Odd Page History is a small, one-person archive of strange folklore, lost stories, and the odd pages of history, curated by Eleanor Thorne, a former archivist based in Boston, MA.
The archive began as a folder kept at a library desk: historical anecdotes too strange for research papers, too small for a book, and too good to throw away. The odd page of the title is a literal reference. In old manuscript conventions, the oddly numbered pages, the rectos, the right-hand pages, are where the important text goes. The even pages, the versos, are where footnotes and marginalia live. This journal is written for the versos: the footnotes, the stories that ran off the edge of the main page.
Every entry here started in a primary source somewhere — a chronicle, a court record, a newspaper on microfilm, a contract, a report. None of it is made up. A lot of it is still very strange. Where the record is uncertain, the entry says so. Where a popular version has drifted from the archival version, the entry tries to show both, and to say which one the documents support.
The archive covers folklore and monsters, finance and bubbles, strange laws and hoaxes, failures and short reigns, letters and last words, shipwrecks, lost cities, and mysteries that remain open. The categories on the front page are shelves, not arguments. An entry is filed where a reader looking for it would most naturally look.
Correspondence
Story tips, corrections, strange primary sources, or anything that should be in the collection and is not — write to archive@oddpagehistory.com. This is a one-person archive, so replies can take a few days. Please do not send sensitive personal information, passwords, or payment details by email. This archive does not accept unsolicited advertising, link placements, or sponsored posts.
There is no mailing list run by this site, and no email signup form on this site. Correspondence by email is welcome; it does not add the writer to a list.