Dudleytown???

[UConn Dan]

I grew up in Fairfield and had a high school English class called “Call of the Wild” in the fall of 1995. Part of the curriculum was going on nature walks and writing about it.

The highlight of the class was a weekend camping trip along the old Appalachian trail. We visited one of the leather-man caves where I still can’t believe I writhed my way in and out horizontally, nor do I think that would be allowed today and for good reason.

One night, we went to dudleytown after dark and sat in the leftover foundations of the abandoned ghost town. It was very spooky and many of us could hear the giggles of school children. We were asked to bring our point and shoot or disposable cameras and some caught glowing orbs on the developed pictures.

Although it felt like a supernatural experience at the time, it was nothing more than our imaginations getting carried away with themselves.

I’d still be interested in going back to see just to check it out though nearly 20 years later.

 

[MTBingNinja]

I’ve researched it awhile back. It’s eerie that you don’t hear or see any birds, squirrels etc. If I recall correctly, upon other’s scientific research, there’s something about the soil there that makes it inhabitable for animals.

 

[MTBingNinja]

New Page — American Hauntings

www.americanhauntingsink.com

Dudleytown – Damned Connecticut

THE VIEW FROM: DUDLEYTOWN; A Hamlet That Can't Get Rid of Its Ghosts (Published 1989)

www.nytimes.com

 

[TXHuskyFan]

We had the melonheads when I was a kid. The lived in the woods in Huntington, Monroe and Easton. Which in the 50s, were 90% wooded -- or at least seemed that way. No one would admit to believing in them, but if you drove down the old sawmill road at night, you locked the doors and sped like crazy, anyway.

The Melon Heads of Connecticut - New England Historical Society

If you grew up in southwestern Connecticut, you probably heard of the melon heads: small humanoids with giant heads, and they lurk on very specific roads.

www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com

We had Melonheads in Milford in the early 80s. That was the first thing that came to mind when I started reading this thread.

 

[ClifSpliffy]

I grew up in Fairfield and had a high school English class called “Call of the Wild” in the fall of 1995. Part of the curriculum was going on nature walks and writing about it.

The highlight of the class was a weekend camping trip along the old Appalachian trail. We visited one of the leather-man caves where I still can’t believe I writhed my way in and out horizontally, nor do I think that would be allowed today and for good reason.

One night, we went to dudleytown after dark and sat in the leftover foundations of the abandoned ghost town. It was very spooky and many of us could hear the giggles of school children. We were asked to bring our point and shoot or disposable cameras and some caught glowing orbs on the developed pictures.

Although it felt like a supernatural experience at the time, it was nothing more than our imaginations getting carried away with themselves.

I’d still be interested in going back to see just to check it out though nearly 20 years later.

'I grew up in Fairfield and had a high school English class called “Call of the Wild” ...
The highlight of the class was a weekend camping trip along the old Appalachian trail.'

tough gig. at Central, call of the wild was a trip to the boys room, especially if the known mooks and reprobates were camping out in there. weird smells. i think that we used to call it 'Con College.'

 

[Icculus]

We had the melonheads when I was a kid. The lived in the woods in Huntington, Monroe and Easton. Which in the 50s, were 90% wooded -- or at least seemed that way. No one would admit to believing in them, but if you drove down the old sawmill road at night, you locked the doors and sped like crazy, anyway.

The Melon Heads of Connecticut - New England Historical Society

If you grew up in southwestern Connecticut, you probably heard of the melon heads: small humanoids with giant heads, and they lurk on very specific roads.

www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com

As someone who grew up in Shelton and is back living there now, I can vouch that Saw Mill City Road is a still freaky place with a vibe that's a little "off", even during the day.

 

[superjohn]

For some reason I thought you were like 80

Thanks?

 

[Chin Diesel]

So, Melonheads are real?

At least real in the sense there are backwoods ass people who rarely make contact with society or is it 100% urban legend?

To hell with craft beer or apizza. Next time I'm in CT I have find some of these spots.

 

[huskeynut]

When I was a Scoutmaster, we did several AT hikes. When we hiked in the northwest corner of CT we always took a detour to Dudleytown. It's been about 20 years since I've been there.

All that's left are foundations in the ground. Street patterns of a town are still evident. The one thing that stuck with me was the complete lack of any animal life or birds. It was eerily silent.

Kids loved it so we took them as often as possible.

The state did step in to preserve the property. A lot of teenage parties left the area a mess of garbage and there was damage to some of the foundations.

 

[Tyler2Rings]

Dudleytown is on private property, and the owners are strict about access. Due to trespassing concerns they have recently threatened to close the old section of the AT (now the blue Mohawk Trail) that crosses their property nearby on Coltsfoot Mountain

 

[Lefty2one]

My favorite story from Dudleytown, which I'm sure is an urban legend and not an original story:

A girl I dated eons ago said she knew a friend whose teenage brother went to Dudleytown and took home a rock about the size of a baseball; I guess he wanted a souvenir. He kept the rock in his room--on his dresser or nightstand--and each night he had the rock in his room he experienced nosebleeds overnight. This went on for a week or so. Eventually his sister convinced him to take the rock back to Dudleytown and he obliged, sick and tired of waking up every night to a bloody pillowcase. The nosebleeds stopped immediately once the rock was out of the house.

It's probably a story from some horror movie I've never seen, or just made-up crap passed on through the years.

 

[Deepster]

There's also Oniontown in the Hudson Valley. Not really "haunted" but this weird commune of inbred meth head hillbillies that have been caught on video shooting at cars or smashing their windshields when people try to drive in and catch a glimpse of them. Plenty of news stories or documentaries on it if you look.

Dragged through the mud: Revisiting Oniontown

Teens portrayed the community of Oniontown as dangerous on YouTube, and residents of this...

www.timesunion.com

 

[AreBee1969]

Search "Dudleytown" on i95rock.com. Lou Milano has done extensive research on the place. Pretty interesting stuff including some odd stuff about the property's owner, "The Dark Entry Forest Association".

 

[BaZZnBOAT]

There was local lore of a Pygmy Village up in New Britain/Plainville. It's just a bunch of ppl who wanted their space, but when you drove up there at night it didn't matter.

 

[Chuck]

There's also Oniontown in the Hudson Valley. Not really "haunted" but this weird commune of inbred meth head hillbillies that have been caught on video shooting at cars or smashing their windshields when people try to drive in and catch a glimpse of them. Plenty of news stories or documentaries on it if you look.

Dragged through the mud: Revisiting Oniontown

Teens portrayed the community of Oniontown as dangerous on YouTube, and residents of this...

www.timesunion.com

Also the "Jackson Whites" in northern NJ. It's more interesting, because they are real people, with a real history, mixed in with the folklore and probably racism. I believe the name is now considered derogatory. If I remember correctly, they tried to get qualified as a Native American tribe, but lost that battle.

 

[Hans Sprungfeld]

There was local lore of a Pygmy Village up in New Britain/Plainville. It's just a bunch of ppl who wanted their space, but when you drove up there at night it didn't matter.

Interesting.

In my recollection, there was "Pygmy Land" out by the reservoir along Farmington Avenue past Mountain Road in West Hartford, nearly into Farmington.

On its east-west axis, this roughly runs the north-south line that I-84 goes as it connects Farmington to New Britain to the west of Metacomet Ridge, including going through where the UConn Health campus is, all of which was undeveloped or just at its beginning 50 years ago.

 

[dennismenace]

ok, now u've actually demonstrated some Bridgeport/Lupe's street cred with that 'melonheads' reference.
when it first came to me in grammar school, and i asked the elder yankees in my family aboot that, they were all like 'of course, the melonheads are there. u gotta watch out for them.' and since they had hooks into renting horses and stuff there since the Civil War, i believed them.
im still not sure aboot all of that. i think that they lied to me cuz i later learned that The President did not, in fact, pass a special law declaring that children in Bridgeport must go to school or lose all dinner privileges.
too risky to argue that one. i do like to eat.
of course, like folks in Columbus' times, we believed that the Merritt Parkway defined the edge of the known world, and if u biked past that, a melonhead might just eat you.
the only dudley we knew was that canuck riding a horse, always unwrapping ladies tied to a train track by some bad guy who looked suspiciously like our principal.

Yes! Dudley Dooright of the Royal Canadian Mounties rescuing the fair Nel (Rocky and Bullwinkle show
from the 60's). Bad Guy is Oil Can Harry. This is pretty dated stuff Clif but a great show that appealed to more than one age group.

 

[Waquoit]

Yes! Dudley Dooright of the Royal Canadian Mounties rescuing the fair Nel (Rocky and Bullwinkle show
from the 60's). Bad Guy is Oil Can Harry. This is pretty dated stuff Clif but a great show that appealed to more than one age group.

Sorry, I must. Oil Can Harry was the nemesis of Mighty Mouse. Snidely Whiplash was the villian in Dudley. One issue they never addressed in depth on the show was the fact that Dudley loved Nell, but Nell only had eyes for Dudley's horse.

 

[M.S.G.]

This was a pretty fascinating read. For anyone who grew up in Eastern CT, the "legend" of Maude's grave - a supposed witch who lived in the woods on the Griswold / Voluntown line always intrigued us. Drove through there on many a night, I had friends who went walking in the woods out there and said they heard and saw some peculiar things..

Hell Hollow - Yawgoog Trails

 

[ClifSpliffy]

Yes! Dudley Dooright of the Royal Canadian Mounties rescuing the fair Nel (Rocky and Bullwinkle show
from the 60's). Bad Guy is Oil Can Harry. This is pretty dated stuff Clif but a great show that appealed to more than one age group.

got aboot 4 generations into watching cartoons, reading comics. boxcar mickey, betty boop, barney google, katzenjammers, all of that. of course, Snoopy is the King, and Peanuts pre-crunchy woodstock is an absolute, thought provoking essay on life. i think that a lot of those creators are/were just messing with us.
remember well the legend,
let the name live on!
ka-bong, El Ka-bong.


ka -BONG. 'i'll do all the thinnin' around here!' too funny.

 

[superjohn]

Also the "Jackson Whites" in northern NJ. It's more interesting, because they are real people, with a real history, mixed in with the folklore and probably racism. I believe the name is now considered derogatory. If I remember correctly, they tried to get qualified as a Native American tribe, but lost that battle.

Those folks have been treated terribly for generations.

 

[TRest]

This was a pretty fascinating read. For anyone who grew up in Eastern CT, the "legend" of Maude's grave - a supposed witch who lived in the woods on the Griswold / Voluntown line always intrigued us. Drove through there on many a night, I had friends who went walking in the woods out there and said they heard and saw some peculiar things..

Hell Hollow - Yawgoog Trails

It reminds me of the Eastern CT/RI vampire panic.

The Great New England Vampire Panic

Two hundred years after the Salem witch trials, farmers became convinced that their relatives were returning from the grave to feed on the living

www.smithsonianmag.com

 

[M.S.G.]

It reminds me of the Eastern CT/RI vampire panic.

The Great New England Vampire Panic

Two hundred years after the Salem witch trials, farmers became convinced that their relatives were returning from the grave to feed on the living

www.smithsonianmag.com

I forgot about that! I think I was a 9th grader at Griswold when it popped up before it disappeared again tor a while, memories haha..

 

[BlueandOG]

We had the melonheads when I was a kid. The lived in the woods in Huntington, Monroe and Easton. Which in the 50s, were 90% wooded -- or at least seemed that way. No one would admit to believing in them, but if you drove down the old sawmill road at night, you locked the doors and sped like crazy, anyway.

The Melon Heads of Connecticut - New England Historical Society

If you grew up in southwestern Connecticut, you probably heard of the melon heads: small humanoids with giant heads, and they lurk on very specific roads.

www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com

Huntington? I think you mean Shelton!

I remember partying on Sawmill City Road in high school. I'm glad I didn't know about them at the time.

 

[dennismenace]

got aboot 4 generations into watching cartoons, reading comics. boxcar mickey, betty boop, barney google, katzenjammers, all of that. of course, Snoopy is the King, and Peanuts pre-crunchy woodstock is an absolute, thought provoking essay on life. i think that a lot of those creators are/were just messing with us.
remember well the legend,
let the name live on!
ka-bong, El Ka-bong.


ka -BONG. 'i'll do all the thinnin' around here!' too funny.

A favorite for me. Uncle Pecos

Tom and Jerry - Crambone

I like the song Crambone sung by Uncle Pecos; Jerry's uncle in Tom and Jerry in my favorite cartoon called Pecos Pest, this is where Uncle Pecos' guitar stri...

www.youtube.com