Viewership Changes Here

For many years this blog has had a small community of daily visitors. Somewhere between 30 and 100 on any given day. One time, I suddenly got a flood of several thousand visitors, and it was interesting in two ways. One is that it made me uncomfortable to suddenly have "strangers" showing up. The other was that I tracked the visitors back to two different webpages that had simultaneously linked to me on a story about a flint knife blade made from exotic flint - found somewhere in the US. As it turned out one of the two webpages was a political/conspiracy theory page, accused of being a CIA front; while the other was a seemingly innocuous "find love" dating site. Who knew the CIA was doing these experiments?

Anyway, something funny happened recently: Both the Rock Piles blog and my Sphinxmoth blog had multiple repeated visits from a server in Singapore. [I can read these details because I have an embedded "STATCOUNTER".] At first Sphinxmoth had several hundred visits for several day. Then the craziness started: I am getting more than 3K daily visits to Rock piles from all over the world!

These are strangers, in no way devoted to rock piles and they are coming in with search strings that make no sense, like this:

https://rockpiles.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-05-10T08:34:00-04:00&max-results=100&reverse-paginate=true&start=26&by-date=false&m=1

Nobody would type this, so I am thinking it is a link from somewhere [connected to Singapore] that thousands are clicking on every day. I think someone is making a little money of this blog's content.

All of which makes me want to make some money too - off a flood of non-enthusiasts who, by coincidence, happen to be passing by. 

SO, I HAVE A QUESTION FOR THE ROCK PILE COMMUNITY: 

HOW ABOUT A DISCRETE ADD OR TWO ON THE LEFT PANEL?

Merry Solstice

Hope we all have a good year.

PA Rock Piles....here somewhere

 Have We Finally Found It? ~ Ghost Village Searching

You just know this guy is going to pass rock piles. The question is: will he say something intelligent about them?

The Indian Cave just below Tousi Road (Hatchett Tousey, Atchetouset, Hatchatowsuck, Hatchatousset )

.   “In the spring of 1996, I was shown what is known locally as the “Indian Cave.” It’s a little over two miles upriver from the floodplains that were the cornfields used by a band of local Native Americans whom local history documents as living there between 1672/1673 and the early 1700’s. A tributary branch of the river that flows through the floodplain, known as the East Spring (or Sprane) Brook, cuts through a large outcrop of bedrock, creating a zigzag ravine shadowed by hemlocks. Boulders in the stream create many pools, the largest of which was right below “Indian Cave,” before an intense summer thunderstorm caused flooding that filled the pool with stones and debris. I tended to think of it as “Plunge Pool” and imagined people leaving the Pissepunk and jumping into this pool. The “cave” is on the west bank, about six feet above the brook. It bears some resemblance to an overhanging glacial cave, perhaps a very small “rockshelter” in the approximately forty-foot almost vertical rock face. There are no obvious marks of any metal stone cutting tools or drills but I think it possible that it may have been quarried to its present size. From the brook to the floor of the “cave” there appears to be rows of stone piled and even “chinked” or mortared with clay (there was a large deposit of clay a short distance upstream) that still remains deep within this sort of “retaining wall” just beyond the drip line of the overhang. The deep pool below the “cave” seems filled with stones that fell from the wall over time, as if the “cave” itself was walled at one time.” From: https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2007/01/indian-cave.html

    On December 7, 2025, I just happened to re-read a passage from William Cothren’s History of Ancient Woodbury Connecticut that included place names related to the town’s past, including “Tousey” which “lies north-west of William Hayes' house, in the south-east part of Bethlehem, and is so called from a Christian Indian, who lived there for a time. His full name was Hatchet Tousey. A further account of him will be found on page 101.” I don’t know why it took almost thirty years for me to realize that the probable stone sweat lodge or pissepunk known locally as the Indian Cave just below the end of present day Tousi Road was related to Hachett Tousey, the father of famed Paugussett basket maker Molly Hatchett.

History of Ancient Woodbury, Connecticut, from the First ... - Page 852

books.google.com › books

William Cothren · 1872

New Runestone in Canada

Mystery Of Lord's Prayer Rock Carved In Canada In A European Language That Vanished Before Columbus

Stone circles from Quebec

The Final Proof: Megalithic Stone Circles of Canada

New Salem Chamber

From James O.

Finally made it out to the "Bears Den" Chamber in New Salem. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere, but the chamber appears to be built on the southeast end of a very short esker, or at least something that looks like an esker. 

I add that caveat because on the north end of the "esker" it seems as if some earth-moving has occurred to form the end into a bowl with one clear opening. I could have been convinced that this was a small but ordinary "kettle hole" in the outwash, except for the fact that the entranceway points due west and there is a very clearly artificial mount directly in the center. 

Is this truly an esker? Or is the whole raised area of human construction? I have no idea, I'm more of a bird-guy than a rock-guy. 

I didn't notice this out in the field, but the LIDAR maps show what looks to be a stone row (maybe sunken beneath the leaf litter?) running form the side of the bowl towards the wet areas along the stream.

And a photo of the "bowl", though photos never really do it justice. There also seemed to be some out of place rocks lining the inside of the bowl.