Interview

Jeff Belanger joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath on the radio to discuss the weird. In the town of Westford, Massachusetts, as far back as the mid-19th century, locals discovered a stone carving on a rock face that appeared to show a figure of a person. They debated whether it was carved long ago by Native Americans or more recently by local kids. It remained a local curiosity until the late 1930s, when a researcher looking for evidence of Viking expeditions to America paid a visit to Westford and declared the figure was a European-style sword. Of course, when talking about Massachusetts legends, myths and folklore, there’s no better person to turn to than Jeff Belanger, folklore expert and host of the New England Legends podcast. He joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath for a closer look at the Westford Knight. What follows is a lightly edited transcript. You can listen to the segment and read the transcript here: https://www.wgbh.org/culture/2024-10-26/in-westford-mass-wild-and-controversial-theories-surround-a-stone-carvings-origins