Dudleytown – A damned zone

Dudleytown – a small abandoned town in Cornwall County (USA, Connecticut) – has long been notorious. The reason for this is an endless series of mysterious deaths, accidents, and disappearances of its inhabitants. More than 100 years ago, people left this place. But today, it still attracts the attention of researchers of anomalous phenomena and is just curious.

The town is located at the foot of three mountains – Bald Mountain, Woodbury Mountain, and Coltsfoot Triplets – and is surrounded on all sides by dense forest, which was given the ominous name Dark Forest – almost no sunlight penetrates into its thicket. There are indeed many tragic episodes connected with Dudleytown.

In 1792, a certain Gershom Hollister broke his neck, falling from the threshing floor on the farm of William Tanner. They said that someone pushed him. The owner of the farm was suspected of murder, but he was never charged. Meanwhile, Tanner was clearly not himself, and he saw demons and demons everywhere. He claimed that with the onset of darkness, evil spirits enter the city from the forest and that one of the monsters tore a man apart right before his eyes.

In 1804, Sarah Faye, the wife of General Herman Swift, died during a thunderstorm from a lightning strike. Her husband went crazy after Sarah’s death.

Mary Cheney, the young wife of the famous American journalist and publisher Horace Greeley, who was born and raised in Dudleytown, hanged herself a week before her husband was defeated in the presidential election. The cause of the suicide remained unknown.

From time to time, entire families disappeared without a trace in this city. At the end of the nineteenth century, John Patrick Brophy’s wife died of tuberculosis. Soon after, his two daughters disappeared in the woods, and Brophy’s house burned down one night. John’s body was not found at the scene of the fire, and no one else saw him alive or dead.

By 1899, Dudleytown was completely deserted. Old people died, and those who were younger left here, frightened by rumors of a curse. Abandoned lands were overgrown with forest.

In 1920, a well-known New York physician, a specialist in oncological diseases, Dr. William Clark, settled in Cornwall. He dreamed of living in a quiet and peaceful place, in the bosom of nature. Clark built a summer house in the woods, near Dudleytown and moved in there with his wife.

Somehow he had to go to New York for a while on business. His wife was left alone in the forest house. When the doctor returned a few days later, it turned out that the woman had gone mad. She ended her days in a psychiatric hospital.

The legend of the executed Duke

Perhaps the history of the Dudleytown curse dates back to 1510, when Duke Edmund Dudley, a representative of an old Anglo–Saxon family, was executed for trying to overthrow King Henry VIII. The vengeful king was not satisfied with the death of the enemy alone – he resorted to the help of black magic, imposing a terrible curse on all the descendants of this family. At least, that’s the legend.

Indeed, since then, the Dudley family has been constantly plagued by misfortunes.

Edmund’s son John, Duke of Northumberland, followed in his father’s footsteps and also started a conspiracy against the crown, for which, together with his eldest son Guilford, he paid with his head.

John Dudley’s third son, Earl Robert of Leicester, and his family secretly left England to avoid reprisals, and sailed by ship to America. His great-grandson Joseph was born already in Saybrook (Connecticut) in 1674. Joseph Dudley had 12 children.

In 1748, one of them, Gideon, bought some land in Cornwall to build a farm. In 1753, Gideon’s brothers – Barzillai and Abel – also acquired plots. A few years later, they were joined by a fourth brother, Martin from Massachusetts. Gradually they became the largest landowners in these parts. A village called Dudleyville has grown up on the site of the uprooted forest.

Over time, it turned into a town, which, according to tradition, was named Dudleytown. Rumor has it that none of the Dudley brothers managed to live quietly to old age – they were all struck by insanity over the years.

Horror stories from tourists

Those who had a chance to visit Dudleytown dubbed it a “damned zone”: there are few wild animals in the forest, no birds singing is heard. Daredevils who arranged walks around the “enchanted” place told about some strange lights and sounds, and others seemed to meet sinister green monsters spreading flames around them.

Once a television crew visited here. Just as the journalists set out to shoot the landscape, a huge black shadow suddenly flashed in front of the lens. Following this, people were suddenly overcome by a feeling of severe suffocation. The equipment stopped working, and the operators were forced to abandon the shooting.

In July 1998, the girls Sarah and Jane with two of their friends went on a tour of Dudleytown, attracted by the legend of the curse of the city. As soon as the guys turned onto the road leading to Bald Mountain, all four of them had a strange, unpleasant feeling. Jane began to have stomach cramps, Sarah’s back stiffened, and two guys, as they admitted later, experienced a feeling of unreasoning horror.

Nevertheless, the young people parked their car at the side of the road and, carrying with their flashlights and video cameras, began to descend downhill. There was dead silence all around. The daredevils had only gone a few steps when they heard a noise. The sounds resembled the grinding of metal on asphalt. Jane looked around and noticed that some signs were painted on the ground.

Sarah took a lantern and lit up the place. There was an inscription: “Never come back… Satan.” The letters looked very fresh, as if they had appeared only a minute or two ago.

Boston “ghost hunter”, Robin Barron once found a bloody cow horn in a pit. In addition, Barron noticed that fragments of stones with incomprehensible symbols scrawled on them were lying on the sides of nearby roads. All this could indicate that witchcraft or satanic rituals were carried out in the vicinity of Dudleytown.

Another eyewitness reports: “I’ve been to Dudleytown twice – it’s a creepy place. For the first time, I got there alone, for the second time, I decided to take friends with me. As soon as we entered the forest, everything went quiet. Not even the chirping of cicadas could be heard, although it was the middle of August. We wandered around the forest for a while, taking pictures. Suddenly, under our feet, we found an inscription carved on the ground in an incomprehensible language – maybe in Latin. None of us could read it. After another 100 steps, all three of us, without agreeing, stopped. We, as well as the time when I came here for the first time, were seized with an uncontrollable desire to immediately turn back. This feeling was so strong that we succumbed to it. When we came back, the forest was filled with the usual sounds…”.

What is the secret of the abandoned city? A well-known expert in demonology and “ghost hunter” Ed Warren said that the curse of Dudleytown has nothing to do with the aristocrat Edmund Dudley. The Dudley brothers, according to Warren, were descended from a certain English judge, who at one time sentenced more than a dozen people to death for witchcraft.

One of the convicts cursed Dudley’s name, hence the consequences. Warren also believes that no monsters supposedly inhabiting the Dark Forest actually exist. It’s just that the very atmosphere of these places drives people crazy, which makes them start to see ghosts.

However, the photos taken in Dudleytown show strange ghostly figures. Most likely, we are talking here about a strong geopathic zone. Be the first to get the latest stories, via our app here