Obscura Day in Bucks County

If you're interested in something weird to do this March you can take a drive down to Bucks County to celebrate Obscura Day with a rock concert at Ringing Rocks park. What's Obscura Day, you ask? Why, Obscura Day is only the 17th best day of the year. March 20th is designated as an international celebration of wondrous, curious, and esoteric places or "Obscura Day."

One of the official Obscura Day events is a concert created by banging on the rocks at Ringing Rocks Park in Bucks County. And anyone can participate. As Obscura Day's website describes:
March 20, 2010 1PM: Bring hammers, mallets, bats, and other percussive instruments for this gathering at the mysterious Ringing Rocks Park in eastern Pennsylvania, where the stones have a most curious property: they ring out musical tones when struck. The exact mechanism by which these rocks ring remains a mystery, though it may have to with the freeze-thaw cycle that helped created the boulder field in the first place. The unusual property has been observed at only a few other locations in the US. Join us on Obscura Day to collectively rock out in this most curious of rock parks. Obscura Day Ringing Rocks Concert website: Click Here

Although WeirdNazareth.com won't be hosting an official Obscura Day event we are going to create a WeirdNazareth map that you can follow on Obscura Day or any day of the year. It will allow you to enjoy the impending Spring weather and some of the stuff we've posted here in-person. Dust off your GPS's and check back in a little bit for your official Spring 2010 WeirdNazareth.com map!

Bath's Guitar Zero

Not since Kendra Hoffman's 2009 pretzel coaster attempt has the Bath area been so abuzz about one of its native sons. Aaron Nikles of Bath made a valiant attempt at breaking a Guitar Hero world record at Wilkes College but came up short. Read the story here. Witnesses say he collapsed from exhaustion during the bridge of Radar Love and his avatar was booed off the virtual stage. On the positive side, $100 dollars were raised for the American Cancer Society and he unlocked the leopard-print stretch pants after beating his own high score on Slow Ride.

Old Car at Jacobsburg

Here is a fairly well-known Jacobsburg oddity that we haven't been able to find a lot of back story on. Not too far from the creek, in the Eastern most part of the park, there is a very old decaying automobile in the middle of the woods. I first discovered this in the early '90's when I first started coming to the park and haven't seen it since. So I decided to take a trip over there to snap some photos.

I surprised myself by finding the car so quickly after all these years. It's not difficult to find. In fact, on a sunny day you can see it from the main trail (Blue blazed; Henry's Woods Trail; just past the bridge) because the sun reflects off of the chrome bumper. It has decomposed quite a bit since I remember and has become covered in etchings from various visitors over the years. I didn't notice any that were older than the late '90's but it may be that the older ones have rusted over.

I wanted to try and get some clues as to the kind of vehicle it is, how long its been there, and how it got there. There was a marking on the engine block that said "Firing Order 18736542." From the little I know about cars I knew that this only told me it is an 8 cylinder (it had eight digits) and told me noting about the model or age. On the front bumper, there was a hand painted code that read "N4046.614W07517.189." At first I thought this may be something like the magic numbers in the TV show LOST. But after I stared at it long enough I realized that these might be coordinates. After a quick Google search I confirmed that Jacobsburg park is located at N4046 and that these are the waypoints for the vehicle and that geocachers may be using this as a stash point. Based on what I had gathered I found nothing to suggest the model or year of the car. Best guess is 1950's or early 1960's model.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

As far as how it got there, it clearly made its way down the embankment from the main trail area and smashed into a tree. The front bumper is bent around the tree. I saw no clear path from the main trail to the resting spot; it was littered with old growth trees. Also, the forest floor was pretty deep around the wheels. This suggests that the car has been there quite a long time. I might guess 30 or 40 years...maybe 50.

It's a pretty interesting juxtaposition of nature and machine to see a car in the middle of the woods. So if you have the means go check it out. Surely, there is someone reading this that has more information about this automobile and what its story is. So drop us a line at weirdnazareth@hotmail.com

Ghosts of the Dryland--Newburg Inn

Monday's Express-Times reported that the City Lights Paranormal Center, headed by Joe Ianetta, visited the Newburg Inn to investigate ghost sightings that have been reported there over the years. A quote from the article:

"The history of the inn includes a grim chapter of the capture of one Indian who was then hung among the rafters in that attic.

Apparently to some, he still hangs around in the bar as a shape and a source of high paranormal activity. Iannetta says he believes the hanged man is haunting the place of his unjust death to assert his innocence."

Not only are other ghosts mentioned ("a black man who greets people at the front door, another small man, a woman" . . . "and a former owner of the inn named Newt"), but also a doll that moves and an unplugged phone that rings! You can see the full article by Tony Nauroth here.

Ianetta took more than 60 hours of video at the inn and as of the time of the article, planned to review it. The manager of the Newburg Inn, Lou Basta, seems to take it all in stride, but Nauroth writes, "As for that disconnected phone that rings, Basta says, 'I don't answer it.' "

Have any of our readers seen ghosts at the Newburg Inn? Anywhere else? Tell us about it. Maybe those specters just want to be mentioned on the internet!

History note: Newburg was part of the area called the Dryland because of a dearth of creeks and springs between the present Brodhead Road and Nazareth.

Magic? Of Quartz!

crystals in a quartz stone found northwest of town

Many Nazareth people know at least the name Black Rock for the woods at the end of the Borough Park. Some have probably noticed the black rock it was named for, both under the stream and along Black Rock Road. Fewer will know that at one time people intended to grind the black rock--slate--into powder and start an industry there producing black mineral pigment.

But only people who are really paying attention notice that as you walk further back into the woods, the black rock stops and various-sized white rocks become more common. From the back half of Black Rock and on up the hill to the Indian Tower and Levis Road, white quartz is the predominant kind of loose stone, from medium-sized boulders to small pebbles, and in a small percentage of that quartz, there are tiny clear crystals, crystals of Nazareth quartz.

Silicon, the main element in quartz, is the second most common element on earth and some think it has spiritual qualities. Metaphysical practitioners say they use quartz for everything from protection and healing to energy storage and prediction. It is the most essential of all healing stones and no crystal healer would be without it. For believers in such things, these are powerful stones.

Even for the more mundane of us, quartz has a curious property. Try striking two pieces together in the dark and you will see what look like sparks. They're not sparks. The stone itself lights up as a result of the piezoelectric effect. Some Native Americans made rattles of very thin skin and pebbles of quartz inside so that when they shook them at night, the rattles lit up!

The Lenape people who preceded us on this land would have noticed the white and black rock so near the source of the Schoeneck. Quartz was significant to them. If it was of high quality, they made blades and weapons from it. They also used it to mark places and incorporated it into their ceremonial stone constructions. That, and the many springs, along with the cave, would probably have made Black Rock a very special, even sacred place for them.

Even technology of the 21st century needs and reveres natural quartz. The silicon chips in nearly all computers originate from pure quartz mined in North Carolina, near a little town called Spruce Pine [see BBC article here]. Quartz's special properties have put Spruce Pine "at the heart of a global billion dollar industry." It's a different kind of magic and a different kind of sacred, but those white stones scattered along the High Street extension still carry that silicon mystique into the internet era.

quartz stones on a path outside Nazareth

Bath Woman Competes in Pretzel Contest and Loses

She may have lost but she is a winner in our eyes. As the Williamsburg-Yorktown Daily reports, Kendra Hoffman of Bath was one of only 6 finalists in the Pretzel Coaster Build-off Contest at Busch Gardens (sponsored by Snyders of Hanover). On Wednesday she was in Virginia competing to build a replica of Apollo’s Chariot out of pretzels within the 3 hour time limit. She competed valiantly but did not win. Kendra, Weird Nazareth salutes you.

You can see a tiny little picture of the coaster that made her a finalist here: LINK

News Articles:

Lots of pretzels + a little glue = prize-winning roller coaster (Daily Press)

Bath Woman Falls Short in Pretzel Contest (Morning Call)

Bath Builder Shapes Pretzels into Winning Coaster (Morning Call)

The Spirit in the Spring at Christian Spring

Christian Spring, outside Nazareth near the intersection of Rte. 248 and Daniels Road, was one of the original outlier communities of Nazareth. In that time it was common for Moravian communities to have separate residences for single men (brethren) and single women (sisters), but Christian Spring, also known as Christiansbrunn, was the only community that consisted almost entirely of single brethren.

The spring was named after Christian Renatus von Zinzendorf, much-beloved son of Ludwig Graf von Zinzendorf, patron and leader of the Moravian Church or the Unitas Fratrum as they preferred to be known at the time. Christian, or Christel as some who loved him called him, was by all accounts a joyous and flamboyant character, whose holy celebrations and pageants delighted many at the Moravian community of Hernhaag in Germany. He was even thought by some to be the embodiment of the spirit of Jesus Christ. When he died at the very young age of 24, many of his closest associates came to live at Christian Spring.

So what's weird? Some of those old friends came to believe that their beloved Christel's spirit lived in the spring after his death. Among other things they pointed out how tame the trout were. The spring is said to remain to this day in the general area of the Christian Spring Hotel.

An old shed nearby

Today the community of Christian Spring is remembered by people interested in the history of gun-making in America, and also by another male demographic, so much so that an intentional community modeled on Christian Spring, the Hermitage (whose original members call themselves Johannes and Christian Zinzendorf) exists in Schuylkill County.

If the spring were cleared and marked and opened to tourists, local people might be surprised to find how many people would come from far and wide to visit the spirit of Christian Renatus and the single brothers, who are better known in some circles than they are in Nazareth.

A note: Along the Christian Spring Road (there are 3) that runs from the Christian Spring Hotel to Route 248, there is at least one white mulberry tree. This kind of mulberry was imported for silk production. There is a very good chance that that white mulberry is a direct descendant of the mulberries planted by the single brethren in the 1700's in an effort to start a silk industry, so the tree may be another piece of their legacy that has survived until today.

The Skull in the Rocks at Jacobsburg

A few miles from Nazareth, in Henry's Woods at the Jacobsburg Environmental Education Center, this skull in the rocks can be seen if you stand in one certain spot in the Bushkill Creek. No one knows whether it is a natural formation or if it was carved out by people in the distant or recent past. The most curious thing about it is that from any other angle, the image isn't noticeable. There is also a small rectangular window in a wall-like stone on the same side of the creek

Note: the skull has been deteriorating. When we first saw it, the lower jaw was more complete than it is in this photo. This was taken several years ago and we have not been back to check whether deterioration has continued. [Photo by Earl Dundore]