FtV – The Druid’s Chair and Witch’s Altar
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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 to the vault. This is a creepy one. This one, I'm just like, why do we do certain things? Sometimes we don't even know. The Druid's Chair and Witch's Altar first aired March 25th, 2021. Enjoy. Okay, so we're looking for an old cemetery. Well, it's kind of a cemetery. Off of Gibson Avenue here in Narragansett, Rhode Island. We just passed a few houses pretty relatively close together. But now we're next to a forest. Yeah.

I see a stone wall up ahead. Yeah, yep, that's it. That's Rhode Island Historic Cemetery number three. Another historic cemetery. All right, who are we looking for? In this strange case, it's not who we're looking for, more like what we're looking for. This cemetery sign just means that we're close. All right, so what are we looking for? Ray, we're heading back into the woods in search of the druid's chair and the witch's altar.

I'm Jeff Belanger. And I'm Ray Osier. Welcome to episode 188 of the New England Legends podcast. If you give us about 10 minutes, we'll give you something strange to talk about today. Narragansett, Rhode Island is the next stop on our mission to chronicle every legend in New England, one story at a time. And we appreciate you riding along with us.

We're a community of legend seekers who are sharing stories, whether in our super secret New England legends Facebook group that you should join, our free smartphone app, or on our website. We love these strange tales from the fringe of New England. And thank you to all of you who've picked up my brand new book, The Call of Kilimanjaro, Finding Hope Above the Clouds.

I appreciate all the great feedback so far. All right, so before we go searching for druids and witches, Jeff, we want to take just a minute to tell everyone about our sponsor, Nuwadi Herbals. Yes, we do. Well, it's finally spring, which means the weather is warming up. We're going to be spending more time outside in the sunshine, so it's the perfect time to grab a cup of a sweeter tea from Nuwadi Herbals. They have so many great flavors, but some of my favorite and my daughter's favorite, too, is...

is their lemon sun, the strawberry moon, chocolate chai, and their root berry tea, which smells exactly like root beer, just to name some of them. Well, my kids love adding a spoonful of sugar or honey to these teas to turn them into great after-school treats.

As the weather gets warmer, we're going to try chilling the teas to make Nuwadi Herbal's iced tea. Those warm days are coming soon. Nuwadi Herbal's has a tea for any occasion or mood. These are herbal remedies from Mother Earth. Please support the people who are supporting us. Check out Nuwadi Herbal's website to see all their great products. And you legendary listeners get 20% off your order when you use the promo code LEGENDS20 at checkout.

Visit nuwadiherbals.com. That's N-U-W-A-T-I, herbals with an S, dot com. All right, Jeff. So we're heading towards the back of Rhode Island Historic Cemetery No. 3. Now, Rhode Island is unique. It is. It's the smallest U.S. state in the country. I think a lot of people already know that. Sure. It's made up of 39 municipalities. That's eight cities and 31 towns. But guess how many cemeteries? Hmm.

I don't know. You have to figure three or four in every town, right? So, I don't know, 150, 200? I just looked it up. Rhode Island has 2,833 cemeteries. What? Yeah. I mean, that's an average of 73 cemeteries per town. Okay, I think that's impossible.

Rhode Island has been meticulous about logging every burial site they can find, from family plots with just one or two graves to the big ones that are well-maintained and still in use today. Okay, so I guess if you include every family plot, that would add up pretty quickly. Turns out Historic Cemetery No. 3 is one of those family plots with a big connection with the house right across the street.

A house called Druid's Dream. I can see from here, Druid's Dream is a stately two and a half story home built from granite blocks. It's an English manor style home that looks like it was pulled right from the pages of some New England architecture magazine. And that house has been featured in a bunch of those magazines, but we're mainly focused on this curious cemetery.

Now, you may notice we don't see any headstones. No, we don't. Just some round stone pillars up ahead and a pointed stone surrounded by some smaller rocks. This would be the place they call the Witch's Altar. Okay. And that larger stone over there, they call that the Druid's Chair. Well, it's obvious the granite pillars are man-made and deliberately placed in a circle. It's also clear those rocks were placed there by someone. But who did this and why? We'll tell you.

To answer that, we're going to travel back to 1884 and meet an eccentric named Joseph Peace Hazard. It's the spring of 1884, and construction workers are putting the finishing touches on an English manor-style home called Druid's Dream.

The stone house is the vision of Joseph Peace Hazard, a guy you can definitely call eccentric into some strange things. Probably all those things. Now, while these workers finish up in this house, we should tell you a little more about Joseph Peace Hazard. The Hazard family are a Narragansett plantation family that first settled this part of Rhode Island in the early 1700s. They're Quakers. They're rich and they're influential.

Joseph's parents established a successful wool and textile manufacturing business at the village of Peasdale. So Joseph was born into some bucks. Yeah, kind of like a trust fund kid. Kind of. Now, without the stress of living hand to mouth and with plenty of capital, Joseph can pursue whatever interests him.

In 1835, Joseph inherited the 200-acre family farm at Point Judith in Narragansett. And then he opened an axe factory. But farming and making axes didn't really interest him all that much. Joseph Hazard is rich. He never got married. And he's got this wanderlust. Joseph travels around the United States.

He travels over to Europe, then the Middle East and Asia. He even makes his way down to South America. All the while, Hazard maintains a journal detailing his life and his philosophies. He loves trees. He starts to collect specimens to bring them back home to plant at his Rhode Island estate. But it's in England and France where his interests turn more spiritual, more metaphysical, more supernatural.

Joseph explains. I have ever entertained an ardent interest in all that relates to the mysterious side of the Druids. The Druids are kind of the spiritual and philosophical leaders of the Celtic people. They're mysterious because they left no written account of their knowledge. Most of what we know about them has been passed on by others. For most of us, when we think Druids, we think of the famous Stonehenge site in England. Yeah, that does seem like the biggest landmark left behind.

Now, the Druids come on the scene around the 2nd century BCE. Some believe them to be sorcerers or wizards. Though the Druids drift into obscurity about a millennia later, there's a revival and interest in them by the 1700s and 1800s, which is when they catch the attention of Joseph Hazard. Joseph fills his journals with notes on his studies of mysticism and transcendentalist philosophies.

When spiritualism emerges out of New York in the mid-1800s, Joseph is quick to embrace the belief in communicating with spirits. During the construction of Druid's Dream, he writes that its design was influenced by spirits. "The well and the house came into my mind with urgency and character of their own."

My role was to simply fulfill the message's requirements. Hazard has a long history of finding insight from the spirit world. His journals and letters are filled with stories of attending seances, communicating with spirits, and exploring haunts. On a trip to London, he visited an ill friend named Mr. Clark.

Doctors were perplexed at what could be causing his illness, so Joseph recommended consulting a higher authority. I soon mentioned the subject of spiritualism to Mr. Clark, and he soon became interested in the subject. And thereafter, he accepted my proposal to hold a spiritual sitting. Accepting this, we seated ourselves at a table near the coal fire that was in my room night and day,

and in a minute or two the table began to move and before the close of the evening it would rock most vigorously and on the following evening this table would frequently run all about the room having continued these sittings a week or two it occurred to me to ask the spirits if they could not advise mr clark of some remedy that might alleviate his care

At this suggestion, the table commenced running about the room in the most frantic manner. This subsiding, I asked what we should do, and received for reply in writing a prescription that was so badly written that neither of us could imagine what it was, until I happened to remember that when I was a boy, a physician advised me to take a few drops of black cohosh.

This by writing through Mr. Clark's hand. At this, the table immediately became frantic again for some time. It's 1882 and 75-year-old Joseph Peacehazard is beginning to feel his mortality. He knows the inevitable comes for everyone, so he wants to build this manor house and this unique tomb. He turns to a familiar source for inspiration. Joseph, under some kind of divine guidance, designs an intricate tomb.

There are eight three-foot-tall granite pillars arranged in a circle with a diameter of exactly 27 feet. Half of the pillars have a bowl-like impression at the top, designed to collect rainwater so birds can bathe in them. In the center is a central monument. To the side is a massive L-shaped rock he had brought here from the coast. Joseph called it the Druid's Chair. Joseph never intends to live in Druid's Dream, but he was still compelled to build it.

It all began with digging a nearby well. It suddenly came to me that I had been used by spirits, as are no doubt the water finders of the West. This well must be dug for some explicit purpose, though I could not then imagine what it might be, but I determined to build a stone house near the well, and to name it Druid's Dream.

But for what purpose? I have never been able to determine to this day in June 1884. Accepting that someone will need it. But who? I have never yet been able to imagine. Druid's dream applies to the entire location, including the tomb, not just the house. Joseph Peacehazard dies in 1892. And that brings us back to today. ♪

When Joseph died in 1892, he was not buried in the tomb he designed, but in the family's burial ground in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Joseph Hazard referred to the area around the tomb as "Kendall Green." Upon his death, Joseph left this property to his sister Anna Hazard, and it remained in the family until the mid-1900s. At that point, the Wells family of Philadelphia purchased the house as a summer home and then sold it in 1986. The house has had various owners,

But this strange monument is still here. Now, Jeff, when you first mentioned the names Druid's Chair and Witch Altar, I figured it was some nickname that locals gave this site over the years. But it was Joseph Hazard who named the Elshave Rock the Druid's Chair. And it's a very interesting name.

And he was quoted as saying that only near the end of his life had it occurred to him that the stone circle looked druid in nature. Almost like some Narragansett stonehenge in miniature. Right. All designed and built by an eccentric who believed it was the spirit world guiding all of his construction activities. And all for reasons he claimed he didn't fully know or understand. And here we are, still talking about him thanks to this unique and mysterious location in the woods.

Hmm. Well, maybe he built that house and this strange monument to be immortal. Maybe. So his legend would live on after he was gone. I can appreciate that. And we're trying to build something bigger than ourselves with New England Legends. And we can't do that without our Patreon patrons.

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So everybody can find us. We'd like to thank our sponsor, Nuwadi Herbals. We'd like to thank Michael Legge for lending his voice acting talents this week. And our theme music is by John Judd. Until next time, remember, the bizarre is closer than you think. We'll break it down right after a word from our sponsor. This is it.

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You have the knowledge. You have the experience. Now it's time to get credit for the work you've done and earn the recognition you deserve with Purdue Global, Purdue's online university for working adults. You know you're worth it. We do too. So don't wait another second to get the degree that will take your career to the next level. Start your comeback today at purdueglobal.edu. Yeah, this was creepy. The most chilling part is that the guy who built it didn't know why he was building it. Mm-hmm.

So here's the thing about a mystery, right? An unsolved mystery plagues us. Had he said like, I built it because I was trying to like make it look like A, B, C, or D, or each stone represents blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. We ain't talking about this. No. You know what I mean? But he even said, he's like, I don't know what compelled me to make this thing. And it's still there in the woods. You can go see it. I don't know what compelled me to make this. And yet maybe it's for someone else to understand at some later point.

Imagine that. Yeah. Maybe it's for some guys to make a podcast about this. Maybe. One day and fill a few minutes of people's lives with a strange story. Or maybe it's meant for like an alien life form in 2,000 years is going to make its way to Earth. And for that reason. So Joseph Peace Hazard, he was the guy that did all this.

It's a name that's come up before. He's a spiritualist, so he was into lots of weird stuff, holding seances, doing all kinds of eccentric things. And he wrote a lot about strange things in Rhode Island. We've referenced him before.

But to actually, like, I love that. Imagine being so, I mean, I know some strange folks, like that's how we roll, you know? But imagine getting so esoteric that you're just like, I'm being moved by spirit to do this thing. I know, for example, a medium who does a lot of art. And this person, I'm not gonna say who, it doesn't matter anyway, who cares? Art is art, right? You express yourself. But this person was moved to make a lot of art.

And I'm looking at it and I'm like, I don't,

I don't get it. You know what I mean? Right. And they might not even get it. I'm sure they don't. I'm sure they don't get it. But I was gifted a piece and I was just like, okay, I don't know what to do with this. It doesn't move me in any way. Didn't want to hang it in the living room? It doesn't evoke anything. For me, art has to evoke something. If it makes you angry, if it makes you confused, if it makes you sad, happy, drawn in, something. Like visual art. That's art. If you could walk right by it.

Like it's hanging in the hotel room that was built last year. You know, the art that like you didn't even look at it. It's just something to be on the wall.

Then, I don't know. Art's subjective. Of course it is. So some people can love one thing and another person could hate the same thing. I know. But so when someone gets so esoteric, like Joseph Peacehazard, to say, I'm going to build a thing. I'm moved to build a thing and I don't understand it. And I'm like, whew, that's cool. Because now you're just like, well, what could it be?

to be. He had no reason behind it. Most artists do. Right. I'm expressing myself. I'm making a statement of some kind about something. Right. Even if I don't explain it to you, I have my reasons. He didn't have reasons. Yeah. That's scary. Yeah. You're just like, what, what should, there was a Simpsons, uh, speaking of great philosophers, uh, Simpsons episode where Bart was just compulsively digging a hole in the backyard. What you doing, Bart? Digging. Digging what? A hole. A hole.

For what? I don't know. And then like a child psychologist comes in and says, what you doing there, you little pal? You know, he's like digging, you know, and it just, everyone was just like, why is he digging? And he didn't know just to dig a hole. Yeah. Why are you putting up a monument, Joseph P. Sazard? Right. I don't know. Don't know. Someday it will be revealed, the truth behind that monument. I feel like,

like, you know, Ghostbusters episode eight, when they walk by the go, yeah, no one knows why he built it. And then suddenly it becomes the focal point of the movie where like, that's the, becomes the portal. Right. Right. Right. It's going to open up someday. Yeah. Stay puff marshmallow man. Version 12 comes through. It could be next week. We don't know. Yeah. That's, that could be it. So, um, but I, I do dig that. And then when I hear stuff, I'm, I'm equal parts appalled and impressed. Yeah.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Appalled for what reason? Like why waste your time, money, energy, resources, and land. Look what you did. To do something like this. It was all for nothing. And then, and then my next thought was like, what a waste. What a stupid, stupid thing. Yeah. I wonder if I could do that. The very next breath. Hmm. Because then someday podcasters will be talking about you as well. This is the podcast. This is where they did it. Yeah. Um,

I did a shock doc for Discovery on Whitley Streber. Whitley Streber was an alien abductee who lived in upstate New York, and we went to his cabin, his actual cabin, where he claims he was abducted night after night after night. And he built a stone circle, like stone slabs that are not quite set out, because I pulled out a compass, and I'm like, do these line up? Because there was like four longer ones, and then was it like,

two between each shorter yeah and i thought oh maybe these are compass points but they were close but not close enough right it's like i'm like well you would have got it right when you built these it wasn't that long ago but i remember looking at it and he said this is where they sit and this is where they commune with the aliens who come to get them oh absolutely wild right um to be there and be like this is where this guy claims that he and others were abducted repeatedly and

And we were there at those stones, but I don't know what the stones mean. Right. Only he would. He would, but he built it and he said, this is where it happened. And it's the stones are still there.

And that was pretty wild. But at least his had a purpose. This is where I commune with the aliens. Peace Hazard was like, I don't know. Just built it. Yeah, he left it up to us to guess. Yeah. And make accusations or whatever. Fill in the blanks. We should go sit there for a while. I think that's the smartest thing to do, though. Don't give a reason. Just make people think about it and talk about it. Make your own conclusions. Draw your own conclusions. That...

That does make for a more powerful story. It does. Unanswered questions drive us crazy. He built this for the aliens. Okay. Yeah. Story done. Whatever. Right. You believe him or you don't believe him. Right. But it's over. Right. But if I said, I don't know why I built it. You'll figure it out one day. But we try to get into people's heads. We want to know why people do the things they do. It's human nature. And then the best thing you can do after that.

It's a mic drop. It's the ultimate mic drop. Never answered the question. Yeah. Why'd you build it? He's dead. I can't even ask him anymore. No one knows. No one will never know. Now, like that's powerful. And I, uh, I love that. That's we've talked about like unanswered questions are what turn into legends. Yeah. It sits with you. It does. Naws away. Just like the Druid circle.

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