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Way back, maybe around 1984, a dozen of us decided to go to the world-famous spooky Duddleytown. When we got there, John was in the lead car position, with his girlfriend as his front seat passenger. He was driving a brown 2-door Mercury Cougar. I was next in line, with my girlfriend in my front passenger seat, and J.R. and his girlfriend in the back of my “boat”, affectionaitely “pimp-mobile” (Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham d’elegance … midnight blue interior and exterior … of course leather all around … my C.B. radio was built-in to the sound system, my car phone was mounted in the trunk, curb-feelers in all the corners, P.A. system, spotlight-equipped, dark tinted windows all around, and fully-loaded by all measures). Jose was in the 3rd car with his girlfriend in the front seat of his Lincoln Continental. The order of how we parked has significance. We all parked in a straight line, on the barely-paved narrow roadway. John and I, (I’m Edward), were the only 2 people who were willing to walk into the field that both tempted and repelled us. Everyone else not only stayed in their cars, with their windows up and the doors locked. This was an ordinary day in late spring - skies were mostly sunny, temperate temperatures, light and nearly constant breeze. Trees in full bloom, wildlife abundant with food-a’plenty as their instincts defaulted to reproduction over common sense - running around as if immortal, albeit horny. John and I have been best friends since we were kids - practically brothers. He had heard goulish hallowed stories of this place and although we were both very apprehensive, he was a bit more scared than I was, and I was a bit more open than he was. He got out of the car first, and waited for me to get to him. We walked up, side by side, toward the open field - mostly grazing grass with various trees scattered. We were both soft-spoken as we were paying close attention to our surroundings. Our conversation was shallow, and light. I noticed that it was getting harder to hear him, which I chalked off to some combination of the elevation and the fact that I had been playing tennis and swimming earlier. We had only walked about 25 at that point. Unexpectedly, he turns to me, and stops. He says “do you hear that?” I said “No, actually I don’t hear anything”. He said, “Yeah, that’s what I mean. All the birds just stopped. Look around … nothing is moving”. I said “yeah, you’re right. There are no sounds at all - and the wind completely stopped.” The air felt a smidgeon electrified - and not in a friendly way, more of a suffocating “you should panic and run” kinda way. He turned to his right, toward me, and then slightly backwards. He noticed that I took a step forward and he said “You want to keep going?” I said “Yeah, you don’t want to go back do you?” We’re both standing idle and contemplating. He said “I’m ready to go if you’re ready to go” I said “Yeah, whatever you want, but we’re here, so we might as well keep going”. He said “you’re not scared?” I said, “Yeah, but I’m more interested in busting everyone else’s ass for being chicken-shit. And besides, we’re not going to buy into all the hype are we?” We agreed continue. Our chit-chat diminished, but we both kept talking, secretly to to bolster our confidence. Our pace was as quick as molasses in the ‘fridge. Not 10 feet later, standing closer than 3 feet from him, I thought he was whispering. Just then, he hits my arm. I saw him moving his mouth, but I thought he was just busting my ass - I could only hear echos of what he was saying, and they were belated and coming from other directions. I tried responding, but even my yells were like soft whispers. We took another 2 steps forward, and we noticed that not only were there no sounds, and we were having trouble seeing each other, but all of our senses seemed to have been muted. We both stopped walking. Our shoulders collided - everything was so … nothing; it wasn’t dark, it was just … nothing. I took a pretend step forward, maybe all of 3 inches. At that moment, he and I turned directly face-to-face and he yelled “I had enough. I’m going back. You do what you want.” Yell, yes, but it sounded like an indescernable whisper from a mile away. I agreed, “Yeah, I’m good, I’m leaving too.” I think that we were both so scared that we couldn’t even pee our pants. Understand: it was as though the entirety of existence was fading to nothingness. The ground felt guey, like it was sucking our inards out of us. Yes, there could be some psychology here - instincts of fear telling us to vacate, but it was something else, something different … an ungodlinous. As we walked to the cars - as fast as we could and yet very slowly as each move seemed to be exhausting - the closer we got, the more our senses became normal. Oh, the greatness of firm ground afoot! A seemingly godlike feeling, our sense of touch had also returned - one that I hadn’t, to that point, realized was gone. At the cars, I said “you do a k-turn, and I’ll follow you, and, with any sense, everyone else will follow souit. Although we agreed, he pulls forward … which I assumed was a sign that he changed his mind and wanted me to k-turn first and lead us out of there - so I did. We fished our way down the forsaken excuse for a road, going as fast as we could on the rough surface - all of our cars were pretty new so we didn’t want to do any damage. I was going pretty slow to make sure that nobody would be left behind, and John would pick up the rear. That was our typical tact - we each had a CB club with 35 to 50 members, so we developed a protocol. Oddly, although all of our cars were equipped with some of the best citizens’ band radio systems, none of us were able to reach anyone else. That wasn’t too surprising as the famed Litchfield Hills and area surface water (lakes, ponds, rivers) had a funny way of disrupting radio communications. Still, dead air; not just no static, but an uncanny feeling of dead air. I, for sure, weighed the value of escaping the tentacles of whatever-the-hell just happened over the more sensical car count - to assure ourselves that nobody was left behind with a dead battery or something like that. Finally we’re approaching the actual town road, and I notice … What? WTF? That’s John’s Cougar right in front of me - not a look-a-like … I recognize the plate. Weird. Impossible. So we make our way out of town and onto the highway. When John and I took our exit, everyone else continued on as they live a few miles away. John took a turn to go back to his house, and I decided to go directly to our local Great Brook Lanes. I walk in and several voices call out to me. Everyone knew that we were making the trip to Duddleytown today, and they all wanted to know what happened. I told them everything that happened, and in great detail. Some non-believers were challenging me a bit, so I gave even greater detail. Finally, they said prove it. (Hmm. How the hell could I do that?) So, I said “John should be here any minute now, you can ask him as soon as he gets here. The chattered back, “Yeah, we will, he’s standing directly behind you.” I turned around and sure enough he was right behind me. I explained that I told everyone what happened and now “they want you to tell them what happened”. I was a bit concerned because he never gets pale and he recovers quickly, so I wondered why he looked ill. He said in a firm, authoritative, understated voice “Yeah, I know. I was standing behind you the entire time. Yes. Everything he told you is exactly correct - every word of it happened exactly like that. Except one thing.” So I said “What?” He said, in the same unconfident way, “It all happened exactly like that, except you weren’t there.” I thought he was just being an obnoxious ass as he tends to do occassionally. Nope, he was serious, and he wanted to know who told me what happened. I looked at him like “Dude, don’t bust my ass and make me look like a fool. You were right behind me the entire time, until about 10 minutes ago - so how could anyone have gotten in my car to tell me anything. There’s no way that I could know in such accurate detail what happened - even if someone else told me what happened, there’s no way that the phone game could ever be that accurate. I know what I saw. I know what happened. I was there!” I was pretty steamed that he would make it seem like I wasn’t there. So, I started telling him even more details - like when he parked on a large hump, and then started the car up again and moved it a foot forward. Then I reminded him that when he got out of the car he looked down at the ground, then looked up (at me), then closed the door, and snickered “well we can leave now”. Stunned, like genuinely stunned, he seriously couldn’t believe it. So I said “John, did that place really do something to your brain? If it happened exactly like that, and I wasn’t there, who was walking beside you?” He said “that was J.R.”. I said “Well we’ll have to ask him when he gets here.” Just then, J.R. comes in the alleys, looking disappointed and mad. Before any of us could say anything, he said “I told you guys I wanted to go with you. Yeah, I was a little bit late but you could have waited for me. I really wanted to go.” John and I were confused and stunned, so we just looked at him, jaws dropped. Then JR says “How was it, anyway? Did you see anything? Any ghosts? What happened? I just wish you guys waited for me”. To boot, Jose later recalled all that happened. He agreed to just about everything - although he couldn’t account for what happened outside of the cars since he stayed in the car - and that it was only he and his girlfriend that were in the car - and his other 2 passengers, who John and I both attest had been with him, went out of state and couldn’t make it. Later, John pulled me aside. He said “There’s something else about what you said that was inaccurate.” I said “What?” He said “I didn’t just pull forward, I decided to go straigh ahead.” I said “That doesn’t make sense. By the time I got to the road, you were in front of me.” He said “There’s something else.” I said “What?” He said all the way home I kept hearing your voice, like you were in the back seat - but, like it was a dream, not like you were really there.” I laughed and said “What was I talking about?” He said “You were just mumbling. You kept saying “What the hell just happened? This can’t be real. What the hell just happened?” My throat closed up, my eyes immediately teared, every hair on my body stood at attention. Those words were exactly what I was saying to myself all the way to the lanes. That was freekier than anything else that happened that day. We were never able to reconcile our individual recounts of the day. We’ve never gone back. We’ll never go back. In retrospect, I wonder if what we experienced was a true manifestation of complete insanity.