Rhode Island is a US state found in the United States New England Region and it is the smallest of the 50 US states, you may be wondering why it is called “Rhode Island” when the state isn’t an island, but quite simply the answer is that the state is named after an actual island called Rhode Island that is a part of the state. The state is bordered with the US states of Massachusetts and Connecticut and also has a coast along the Atlantic Ocean. The state capital and largest city is Providence.
The geography of Rhode Island includes a number of ocean front beaches along the coast but also dozens of small islands, many of which are found within the Narragansett Bay that cuts into the state’s mainland. The state is mostly flat and has no mountains, forest can be found in parts of the state. Most of the state experiences warm summers and cold winters, although the southern coastal portions of the state have hot summers and cool winters. Sometimes but rarely the state can be hit by hurricanes or more often tropical storms that may travel up the Eastern seaboard.
Rhode Island’s economy is mostly services-based in the modern era compared to its past where it relied on manufacturing. Such service sectors in the state which play a large role include healthcare and education, manufacturing does also still play a role in the economy, including the constructing of nuclear submarines. Tourism is another large sector. A number of Fortune 500 and 100 companies are located in the state including Hasbro.
Now let’s get into the strange and the unexplained of the US state of Rhode Island!
At first glance Rhode Island appears to perhaps be one of the most ordinary states in the US so far as there does not appear to be too much unexplained things that have happened there or even really any cryptids at all for that matter, which isn’t too surprising considering the small size of the state, if anything were there one would think that it would not be too hard to find, many other states in the US have much more vast wilderness a part of it, which are the places that tend to get cryptid and other unexplained reputations surrounding them.
One of the most visible things that is perhaps of an unexplained nature that has occurred in the state is that about a sea serpent that may have attacked a woman who was out swimming at a place called Teddy’s beach, which is found in Portsmouth, with the beach being on Sakonnet River. The story was exclusively reported by the Providence WPRI Channel 12 News in 2007, so there is a great likelihood you haven’t heard about it.
Basically, the story is that a woman was out simply relaxing by floating around on her back in the ocean when suddenly out of nowhere a massive water dwelling beast of unknown origin attacks her, swimming around her in menacing fashion. The woman first noticed something was up when she was startled by an odd hissing sound and then after that she witnessed a great face push out of the water near to her, describing it as also having big teeth, a basketball shaped face, and the woman also described it as having scaly skin as it brushed up against her, due to being so close.
The woman then yelled for her fiancé to come and save her, which he then went on to describe whipping the woman away from the beast and yelling at her to swim back to shore. The man then also witnessed the creature swimming around him, with him describing it as “gigantic”, and also described it raising its head out of the water, where the man described it having layers of large fangs.
Some of the other witnesses on the beach believed that a leg injury from another man may have attracted the creature due to how much he was bleeding. The original woman who first witnessed the creature in the water was very traumatized by the event, enough to go and see a counsellor and her fiancé also complained of bad dreams of being attacked since the incident.
Next up is the Vampire legend of the Brown family, which is something you may well know if you come from the state as it is one of their most well-known legends, coming from the late 1800s. The Brown family lived in the village of Exeter in the state and many of those villagers noticed an oddity about the family… in that many of them kept getting sick and dying, despite originally being perfectly healthy. The doctors of the time called the disease “consumption” (which we know now a days was likely Tuberculosis).
The head of the family was a farmer called George Brown and it begun with his wife Mary Brown dying in 1883, if that was bad enough this was followed by his 20-year-old daughter Mary Olive Brown also getting ill and soon dying only six months later. But it still didn’t end there, over the next several years George Brown’s 19-year-old daughter, Mercy Brown and his teenage son Edwin Brown also became quickly ill and died.
Much superstition of the time had many believe that this “consumption” disease was caused by vampires and the villagers became suspicious that someone in the Brown family could possibly be a Vampire, which is why they kept getting ill and dying.
In March 1892 a group of villagers entered into the Chestnut Hill cemetery after concluding that one of the “dead” was actually a Vampire who left the grave in the night to suck life from relatives of the Brown family, leading to them becoming ill and dying. The villagers planned to put an end to this vampire. They started by exhuming the graves of George Brown’s wife and his two daughters. The examination of the wife and daughter Mary showed they were decomposing at a normal rate and as such were not vampires… but then the body of Mercy Brown was dug up and something odd was supposedly discovered.
Despite being buried for two months they found that the body of Mercy Brown was still well-preserved and that her hair and nails had also appeared to have grown, and upon prodding the body fresh blood apparently seeped out, leading them to believe that she was the vampire. The villagers removed Mercy’s heart and burned it on a nearby rock, Edwin Brown at this point was still alive but very unwell, and so the villagers added the ashes from the heart to Edwin’s medicine in an attempt to save him, but he still ended up dying.
The legend led to Rhode Island being dubbed the Vampire Capital of the US and the state has had several other Vampire legends associated with it, around the same time period as the Brown family one.
So, creatures are interesting and all but what about unexplained blasts? That’s just what is said to have happened on Salty Brine beach in Narragansett in July 2015 which was strong enough to have hurled 60-year-old Kathleen Danise from her chair as she was relaxing, she went as high as 10-feet into the air after the unexplained blast and landed near a rock jetty, her injuries included two fractured ribs and some bruises but that she would recover.
Since then, officials and others have scrambled and speculated over what could have caused the blast with possible explanations including some kind of seismic event, a gas or electrical explosion or a natural explosion caused by methane build-up from decaying seaweed or something else.
Witnesses at the scene said they experienced a rumbling and then a loud bang as if a large firecracker, grenade or gas explosion had taken place, they also described a sulfur or butane smell lingering about afterwards, a rift was left in the sand from where the blast happened, but other than that there was not much other evidence of an explosion, such as the absence of charring or other debris, sniffer dogs and chemical swipes also did not find any kind of explosive residue. There was also no natural gas pipe underneath the area.
Officials also later determined that no seismic event had been registered in the area. A power cable was dug up in the area but the National Grid determined it to be unrelated, but that it was unclear who the power line belonged to and if it was even live.
One of the most possible (but still unproven) theories is that the blast was caused by the build-up of methane from seaweed or other organic matter, although such phenomena would usually happen in swamps or certain areas of the arctic where high levels of methane exist, rather than on a beach.
Finally, there is something of a more typical paranormal nature that was encountered in the state and is a part of the state’s legend although is perhaps relatively little known. This is the legend of the Gloucester Ghoul, which was some kind of beastly specter encounter or even possibly some kind of cryptid in Gloucester, Rhode Island in 1839.
The story goes that a pirate called Albert Hicks and his crew were out late in the night looking for a Captain Kidd’s treasure, which Albert Hicks and his crew believed was buried somewhere in Gloucester. At some point they began digging in a spot where they thought the treasure may be but after a short while they were briefly interrupted by something quite scary.
Hicks described a large beast which has eyes that looked like balls of fire, and that when it breathed flames shot out of its nose and mouth, which scorched the nearby brush. It was also described as large as a cow and that it had scales on its body, and that they rattled when it moved. It also had dark wings on both sides and spiral horns on its head. The beast quickly vanished from view.
Well, that’s about all for Rhode Island, Next up we will be looking at the strange and the unexplained of the US State of New Jersey.
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