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Blood in the Soil: The Chilling Tale of the New England Vampire Panic

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Centuries after the witch panic in Salem, New England was gripped by another entity – vampires! Thought to crawl out from their graves at night and back to their remaining family to feed and consume the life of them. This has later been known as the New England Vampire Panic The only way to stop them was to dig them up and set them on fire. 

In the quiet, frostbitten corners of 19th-century New England—amid snow-capped fields and rickety clapboard farmhouses—a curious darkness was spreading. But it wasn’t witches this time. It wasn’t demons, or ghosts, or devils hiding in the woods. No, what haunted the good, God-fearing folk of Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Vermont was something far stranger.

Vampires.

Not the aristocratic, silk-robed kind with Eastern European accents. Not the seductive, night-stalking vampires of Hollywood imagination. These were homegrown, farm-dwelling, dirt-under-their-nails revenants. According to local belief, they didn’t sip fine blood from crystal goblets. They clawed their way out of graves and siphoned the life from their living kin—not with fangs, but with supernatural persistence.

Read More: Check out all ghost stories from USA

This wasn’t just a gothic fever dream. It was real. It had a body count, graves empty after their families dug them up and burnt their remains to cure themselves of the curse of the undead. After it swept across the east coast, it was later called the New England Vampire Panic.

Old Graveyards: A serene graveyard in New Hampshire reflects the eerie history of vampire folklore in early New England that was gripped by fear during the New England Vampire Panic.

A Disease by Any Other Name

To understand how New England came to believe in vampires, we need to talk about tuberculosis—known in the 1800s as consumption.

Before it had a scientific explanation, TB was a horrifying, slow-moving plague. It wasted the body and if you first got infected, there was a two in ten chance of surviving it as there was no cure. Victims grew pale and thin, their cheeks sunken, eyes glassy. They coughed blood. They wheezed and gasped and sometimes appeared to grow stronger just before they died, as if something unnatural were prolonging their suffering.

The White Death: The plague of tuberculosis is a disease that has killed more people than any other microbial pathogen and mummies dating back to the 8000 BCE. Over the years, many attempts to cure it through curious means show desperation. Fresh air, bloodletting, elephant urine, eating wolf livers and human breast milk has from ancient times been tried.

It was contagious, of course, though no one knew why or how. When one family member died, others often followed. Households dropped like dominos. And so the imagination of rural folk—grounded in a stew of folklore, fear, and grim necessity—did what it does best: It reached for reasons.

They began to believe that the dead were not staying dead. 

Vampire Lore: In addition to consumption being rooted in a vampiric infliction, you also had rabies that gave strange symptoms and rare genetic disorders like porphyria that gave a sensitivity to sunlight and reddish teeth. Although in the New England Vampire Panic, it was mainly tuberculosis.

The New England Outback

Exactly why New England? After all, tuberculosis was a worldwide problem, why did the vampiric panic happen here, 200 years after the witch craze in Salem not too far from where they would begin to exhume their loved one from their graves?

There are several factors of how this particular lore and New England Vampire Panic started. One has to do with numbers. After years of civil war, the number of people living in Exeter, Rhode Island for instance, had dwindled to a few thousand, scattered across small rural communities. By some, this was later known as Vampire Capital of America and had a high count of exhumations like the case of Mercy Brown. 

Contrary to popular belief about being puritanical, the rural New Englanders in the 1800s were not overly religious and 10 percent belonged to church in these parts. Missionaries were sent to these parts to get them back to God’s words as they saw these rural communities living in cultural isolation from the rest of the world.. 

The belief of the uneducated farmers have taken hold for many in later years. But was it really so? It seems like many places like Manchester, Vermont where Rachel Burton was exhumed and burned on the town square was founded by educated and not really the most superstitious and religious men. This seems to have changed after the Revolutionary War when it was then described as a place of drinking gambling, and superstitions like vampirism. 

Read More: The Vampire of Rachel Burton: Vermont’s Gruesome 18th Century Exhumation

They were however superstitious and let their beliefs fester side by side with the industrial revolution and modernisation of the society in the cities not far from their farming communities. Also as a small community, there were a lot of relations between the exhumations. Like the case of the exhumation of Nancy Young having relation through marriage to Sarah Tillinghast who was also exhumed the same way. They were neighbors, although the farms were few and far between, family and friends, and like the sickness of consumption, so did the fear of the undead spread and infect through generations and places.

The Curious Case of Mercy Brown

The most infamous case of the New England Vampire Panic took place in 1892, in the icy hills of Exeter, Rhode Island. The Brown family had been ravaged by tuberculosis. First, mother Mary Eliza died. Then daughter Mary Olive. Then son Edwin became ill and left for Colorado in a desperate bid for recovery.

And then Mercy Lena Brown, a 19-year-old girl with dark hair and a shy smile, fell sick and died on January 17, 1892.

Mercy Brown: A historical portrait of Mercy Brown, the young woman at the center of the New England Vampire Panic.

The townsfolk were suspicious. Too many Browns were dying. Someone, or something, must be behind it. They began to murmur. Maybe one of the dead was still feeding. Edwin, now barely hanging on, had to be saved.

So in March—when the ground thawed enough to dig—they exhumed the bodies.

Mary Eliza and Mary Olive had decomposed as expected. But Mercy? Her body, kept in a crypt during the harsh winter, was remarkably intact. Her cheeks had color. There was blood in her heart, clear signs she was the vampire.

The heart and liver were removed and burned. The ashes were mixed into a tonic and given to Edwin to drink. (A sentence that should never be uttered casually, but here we are.)

Read More: Check out The Mercy Brown Vampire Incident in Rhode Island 

Did it work? Tragically, no. Edwin died two months later. But Mercy’s story endured, becoming the poster child of the New England Vampire Panic—a real-life tale so haunting that even Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, reportedly took notes.

Mercy wasn’t the only one. According to folklorist Michael Bell, there was around 80 of these types of exhumations. From Maine to Massachusetts to Rhode Island, similar rituals were performed. Perhaps as far west as Minnesota. Not always with a name. Not always with fire. But the goal was the same: stop the dead from killing the living.

The Vampire Next Door in the New England Vampire Panic

These were not “vampires” as we think of them today, but corpses with unfinished business, still feeding on their living relatives from beyond the grave. They drained vitality, not with teeth, but through a metaphysical link. The only cure? Dig up the body, examine it, and if necessary, destroy the vessel.

Some communities in Maine and Plymouth, Massachusetts, opted to simply flip the exhumed vampire facedown in the grave and leave it at that. But in places like Connecticut, Vermont and especially in Rhode Island, they took it one step further. 

If the corpse was found unusually fresh, with blood in the heart or organs (a not-uncommon occurrence in cold New England graves and those buried in the winter or put in freezing crypts waiting for the ground to thaw), it was declared the source of the curse. The heart would be removed and burned to ash, sometimes the liver, kidney or other organs were also taken. Often, the ritual was done in secret, other times it was done publicly, sometimes on a blacksmith’s anvil or just on a nearby rock in the cemetery. In many cultures it was believed that the fire in a blacksmith’s anvil was a divine gift and that they had the power to banish evil through their metal and flames.

There were also some cases where vines and sprouts growing from the coffins and bodies were seen as signs of vampiric activity, like we see with the exhumation of Annie Dennett. They believed that the vine or root growing at or by the grave reached the next coffin, another family member would be sick and die. This part of the legend is a bit more difficult to trace back to a particular superstition shared with other places.

Read More: The Curious Case of Annie Dennett and the Vampiric Vines 

As the ritual demanded, their heart and liver were burned on a nearby rock and the ashes were mixed with a tonic and given to the sick relatives to drink. Sometimes it was also said to be smoked or the fumes from the burning were inhaled by those attending. 

The Mystery of J.B: Connecticut State Archaeologist, Nick Bellantoni, was excavating the cemetery and found something no one could have expected. Among the graves, one burial in particular captured attention: a coffin marked only with brass tacks, spelling the initials “J.B. 55”. The remains inside had been subject to a post-mortem ritual that hinted unmistakably at vampire panic practices during the New England Vampire Panic. // Photo courtesy of Nicholas Bellantoni

After the ritual, it seems like the rest of the body was reburied. In Woodstock, Vermont, a father exhumed the bodies of his daughters and burned them to save his last surviving child. In Griswold, Connecticut, archaeologists discovered 29 burials in the 1990s—one with the skull and thigh bones rearranged in a skull-and-crossbones pattern. The jaw had been hacked apart. The coffin was inscribed with “JB55,” believed to stand for “John Barber,” a middle-aged man who likely died of TB. The mutilation? A post-mortem attempt to stop the spread of vampirism.

Read More: The Griswold Vampire Case and the True Identity of J.B. in the Coffin 

Where did the Vampire Lore come from?

Although it is today known as the New England Vampire Panic, the people at the time didn’t use this terminology as the term was not commonly used in the community. But when the newspapers and outsiders started to look at the phenomenon, they classified it as vampire lore because of the similarities about the lore in eastern Europe dating back to the tenth century. 

There are many versions about where the vampire lore that struck the New England coast around this time. According to residents of Exeter, Rhode Island, they claimed they got the exhumations tradition from the Native Americans that certainly had their own vampire lore. But what about the European connection? 

Vampire Lore in the World: Although New England cultivated its own vampire belief, it certainly wasn’t the first. Across the ocean in Europe, the fear of the vampires in eastern Europe took hold in the 1700 and worked its way west. In Europe the wooden stake was said to be the thing banishing the vampire. In America, they burned their organs showing signs of vampirism. This illustration comes from an 1851 book by Paul Feval titles “Les Tribunaux secrets” and was created by René de Moraine.

In this time, there was also a Vampire panic in Europe, especially eastern and central Europe. German and Slavic immigrants are said to have brought their lore and superstitions with them in the 18th century. There were Hessian mercenaries that served in the Revolutionary War and Palatine Germans colonized Pennsylvania. There were also Germans and different eastern Europeans traveling through the area as healers, bringing with them the ideas of the undead and exhumation as a cure for the terrible diseases the townsfolk didn’t yet understand. 

The Science Arrives too Late for Many

The New England Vampire Panic began to wane by the early 20th century, as germ theory and modern medicine began to explain disease in ways people could trust. TB was finally understood as a bacterial infection, not a curse.

In the meantime, there were as many as 80 exhumed graves we know of, but there were probably many more. For example, in 1862, reports of vampirism swept the community of Saco, Maine so strongly that almost every deceased resident was dug up and reburied, allegedly. Every corpse was, apparently, a suspect.

But the New England Vampire Panic hadn’t been entirely irrational. These were desperate people watching their families die horribly. They didn’t have the benefit of science. They had folk remedies, tradition, and fear—and so they reached for the most ancient tool humans possess: storytelling.

And in the dark corners of New England, those stories had fangs.

List of Vampire Cases of the New England Vampire Panic

1793 – The Vampire of Rachel Burton: Vermont’s Gruesome 18th Century Exhumation

1799 – The Rhode Island Vampire and the Legend of Sarah Tillinghast 

1810 – The Curious Case of Annie Dennett and the Vampiric Vines 

1816-1817 – A Vampire in Ohio: The Strange and Grim Superstition of the Salladay Family 

1817 – The Case of Frederick Ransom: The Woodstock Vampire

1827 – The Legend of the Vampire Nancy Young Rising from her Grave 

1843 – The Griswold Vampire Case and the True Identity of J.B. in the Coffin

1854 – The Jewett City Vampires and the Ray Family in Connecticut

1874 – The Restless Dead of Rhode Island: The Vampiric Legend of Ruth Ellen Rose

1892 – The Mercy Brown Vampire Incident in Rhode Island 

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Food For The Dead The Vampires

Bioarcheological and biocultural evidence for the New England vampire folk belief 

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The Jewett City Vampires and the Ray Family in Connecticut

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In the midst of a consumption epidemic ravaging whole families on the coast of New England, the Ray family took drastic measures to save the eldest son from illness. The Jewett City Vampires were believed to be behind the consumption running in the family’s veins. Could burying up the bodies and burning them keep them from feeding on the living?

Buried in the annals of Connecticut history is a lesser-known, chilling chapter of American vampire panic — the unsettling case of the Jewett City Vampires.

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This grim and fascinating story unfolded in the mid-19th century in Jewett City, a quiet mill town in Griswold, Connecticut. And like many such tales, it was rooted not in mythic monsters, but in the all-too-real terror of tuberculosis, known back then by a far more ominous name: consumption.

The Ray Family: A Family Struck by Death

The story centers around the Ray family, whose seemingly cursed lineage became the focus of the town’s fear and superstition. The Rays were a large farming family that were greatly affected by the tuberculosis epidemic ravaging the coast of New England. Between 1845 and 1854, several members of the Ray family died in rapid succession from tuberculosis. In an age before germ theory, the illness seemed almost supernatural — wasting away the victim’s body, leaving them pale, weak, and sunken-eyed, sometimes for years before death.

And in those uncertain days, when science faltered, folklore eagerly filled the void.

The neighbors of Jewett City began to murmur. Surely this wasn’t natural. The idea took hold that perhaps the dead of the Ray family were not resting peacefully in their graves, but rather rising at night to drain the life from their surviving kin.

The Exhumation of The Jewett City Vampires

The first in the family to die of consumption was 24 year old Lemuel Ray in 1845. Then his father, Henry B. Ray followed in 1851 and his brother, 26 year old Elisha Ray in 1853. 

The eldest son in the family, Henry Ray got the disease the year after and panic started to set into the community. Surely there was something supernatural at play? 

In 1854, driven by grief and superstition, the surviving members of the Ray family took a drastic step. According to contemporary accounts, they exhumed the bodies of Lemuel and Elisha from the Jewett City Cemetery on the 8th of May. The remaining and extended Ray family together with their friends and neighbors, gathered in the cemetery to perform the ritual.

At the time, it was believed that if a body was too well-preserved — particularly the heart or vital organs — it meant the deceased was still spiritually active and preying upon the living. In such cases, the suspected vampire’s heart would be cut out and ritually burned to sever the unnatural bond.

Records from the era confirm that at least one body was exhumed and burned on a nearby hill. The hope was that this morbid ritual would stop the deaths within the family and finally lay the restless spirit to peace.

They burned the heart of the corpses in the graveyard and most likely mixed the ashes of it into a mixture for Henry to drink or ingest in some way. This was believed to protect and cure him from the vampiric feeding they believed his brother did. Or was it enough to burn their bodies to keep them rising from their graves at night to feed on their remaining family? The sources of this detail remain inconclusive.

But what happened to Henry? Some say that they don’t know and that Henry most likely lived on and that the ritual cured him. Perhaps this is because his tombstone is not right next to his brothers in the cemetery that people believe it. Other sources claim that he died the same year, only 34 years old. In addition to his demise, his own children and wife also followed shortly. Because, a little further behind his brothers and family, his grave can be seen.

Echoes of a Broader Vampire Panic

What makes the Jewett City Vampire Panic especially significant is that it wasn’t a lone case of morbid superstition — it was part of a broader phenomenon that plagued New England throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.

Between 1790 and 1890, multiple cases of so-called vampire exhumations were documented in Rhode Island, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. All were responses to consumption outbreaks that ravaged families and small towns, where fear was a tangible, everyday companion.

The famous Mercy Brown case in 1892 was the last well-documented vampire exhumation in America, but the events in Jewett City nearly forty years earlier reflect just how widespread and desperate these beliefs were.

Modern Discovery and Legacy of Vampire Graves in Connecticut

The graves of the Ray family remained largely undisturbed until 1990, when nearby, another unsettling discovery was made — the now-famous Griswold “J.B.” vampire grave, with remains arranged in a classic anti-vampire configuration: skull and thigh bones crossed beneath it.

Read More: The Griswold Vampire Case and the True Identity of J.B. in the Coffin

Though unconnected officially to the Ray family, the proximity of these two cases in Griswold illustrates just how deep the vampire panic had gripped rural New England communities. Had the Rays heard about the rituals the Walton family had done decades before? Was the contagious disease actually fear?

Today, the Jewett City Cemetery still stands, an unassuming plot of land in a quiet town. Although the original graves from the cemetery were moved in recent years because of a building project. The graves of the Ray family look like they are still buried, six feet under.

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References:

The Jewett City Vampires, Griswold – Damned Connecticut

Jewett City vampires – Wikipedia

Jewett City Vampires – Atlas Obscura

Vampire Case: The Ray Brothers of Jewett City – Locations of Lore

March 8: Death of a Vampire

1854-05-24-Jewett City Vampires – Newspapers.com™ 

Cemetery Holds Tales of Vampires – The New York Times

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The Griswold Vampire Case and the True Identity of J.B. in the Coffin

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Dug up after his first burial, the mysterious grave of J.B haunted New England as one of its vampire graves from the New England vampire panic. Who was this man, and what happened to make his friends and family dig him up and rearrange his bones, actually turning him in his grave?

When people think of America’s vampire folklore, names like Mercy Brown often rise to the top. But lurking deeper in the shadowy annals of New England’s vampire panic is the strange and unsettling case of a man identified only by his initials: J.B. His grave, discovered in 1990 in Griswold, Connecticut, became the centerpiece of a chilling historical mystery that hints at the desperate and fearful superstitions of rural 19th-century America.

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But who was J.B? And what happened back then that was so horrifying, they had to dig his corpse up to make sure that he would stay dead?

A Grim Discovery in the Griswold Woods

In 1990, three young boys playing near a gravel pit in Griswold stumbled upon something macabre — a collection of human bones near a sand and gravel mine. When they told their mothers what happened, they didn’t believe it, but when they returned with a skull.

The police first thought it had something to do with the serial killer, Michael Ross, but they soon realized that the bones were from something much older. What was initially believed to be the remains of a modern crime victim quickly turned into an archaeological investigation when it was determined that the bones belonged to an early 19th-century graveyard known as the Walton Family Cemetery.

Photo courtesy of Nicholas Bellantoni

Connecticut State Archaeologist, Nick Bellantoni, was excavating the cemetery and found something no one could have expected. Among the graves, one burial in particular captured attention: a coffin marked only with brass tacks, spelling the initials “J.B. 55”. The remains inside had been subject to a post-mortem ritual that hinted unmistakably at vampire panic practices. The skeleton had been exhumed and carefully reburied with its head decapitated and put on the chest. Its thigh bones were placed in a cross beneath the skull — a classic “skull and crossbones” arrangement used in old folklore to prevent the dead from rising.

Photo courtesy of Nicholas Bellantoni

This was no accident. This was a deliberate act meant to keep something sinister at bay.

The New England Vampire Panic: Death’s Superstitious Grip

The grave of J.B can easily be seen together with a string of exhumations in the New England area during the 19th century as a part of the vampire panic that grew forth after a tuberculosis epidemic broke out, that made even the most logical man hunting for the undead.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, tuberculosis (then called “consumption”) was an incurable and terrifying disease. It slowly wasted away its victims, hollowing them out until death. In the face of its horrors, rural communities often turned to folklore for explanations.

One deeply held belief was that when several family members fell ill in succession, it might be the work of a vampire among the dead — a family member or neighbor who, from beyond the grave, was spiritually draining the living. 

To stop them, they thought they had to dig them up and perform a ritual on the undead. Signs of vampirism were blood left in their organs, unnatural lack of decomposition, their hair and nails growing and bloated bellies, looking like they had recently fed. If some of these signs were present in the grave, they believed that they were a part of the undead and vampires. The grim solution? Exhume the suspect’s body and perform a ritual to stop them.

This often involved cutting out and burning the heart, decapitating the body, or rearranging the skeleton to prevent it from rising. The Griswold case suggests this very ritual was carried out on poor J.B who had been exhumed around five years after his death and where they removed his heart in an attempt to stop the undead from rising and feeding on the living. 

Who Was J.B. and What Happened to his Grave?

Despite modern forensic analysis, the identity of J.B. remain a mystery for decades. Archaeologists and historians placed the burial in the 1830s to 1840s, based on coffin construction and burial artifacts. Forensic examination of the bones revealed that J.B. was a middle-aged man who had indeed suffered from tuberculosis. His bones bore signs of the disease’s toll — lesions on the ribs characteristic of pulmonary tuberculosis.

Photo courtesy of Nicholas Bellantoni

The practice of marking coffins with initials was common in the period, but unfortunately, no surviving burial records from Griswold matched those initials, and no contemporary accounts of a local vampire panic in the area have yet surfaced. Yet the condition of the grave makes it clear: someone believed J.B. was a threat from beyond the grave.

When scientists revisited the case, they turned to a farmer named John Barber. Next to him, where a grave marked IB45 containing a female around 45-55 years old. Could it be a family laid to rest next to each other? There was also a grave marked NB 13, suggesting a father son relationship. Something an obituary from 1826 supports. This was for the 12 year old Nicholas Barber where they also mentioned his father, John Barber. This was also confirmed through DNA testing. 

Face of the Vampire: Using DNA extracted from a skull, a forensic artist created a facial reconstruction of a man believed to be a vampire from the 18th century. Using 3D facial reconstruction software, a forensic artist determined that JB55 likely had fair skin, brown or hazel eyes, brown or black hair and some freckles, according to a statement. (Image credit: Parabon Nanolabs, Virginia Commonwealth University)

Most often, the organs to those accused of vampirism were cut out and burned. Most often it was the heart, or perhaps the kidneys. Often, it wasn’t years before they dug them up, so what happened if there were no organs left?

When the townspeople opened his grave, his body was probably a skeleton already. To get to his decomposing heart, they most likely broke open his ribs to remove it, removed his head and put it back together. His heart and organs were most likely burnt. Most often the undead showed these signs of something being wrong, but what if there were nothing to take?

If there were no organs to take, the separation of the skull from the body was a part of the ritual instead, many that have looked into the case have hypothesized. The rituals craved for people to ingest the ashes of what they cremated, but we simply don’t know what really happened when they exhumed J.Bs body.

It is also said that there were no signs of tuberculosis in the other bodies found near J.B in the cemetery. So for what reason did they dig him up?

Fear Beyond the Grave of John Barber

The story of J.B. of Griswold is a chilling reminder of the power of fear, folklore, and superstition that seems so foreign and barbaric to people not believing in them. In a time before germ theory and antibiotics, death crept so relentlessly through small communities that people were willing to embrace the macabre to protect the living.

Today, the remains of J.B. are studied and preserved as part of Connecticut’s archaeological history, but his story — or rather, the silence of it — still haunts the annals of New England folklore. His grave stands not just as a testament to a forgotten life, but to the uneasy marriage of death and superstition that once gripped early America.

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References:

New England ‘Vampire’ Was Likely a Farmer Named John 

DNA Testing Reveals the Putative Identity of JB55, a 19th Century Vampire Buried in Griswold, Connecticut

Bioarcheological and biocultural evidence for the New England vampire folk belief

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Haunting Music and Cries from Sheffield Island Lighthouse

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On the rocky shores of Connecticut, the Sheffield Island Lighthouse in Norwalk is said to be haunted by mysterious music, a blaring foghorn that doesn’t exist and distant cries for help from the island or worse, the deep dark water. 

On the edge of Long Island Sound, the Sheffield Island Lighthouse in Norwalk, Connecticut, is a beacon of history and mystery. Built in 1868, this Victorian-style lighthouse stands as a reminder of the bygone era of maritime navigation when the light of the lighthouses along the shore guided passing ships supplying oysters safely to shore.

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With its ten rooms and distinct architectural charm, the lighthouse has guided countless ships safely to shore. However, beneath its picturesque facade lies a series of chilling tales and unexplained phenomena that have captured the imaginations of visitors and locals alike.

A Glimpse into History

Sheffield Island Lighthouse was erected to aid navigation through the treacherous waters surrounding the island, a task it performed for over a century. The island itself was initially purchased in the early 1800s by Captain Robert Sheffield, back when the island was known as “White Island”. Sheffield was a war veteran and a man known for his eccentricity and fondness for unusual musical instruments. 

Read More: Check out The Haunted Prospect Harbor Lighthouse, Bass Harbor Head Light’s Murder Mystery Ghost and The Paranormal Activity At The St. Augustine Lighthouse  for more haunted lighthouses.

Over time, the lighthouse became a critical fixture for seafarers, its light a reassuring presence in the dark, fog-laden nights. In the beginning, the lighthouse had a rather unique system with ten lamps with parabolic reflectors turning using a clockwork mechanism, producing alternating red and white flashes. The system was replaced by a fourth-order Fresnel lens in 1857.

Sheffield Island Lighthouse: Source: Wikimedia

The Ghostly Legends of Sheffield Island Lighthouse

In 1972, the keeper of the lighthouse met an untimely and mysterious end. While watching passing ships through his spyglass, he suddenly collapsed and died, with no clear cause of death ever determined. This incident marked the beginning of the lighthouse’s reputation for being a site of unexplained occurrences.

In 1991, an archaeologist working on site preservation experienced a series of unsettling events. Karen Orawsky was working on Sheffield Island. One day she came to the island by boat. She first heard something that she described as a “hypnotic and mystical music” coming from the island, although she was unable to pinpoint the source.

She then reported hearing distant cries for help, although no one was ever found. Even more bizarre was the sound of a foghorn blaring. A foghorn or fog signal is a device that uses sound to warn vehicles of navigational hazards such as rocky coastlines, or boats of the presence of other vessels, in foggy conditions. This would not have been such a weird thing to hear, except, there being no foghorn on the island. These eerie sounds have fueled speculation that the lighthouse and its surroundings are haunted by restless spirits.

Mystical Music and Mysterious Sounds

The reports of mystical music are not isolated incidents around the Sheffield Island Lighthouse. Numerous visitors have described hearing melodies that seem to float on the wind, vanishing as suddenly as they appear. Some have suggested that these tunes are the spectral echoes of Captain Sheffield’s musical past, a ghostly serenade that defies explanation.

After a paranormal group investigated the island, they also claimed to have met the ghost of a young girl named Abby who has been stuck on the island ever since she died for unknown reasons. Can she be the reason behind the cries for help that visitors have reported on?

The cries for help and the phantom foghorn add to the lighthouse’s spooky reputation. These sounds are often heard during the quiet, still nights, leaving those who hear them with a lingering sense of unease. The lack of any logical source for these noises only deepens the mystery.

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References:

Sheffield Island Light history – NEW ENGLAND LIGHTHOUSES: A VIRTUAL GUIDE 

Haunted Lighthouses of Connecticut 

Sheffield Island Lighthouse: Everything You Need To Know | Stanton House Inn 

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The Haunting of The Mark Twain House: The Gothic Mansion on the Hill

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Mark Twain House in Connecticut is said to be haunted by the whole Clemens family. A place of great literary importance it remains as the family home with a deep sorrow as tragedy seemed to follow the Clemens children. 

Mark Twain House is a beautiful Gothic mansion in Hartford, Connecticut mansion, where he resided from 1874 to 1891, is celebrated as much for its architectural charm in the Hartford neighborhood as its eerie legends. 

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The house belonged to the Clemens family, and Samuel Clemens, which was Mark Twain’s real name. This grand 25 room Victorian Gothic home was where Twain penned iconic novels such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, making it a literary sanctuary. 

He built the home to his family himself and Twain wrote: “To us, our house…had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with; and approvals and solicitudes and deep sympathies; it was of us, and we were of its confidence and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benediction,” 

Mark Twain House: The authors house in Hartford, Connecticut is believed to be haunted by the Clemens family.

They didn’t live in it too long though and had to move to Europe in 1891 because of financial troubles. By 1903 they could have lived in it again, but sold it because it brought up too many memories of their daughter Suzy who died in the house when they were in Europe. Twain never returned to it.

The Mark Twain House went through a familiar process of falling into disrepair after it was sold out of the family and was restored in the 1960s before being converted into a museum. 

Mark Twain and the Supernatural

However, Twain’s beloved mansion, which now serves as a museum, is rumored to harbor restless spirits, leading to its reputation as one of Connecticut’s most haunted locations. It is not so far fetched as Twain himself and his family was quite involved with the spiritualist movement in the late 1800s and early 1900s of seances and mediums which were all the rage. Something the ghost tours the museum offers focus on.

Mark Twain: The writer was interested in science as well as spiritualism. Here in Nikola Tesla’s lab; 1894.

But did he really believe in ghosts? In his supernatural short story, A Ghost Story, he seemingly mocks the idea and gives off the impression that Mark Twain himself did not believe in ghosts. But his life was certainly intertwined with it though. When he was a child it was a woman who claimed to have healing powers and could cure toothache with the touch. When he met his wife, Olivia Langdon, she was partially paralyzed after falling on ice at sixteen. She was unable to leave her bed for two years. She went to a healer called Dr. Newton who prayed for her and made her better, although not fully recovered by her touch. 

Mark Twain would also have what the believed was prophetic dreams about his brother’s death, and was intrigued by “thought transference” where he believed to speak out loud what his wife was thinking. 

Even the birth of Mark Twain the family looked at through spiritual lenses. When he was born in 1835, the Haley’s Comet shot across the night sky. This made his mother believe he was destined for greater things. When he died on April 21 in 1910, you could also see Haley’s comet in the sky just as it was when he was born. As he himself said to his friend, Albert Bigelow Paine: “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It will be coming again next year and I expect to go out with it.”

The Haunting of the Mark Twain House

Several paranormal investigations have reported elevated activity in the home and now the house museum even offers their own ghost tours. Even famed paranormal researcher, Lorraine Warren has visited the Mark Twain House. The house has also been on numerous ghost hunting TV-shows, but what exactly are the rumors about it?

Visitors to the museum who venture too close to Twain’s desk have often described feelings of discomfort or sudden chills. Paranormal researchers report EMF (electromagnetic field) spikes near the author’s personal belongings, adding further intrigue to the notion that Twain—or perhaps one of his loved ones—has not yet left the premises.

The Woman in White

Olivia Susan Clemens: (March 19, 1872 – August 18, 1896). She is believed to be the woman in white haunting the Mark Twain House.

The “woman in white,” a figure as classic in ghost lore as it is mysterious, is one of the most frequently reported apparitions here. The apparition is said to wear Victorian clothing and hairstyle, seemingly transparent and walking through the house before vanishing into thin air. 

This spectral figure, often spotted on the stairs or in the corridors, is sometimes thought to be Twain’s daughter Susy, who tragically passed away in the Mark Twain House when she was 24 years old of spinal meningitis. Most of the Clemens children never grew up. Out of four, their son Samuel died when he was two of diphtheria before they moved into the house, and his father blamed himself for not dressing the boy warm enough. Jean was epileptic and died of a seizure in the bath and drowned. Only their middle daughter, Clara grew up and got married. 

The death of Suzy however seemed to have been what broke them, as she was her favorite daughter. She was a gifted writer and her father saw her as a prodigy. According to the guides taken them on the ghost tour of the house, people sometimes claim to feel a terrible neck pain and headache when entering into the room she passed away. 

The Woman in Black

Witnesses describe an unsettling feeling of being watched in rooms filled with Victorian decor that, despite its warmth, carries a lingering chill. Some also talk about seeing the “Woman in Black”. The same apparition or something else? There are also those who claim that Livy Clemens, her mother who spent her life decorating the house to be haunting it as well. 

After their children’s death, both her and her husband withdrew from society and each other, getting much involved with spiritism and trying to communicate with the dead. Those claiming to see her often see her in a black dress and black bonnett. 

The Woman in Black: Olivia Langdon Clemens with her daughters, Susy, Clara and Jean in 1884. Many claims that she is the woman in black ghost people claim is haunting the Mark Twain House together with the rest of the family.

Some also claim to hear the sound of children and some say they have felt the touch of small hands, making people believe that Suzy is not the only Clemens haunting the Mark Twain House. Echoes of footsteps, faint whispers, and even the melancholic notes of an old piano are occasionally heard by visitors, adding a haunting layer to Twain’s otherwise cozy haven.

Is Mark Twain Haunting the House?

Twain’s beloved billiard room on the third floor holds a particularly eerie reputation. This was where Twain would unwind, smoke cigars, and reflect on his writings. He was a heavy smoker, up to 40 cigars a day. 

Today, some visitors report smelling cigar smoke in the room, even though smoking has been prohibited in the house for years. Those attuned to the supernatural sense that Twain’s spirit may still be lingering here, contemplating his works, or simply enjoying a quiet smoke. Some have even claimed to hear the soft clinking of billiard balls as though Twain is still there, absorbed in a game.

Billiards Room: One of the alleged haunted rooms at the Mark Twain House. // Source: John Hoey/ Wikimedia

Mark Twain is actually rumored to be haunting quite a few places, like the house he lived in on 14 West 10th Street between fifth and sixth avenues for a year or so. This house is widely believed to be a very haunted house for a long time, even before he moved in. Although he was a bit of a ghost skeptic, he had some strange experiences while living there, and rumors are that he is haunting it now. 

The Haunted Mark Twain House

Is that all of the ghosts? Could the whole Clemens be lingering in the home they loved so much? Some even say that a maid manifesting as an older woman is haunting the house as well, frozen in time of the Twain era. 

Read More: Check out all ghost stories from Haunted Houses

Twain once said, “To us, our house was not unsentient matter—it had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with.” It’s as if the house itself has absorbed the emotional and creative energy of Twain’s family, rendering it a haunted artifact, not just a building.

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References:

Why TV’s ‘Ghost Hunters’ series has made multiple visits to CT’s Mark Twain House 

New York Ghosts: Mark Twain 

Hartford Twain House

Inside Mark Twain’s haunted Connecticut mansion

The Mark Twain House Ghost Tour :: General Discussion

MARK TWAIN AND THE SUPERNATURAL — American Hauntings

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The Haunted Dark Entry Forest and the Cursed Dudleytown

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You are not allowed to enter the Dark Entry Forest any longer. Inside there is the ghost town of Dudleytown, a town said to be so cursed it didn’t end well for any of the settlers. They turned mad, dead or even taken by the ‘creature of the forest’. 

Once this area was sacred ground for the Mohawk Nation, but this all changed after colonization and today it is known as a cursed place. The Dark Entry Forest in northwestern Connecticut, with its ominous sounding name, has an even worse reputation of being cursed and haunted, a forest of complete silence and darkness. 

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The Dark Entry Forest got its name because of how little sun that gets through the trees when the settlers first came here. Records claim that some parts were dark already around noon. The nearby mountains also cast long shadows, making the land look a little darker and scarier than it perhaps was. 

The Ghost of Dudleytown in Dark Entry Forest

Not only is the Dark Entry Forest itself creepy, but the remains of a now abandoned ghost town is also the source of many of the rumors. Dudleytown stands as a ghostly testament to a bygone era. 

Tucked away a few miles south of Cornwall Bridge, Dudleytown found its home in the Dark Entry Forest. The very name evokes images of shadowy paths and hidden secrets. Back then it was known as Owlsbury. It was never really a town, and at most, the settlement reached around 26 people living there. 

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Dudleytown, though never officially a town, etched its place in history in the early 1740s when settlers like Thomas Griffis and the Dudley family took root in this desolate corner of Cornwall. Barzillai Dudley and Abiel Dudley, among others, built a community that would soon become synonymous with tales of misfortune and spectral encounters. However, the town’s decline wasn’t a result of curses but rather practical challenges — distant water sources and unsuitable soil for cultivation. Or was it really?

As the town succumbed to abandonment sometime after the Civil War, its remnants, like cellar holes, became the silent witnesses to a past that refuses to be forgotten. Since 1924, Dark Entry Forest, Incorporated, has guarded the land, preserving it from the encroachment of curious onlookers and seekers of the supernatural.

Rumors and Curses of the Dudley Line

Legend has it that Dudleytown carries a curse, stemming from the supposed lineage of its founders, who were said to be descendants of the beheaded English nobleman, Edmund Dudley under the reign of Henry VII from 1485 to 1509. So what is the background for his curse?

Edmund Dudley: Edmund Dudley (c. 1462 – August 17, 1510) was an English figure during King Henry VII and thought to be the originator of the curse. Dudley’s involvement in a plot against the crown led to his arrest. In 1510, he was charged with treason and beheaded.

Edmund Dudley served in the council for King Henry VII, but when Henry VIII took over, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London and executed in 1510 charged with treason. His son John Dudley was the one trying to put his daughter in law, Lady Jane Grey on the throne but was also convicted of high treason and executed. 

According to this rumor on the internet, his family curse followed his descendant when they crossed the Atlantic and settled in Dudleytown. This was Edmund Dudley’s grandchild, Robert, Earl of Leicester, a favorite of Elizabeth I.

This is not the only ghost story this man is involved in though, most notably that he was haunted by his wife, Amy Robsart, who died under suspicious circumstances. Read more about it in The Hauntings of Amy Robsart in Wychwood Forest. 

There are also those that claim that a Dudley ancestor who was a judge, sentenced people to death for witchcraft. Apparently one of them was in fact a witch and cursed him and his entire family line to misfortune. This is actually a theory put forward by ghosthunter and demonologist, Ed Warren. 

This curse, whispered through generations, is blamed for everything from crop failures to tragic deaths within the village. This could also be because it was located on top of a hill, unsuitable for farming. 

However, historical scrutiny reveals no genealogical link to the English nobleman, and factual inconsistencies abound. Especially the legend about it being Robert, Earl of Leicester, that settled in America, as he never did. The true story lies hidden in the annals of time, obscured by the mists of myth and rumor. Although, there truly are many Dudley’s and historical records does not necessarily mean blood.

Vandalism and the Blair Witch Effect on Dark Entry Forest

Tales of the Dark Entry Forest being haunted can be traced back to the 80s, at least, perhaps even further back as some say people talked about it, even in the 1940s. 

What we know is that in 1926, Edward C. Starr published two pages about Dudleytown residents in his History of Cornwall. Fictitious most of it it seems. It didn’t garner much attention at the time, but in the early 1970s, the story got picked up by Ed and Lorraine Warren, a couple from Connecticut and self declared demonologists, most famous for investigating the Amityville house. 

They used the story in a videotaped Halloween special where they said the town was demonically possessed and controlled by something terrifying. 

As the 1999 film, The Blair Witch Project, brought haunted forests into the spotlight, Dudleytown found itself thrust into the public eye once more together with Dark Entry Forest. A surge of interest, fueled by rumors of curses and ghostly apparitions, led to a rise in vandalism. Despite the best efforts of local authorities and the closure of the village site, Dudleytown became a magnet for those seeking a brush with the supernatural.

Blair Witch Project: A horror film released in 1999. Directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, the movie employs the found-footage style to tell the story of three student filmmakers who venture into the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Maryland, to document the legend of the Blair Witch. The film gained immense popularity for its innovative approach, creating a sense of realism and fear through shaky camera work and minimalist effects. Despite its modest budget, “The Blair Witch Project” became a massive success and left a lasting impact on the horror genre. It in turn was said to have been inspired by: The Legend of the Witch Moll Dyer

Haunting and Cursed Going on

The legend is that, in addition to the family curse, was plagued by ghosts as well as demonic forces. Even before The Blair Witch Project was released, the New York Times dubbed the town Connecticut favorite ghost town and the village of the damned. 

Strange Creatures of the Dark Entry Forest

One of the legends coming from the Dark Forest, is about the mysterious and strange creatures coming to the settlers from time to time. What is it, and if the villagers really feared this has never really been clear.

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One of those that talked about this was William Tanner who was said to have gone insane and talked about that there were these strange creatures that came out from the woods at night. This especially happened when a Gershon Hollister was murdered in his barn in 1792. Or was it that he fell from the rafters? It is also worth mentioning that he was said to have been slightly demented in his old age, said to have died at 104. 

It is said though the ghost of Gershon Hollister is haunting the settlement, appearing as a shadow, calling out for help. 

Insanity Plaguing the Villagers

There are many cases where insanity was sort of a confirmation that Dudleytown was cursed. Like with the Revolutionary War General, Herman Swift that lived close to Dudleytown. His wife, Sarah Faye was killed when she was struck by lightning standing on her porch. It is said he went insane and died soon after. 

Even after the original Dudleytown had died out, cases of insanity continued to haunt the Dark Entry Forest. In 1900 a Dr. William Clarke came to the Dark Entry Forest and purchased land that included Dudleytown. There he built a summer home where he and his wife Harriet Bank Clark visited on weekends and summers. 

In 1918 however, Dr. Clark had to go to New York for a medical emergency and left his wife in the house. He didn’t stay long, and after 36 hours, he was back, but it was already too late. According to the stories he came home and found his wife being insane, talking about strange creatures coming out of the Dark Entry Forest. 

Not long after she committed suicide. Although it is known that she suffered from a chronic illness, most likely a mental illness that is, or perhaps such a painful one that she couldn’t take it anymore.. 

The Plague and Curse

Although we know today that different plagues and illnesses were common in these times, it was also speculated that they were under some sort of curse. In Dudleytown there was a house built by Abiel Dudley who had died after he went insane, or perhaps old and demented. Some claim to have seen his ghost, sitting on the porch of the ruins of his former house. 

In 1759, Nathaniel Carter moved into the house in Dark Entry Forest. A plague took most of his family and they moved from Dark Entry Forest to the Delaware wilderness in the natives territory and they were attacked where they killed Nathaniel, his wife and their infant child. Their three other children were kidnapped and brought to Canada. Some say that they took the Dudley curse with them just as it had followed from England. Some say you can see and hear their ghosts in their former house today. 

The three other children did fine though as the two daughters were ransomed. The son, David Carted stayed with the natives, married one of them and returned to the States to get his education. He ended up as an editor of a newspaper as well as a justice on the Supreme Court. 

The Vanished Residents of Dudleytown

There were also tales that residents vanished under mysterious circumstances into Dark Entry Forest. Some of these were the Brophy family that still lived in Dudleytown in 1901 when most had already left. 

His wife had died of consumption and he was left with their two children. One day they suddenly went missing, and went into the Dark Entry Forest just after their mothers funeral. Could they have ran off? Yes, as they had been accused of theft. They were however never found again. Shortly after their house burnt to the ground and after this, Brophy himself vanished into the forest just as his children had. He was also never seen again. 

What happened, we don’t know. Did he search for his children? Was he taken by the creature of the forest just like his kids? Perhaps he went on the lamb after burning his house down?

Screams and The Devil’s Breath

There are also more vague and general things that are deemed as strange by many. It is said that dogs refuse to enter the woods around these parts, or become aggressive. Strange animal injuries and going missing, only to never return or return completely traumatized. 

People claim to have heard screams coming from the woods as well as whispers in the night. They also heard heavy footsteps, but when turning around, there was no one there. 

The Devil’s breath is also a thing said to happen in the Dark Entry Forest, where a mystic mist comes from the forest, perhaps even poisonous. This could be from the time in the early 1800s though, when Dudleytown was a mining community.

If not because of a family curse, could it be because they disturbed the natives sacred land, thought to be a burial ground? No one can say for sure, but the legends surrounding Dudleytown and Dark Entry Forest certainly persists.

The Forbidden Dark Entry Forest

Dudleytown, veiled in the shadows of the Dark Entry Forest, remains a spectral enigma that captivates the imagination. The locals talk about it all being nonsense, as well as there are locals that claim there is something going on in the woods.  

Today the woods are closed off and you can suffer a huge fine of around 100 dollars if you enter it and police claim they find trespassers many times every month, mostly people in search of ghosts. So because of this, we have to fear the rumors of it from a distance. Perhaps just as well. 

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References:

THE VIEW FROM: DUDLEYTOWN; A Hamlet That Can’t Get Rid of Its Ghosts – The New York Times 

Dudleytown, Connecticut – Wikipedia 

“curse” on Dudleytown 

The Dudleytown Curse, Connecticut’s Village of the Damned – New England Historical Society 

10 Creepy Secrets about the Town That Never Existed – Listverse