Abby Hall of BrightonPhoto: Chaiel Schaffel/WBZ NewsRadio
BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — Abby Hall of Brighton swears she doesn't have any enemies. But her front yard routinely looks like a vengeful baker is out for blood.
Nearly every week for five years, someone has repeatedly and methodically covered her tiny yard with chunks of bread, a mystery this reporter has dubbed the "Brighton Breader." She spoke to WBZ NewsRadio as a follow-up two years after her first post on Facebook, trying to identify the culprit.
"It was tapering off... but then in the last year, prolific!" she said of the shadowy character's exploits. Abby said the breading events began as a once-a-week phenomenon about a year after she moved into her apartment on Corey Road in Brighton, and originally the bread was neatly cut cubes piled in one corner of the yard. Now, the breader is flinging the bread all over, including down her driveway, up to three days a week at random.
A 'breading' incident from 2024. Photo: Courtesy of Abby Hall
She said no one else on the street has ever had the same problem — it's always just been her, and all the apartments near her have turned over since the breadings began, so her neighbors have been ruled out. She estimates she has been breaded somewhere between 100 and 250 times.
Abby recently decided on a direct appeal to the public, putting up prominent, hand-written signs with the word "WHY?" right in front of the house. The signs beg whoever is doing the breading to please come forward; "I'M NOT MAD, BUT I NEED TO KNOW," they read.
"I really, really need to know who you are," she told WBZ Radio. "Cleaning bread out of the yard I fell into a rat hole, nearly twisted my ankle," she said.
And indeed, it seems the few fans of the repeated breadings are the rats in her yard. They've grown fat and abundant on the erratic, yeasty manna cast from the heavens at the whim of their anonymous benefactor. Abby's landlord is much less pleased.
At last check, a trail camera had been purchased, but not yet set up.
WBZ's Chaiel Schaffel (@CschaffelWBZ) reports.