And It's Hard to Dance with the Devil on Your Back/ So Shake Him Off

 Our last stop on our NH trip was a Shaker Village in Canterbury.  The Shakers, or the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, are perhaps an offshoot of the Quakers, founded upon the teachings of Ann Lee.  According to the museum guide, there are only two living Shakers left in America (up in Maine) and that is not surprising seeing as how one of their foundational beliefs is celibacy.  They increased their numbers through conversion, and apparently people used to leave their kids with the Shakers if they couldn't afford to care for them.  Sort of like a commune-cum-orphanage.  The Shakers were not about the sexy-times, but they were about singing and dancing.  They were also pro-equality of the sexes, and were all about furniture making and broom making.  It seems like they were an interesting group of people, but the ghost town they left behind in Canterbury is CREEPY. 

We went in several of the buildings, and each time were greeted by a volunteer who would yell at us not to take pictures (NO PROBLEM) and then try to sell us something.  When we were in the broom-making shed, the broom-making demonstrator was finishing up his "BUY OUR BROOMS" pitch to two German ladies (Because that would be fun to take on the plane) so I turned to Lizzie and whispered "RUN" and luckily, though she wasn't quite sure what I had said, she instinctively followed my directions and we escaped before we had to hear a 35 minute lecture about how Shaker Brooms last forever, as they are made with the best Broom Corn there is. 


 In the infirmary, the volunteer would not shut up about not taking pictures (OKAY, GOT IT) and then told us to not be scared of the coffin on the top floor.  We milled about, looking at the various displays of horrible old school medical and dental devices, and there was a serious "LOTS OF PEOPLE DIED IN HERE, Y'ALL" tinge to the building that was way scarier than the little wooden coffin.  We decided to GTFO (that's "Get the Fuck Out", for the less street-wise of our readers) because something was just wrong about the building.  We then went to an even more wrong building--the school house.  When we went in the school house, the ambient temperature INSIDE dropped about 20 degrees from the temperature outside.  Something horrible had obviously happened here, too, and we only got in far enough to see the little latrines made from holes cut into a long wooden bench (gross--so, like, you're just taking a Carolina Crapo while your schoolmate is just hanging out next to you?). We were
getting serious goose bumps, and we left faster than you could say "Elder Henry Blinn's Bee House," took our stern Shaker photos, and headed for the warm embrace of our Massachusetts home. 

On the drive back, Lizzie and I tried to reason out our creeptastic reaction to that place--it should have been friendly and innocuous, but there was just something inexplicably off about it.  We couldn't find any ghost stories about the place on the interwebs (though they're having a ghost tour next weekend) but the place was a bucket of sketch.  A Shaker-Made long-lasting Bucket of Sketch. 

Also, it should be noted, though many of our faithful readers won't believe this, that I was too busy talking to alert Lizzie to the proper exit to take to get to my home, and we ended up driving an extra half-hour through Boston until we could turn around.  Ah, home sweet home.