Dudleytown
Cornwall, CT

The road to get to Dudleytown is called "Dark Entry Road" and if that weren't enough of a subtle warning, perhaps the stories that have come out of Dudleytown will keep you away. The town itself was settled in 1740 as a farming community. The boulder-filled terrain and abundance of sunlight quenching trees made it less than ideal for that type of endeavor. The town struggled, and, due to it's hard-reached location, found itself isolated from the nearby town of Cornwall. What's more, a plague of Smallpox nearly wiped out the town's infant population in 1774. The cause of the plague is not known. There are reports of mass suicides and murder, though no hard evidence as ever been found. The town continued to decline, finally being totally abandoned in the early 1900's. Nature took over, reducing the town to a series of stone foundations and dirt roads.

Commenting on the "curse" of Dudleytown, Dan Aykroyd found it to be "the scariest place on Earth." Ghosthunters have found the area to be "demonically possessed" and rumors run rampant as to why the town imploded. People claim to have seen specters sitting on rocks, and shadowy figures moving among the higher branches of trees. Having traveled to Dudleytown, I will say that things seem a bit off up there. Situated in a dark valley with large trees, there isn't much sun, and there's a distinct lack of birds in the summer. (Due to arson a few years back, Dudleytown has been off-limits to the public since 2006.) For more info, click here.

Union Cemetery
Easton, CT

Cemeteries are scary places no matter what time of day or where they're located. But when they're haunted by the apparition of a "white lady" and several credible witnesses claim to have spotted her, this cemetery in particular takes on a whole new character.

From Cosmic Society:

No one, to this day, has ever figured out who she really is, or was in her physical lifetime. There was some talk about a gravestone within Union cemetery, with a baby's grave marker next to it, that seemed to indicate a woman dying shortly after the baby, and possibly she is searching in vain, grieving the loss, however that's all speculation. Another possible identity of the woman, is that of Ellen Smathers, wife of John Smathers, the man who's body was found in a sink-hole behind the [Easton Baptist] church, weighed down with iron chunks in his pockets...Richard Dean Jason confessed to the murder. Yet another researcher feels the White Lady is the soul of Mrs. Knott, murdered by her adulterous lover, Elwood Wade sometime around the turn of the century. Mrs. Knott's body was also found in the dark, wooded area of the sink-hole.

Further, sitings of this woman have occurred for the last sixty years. One story claims that the police chief of the town, driving late at night, ran through a person outside the cemetery. He stopped, found his patrol car to be damaged, but couldn't locate a body anywhere. He resigned shortly afterward.

Further, from Cosmic Society:

There are also tales of a ghostly "hobo", a caretaker's spirit who, himself became obsessed with the spirit of a 200 year-dead trapper's spirit he saw in the vicinity of the cemeteries hills, and now walks (or should I say glides?) the length of the wrought iron fence, Uniformed men who leave no tracks in the snow and actually talk with the witnesses, reports of men dressed very out of season, let alone century, who reply, when asked where they're going, "straight through" - meaning straight through the man-made reservoir, animal noises, sounds of a baby crying, footsteps, stones and rocks being thrown by unseen hands, shadow ghosts and more! There are stories and reports of murder ( in 1935, one man, was set on fire by Earle Kellog and died directly across the street from the cemetery) and tragedy around Union Cemetery and the area of the church. Because of vandalism, occult activities and rituals, and general destructive behavior, the graveyard is strictly off-limits after dusk (The Easton police force DOES enforce this and hundreds of would be ghost hunters have received $77.00+ fines, and/or arrest).

Whatever you choose to believe, the cemetery is a great chance to freak yourself out late at night.

Penfield Reef Lighthouse
Fairfield, CT

Situated at the tip of one of Long Island Sound's greatest navigational hazards, the Penfield Reef Lighthouse has warned sailors of the mile-long reef for over a century. Accessible only by boat, the light is now fully automated. But before 1971, it required a keeper to light the beacon. The hazardous trip out to the light did not fair well for one keeper in particular.

From Lighthouse Friends:

The Penfield Reef Light is said to be haunted by the ghost of an old keeper. Just before Christmas in 1916, Head Keeper Frederick A. Jordan anxiously climbed into a small boat and began rowing towards shore to spend the holiday with his family, whom he had not seen for several weeks as a series of storms had kept him trapped at the lighthouse. The assistant keeper, named Iten, watched as Jordan's boat capsized in the choppy seas. Due to the increasingly stormy weather, Iten was delayed in launching a rescue boat, and watched helplessly as Jordan drifted away holding onto the overturned rowboat. Eventually Iten lost sight of the head keeper, and he was presumed lost and drowned.

Iten was promoted to head keeper after Jordan's disappearance, but every so often he felt an unearthly chill in the lighthouse for unexplained reasons. One time he saw a hazy presence coming out of the dead keeper's former room. After gathering his wits, the keeper looked around the station and found that the logbook was taken down from the shelf where it was stored, and had been opened to the page that described Jordan's death! Even in more modern times, when the beacon occasionally behaves erratically longtime locals say it is the ghost of keeper Jordan having a little fun.

After ten years of service following the death of keeper Jordan, Iten said, "I have seen the semblance of the figure several times... and so have the others [two assistant keepers], and we are all prepared to make an affidavit to that effect. Something comes here, of that we are positive."

The Devil's Hopyard
East Haddam, CT

An earthquake in Connecticut is not typical. Even in the geologically quiet Northeast, Connecticut's seismographs are comparatively still to the states along its border. However, back on May 16, 1791, the town of Moodus, Connecticut had an earthquake measuring an (estimated) 7.0 on the Richter scale.

Wouldn't you view that as a bit odd? The official statement from the USGS says:

The region around East Haddam, on the Connecticut River northeast of New Haven, has been the scene of a series of local disturbances since this country was settled. The region southeast of Middletown has been referred to in Indian tradition as Morehemoodus, or "place of noises." The first reported earthquake began on May 16 with two heavy shocks in quick succession. Stone walls were shaken down, tops of chimneys were knocked off, and latched doors were thrown open. A fissure several meters long formed in the ground. In a short time, 30 lighter shocks occurred, and more than 100 continued during the night. Reported felt at Boston, Massachusetts, and New York City, New York.

Further investigation into the area surrounding Moodus indicates that this "place of noises" may not be all that it seems. In fact, Moodus is also home to the Devil's Hopyard. According to Curbstone.com:

Of all the places in Connecticut bearing the Devil's name, the one with the greatest variety of legendary etymologies is the 860-acre state park in East Haddam known as the Devil's Hopyard. Here, the combination of booming Chapman's Falls, pothole-scarred rocks, the unearthly quiet in the dark glen below the falls and the steep, cave-pocked cliffs flanking turbulent Eight Mile River makes a likely setting for the growth and development of legends. Then, too, the "hellish" appearance of the Hopyard's gorge was probably enhanced for the early English settlers by local Indian tribes, which are said to have used Devil's Hopyard for religious rites and powwows. It probably wouldn't have taken much to convince those devout Puritans that the Indians they saw dancing around a midnight campfire were really evil demons paying their respects to the Head Man.

The most widely-circulated legend tells of the many times Satan has been seen, sitting on a huge boulder at the top of Chapman's Falls, playing his violin while the evil witches of Haddam stirred a "hell broth for a charm of powerful trouble" in the cauldron-like potholes formed in the rocks below. Another story reports that a lone traveler, while walking through the Hopyard one night, saw some weird, shapeless forms leaping from ledges and trees near the falls. Later, these phantoms accosted the terrified man, who then beat a hasty retreat to the nearest tavern, where he related his experience to anyone who would listen. Some say that the traveler had spent too much time at the tavern before he took his ramble through the Hopyard.

From the official Devil's Hopyard Site comes this tale:

Another tale focuses on the potholes near the falls, which are some of the finest examples of pothole stone formations in this section of the country. Perfectly cylindrical, they range from inches to several feet in diameter and depth. These potholes were formed by stones moved downstream by the current and trapped in an eddy where the stone was spun around and around, wearing a depression in the rock. When the rock wore itself down, another would catch in the same hole and enlarge it. We know this now, but to the early settlers the potholes were a great mystery that they tried to explain with references to the supernatural. They thought that the Devil has passed by the falls, accidentally getting his tail wet. This made him so mad he burned holes in the stones with his hooves as he bounded away.

In the spirit of Halloween, let's hear some of the local ghost stories from your neck of the woods in the comments section below...