Dogtown is one funky little book. It is a non-fiction book about an inland area named Dogtown near the City of Gloucester, Massachusetts. The area was a village in the colonial era but was soon abandoned and has not been inhabited since. It is legally a commons area, owned and administered by the city, but it has been pretty much ignored. The area has inspired some famous artists (Marsden Hartley is the most famous) and poets but there has been some strange stuff including a very brutal murder. The book is ultimately about whether places in and of themselves can be evil.

It’s an interesting question. It seems that some places we find good or inspiring. The Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Park, Mesa Verde have all been described as great places. Why can there not be evil places. I don’t know. Back in my pipeline construction days there were some areas that just gave me the willys and there other areas I loved. While geocaching out in the boonies right on the Red River which is the Oklahoma – Texas border I found myself in an area that spooked the crap out of me. Researching it later I found that was a popular body dumping spot and there were allegations of satanic rituals carried out in a nearby Indian cemetery. I didn’t know any of this when I was at the site. I do know, I found the cache and got out of there as fast as I could.

Years ago, I was scouting a route for a pipeline in southwest Louisiana in a very remote swampy snaky area. I was going down a dirt road that kept getting worse and worse and came upon an area where there were a lot of shacks. The shacks looked like they had been relocated from somewhere else and just scattered randomly across a field. Some of them didn’t have doors or windows. It looked kind of abandoned. For some reason my pucker factor was pretty high. I came up on a group of about a dozen kids. They looked to be about three or four years old up to about 10. The thing was, none of them were wearing a stitch of clothing. They were totally naked, boys and girls both. They looked at me then started throwing dirt clods at the car. So I backed up quite a ways back to the main road.

I routed the pipeline clear around that area. I still wonder what the deal was.

Anyway, I don’t know why a guy in Oklahoma found a quirky history of a ghost town in Massachusetts so interesting except I am interested in the power and energy of places.

I give the book 2.5 stars out of 4. I liked it.