When: Saturday, April 19, 2025, 1:00 PM HST
Where: Oakledge Park, Southern Parking Lot, Burlington, VT
Hares: 20 Gallons of Piss and Siren’s Thong
What to bring: $6.9 hash cash, a fun basket, leftover chocolate, dogs that can sniff our hares, your finest occult garb
This upcoming weekend is a special one—while Jesus is stuck behind a rock and stoners prepare to sit on their couches all day Sunday, it’s the yearly return of Ostremar! This Saturday, join 20 Gallons of Piss and Siren’s Thong in Oakledge Park as we reenact some of the customs of one of Vermont’s least known occult groups and await the return of the “Thumping One”. It will be a day filled with lots of fun, frolic and folklore! Bring a basket to try and collect as many offerings for Ostremar as you can.
Not sure about our lord and savior, Ostremar? Fortunately for you I happen to obsessed with all things cryptid.
Excerpt from Vermont Obscura: Forgotten Folklore and Occult History of the Green Mountain State, 2nd Edition (1937)
In the remote and largely inaccessible region of Addison County, near the border of what was once indigenous Algonquin territory, historical records and oral traditions suggest the presence of a fringe religious sect known as the Breadloaf Covenant. Active from the late 18th century through to the early 20th, this isolated community is believed to have practiced an esoteric form of ritual worship centered on a figure they called Ostremar—a hare-like entity described in surviving texts as “a great burrowing god with antlers of ash and a maw lined in shadow.” Early anthropological surveys, though sparse, note peculiar springtime gatherings marked by animal sacrifice, the distribution of dyed eggs filled with hair and teeth, and unsettling children's rhymes about a "Thumping One" who comes "from the roots beneath to reap the soft and slow."
While mainstream historians initially dismissed the cult as an offshoot of Christian syncretism or a colonial-era fertility rite distorted by isolation, more recent examinations suggest possible ties to pre-colonial cryptid legends—specifically, Algonquin stories of a “white shadow hare” said to haunt thawing forest edges. Curiously, several 19th-century disappearances in the region remain officially unsolved, and local folklore continues to caution travelers against walking in the woods near Breadloaf during the weeks surrounding the vernal equinox. To this day, residents of nearby towns report strange nocturnal sounds: rhythmic thumping in the underbrush, and on occasion, egg-shaped objects found near doorsteps, still warm and inexplicably pulsing.
Skip once for the thumpin’ feet,
Skip twice for the sugar-sweet,
Skip thrice and don’t you peek—
The Hollow Hare don’t like the weak.
He knocks at dusk, he knocks at three,
He’s lookin’ for the likes of thee.
He’s tall as trees and thin as air,
With twiggy horns and patchy hair.
“Come out, come out,” the bunny hums,
“I’ve brought a gift with sugared drums!”
But if you take the treat he brings—
You’ll never dance or skip or sing.
So skip your rope and shut the blind,
And leave no footprints he can find.
For Ostremar knows every name,
And children’s bones all burn the same.