⚠️ Sensitive Archival Image  ⚠️ This article includes a historical photograph that some readers may find unsettling.  Reader discretion is advised —  An original Southwick Time Machine tragic story In the summer of 1950, Mr. and Mrs. Hermas W. Hamel of upstate New York had much to celebrate. The couple had reached a milestone that many couples aspire to, but few achieve—fifty years of marriage. Having exchanged their vows on July 11, 1900, the Hamels marked their golden wedding anniversary with a reception held in their honor on July 15, 1950, at the Townsend Club in Binghamton, New York.   Mr. & Mrs. Hermas Hamel circa 1950   The celebration brought together family and friends to honor the couple’s half-century of commitment to one another. Among those in attendance were the Hamels’ daughter, Edna, and her husband, Ambrose Dietrich, who had traveled from their home in the Congamond Heights section of Southwick, Massachusetts, to join in the festivities. Fol...

📜 UNEARTHED — This story has been assembled from separate events and narrative fragments. ⚠️  It includes themes of suicide. Reader discretion is advised.   —   A Southwick Time Machine original In late 1873, Lyman Cooley of Southwick, Massachusetts, received a letter that would change everything.  Lyman Cooley received a letter that would change everything  Lyman was born in Granby, Connecticut, around 1850. His family relocated to Russell, Massachusetts, before settling on a farm in Southwick sometime before 1865. He worked as a farmhand through his youth. Around 1869, when he was eighteen or nineteen, he began courting a local Southwick beauty. Their courtship would span several years, but the relationship did not progress as Lyman had dreamed. By the early 1870s, he had taken up the butcher’s trade in Springfield. My Dearest Lyman... To Lyman’s surprise, the girl had written him, inviting him to visit her at her Southwick home. He traveled from Springfield...

—   A Southwick Time Machine archival discovery On November 10, 1915, 25-year-old William H. Semke of Southwick, Massachusetts, was operating a 14-inch circular saw at the Southwick Road home of his employer, Harry A. Hescock, in neighboring Westfield. Without warning, the blade broke loose from the machinery and struck Semke on the left side of his head. It shattered his skull, laid bare his brain, cut across the scalp at the left temple, and severed part of his nose. He was taken to nearby Noble Hospital, but despite doctors' best efforts, he died there roughly twelve hours later. An inquest into Semke’s death concluded that gross carelessness on his part was the cause. Thirty-seven years later, on Tuesday morning, November 4, 1952, the man who had employed him met a sudden end of his own. Harry A. Hescock entered his polling station in Westfield to cast his vote. He was handed his ballot but collapsed almost immediately afterward, never marking it. He was pronounced dead on arri...

—   A Southwick Time Machine original archival reconstruction   On the evening of January 20, 1917, Joseph Nowak of Chicopee—accompanied by an unidentified man—paid a social visit to the small farm of Mr. and Mrs. Julian Banalewska in Southwick, Massachusetts. The couple, recent immigrants who soon shortened their surname to Banel, were at home with their infant daughter, Jennie. Julian was commonly known as “Julius,” and his wife as “Mary.” Nowak and his companion arrived with liquor to celebrate—though for what, surviving records do not say. What happened next nearly cost Jennie her life. According to the statements later presented in court, Nowak poured alcohol into a glass, set it ablaze, and threw the flaming liquor directly into the crib where baby Jennie was sleeping. The burning liquid spread rapidly, igniting the bedding and the infant’s clothing. Witnesses said it required considerable effort to put out the fire, and that had the Banels not acted quickly, the child w...

On Thanksgiving Day, 1959, Francis Slasinski of 2 Union Avenue in Westfield, Massachusetts, set out for a deer hunting trip in nearby Granville, Massachusetts. Carrying his bow, he followed a quiet country road when he spotted what looked like a deer standing further down the road. Slasinski drew his bow and prepared to shoot—but just as he was about to release the arrow, the sudden blast of a car horn startled him. The driver pulled alongside and called out that the deer wasn’t wild at all—it was his pet. To prove it, the man opened his car door, and the deer jumped right in. Before driving away, the unidentified owner offered a good-natured remark to the surprised hunter: “I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had shot him.” The strange encounter became one of those memorable local stories that seem almost too unlikely to be true, but it was. Francis "Fran" Richard Slasinski was well known around Westfield. A sportsman from a young age, he was active in the Boy Scouts, sang in ...