The Dudleytown Curse

Can a whole town be cursed? The small village of Dudleytown in Connecticut, part of the Cornwall township, has experienced a series of unfortunate events since its inception in 1747. Bouts of insanity, suicides, and murder have plagued the city throughout its short history. Perhaps the Dark Entry Forest surrounding the village drove its people to madness.

Or so the legend goes…

SOURCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudleytown,_Connecticut#:~:text=Rumors%20and%20vandalism,-Dudleytown%20is%20said&text=From%20that%20moment%20on%2C%20the,violent%20deaths%20in%20the%20village.
https://web.archive.org/web/20131225230849/http://www.legendofdudleytown.com/maryob.gif
https://www.nytimes.com/1980/10/26/archives/connecticut-weekly-a-lost-town-populated-by-legends.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20130515214659/http://www.legendofdudleytown.com/morex2.html
https://www.americanhauntingsink.com/dudleytown
https://usghostadventures.com/haunted-stories/americas-most-haunted-east/the-curse-of-dudleytown/
https://wokq.com/have-you-heard-of-this-haunted-new-england-town-thats-closed-to-the-public/


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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Dark Cast Network. Welcome to the Dark Side of podcasting. Hey, hey,
welcome back to Autumn's audities. I'm Autumn. Well. I've mailed
out the first round of Halloween cards to my Patreon members.
I also sent an email to anyone in the Patreon

(00:51):
family who does not have their home address listed on
the app. So if you would like a card, please
respond with your address. All I've got for you today.
Let's get into the episode Can a Whole Town Be Cursed?
The small village of Dudley Town in Connecticut, which is
part of the Cornwall Township, has experienced a series of

(01:14):
unfortunate events since its inception in seventeen forty seven. Bouts
of insanity, suicides, and murder have plagued the city throughout
its short history. Perhaps the dark Entry Forest which surrounds
the village drove its people to madness, and obviously for
many years, ghost hunters have been fascinated by tales of

(01:36):
the Lost Village of Dudley Town, a vanished Connecticut village
whose residents fled for some unknown reason. The Dudley Town
Curse brought misfortune, madness, and death to the people who
lived there, and so it is termed the village of
the damned English noblemen beheaded for treason started the curse

(01:56):
in the sixteenth century. Their descendants then brought it to
the hamlet in Cornwall before the American Revolution. Eventually, those
dark supernatural forces drove the villagers away, leaving a creepy
forest that grew over a ghost town, or so the
story goes. So first thing to know about Dudley Town

(02:19):
it was never an actual town. The name was given
at an unknown date to a portion of Cornwall that
included several members of the Dudley family that the area
that became known as Dudley Town was settled in the
early seventeen forties by Thomas Griffith's or Griffith's again recording

(02:39):
wasn't great like record keeping wasn't awesome, followed by Gideon Dudley,
and by seventeen fifty three Barzillai Dudley and abl Dudley.
Martin Dudley joined them a few years later, and other
family members also settled there. And with every other part
of Cornwall, Connecticut, Dudley Town was converted from forrest to farmland.

(03:01):
Families tilled the land for generations, and it was located
on top of a high hill, so it was not
ideally suited for farming. When more fertile and spacious land
opened up in the Midwest. It around the nineteenth century
mid nineteenth century, and as the local iron industry kind
of died out, Cornwall's population declined. Dudley Town is surrounded

(03:26):
by deep, dark woods, and you don't even have to
go there to know that if you look at a map,
just you know, google a map. The name of the
road that goes through the town is dark Entry, which
is the name of a baw house songworre Dark Entries,
And I don't know if they named it after that,
but it's pretty cool. People who visit also noticed the

(03:46):
unnatural silence. There's no chirping birds or cawing crows, no
chattering squirrels or bugs, nothing, and I do find that
a little eerie. You might see a cellar hole or two,
or a ruined stone wall, remnants of the abandoned village,
and you'll hear stories of the mysterious supernatural forces that

(04:07):
caused everyone to leave. The curse, they say, began with
Edmund Dudley beheaded by Henry the Eighth on a charge
of treason. Then Edmund's son, John, Duke of Northumberland, plotted
to install his daughter in law, Lady Jane Gray, as
Queen of England, and I believe he was successful initially,
but she was queen for only a day. The plot

(04:29):
failed and he and Jane both lost their heads. One
of John's descendants, William Dudley, immigrated to Guilford, Connecticut, during
the Great Puritan Migration. What a fun time to be alive.
What a party it must have been. That is pure sarcasm.
Puritans were yeah, like super not fun. His descendants came

(04:54):
to a hamlet in the Hills settled by Thomas Griffiths,
like I said, or Griffith a farmer. In seventeen thirty eight,
first came Gideon Dudley, or maybe he came later again
we don't know. And then in seventeen forty seven abl
and Barzilla I arrived, and even later Martin and Obajaw
Dudley showed up or maybe not. You know, they weren't

(05:16):
great at record keeping. But a whole lot of this
is not super well documented. The settlers cleared the land
and formed a community that farmed flax, wheat, and corn.
Then in seventeen ninety two came the first untimely death.
Gershawn Hollister was murdered in a home owned by William Tanner,

(05:37):
who lived next door to Abl Dudley. Afterward, Tanner started
talking about wild animals and demons and then went completely mad.
So that's true that that legend is true. Gershawn Hollister
was killed, but it was during a barn raising when

(05:57):
he fell from an unfinished structure. There is no indication
that there was an investigation, you know, as that sort
of thing, well unfortunate was not unheard of. William Tanner
was never charged with or convicted of any crime. So
what did happen to William Tanner? Well, he lived to
be one hundred and four years old, which is insane

(06:19):
at the time, like he very well could have been
the oldest living person in the United States at the time.
People did not live that long, and he did not
go mad. The historical records that I could find indicated
and this sounds offensive. Slightly demented or feeble minded is
how they termed him. And feeble minded was a common
phrase associated with elderly people, and physicians will readily tell

(06:44):
you that it meant senility. So he was either had
dementia or was senile, or you know, one or the other.
Who knows. Again, we must remember the time that we
are talking about here. It's an excellent example of how
the curse has changed facts to fit in with the story.
Abl Dudley became the next curse victim. He lost all

(07:07):
of his possessions and his mind. Allegedly, he did die
a popper and was said to be quite mad. Well,
the man was ninety years old when he died. Again,
ninety even by today's standards, that's a long life, and
back then it again was almost unheard of. Back in
seventeen ninety nine, you know, the year he died, there

(07:28):
was nothing like social security, medicare nothing. Children took care
of their parents, you know, with no medical training, no
hospice nurse or anything of the sort. But unfortunately for
old Biel as they called him, he had no children.
So who took care of him? No one is the answer.
This is some wild stuff. When he could no longer

(07:48):
afford to pay his debts, the town took his property
and sold it and then put him as a charge
of the town. Just kind of meaning that like the
whole town took care of him. All pretty standard operating
procedure at the time. Nothing was strange about that. But
did he go mad well again? At the time when

(08:10):
the average life expectancy was forty or fifty years, what
would sanility look like? They probably wouldn't know what that
looked like because there were not a lot of elderly people.
He was forgetful, you know, he couldn't handle his debts.
My guess is just you know, old age and losing

(08:30):
of the mind, but not from madness or curse, just
from you know, being that age and medical care being
non existent. Nathaniel Carter supposedly set the curse in motion
when he bought a bl Dudley's house when poor old
Beale became a charge of the town. Carter and his
family lived in Dudley Town for four years, and then

(08:52):
they abruptly moved in seventeen sixty three. They built a
log cabin, and one day while Nathaniel was away, indigenous
people killed his wife, captured his three children, and burned
his house. When he returned, they killed him too, And
we know what happened to them, But you know, was

(09:13):
it the curse? Well, folks, First of all, that tragedy
happened a long way from Dudley Town. So if Dudley
Town is cursed, I would say this should not be connected. However,
some historians insist that it is. And in that case,
let's use some common sense. The Carters moved from dudley

(09:33):
Town near Binghamton, New York, and they built a house
quote at the forks of the Delaware Wilderness, smack in
the middle of indigenous country. So I mean, and what
happened to the three children that were taken, Well, the
two girls were later ransomed by the British, and the
son decided to stay. He later attended the missionary school

(09:57):
in Cornwall and then went on to edit the cherry
Key Advocate newspaper, later becoming a Justice of the Supreme Court.
And who bought the abl Carter house afterward? Well that's unknown. Maybe,
Well that's unknown maybe because nothing happened to the people
that lived there. But the other Carters, you know, didn't

(10:19):
they strangely die? No, they did not. They died in
the plague of seventeen seventy four, along with half of
Dudley Town and nearby Cornwall. Yeah, so it kind of
sounds like the whole curse narrative like some tragic events
that happened to people who either once lived there or

(10:40):
currently live there. Something happened to them. They went mad allegedly,
but they were ninety or one hundred and four years old.
People moved away into the heart of indigenous territory and
were attacked. It's all kind of par for the course, really.
So after the American Revolution, here's another tale. General Herman

(11:03):
Swift returned to his home in Dudley Town. His wife
was struck and killed by lightning in eighteen oh four
right on her front porch. Then they say General Swift
went mad well again. This may sound strange, except for
one thing. The good General did not live in Dudley Town.

(11:25):
His house is still directly across from Bald Mountain Road,
which is at the bottom of the hill, right where
it was back then, and it's a historical landmark. You
can look it up if you've ever had that way.
But somebody lives in it, so don't go a trespassing.
As for the General going mad well again, this didn't
happen until he was very old. These poor elderly people

(11:48):
of Dudley Town, they just you know, can't get old
without going mad supposedly, at least according to the curse anyway,
what is it? You know? Does the curse extend beyond
the boundaries of the town. If you've ever stepped foot Dudleytown,
are you cursed? Does anything that ever happens to you,
like in perpetuity if you've been in Dudleytown or lived
in Dudleytown tie back to the curse? I don't know.

(12:08):
It kind of seems like the legend tellers would like
it too. Then, in eighteen seventy two, Horace Greeley was
running for president. One week before he lost the election,
his wife hanged herself in Dudleytown. According to the legend anyway,
So Horace's wife, her name was Mary Young Cheney, was
born October twentieth, eighteen eleven, in Lichfield, Connecticut. And that's

(12:33):
according to Litchfield vital records. And yes, it is the
same name of the county that Cornwall slash Dudleytown is in,
but it is also the name of a nearby town.
Her father's name was Silas, her mother's name was Polly.
So did the storytellers get confused? Wouldn't really seem to
be the first time? Was she raised in Dudleytown. No,

(12:56):
she had actually never even stepped foot into Dudleytown in
her life lifetime. There are absolutely no records of her
or her family being there during this time period. Mary
left Lichfield and this is confirmed in eighteen thirty three
and went to live at a vegetarian boarding house owned
by doctor Graham of Graham Cracker Fame. I want to

(13:19):
do an episode on this on like the wellness movement
back then, and because apparently she was involved with that
whole movement that was catching on in the country, including
the man who invented Kellogg cereal. All of that they
thought like food was holistic, and obviously in some ways
it is, but they were peddling like cereal as a

(13:39):
cure all and things like that. It's it's really fascinating.
While there at this retreat, she met and married Horace
go West young Man go West, Greeley on July fifth,
eighteen thirty six, and like a dutiful wife, she followed him.
He ran for president against General Ulysses S. Graham in

(14:00):
what most would say was an election of foregone conclusion,
because you know, nobody could win against a Civil War hero.
His party was the newly formed Liberal Republicans, and Grant
waged one of the most vicious campaigns imaginable. Greeley once said,
during this time, I don't know if I am running
for the presidency or the penitentiary. It's tough stuff. Not

(14:23):
much has changed. The stress had to have been terrible,
you know, as not only he was fighting a malicious campaign,
but his wife Mary was sick. And according to her obituary,
Mary did not die from hanging. Historical records record the
outcome of the campaign, of course, and just before the election,

(14:46):
Mary suffered from a severe attack of lung disease. She'd
had it for twenty years, and she died on October thirtieth,
eighteen seventy two. Per her obituary, Her daughters Ida and
Gabrielle were there as her death had been anticipated. She
died in New York City and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery.
Her husband, Horace died one month later on November twenty ninth,

(15:09):
and the forty electoral votes that he received were distributed
to minor candidates whoa forty. Here again we faced the curse,
just completely changing historical facts. If only someone had checked them.
It was really super easy to find. But then again,
when this curse thing started, the Internet didn't exist, so

(15:31):
it probably wasn't that easy to check. So here's a
strange one, maybe, depending on who's telling the story. A
man named John Patrick Brophy's children disappeared and his wife
died mysteriously. Hmm, here are the facts. His children started
stealing sleigh robes whatever that is, and the law was

(15:55):
after them, so what did they do? They left to
escape going to prison doesn't seem like a curse. His
wife died of consumption, meaning she had tuberculosis. Again, it's
not a cur well, it is a curse. It's a horrible,
horrible thing, but she did not die mysteriously. Lots of
people tuberculosis back then. And the house burned in nineteen

(16:18):
oh one and he turned up missing after that, so
you know, that is a mystery. We don't know what
happened to him, But you know, what would you do?
Your sons are on the run from the police or
the law, your wife's dead and your house is burned down,
Like would you stick around and build another house or leave?
Who knows what he did? Either way, nobody knows what
happened to him. Don't think he died in the fire.

(16:40):
I'm sure they looked to see if there was a
body inside. I would hope either way. No historical records
of him anywhere. In nineteen twenty four, doctor William Clark,
a New York cancer specialist, bought one thousand acres on
Bald Mountain, part of which belonged to Dudley Town. One summer,
he went to New York for a brief business trip

(17:00):
and returned to find his wife had gone insane and
she actually spent the rest of her life in a
mental hospital. So doctor Walter Clark actually bought his place
in nineteen hundred for weekend visits. His wife had a
chronic disease and couldn't stand the pain, and sometime in
nineteen eighteen she committed suicide in New York, but Clark

(17:25):
continued to spend his country weekends in Dudleytown. When Clark
first arrived, dark Entry Forest was just a name. There
was no forest and no Dark Entry because Dudley Dudley
Town farmers had cleared the land and Clark wanted to
change that. In nineteen twenty four, he and his friends
formed the Dark Entry Forest Association to reforest the land.

(17:49):
They hoped to run a woodmill and also provide recreation
to children. So they planted thousands of trees, and by
the nineteen thirties a New York ski club used trails
for skiing, and summer camps use them for horseback riding.
Visitors also canoed down the Housatonic River. Such idols ended, however,

(18:11):
when the association closed the forest to visitors. And here's
a little bit of an oddity. The doctor continued to
visit the house and finally settled in Cornwall, but he
would continue to return there, bringing other doctors and nurses,
and on December twenty fourth, nineteen twenty four, they did
incorporate the dark Entry Forest or DEEF, which owns Dudley

(18:35):
Town today, so Dark Entry Forest Inc. Owns Deadly Town.
The stated purpose of the organization declares that it exists
to keep the naturalness of the area in perpetuity. He
also married a quote fine woman named Krita, and on
February first, nineteen twenty six, DEAF had its first meeting

(18:57):
with forty one members, and William and Kreita were listed
on the log. He continued to live in the little
house off and On, which was called the crooked House
until his big house on Route forty five was finished,
and he moved into that in nineteen thirty. They had
some children and a number of his offspring apparently still

(19:18):
reside in the area and are members of the Dark
Entry Forest Inc. And he died in Cornwall Bridge on
Valentine's Day nineteen forty three. Corrida died of cancer in
nineteen forty eight in a nearby Sharon hospital. Now think
about that for a moment. If his wife went mad
from some sort of supernatural means that maybe live in

(19:40):
the forest or any other way that might tip the
good doctor off that something was amiss, why then did
he help found an organization that would buy the area,
move there himself, raise his children there, and die there.
M Doctor Clark's occurrence at Dudley Town is where most

(20:01):
of the cursed stories in. With the explanation verified by
his children, we now know that every one of the
odd occurrences was just completely false. It is a little weird, though,
that they shut down the forest to visitors, that they
bought the town, and that this one doctor couldn't seem

(20:23):
to stay out of there, and he kept bringing in
other doctors and nurses I could see how that that
part could spiral, like, Oh, maybe they're conducting medical experiments
out there. That's why they've closed the woods. They've got
some sort of secret government facility. Look, I'm starting one,
but I could see that one spiraling because a whole
town like is just gone. There's ruins of the town.

(20:45):
Nobody lives there. If they live, you know, in Dudley Town,
they're not like in Dudley Town proper. There at the
base of the hill in Bald Mountain or whatever the
hole is called. So I could see how that one
would dart because you're like, why did the entire town leave?
Why has this doctor from the city taken an interest

(21:07):
in this place? Why did he buy the town? Why
are there's so many doctor and nurse members. It is
a little strange. So why is Dudley Town said to
be haunted? Well, apparently a local rumor that is frequently
shared on the Internet alleges that, of course, the founders
of the town were descended from Edmund Dudley, an English

(21:28):
nobleman who was beheaded for treason during the reign of
Henry the Eighth. From that moment on, the Dudley family
was placed under a curse that followed them across the
Atlantic to America. I've never seen a curse travel so much,
and this curse is blamed for instances of crop failure
and mental illness, as well as several purporter violent deaths

(21:49):
in the village. Local historians have found no genealogical link
between the Dudley family of Cornwall and the English noblemen,
and noted many other factual inconsisncies in the rumors, a
lot of which I just went over. Records have shown
that the land was originally occupied by the Mohawk nation
as sacred ground. The village's decline has instead been attributed

(22:13):
to its distance from clean drinking water and it sucked
for farming. They wanted to farm in the town and
the soil was unsuitable for cultivation. One confirmed case of suicide,
only one of them is confirmed of a village resident,
took place in New York State and it was not

(22:33):
in Cornwall. One over the top account called Dudleytown Village
of the Damned. The ghost town is so haunted that
it's permanently closed, reported radio station in twenty twenty two.
That whole thing apparently started in nineteen twenty six when
Edward C. Starr published his History of Cornwall, and for

(22:54):
some reason he included two pages of fiction about Dudley
Town residents, and it's like not for some reason, I'm
sure he did it to sell some stuff, like why
wouldn't you? He did no fact checking whatsoever. Apparently the
book didn't get much attention though, until the early nineteen seventies.
And that's one of Connecticut couple. Maybe you've heard of him,

(23:15):
ed Lorraine Warren god videotaped to Halloween Special from Dudley Town.
They declared it demonically possessed, and Ed Warren said Dudley
Town was controlled by something terrifying. Again, I did a
two part episode on the Warrens before some stuff came

(23:35):
out about them, and now I don't care for him
so much. The Warrens, as we know, were self styled
demonologists and had famously investigated the Amityville Haunting, which the
owners of that house they came out said and said
that all of it was total bullshit. They just needed
some money and they partnered with an attorney to write

(23:58):
that book and get rich, and it worked, it did.
And I'm starting to think that Lorraine Warren is in
no way, shape or form a psychic medium because she
legitimately says everything is possessed, everything is haunted. I'm like, ma'am,
everything is not possessed and haunted. And by the way,
I don't know that demons are demons in this in

(24:20):
like the biblical sense. I think you've heard my theory
on that that. I think there's some sort of dimensional
traveler trickster just like fucking with us. Anyway, we know
that they keep the occult museum in the back of
their home in Monroe, Connecticut, and that they are indeed
opportunists of the highest order. Since the nineteen nineties, police

(24:41):
in Cornwall have responded to numerous cases of vandalism. You know,
it gets a little bit of a reputation and then
everybody wants to go there. In a nineteen ninety three
interview with Playboy of All Things, actor dan Ackroyd referred
to Dudley Town as the most haunted place on Earth.
In the same interview, he mistakenly stated that Dudley Town

(25:02):
was in Massachusetts. And I love dan Ackroyd. I'm not
going to fault him for this. I'm sure somebody told
him the tale and he just repeated it anyway. The
nineteen ninety nine movie The Blair Witch Project, about a
haunted forest, of course, prompted increased interest in the allegedly
haunted village. You know, inside of a dark ass forest,
it's legally off limits, and of course he makes something

(25:26):
off limits. This increased the frequency of people trespassing. The
owners of Dudley Town property have closed it to the public.
Like I said, they don't want anybody in there, probably
just because it's there's no light or any it's called
dark entry. It's a dense ass forest. They don't want
people getting hurt in it. Skeptics investigating their claims concluded
that you know, this was all a whole bunch of bonnie.

(25:50):
That didn't stop the investigation of Dudley Town from opening
the floodgates to annoying taurists, as the locals call them Cornwall.
Cornwall residents complained the legends of the curse brought noisy
hordes motorcycle clubs through beer cans along the side of
the road. Drivers along the carriage trails got stuck and

(26:12):
needed towing. Tour buses disgorged thrill seekers who stood on
the ground waiting to feel supernatural vibrations. And of course
the ghost hunters came with recording devices to make videos
and podcasts, and I am making a podcast, but I'm
debunking it. I'm different, Yeah, I'm different anyway. The Dark
Entry Forest Association finally had enough and they closed the

(26:35):
forest to the public. In twenty eleven, police arrested eight
filmmakers who'd straight off the public roads onto private property.
Now stories about Dudley Town come with the warning it's
so creepy you're not allowded and you know the ghost
brows are up in they're the look, we don't give
a shit. We trespassed, we break the law. Fight me
ghost and the ghosts are like, sir, if they're are

(26:57):
any they're like, sir, could you use sli less axe
body spray? And also the rhinestones on your genes they're
just blinding me when the light hits them. If you
could take them off, it would be greatly appreciated. It's
not two thousand and eight, please and thank you. Harriet Clark,
former president of the Cornwall Historical Society, wrote a book
about the real history of Dudley Town. In the True

(27:20):
Facts of Dudley Town, she wrote today's owners and taxpayers
of Dudley Town are professional people who live there for
privacy and seclusion. They do not welcome tourists or those
seeking tales of chilling or wild experiences. Please do not come.
There are no ghosts, no spirits, and no curse. And
we're all like, yeah, that's what a cursed town would say.

(27:42):
Like a curse town definitely wrote that book. Dudleytown did
have a hermit, though, so there's that, and in nineteen
eighty nine he still lived there. Walter Killim, an architect,
moved to Dudleytown in nineteen thirty eight. Damn you lived
there a long time after camping there overnight. He bought
four acres and then built fourteen buildings on his property.

(28:04):
He said that people would ask him where to find ghosts,
and he talked to The New York Times about this
in nineteen eighty nine, and he said, I tell I
tell them. If you believe in ghosts, I guess you'll
find one. If you don't, then there aren't going to
be any wah wah. The ghost bros Are like, but
have you ever fought a ghost? Bro? You ever thought
a ghost? How much do you bench? Yeah? I love

(28:25):
ed hardy. The truth is that, oh, it's true that
Dudleytown residents abandoned their homes, but not because of mysterious
supernatural forces. And that's what the government wants you to think.
I'm just kidding. They left because Dudley Town had lousy
farmland and the newly opened West offered more opportunities. Like,

(28:47):
I don't know why you wouldn't. It's also true that
Cornwall's population had dwindled by half to about eight hundred
and thirty four residents. It's cheap real estate and closeness
to New York City attracted you know, urbanights seeking rural
solitude on the weekends. That makes sense. Tons of people
have country houses. I don't want it like to have
two houses. Back then, I'm sure people had like eight houses.

(29:08):
They had one salary, like six kids, and they could
afford a summer home on the cape. And now we're
all like rent is four thousand dollars a month. Another
Dudley reverend, Gary P. Went to work debunking the tales
of murder, suicide, and madness that supposedly resulted from the
Dudley Town Curse. A descendant of the Dudley Town Dudley's.

(29:31):
The ones that lived there were actual Dudley's, they just
weren't tied back to the English nobleman. He poured through
old records and newspapers. In nineteen ninety nine he reported
his conclusions, and the Cornwall Historical Society sets the record
straight again. The Dudleys of Dudleytown had no connection to
the nobleman beheaded in England. And I'm just recapping all

(29:53):
of it. I've told you so far. And Gershawn Hollister
wasn't murdered. He fell to his death during a barn raising.
Abl Dudley didn't go mad. He was just really old.
He was ninety and most likely seenile and y'all took
his house from him and just like turned him loose
in the town. I would act like a total asshole
of somebody. If a whole town did that to me,
I'd be like, I'm piss on all your lawns. I'm

(30:14):
gonna poop on your front porch. I don't know why
it has to be all bodily functions. I guess because
it's like readily available and horrifying to most people. But like,
I would just do the worst things I could possibly do.
I'd be like, you took my fucking house, Like for
what purpose? Like why would you take my house. I'm
an old man. It's like I'm gonna die soon anyway.
Just let me live in my house. The Carter tragedy
did happen a long way from dudley Town, and furthermore,

(30:38):
Carter built a house at the forks of the Delaware Wilderness,
right in the middle of Mohawk Country. His three children survived,
and his son became a state Supreme Court justice. Herman
Swift never lived in dudley Town. He lived to age
eighty one. He also got a little seen Aisle Horace.
Greeley's wife never even sept foot in dudley Town. He

(31:00):
died of lung disease. It's not funny, but they said
she was struck by lightning, which is insane. She died
of lung disease in New York City. That unearthly silence,
because yeah, that is bizarre to go into a forest
and not hear anything. Well, apparently, sometime in the nineteen sixties,
Dudley Town had been sprayed with DDT, which I don't

(31:21):
know if you know this, if you've ever taken like
an environmental policy class. It ain't good, it's real bad.
It causes cancer and kills things. Today, it is privately owned,
it's a nature preserve accessed by an old carriage trail.
The dark injury nearby bald and colts Foot Mountains and
the Housatonic River attract hikers and boaters. Of course, the

(31:44):
other kind of visitor, the thrill seeking ghost hunter, is
drawn by tales of hauntings told by a couple of
self appointed demonologies. Paranormal investigators come to trespass, litter and
record their podcast and documentaries to the vast irritation of
Cornwall residents. The only Dudley Town curse, say disbelievers, is

(32:05):
the tourists. Woolf. That's a scathing review, isn't it. What
do you think? You think it's all lie? You think
that all of this did happen. And the government shows
this dark ass forest and this cancer specialist doctor to
go in and buy up all the forest and the
land and kick out the people that live there because

(32:25):
they realize there's some sort of supernatural force there and
they need to harness it before the Germans or the
Russians do right right, perfect like it kind of makes sense.
That's actually a pretty good conspiracy theory. That sounds like
a good plot to a horror movie. I would watch that.
Would you watch it? You guys want to make a movie.
Let's start a GoFundMe or a what's the other one

(32:46):
that go pro not go pro? Kickstarter jump start. I
don't know, I don't remember. Again, it's early in the morning.
For me. Yeah, I think that didn't happen most likely,
But you know me, I love a good government conspiracy theory,
and we know good and full well that a lot
of them turned out not to be conspiracy theories. There

(33:09):
are minny clandestine labs, especially in the time of World
War Two, because remember the spans quite a long time.
World War Two and the Cold War, everything was a race,
no matter how bizarre, to try to obtain access to.
We know that LSD was used to try to remote

(33:31):
viewing and psychic warfare and things of that nature. Paranormal
warfare was looked into by the Russians during the Cold War.
The Russians looked into practically everything in terms of military opportunity.
So you know that if the United States got even
the slightest hint of the Russians looking into something for

(33:54):
military application that they tried it too. Could they have
sent a bunch of doctors. Why they would send medical
doctors though, when dealing with something paranormal, Who knows. Maybe
they were like getting the medical doctors to conduct scientific
experiments on human beings or animals in terms of the

(34:15):
paranormal or the curse or the what have you. They
could have been doing that. Again, that sounds like a
fun movie. I'm sure lots of movies have already been
made like that. I think I watched one on Netflix,
like maybe in twenty eighteen, and I cannot remember the
name of it, but it was fun. I don't think
the town is cursed like it sounds like they just

(34:36):
didn't know a whole lot about farming. The people who
tried to settle it, and they chose a place that
was not suitable for farming, and the town couldn't sustain
itself and there wasn't access to water, and it just
sounds like, you know, some people picked a random plot
of land they didn't know anything about, they tried to
settle it, they couldn't. That's happened lots of times before.

(34:56):
But like the people didn't vanish without a trace. The
people who lived there did not vanish without a trace.
There's historical record of them that continued on. Not all
of them, you know, but some of them. It's not
like Rowan Oak where the entire ass town disappears. Crow
Atin's carved into a tree and nobody knows what happened
to them. I started writing an episode on it. I

(35:18):
think I got pretty far into Rowanok, the lost Colony
of Rowan Oak. I just found so many conflicting theories
and alleged historical records that I really couldn't verify. So
I don't know. It was a jumbled, jumbled mess. I
just couldn't make sense of it. Nobody can. That's why

(35:40):
it's a freaking mystery. But there is another town, Oh
my god, what's it called. I think it's called Hell Town,
and I think it's in Ohio where the whole town
was evacuated, like stuff still in their houses and things
like that. I tried to find some reliable information on it,
again I really couldn't. But it was shut down and

(36:02):
taken over by the United States government, and I couldn't
find reasons for why that happened. If there was some
sort of a chemical spill, you know, something like that.
But it's closed to the public and fenced off, and
again houses stand in there, just completely abandoned, with like
people's belongings in them and family pictures and stuff like that.

(36:26):
And the only reason I know that is because people
trespassed to go in there. If I can find more
information on that one, I'll do an episode because I
saw a documentary about it years ago, and I thought
it was fascinating, but it kind of seemed a little
blair witch. It said it was a documentary, I don't
know how ruted in fact it was. And you know,

(36:46):
I don't really want to put that out there and
piss off the United States government, so I won't. I
won't say anything else. I'll be quiet. The place doesn't exist,
and I will never attempt to go to it. Thank
you for listening. If you like what you hear, you
can hear more episodes on Tuesdays and Fridays, released on

(37:09):
all podcast platforms. I'm on social media all the places,
not really. I'm on Instagram at Autumns Podcast, Threads, at
Autumn Podcast, Patreon, at Autumn's Oddities Podcast. Where else am I?
That's pretty much it. I got off ex Twitter, like
I told you, just getting too many insane messages and

(37:29):
comments and not an enjoyable place to be for me.
Right now, I will be at the Battletown Which festival
in Brandenburg, Kentucky, October twenty sixth. It's a Saturday, like
a week and a half from now. I'll be doing
a panel and a live podcast episode, most likely on

(37:49):
the Battletown Which herself Leah Smock. And that's it. That's
all the business that I got for you. As always,
I appreciate you listening and remember, if it's creepy and weird,
you'll find it here.