand new hotel to ashes. Three fires now. I'm hoping Hutchins got the message that someone or something doesn't want a hotel here. Nope, he didn't listen. He rebuilt yet again. The newly rebuilt hotel was ready to open by the spring of 1931.

And then... And then it burned to the ground again on April 23, 1931. So this place has burned down three times in three years, four times total. Tell me Hutchins started believing in curses after that.

I'm not sure if he believed in curses, but he did give up on the springs. No other hotel was ever built here, and now we can see the foundation remains of those buildings all around us just rotting away as nature slowly reclaims what was always hers. Even if the last version of the hotel survived...

he wouldn't have made it very long anyway. There were forces at work even bigger than the Abenaki curse. What do you mean? Well, in 1938, the relatively new Food and Drug Administration helped enact the U.S. Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

What this did was two things. First, it meant that all medicines had to pass a pre-market safety inspection by the FDA. But it also meant that you can't market anything as medicine that isn't an approved pharmaceutical. That must have killed an entire industry. Yeah, it did.

All of the mineral spring resorts anywhere in the United States could no longer tout the medicinal qualities of their water. And when selling bottles, the word medicine couldn't be anywhere on the packaging or in the marketing. And back then, who would buy a bottle of water if it didn't do anything?

Turns out they were about 80 years off. Because these days, the bottled water market is a $100 billion global industry. You ready for another statistic? Hit me. The vitamin, mineral, and supplement market is now a $106 billion global industry. I'll put them together and, wow, you're north of $200 billion. Yep. We still have the minerals, still have the water, but have taken away the days of rest and retreat aspect of it. Well, something has definitely been lost in the translation.

Today, these stone and cement ruins and old broken pipes are a reminder of what was once here, built on an Indian legend and haunted by the two Abenaki men who died defending this place from exploitation.

What kinds of ghostly experiences have people had around here? Well, some believe that the apparitions of these Abenaki are still around to enforce the curse, to make sure that no one tries to come here with greedy intentions ever again. You mean like exploiting the story for the sake of an episode of a podcast on New England Legends?

Did you know that we often post photos and graphics related to each of these stories on our website at OurNewEnglandLegends.com? You know, I did know that, Jeff. I knew you knew, but not sure they knew. You can listen to our entire archive on our website as well. Plus, check out the New England Legends television series on PBS and Amazon Prime. Also, do us a favor. If you're interested in learning more about the New England Legends,

And subscribe to our podcast so you never miss an episode. You can subscribe for free right through your smartphone on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, remember, the bizarre is closer than you think. We'll break it down right after a word from our sponsor.

This one was a little cringy listening to, not the content. This place made me feel better. Was it that part? It was so old. What was it? 27. 27. Come on. We were still getting our feet wet. Yeah. And the quality wasn't that fantastic. And yeah, we were still getting our feet wet there. Yeah. But a fun subject. Not fun, but a really cool subject. Yeah.

It's interesting because this story is not unique. We covered how the FDA more or less shut down Mineral Springs places all over the country because they said, no, if you're going to call something medicine, it has to be approved by us.

and more or less it can't be natural. Right. Right? Like, don't be drinking water that comes out of a spring. It's got to come out of a factory, right, with all kinds of chemicals in it that's been tested. On the one hand, not to totally disparage the FDA, I get it. You can't have, like, Jeff and Ray being like, hey, we've got a side hustle. We're making these pills, right? That's no good. I get that. You don't want us making your medicine, right? So I understand. But on the other hand,

There are certain things that are just good for your health. Yeah. Like water and minerals and relaxing. Yeah. And things like that. These are things you could probably sell out of your basement, but you wouldn't want to promote too much on like Facebook or anything. Well, it's for the neighbors. Like beer. You see it with beer all the time, right? Somebody will bottle up some beer and sell it to friends maybe or give it to friends. Sure. That's not FDA approved. No. And you are allowed to make your own beer. You're not allowed to sell it.

Right. Right. If you sell it now, you're not allowed to. Well, you'd need a license to sell it legally. But yeah, it's one of those things where like, I mean, is it you getting a few bucks from some friends or is it like you literally open your garage door and you're, you're, you get, you get a sign on the front lawn. All right. Your 14 year old neighbor walks up. Are you 21? Sure am. Good enough.

I'll take your 20 bucks. Here you go. Here's your beer. So shameless. This is a shameless plug. My new issue of Shadowsene, issue four, is called the Mineral Wells Haunted Hill House. Oh. Mineral Wells, Texas. Same story. Yeah. It's kind of weird that I picked that one to go back to. Very similar story. You had, they called it Crazy Woman Well. This woman was crazy, and there was all kinds of different minerals and chemicals in these waters.

and people were getting better. It was fixing rheumatism. It was helping all kinds of ailments. And they set up a big hotel, just like in Brunswick Springs. And people would come there and stay for like a month. And they would bathe in the waters, and they would drink the water, and they would go for walks, and they left feeling better. Just like, you know, it's two very similar stories. The FDA shut down Mineral Wells, Texas. The FDA shut down Brunswick Springs, you know,

in Vermont. The government doesn't want us to feel that good. No. They want to be able to control us a little bit. A lot of it. If we feel too good, we might take over. Right. Right. Yeah. You can't, if you're too happy, then the whole system crumbles. Right. Um, so, but it's so interesting how the, um, how the stories are so similar, you know? Um, but yeah, these are just two examples, one in Texas, one in Vermont of these, these mineral springs, places that, you know, um,

that just went completely out of business because of changes in government rules. The one up here in Vermont, though, we've got layers, though. We've got curses and, you know, mysterious fires and, you know. I mean, I get it. Old hotels used to be made of wood and...

And there's not like, they didn't have fire departments like we have today that can be there in two minutes. No, there was one bucket. Right. They just got a hundred people together. Yeah. Took an hour or two to get them together. See that alone. That'd be an interesting documentary. I don't want to make it. I just want to watch it one night. Right. You know, like, like the history of fire protection. Yeah. Fire brigades. Yeah. From like grab the buckets to today. Yeah. Where you've got literally a truck that can roll up in minutes and contain a blaze and save a building as opposed to. Yeah.

Well, we're just trying to save the other buildings. Yours is gone. There's no hope for that. I mean, a horse and carriage? Yeah. And if you didn't have your own firehouse, you had to rely on the one that was 50 miles away. Begging neighbors, please wake up, come out here and help. Yeah, I mean, I think things just burnt down and you immediately rebuilt in a week and that's it. It was standard. Barn raising. Yeah, right? Maybe the neighborhood comes together and helps you out. Yeah.

But yeah, that's, it's crazy to think about that. Different times. So many things must have just burnt and nobody thought twice. Just, oh, we had a fire. Time to rebuild. Whole towns, like, especially like, you know, the old West where you had all these wooden buildings on a- Side by side by side. Nice, nice windy day. And, and the, you know, now forget it. You're going to lose the whole block. Yeah. You know? And so, yeah, we've come a long way for sure. But so I get it. On the one hand, we've learned some things about construction, about fire containment and all that other stuff. Yeah.

But on the other hand, it's a concern that...

Our healthcare system is a mess. I speak from someone who occasionally has to go to a doctor like everybody else. Molly's going through it with her dad. He had a stroke, so she's dealing with the healthcare system right now, and it's horrible. And every seasoned nurse that she talks to says, we're in trouble. There's nobody getting into the profession anymore. Right. And...

And quick story, one of the younger nurses was upset because her dad said, I like when the pretty nurses take care of me. And she took offense to that. Now, I would imagine as a nurse, you got to have some thick skin. That's a generational thing.

It's not... He's 80 years old, you know? And he didn't mean anything by it. I know, I know. So, yeah, the healthcare system is very broken and it's just going to get worse. Yes. And I'm not speaking politically or anything. No, it's a mess. It is a mess. It's a mess at every stage. It's a mess at the pharmacy, the doctor, the billing, the...

insurance, insurance isn't healthcare. Insurance is just insurance. Yeah. It still doesn't cover everything. Right. Right. Exactly. So you, you pay this, you pay a fortune and pray you don't get sick. I'm like, I feel like I can afford insurance or doctors, but not both. Right. You know, again, that's the government that just wants us all to be sick. So there was a time right back in the, in the 1800s when you'd go to places like Brunswick Springs or mineral wells, Texas, and many others we could name. And,

And you're just like, I'm really not well. It could be mental, physical, quite often both, because your mental deterioration is going to lead to physical deterioration. You're not going to take care of your body if your mind isn't well. And physical maladies are going to hurt your mind. It's all interconnected.

Imagine going somewhere right now, right? And you feel pretty good, right? You're in pretty good health. Imagine if I said, right, four weeks, you're going to this hotel. You're going to bathe in these mineral waters every day. You're going to drink the water. You're going to eat good, healthy food. You're going to be out in nature, go for walks. Four weeks. You would come back a new person. Sure. Absolutely. You'd be like, wow.

I see colors I didn't see before. Right? You just... We don't take the time. We get a week off a year maybe. You know what I mean? Yeah, but even vacationing can be stressful. Totally stressful. We don't just relax. We don't enjoy where we are. We're thinking about, oh, I got to pack tomorrow because we're leaving the day after. And it just gets in your head. And relaxing is not the way it used to be. Well, so... And I know for me, like when I travel...

I want to do a trip. Like, I want to go somewhere. Like, I don't want to go sit on a beach. That's not my idea of a good time. Just, that's me. Other people, I get. I'm the same way. Yeah, other people, totally cool if that's your thing. All good. I just, but for me, I'm like, let me go see something I wouldn't see and do stuff I wouldn't do. Right. Like, you know, see exotic stuff, cool things, whatever. So that's my idea of a good time. It's not relaxing. So you don't come back like, ah, but I,

But I do come back renewed, but in a different way. Peace of mind, right? I would imagine. I come back sort of jazzed up. Like, wow, I did a cool thing. Right. You know? Relaxing, though. I don't know how to do that. I really don't. But that's still a positive way to travel. Sure. Is renewing your sense of self and the world itself. Yeah, for sure. So anyway, but yeah, so there was a time when this is how you took care of yourself, where you made it a priority, where you would take weeks off.

to just take care of your physical and mental state. And we don't have that time anymore. We're working too much. We're too stressed. So that's a shame. So it's too bad that we couldn't find a way to sort of bring these places back because they did a lot of good for a lot of people. You know, they felt better. And so, I don't know. I think it's good that we tell these stories that

that maybe somewhere out there, some, some entrepreneur might be like, you know what? I mean, I know there's spa getaways, but those are so expensive. Like where, where's the, like every person I know, right. Right. Like I don't spend four or 500 bucks to go someplace for a day and just get massages and mud baths and stuff. I'm like,

And they'll tell you it's all natural stuff they're using on your body. And it may be. Yeah. But still, I'm like, that's a lot of money. Like, where's the Motel 6 version of that? Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. But anyway, so yeah. But this one, the ruins are still out there to remind us of this long gone time.