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Dark Entry and Dudleytown
1980s:
Back east,
my friend Bob's
family owned a wonderful little cabin in the sprawling but little-populated town of Kent, Connecticut.
The nicely sized cabin was on a massive 100-acre or so parcel of land called Red Gulch, and our large circle of friends
(at the time, all of us being twenty-somethings),
would head up there for holiday weekends, specifically Independence Day and New Years.
Much of their acreage was unusable, being heavily forested and rock-filled terrain.
Through the property ran a good size stream we used to keep cool our canned and bottled drinks, and with a bit of rock-dam work without slowing the water flow, we created a nice little pool in which to relax during blisteringly hot summer days.
Right off the property line, at the road, was the magnificent tall waterfall of Kent State Falls Park.
The road technically is a dead end... Red Gulch was the last property at the time.
Years later the family lost the property, so I have no idea who now owns the property; the cabin, Bob has reported, has since been demolished.
On the cabin side of the stream it was a wonderful place to visit and stay for several nights.
On the mountainous side across the stream, the area is known to locals as having deeply negative energy.
Near the falls is a small bridge crossing to a long unpaved road... according to locals, nature seems to refuse to let this road be maintained.
The next nearest property at the time belonged to a very friendly woman named Donna who raised pugs... and bull mastiffs.
Very Sensitive and psychic, Donna related to me just how haunted is the area.
Beyond the road is an area known as Dark Entry, and the lost community of Dudleytown.
Both are well known to be haunted and filled with negative energy.
The populace of Dudleytown apparently went insane; eventual research deduced most likely the culprit was ergot, a mold in bad bread that is not conducive to good health.
Donna also told me that she saw a friend of hers walking her dog along the road towards the bridge.
A while later she and her children heard a distant gunshot, of which they thought little.
The area had hunters, and when we would visit we brought up black powder just to blew up stuff.
The next day or so, Donna answered the phone of the dog-walking woman's adult children, asking if she knew where she was.
On hearing their inquiry, Donna immediately Knew their mother was dead.
Her own children found the body.
High up the road and around the bend is, or at the time was, an old collapsed house.
Its deep foundation filled with the large timbers of the fallen roof and walls.
The woman's body was sitting up at the brick chimney, her face and surrounding bricks riddled with heavy shotgun fire.
At her lap, its muzzle facing her, was a single shot rifle.
The woman's husband had wanted a divorce she wouldn't grant.
The husband had connections, one of which was the town coroner apparently, the local gossip indicated
(and the coroner's actions demonstrated).
The body could not be moved until the coroner came out... and the coroner refused to leave his game of golf.
When he finally got there, despite the clear physical evidence of being shot with a different gun than the long rifle with one would have a hard time using against oneself, the coroner ruled the obvious murder as a suicide.
During the coming days, nights, weeks, Donna would see the woman's confused ghost wandering helplessly on the road, the side of her face blasted away.
One winter night at the most darkest time, the entire household was awakened by a frantic pounding on the front door.
Their collective terror notwithstanding, Donna threw open the door in mid-pound, to find no one physically there, and no tracks in the new fallen snow.
Along with my dog Lady and my New Years weekend date "Tina"
[not the girl's real name],
we hiked up to find the ancient cabin and see how far it was to Dark Entry.
On the surface in the packed mud by the house were spent shotgun shells.
We stepped back onto the main path when suddenly it was clear the path no longer wanted us to continue on.
Before we turned off the path to check out the house, the path ahead was wide and open.
Now it was dark and foreboding, the trees themselves seemingly having lined the path and leaned inwards threateningly.
Another New Years weekend my date was "Lisa," who was very Sensitive and psychic as well.
I had a good idea on how to find Dudleytown from the main road past the base of Kent State Park and its entry.
I came to a split and bore left, at which "Lisa" said, "No; it's That Way..."
I turned around and headed the right fork.
A few minutes along the road we passed through a curtain of falling snow: light flakes but like a windless blizzard out of nowhere.
While recently it had goodly snowed up there before our arrival, there was no snowing during our time there, and this was literally a wall of a snowstorm.
The road had no snow on it, so clearly this had just begun, despite by appearance it had been snowing for several minutes or more.
Meanwhile, "Lisa" began to have trouble breathing until she insisted we turn back.
I headed back to Red Gulch, our passing through the boundary of the falling snow to where the snow wasn't falling.
In the rear view mirror the falling snow still was not sticking to the road.
Was it even actual snow...?
On the third day or so when we went to leave, during which time there was no additional snowfall at the cabin or nearby, as she and I went to leave, we decided to try again.
We encountered the same wall of snowfall, still with no accumulated snow on the road, and her experiencing the same Do Not Come This Way sensations of breathlessness.
Since the family lost the property and its cabin, I still miss those recklessly fun weekends.
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