My first visit to Dudleytown occurred at least twenty years ago, in a time when cameras were still using something called “film.” I had gone there to do some research on an historical piece I was writing. Jay Baca, a frequent visitor to Dudleytown, served as my guide. We were the only two people on the mountain. Although it was a beautiful and sunny summer day, the deep woods cast cool shadows over the crumbling stone walls and cellar holes of ruined houses. The woods were eerily quiet; not a single bird sang.
I took many pictures of the old walls, cellars and wells, all overgrown with thick vegetation. In one cellar hole I discovered a broken Ouija board and felt a shiver course through my spine. I left the board there.
After I returned home and developed my film, I was shocked to discover what looked like a face peering at me from one of the cellar holes. Colored like the vegetation, it resembled a “Green Man.” Thinking I was looking at a pattern of leaves and bushes that just happened to resemble a face, I enlarged the photo. The face became only more distinct. That’s when I called Ed and Lorraine Warren—America’s godfather and godmother of ghost hunting—and told them what I had found.
I lived in the same Connecticut town as the Warrens and they invited me to bring my photos to their home. They examined the photos and said that I had captured some kind of anomaly, but they were not all surprised and proceeded to haul out a collection of scores of photos they had taken at Dudleytown, each of them marked by unrecognizable streaks, blurs, and various colors, all of which they said had paranormal origins.
Over the years many people have explored Dudleytown and have felt unexplainable chills and cold spots and have captured photographic anomalies. There have also been reports of satanic rituals taking place there, although that has not been verified (but I do wonder about that Ouija board I found there so long ago).
Dudleytown is located on private property and the police routinely roust out trespassers so it’s not an easy place to visit today. Still, its legends—and maybe its ghosts—still linger. Sharp in my mind, their stories are the inspiration behind my paranormal novella, Dark Entry, available as an e-book on Amazon.com. Here’s the link: http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Entry-ebook/dp/B008OZEWTS/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1346003398&sr=1-1&keywords=dark+entry