{"id":3220,"slug":"woburn-woburn-massachusetts","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Woburn is the 1642 town — the twentieth town in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, settled by the Charlestown congregation that needed more farmland, and the site of the first religious ordination in the Americas. Captain Edward Johnson led the 1640 exploration; the First Burial Ground is still there.","The town was the industry — the Aberjona River's tanning and dyeing that made Woburn the leather center, the Middlesex Canal that connected it to Boston, the Richardson library and the First Church that are the town's landmarks. The twentieth town became the industrial city.","Woburn is still there — the First Burial Ground on the common, the H.H. Richardson library that's a National Historic Landmark, the town that was Charlestown's overflow. The file keeps the founding: the 1642 ordination, the tanning river, and the town that's the colony's twentieth.","Woburn is the archive's colonial file — the 1642 town, the first ordination in the Americas, and the burying ground that's still on the common."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Woburn is the archive's colonial file — the twentieth town in the Bay Colony, the first ordination, and the burial ground that's the original.","A town that's the colony's twentieth keeps its ground — the file's suggestion being that Woburn's hold is the First Burial Ground: the 1642 graves, the ordination site, and the town that was the settlement's first expansion."]}],"name":"Woburn","aliases":[],"type":"SITE","type_label":"Site","cats":["DARK_HISTORY","LOCAL_FOLKLORE","TOXIC"],"groups":["dark-history","legends"],"desc":"The town where the water made the children sick—A Civil Action.","full_desc":"Woburn is a site in Woburn, Massachusetts. The town where the water made the children sick—A Civil Action. It sits in the archive under dark history, toxic sites and local folklore. The dossier holds 2 reported claims and 1 documented fact — documented record and retelling kept side by side. The site is open to visitors. For HauntHunt it is exactly the kind of file the archive exists for: a real place, a real record, and a story still being told.","address":null,"city":"Woburn","county":null,"state":"Massachusetts","postal":null,"region":"Northeast","lat":42.488703,"lon":-71.154383,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":"Historic site / memorial","research_notes":"dark2 batch; VERIFY task auto-queued.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":59.4,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.3999999999999999,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":3249,"type":"HISTORICAL_LEGEND","description":"The contamination is documented history. The reports at Woburn are the site's second history — unofficial, unverified, and stubbornly retold. Coverage gave the claim its audience; proof remains another matter. Legends accrue where records go silent; this one filled the gap and stayed. It remains the site's standing claim.","evidence":"MEDIA_REPORTED","evidence_label":"Media reported","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Woburn / W.R. Grace","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woburn,_Massachusetts","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]},{"id":3250,"type":"APPARITION","description":"Reported a presence in the town. The site in Woburn, Massachusetts gives the account a documented setting: real place, real history, unresolved reports. The file holds testimony rather than proof; the claim remains anecdotal. Sources including 'Woburn / W. R. Grace' keep the claim in circulation. It is the sighting the place is known for, and it hasn't stopped.","evidence":"ANECDOTAL","evidence_label":"Anecdotal","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Woburn / W.R. Grace","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woburn,_Massachusetts","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"The contamination and the lawsuit are documented. A documented history gives the file real substance; this entry is part of that spine. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. The detail is preserved in 'Woburn / W.R. Grace'. The entry's timeline holds it; the lore holds the rest.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Woburn / W.R. Grace","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woburn,_Massachusetts","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Site access varies; verify before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Woburn / W.R. Grace","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woburn,_Massachusetts","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Woburn, Massachusetts","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woburn%2C_Massachusetts","desc":"City in Massachusetts, United States","extract":"Woburn (  WOO-bərn) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 40,876 at the 2020 census. Woburn is located 9 miles (14 km) north of Boston. Woburn uses Massachusetts' mayor-council form of government, in which an elected mayor is the executive and a partly district-based, partly at-large city council is the legislature. It was the last of Massachusetts' 351 municipalities to refer to members of its city council as \"aldermen\".\n\n","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Benjamin_Thompson_Birthplace%2C_Woburn%2C_Massachusetts.JPG/960px-Benjamin_Thompson_Birthplace%2C_Woburn%2C_Massachusetts.JPG?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":86,"lat":42.47916667,"lon":-71.15277778},"counts":{"claims":2,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":1}}