The Dudley Curse and Dudleytown Connecticut

The village of Dudleytown is located a few miles south of the Cornwall Bridge neighborhood of Cornwall. It’s down in a valley, known as the Dark Entry Forest, thanks to the shadows caused by the mountains surrounding the village and its access road. The village was founded in 1747 by Gideon Dudley, and doomed right from the start.

But our story doesn’t begin in Dudleytown, Connecticut. Instead, we can trace it’s haunted history back to England.

April 24, 1509, three days after the death of King Henry VII, the new King, a young Henry VIII chose to let his people know that his reign would be different from his father’s. He chose to arrest and prosecute his father’s most notorious and unpopular officials. This included Edmund Dudley. The charge against Dudley, was that on April 22, he had “conspired with armed force to take the government of the King and realm.”

The charges were erroneous; Edmund Dudley had thrived under the leadership of Henry VII. Nevertheless, he was convicted on July 18, 1509. Dudley was imprisoned in the Tower of England, and while he was there, he made a list of people he believed had been treated unjustly by the late government. He also wrote a treatise entitled The Tree of Commonwealth, in which he depicted the state as a tree upheld by roots of godliness, justice, truth, concord, and peace.

Dudley plotted to escape from the Tower, and by August, 1510, Henry VIII gave the order to execute. Dudley was executed on Tower Hill on August 17, 1510 in what G. J. Meyer termed “a cynical act of judicial murder, done purely for political and propaganda purposes.” At the time of his death, a curse was also placed on Dudley and his family. The curse stated that all of the Dudley descendants would be surrounded by horror and death. Dudley was buried at London Blackfriars, Empson at London Whitefriars.

Sure enough, death ensued. Edmund’s son, John Dudley wanted to control the British throne. He arranged for his son, Guilford, to marry Lady Jane Grey, who was next in line for the crown. After the death of Edward VI, Lady Jane became Queen for a short time before the plan failed, at which time Lady Jane, John Dudley, and his son, Guilford Dudley were all executed.

When John Dudley’s other son, a military officer, returned from France, he brought home a plague that quickly spread to his officers and troops. The sickness wiped out a massive number of British soldiers before spreading across the country, killing thousands.

John Dudley’s third son, Robert, Earl of Leicester, made a decision to leave England behind and travel to the New World. His son, William settled in Guilford, Connecticut, and three of William’s descendants, Abiel, Barzallai, and Gideon, later purchased a plot of land in Cornwall township.

The purchased land, rested in the middle of three large hills. The community grew with settlers trickling into the area. Farming was difficult, but with the discovery of iron ore nearby, made farming a secondary concern. With no stores, shops, schools or churches nearby, supplies had to be purchased on trips to Cornwall. When a person died, another trip to Cornwall was necessary as there was no cemetery either. By 1854, the number of families living here was 26.

Despite the hardships, and the curse, the town seemed to thrive for a while. Dudleytown had timber which was burned and used to make wood coal for the Litchfield County Iron Furnaces in Cornwall and other towns. Unfortunately, the furnaces were moved closer to the railroads and more industrial towns, and lumber was no longer needed.

Dudleytown had three water-powered mills. Unfortunately the mills also closed down, due to the long trip down the mountain to deliver their goods.

There was also an unusually high death rate in Dudleytown. In addition to that, a rather large number of people went insane in the area. Some simply vanished without a trace. Three of the Dudley’s ended up moving out of the region, leaving only Abiel behind. He ended up losing his entire fortune, then went insane. He died in 1799 at the age of 90.

Before the death of Abiel, in 1792, his friend and neighbor, Gershon Hollister was killed while building a barn at the home of William Tanner. Some time later, William Tanner also went insane. He lived to the age of 104 and was reported to be “slightly demented” at the time of his death. Prior to his death, Tanner would tell the townsfolk of “strange creatures” that came out of the woods at night. It is believed that these creatures were a symptom of his psychosis.

In 1759 a plague swept through Dudleytown, taking the lives of the Adoniram Carter family, relatives of Nathaniel Carter. Nathaniel, saddened by the loss, moved to the Delaware wilderness, in the heart of Indian territory. It was there that Nathaniel, his wife and infant child were slaughtered. Their other three children were abducted and taken to Canada where the two daughters were ransomed. David carter remained with his captors, married an Indian girl, and returned to the United States.

General Herman Swift, who had served under George Washington in the Revolutionary War, had a home near Dudleytown. His wife, Sarah Faye, was struck by lightening and killed instantly while standing on their porch. The General went insane and died soon after.

After the Civil War, Dudleytown began to die, with many of the villagers picking up and moving on. One of the last residents, John Patrick Brophy, remained. In 1901, his wife died of consumption. A short time after her funeral, his two children vanished into the forest, never to be seen again. Then the Brophy’s house burned to the ground in an unexplained fire, just before Brophy himself vanished into the forest. He too was never seen again.

The remaining homes began to fall into disrepair. The forest began to reclaim the village. But there was still at least one more victim to fall to the Dudley curse.

Dr. William Clarke came to Cornwall and fell in love with the forest and the quiet. He purchased 1,000 acres of land in the wilds of Connecticut, which included Dudleytown. He constructed a vacation home here, and over the next few years, he and his wife, Harriet Bank Clarke, visited the house for weekends in the summer until it was completed. It became a holiday house, and they ended up maintaining a second life near Dudleytown until 1918.

One summer weekend, Dr. Clarke was called away to New York on an emergency. His wife stayed behind in their home, and when he returned, just 36 hours later, he found that she had gone insane. She told him of strange creatures that came out of the forest and attacked her. Soon after, she committed suicide.

The ghostly tales began to surface in the 1940’s. Strange incidents and wispy apparitions were spotted in the woods. Overwhelming feelings of terror, mysterious lights, sights and sounds and even the feeling of being touched, pushed and scratched have been reported. Some researchers of the area refer to it as a “negative power spot,” or a place where entities enter this world from the other side.

Don’t try to visit Dudleytown today though. It is owned by the Dark Forest Entry Association, and thanks to the vandalism of the area, they have closed it to the public and they are not afraid to prosecute.

Another fascinating story from colonial America is the Lost Colony of Roanoke.