Bri Manning

Timothy Dexter

April 20, 2018

Rocket is moving into a brand new office in Newburyport this year. This is on top of opening the new office in Boston.

Apparently, the building is haunted by Timothy Dexter.

I had heard about him once before from someone at Rocket and perusing his wikipedia page is an exercise in the absurd.

His career as an author was remarkable.

At age 50, Dexter authored A Pickle for the Knowing Ones or Plain Truth in a Homespun Dress, in which he complained about politicians, the clergy, and his wife. The book contained 8,847 words and 33,864 letters, but without punctuation and seemingly random capitalization. Dexter initially handed his book out for free, but it became popular and was reprinted eight times. In the second edition, Dexter added an extra page which consisted of 13 lines of punctuation marks with the instructions that readers could distribute them as they pleased.

And it seems like he was hard to get along with.

His relationships with his wife, daughter, and son also suffered. This became evident when he started telling visitors that his wife had died (despite the fact that she was still alive) and that the woman who frequented the building was simply her ghost.

He seems like someone to invite to a party.