Latest / Sasquatch & Sourdough / Ep. 43 | Sleepy Hollow | Sasquatch & Sourdough Podcast

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Ep. 43 | Sleepy Hollow | Sasquatch & Sourdough Podcast · Sasquatch & Sourdough

0:22
SPEAKER_00: Nestled near the banks of the Hudson River, and populated by folks of Dutch and German blood, lies a mysterious, dreamy little settlement called Sleepy Hollow.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: Since time before time, there have been stories among the settlers in the hollow of evil deeds from the past that still have hold that still hold a power over the valley and the people who live there.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: Some say a high German doctor bewitched the area in early days.
0:53
SPEAKER_00: Others claim the evil deed was done by a long-dead Indian chief, maybe a prophet or a wizard.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: Whether Sleepy Hollow is indeed bewitched, I don't know for sure.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: But I think it must have been.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: The folks who lived there were certainly given to believing.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: Tales of ghosts, haunted spots, and twilight visits were plentiful.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: Reports of strange voices and music floating on the night air were so common that no one really thought of them as unusual.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: King of the tales and spirits who haunted the valley in those days was a ghostly, headless figure riding on horseback, said to be the ghost of a Hessian soldier whose head was shot off at the shoulders by a cannonball during the Revolutionary War.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: Most folks believed that he was searching for his missing head while on his midnight rides.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: More often than not, he did travel the roads near the churchyard where the body of this unlucky soldier was buried.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: One thing is certain the old churchyard was an eerie place, with night winds blowing and howling, probably caused by the rustling headless horseman himself racing back to his grave before the day broke.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: That's what I believe.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: Now, one day, a schoolteacher by the name of Ichabod Crane wandered into this strange dreamy land, traveling from his home in Connecticut, and seeing the need for a school, Ichabod Crane appointed himself the new schoolmaster and started a school for the children of Sleepy Hollow.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: As time went on, all in all, Ichabod had made quite a satisfactory life for himself in Sleepy Hollow.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: His needs were comfortably taken care of, and because of his respected position as schoolmaster, as well as his singing ability, he was in fact admired by many of the young ladies in the region.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: He carried on courtships with an elegance and grace to which his rival Country Bumpkins could not dare to compare.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: The truth is, though, the schoolmaster was an odd mix.
2:59
SPEAKER_00: He was intelligent and popular, yet he would delight for hours in the tales of mysterious happenings that were told about Sleepy Hollow.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: The more tales he heard, the more he wanted.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: No story was too monstrous or unbelievable for Ichabod.
3:16
SPEAKER_00: Often after school, he would lie down on a lush clover bed near the school, reading and rereading the witching tales of Cotton Mather's History of New England witchcraft.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: Then as the evening dew fell, Ichabod would sulk homeward into the twilight with his imagination racing, inflamed by the very sounds of the surrounding countryside.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: The moan of the whipperwill and the cry of the frogs would make him uneasy, and the rustling cattle or hooting owl would send him into full fright.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: When poor Ichabod was spooked this way, he would sing his psalms at the top of his voice, hoping to drown out the noises of the night and fend off any lurking spirits.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: In the winter, when his clover bed was covered in frost and snow, he would listen to the old Dutch wives as they sat spinning wool, telling ghastly tales of ghosts and goblins, haunted fields, haunted houses, and particularly the tale of the headless Hessian horseman that haunted Sleepy Hollow.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: But when the evening came to an end, Ichabod Crane would always find himself in the familiar predicament, a long and frightening walk through the dark of night back to his home of the weak.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: Despite all the terrors and frights of the hollow, our schoolmaster friend continued getting along quite nicely there until one day his path was crossed by a force more powerful than even Cotton Mather's witchcraft.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: I spent some time yesterday, last night recording it, and then when I finally went back to edit, I discovered that my entire episode had been muted somehow.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: So here we go.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: This is take two.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: I am so happy um just to be recording this.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: As you know, this is Halloween week.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, I'll get this out on Thursday so you guys can have some content um from the podcast for Halloween season.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: I know we've done a lot of episodes, kind of almost in a little series, uh just leading up and through fall.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: So it's been really, really fun tying all these um tales together for you.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: But I just think that Sleepy Hollow is quintessential fall, um, just the perfect scary story to tell on a spooky night.
6:14
SPEAKER_00: And when I was looking through, I found some really incredible correlations.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: But before we get into that, I just wanted to say welcome to all of the new folks.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: We've had another uptick in subscribers, uh, people liking, sharing, commenting.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: It's been really encouraging, you guys.
6:32
SPEAKER_00: So please keep it up.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: I also wanted to give a shout out to um Pastor Nelly from the Dancing Toaster.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: His Halloween episode is fantastic.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: If you guys haven't checked that out already, please go and listen to that.
6:45
SPEAKER_00: Is definitely um, he does some great research in the origins of Halloween and he has a really good um insight that I think you might enjoy.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: Also, a big shout out to my new friend Bennett from the Broadcasting Seeds podcast.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: I had an opportunity to sit down and share my testimony on Bennett's show, and I just wanted to thank him.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: If you guys haven't uh been enjoying his content, or if you're not familiar, please check him out.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: He's on Instagram, Spotify, all the places.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh, that's the Broadcasting Seeds podcast.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: He's a really super awesome guy, and I really enjoyed the conversation.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: I'll let you guys know when that comes out.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: I think it's supposed to be November 4th.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and that intro was from the book The Legends of Sleepy Hollow.
7:29
SPEAKER_00: It's actually a retelling by Will Moses.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: Um, I really, really enjoy this book.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: I actually got it um like a thousand years ago when I used to work at a used bookstore, and it came through, it was a book that somebody was throwing away, and for some reason our program didn't want it, and I I yanked it up.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: It's a really awesome retelling.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: It's actually so Will Moses is uh his grandmother.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he learned to paint from her, who was the legendary grandma Moses.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: And the illustrations are beautiful, they're all hand painted, and it's kind of his retelling.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: Um, I think that his grandmother kind of passed down.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: So it's really, really cool, and I really enjoy reading it every year.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to kind of go through there were parts in this that I didn't pick up details, including that Ichabod Crane was actually from Connecticut.
8:19
SPEAKER_00: I found that fascinating because I mean to drive to from Connecticut to New York is is a drive, but to walk and just kind of mosey down a road and end up in Sleepy Hollow is is really quite the quite the hike.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: So I found that interesting.
8:39
SPEAKER_00: And so then I had to just take a deep dive.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: You guys know me by now.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: I definitely had to look into that, like what's going on in Connecticut.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I found some really, really interesting correlations, definitely some tales that were fascinating, involving more headless people.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so kind of how you could see the character of Ichabod Crane develop.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: Let's dive into the episode.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: Our story began with Ichabod Crane, a schoolmaster with a fragile kind of faith.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: He taught the scriptures by day, read ghost stories by night, and spent his evenings at the homes of villagers trading tales of the strange and the unexplained.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: He believed in the devil, in witches, and omens and portals, but not quite in grace.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: Sleepy Hollow was a place steeped in superstition.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: The air seemed bewitched, the trees whispered, the brook babbled of old tragedies, and somewhere in the darkness rode a figure, the headless horseman, said to be the restless spirit of a Hessian soldier whose head had been carried away by a cannonball.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: For Ichabod, fear became faith.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: He lived in awe of every rustle, every shadow, and when the terrible night came, when he heard the hooves pounding behind him, it wasn't just a ghost chasing him, it was every false belief he'd ever had.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: In the end, Ichabod vanished into legend.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: Some say the horsemen took him, others say he simply fled into the night.
10:19
SPEAKER_00: But what if he wasn't running from a spirit at all?
10:22
SPEAKER_00: What if the hollow itself was only showing him what he already was?
10:27
SPEAKER_00: A man full of words and wisdom, but empty of the truth.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: That's the thing about hauntings.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: They have a way of exposing what's hollow.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: If you follow the backroads through the Litchfield Hills long enough, the trees start to close in.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: The road narrows and the cell signal fades until it feels like you've slipped back in time.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: Somewhere deep in those woods lies what's left of Dudley Town.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe what remains of the people who lived there.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: It began like so many colonial towns, built by faith, held together by hard work and community, but from the start, Dudley Town carried a strange kind of gravity.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: The settlers said the soil was bad, crops would fail, horses went wild for no reason, and then the deaths began.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: A man fell from a hayloft and broke his neck.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: A woman, driven mad, wandered into the woods and never came back.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: Families spoke of seeing shadow figures among the trees, shapes that didn't move like people should.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: One by one, the townsfolk left.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: Some fled to escape the rumors, others simply disappeared.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: By the mid-1800s, Dudley Town was gone.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: The forest took it back.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: Hikers who visit today say there's a pressure in the air, a heaviness that settles on the chest.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: Compasses spin, cameras fail, even the birds fall silent.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: But the strangest thing isn't what you feel there, it's what you don't.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: No laughter, no echoes, no memory of joy.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: People call it cursed, but maybe the curse isn't supernatural at all.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: Maybe Deadly Town failed and died the way faith does, not in an instant, but in neglect, a slow fading of light, a quiet surrender to despair, because darkness doesn't always storm the gates.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it just waits for us to stop tending the fire.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: And in that silence, the land remembers every place that forgets the light becomes its own kind of ghost.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this was really kind of neat to find.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: I had never heard of Dudley Town, which is a ghost town, um, at least according to Wikipedia.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so let's take a look and see what um Wikipedia has to say.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: So Dudley Town is an abandoned settlement located in a valley known as the Dark Entry Forest in northwestern Connecticut.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: Um, due to vandalism and trespassers, the site is no longer open to the public.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: So the complicated history is really such as there were legends built of on, you know, the kind of the foundation of this place that there was a curse.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: We'll get into that in a little bit.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: Um, but basically, because of the atmosphere and the legend surrounding this place, it's been inundated with paranormal investigators, ghost hunters, hikers, people that just want to go and you know check the vibe, basically.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: And they have destroyed parts of the land.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: There's been frequent vandalism, and basically the owners decided um to close the land to the public because it was just too much to handle.
13:50
SPEAKER_00: So the history goes um that it never actually was a town, it was given the name um as a portion of Cornwall that included several members of the Dudley family.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: The area that became known as Dudley Town was actually settled in the early uh 1740s by Thomas Griffiths, followed by Gideon Dudley, and then uh other family members started settling there.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: So, as with other parts of Cornwall, Connecticut, Dudley Town was converted from forest to farmland.
14:21
SPEAKER_00: Families would till the land for generations, and it's located on top of a high hill.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh, all other references say, all other references say it was in a valley.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: Dudley Town was not ideally suited for farming when more fertile and spacious land opened up in the Midwest in the mid-19th century, and as the local iron industry wore down, Cornwall's population declined.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: So basically, this place was settled and it wasn't very ideal for farming, and so people kind of moved away.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: But there were some instances that kind of created all of this lore.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: Basically, the rumors go as this uh Dudley Town is said to be haunted.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: A local rumor that has been frequently shared on the internet alleges that the founders of the town were descended from Edmund Dudley, uh, who was an English nobleman who was actually beheaded.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: So there's our connection, obviously, with you know, headless horseman, uh, beheaded for treason during the reign of Henry VII.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: Now, there is no actual correlation.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: Historians have tried to tie this back and link this lineage, but there is no known correlation between the actual um Dudley family and this person that um Edmund Dudley.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: There is no correlation there, the nobleman.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: The curse is blamed for instances of crop failures and mental illness, as well as several purported violent deaths in the village.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: Local historians have found no genealogical link between the Dudley family of Cornwall and the English nobleman, and noted many other factual inconsistencies in the rumors.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: Records have shown that the land was originally occupied by the Mohawk nation as sacred ground.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: So that kind of makes sense.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: It's a high hill, it's a forested area originally, and it's more sacred land than anything that they would be propagating.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: The village's decline has instead been attributed to its distance from clean drinking water and unsuitable soil for cultivation.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: One confirmed case of suicide of a of a village resident took place in New York State rather than within Cornwall.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: So a lot of this kind of falls apart when you do um the digging.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and the so, of course, like the paranormal lore is all over the internet with this.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: The like US Ghost Adventures did something, uh, American Hauntings did something.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: There's a ton of YouTube videos where people are just, you know, amateur sleuths and paranormal adventures investigators checking this place out.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: That's basically what happened.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: And the reason that um this the land trust decided to close it to the public because it was just too much vandalism, which I think is kind of cool.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: Um, I think that the far I like the idea of the forest taking back, you know, and even especially since it was kind of mobile.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: I kind of like that idea that the forest is like taking it back, the forest is growing back.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: Um, so it does definitely sound like spooky and it does have the spooky vibe.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: I know the Warrens were involved somehow with that too.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: Um, I think they wrote, they wrote it up in in one of their books.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh, they're always they're yeah, they're just totally, they're never far, are they?
17:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh it says uh visitors have reported phenomena such as strange silence, a lack of wildlife, and a lack of wildlife and feelings of unease.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: Paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren, reportedly declared it demonically possessed.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: And that is the interesting case of Deadly Town.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can look into it.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: It's definitely, you know, it's definitely creepy and all that sort of stuff, but I don't know.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: I feel like it bothers me when we start going around to places that and vandalizing, and you know, you're kind of you're messing with the energy anyway anyway.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: You're not going there to to pray about it or to to cleanse anything or to help anything or you know, to reclaim for God's glory.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: You're just kind of snooping around and Easton's Union Cemetery has been called one of the most haunted places in America.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: A small old burial ground, iron gates rusted, headstones leaning, the air unnaturally still.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: And yet this place is said to shimmer at night with something luminous.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: They call her the White Lady.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: She appears most often near the curve in the road by the cemetery wall.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: A woman in a flowing, translucent gown, her face veiled in sorrow.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: Drivers slam on their brakes, hearts pounding, certain they've struck her.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: But when they stop, her name.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: Some say she was a mother who lost her child and could never leave his grave.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: Others say a bride who died before her wedding, doomed to wander until love finds her again.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: But maybe the details don't matter.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: Maybe she's every story of grief that lingers, every prayer unanswered, every loss that never found comfort.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: The Bible verse says, Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: But what happens when warning turns to haunting?
19:38
SPEAKER_00: The White Lady reminds us that not all ghosts are bound by curses, some are bound by love, love that refuses to rest until it's seen again.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: Locals say that when she appears, the air turns cold but peaceful, like standing near a river at dawn.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: There's fear, yes, but also a strange calm, a hush that feels almost sacred.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: Maybe she's not warning us.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: Maybe she bears witness to the ache that never dies, the faith that still waits in the dark.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: And if you listen closely, you might hear something in that stillness, a whisper not of despair, but of longing, the echo of a heart that still believes comfort is coming.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: Because even in the graveyard, even among the lost, grace still walks.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: So getting back to old Ichabod, he loved a good tale of ghosts and goblins and all of that.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: And they mentioned in Sleepy Hollow that they would tell stories of the white lady.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: And you guys know if you've gone back through any of our episodes, every time we start poking around into different areas of high strangeness, we are bound to run into a story of a white lady ghost.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: So I wasn't shocked when I ran into this, but this article that I found, um, it is from, let me see here, the Easton Courier.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: It's called Easton's Ladies in White, and it's by Elizabeth Boyce.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: This was written uh October 2020, and it's very, very well.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so it reads, like all small colonial towns in New England, Easton has its share of ghost stories, but few can compare to the tales told about our oldest burial ground, the Union Cemetery.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: Set off by stone walls and wrought iron fencing, it sits at the intersection of Steepney, Sport Hill, and Westport Roads.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: Its antiquity is impressive.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: Its earliest surviving headstone dates to 1761, though, in truth, most historians agree that many earlier graves exist in the northeastern corner of the grounds, where the markers of wood or stone have long since crumbled away.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh, this hollowed site is still in use today, with recent internments, despite its reputation as one of the most haunted cemeteries, not just in Connecticut, but in the country.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: Now, while the archives of local historical societies cannot confirm the existence of ghosts, they can help us connect some of these stories to the people from our town's past and to some cultural practices and beliefs that may have contributed to this theory legacy.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh, let's see here.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: It goes on to say, as early as 1882, the cemetery near the Baptist Church was recognized as an important site for historic preservation, and the funerary inscriptions were recorded and published.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: Other than the antiquarian interest, it wasn't until the work of paranormal specialist, can you guess who, Ed and Lorraine Warren, that the Union Cemetery became the subject of a book.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: In his 1992 work, Graveyard True Hauntings from an Old New England Cemetery, the couple documented stories about apparitions at this site.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: Though there are different spirits mentioned in their book, the most popular figure is the white lady, appearing to neighboring children, materializing on the roads in front of passing drivers, and gliding towards cemetery visitors.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: Witnesses describe a young woman surrounded by shimmering light.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: She wears a long white dress in a style from a bygone era, sometimes thought to be a wedding dress with a veil, and at other times a bonnet.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: Long black hair frames her face while glowing orbs of light and dark shape surround her.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: Whoever she may be, not even the Warrens were certain.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: So there's always a warren or two lurking in the shadows, it seems.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's see.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: And this goes on to say, uh, uh, let's see here.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh, now the term white lady or lady in white is really quite an ancient moniker for figures described in the ghost lore of many countries and cultures, but particularly in the British Isles from where these traditions may have spread.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: Appearing as a gliding specter, these tales all relate to the story of a woman who died a tragic death and left behind a sorrow tied to a particular location.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: And we see that that just fits through every white lady or lady in white um encounter uh or uh narrative that we see in a lot of the stuff that we research.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: Initially, it was believed that the universal appearance of these accounts was due to the custom of dressing the dead in white grave clothing and winding sheets.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: However, folklore scholars suspect that the ultimate ancestor of these tales rests in the European traditions of glowing fairies and radiant white-robed pre-Christian deities whose iconographic influence persists.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: So that is always fascinating to me.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: We can always count on a fairy to be attached to this lore, too.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: It's all the same, isn't it?
25:10
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it fascinating?
25:12
SPEAKER_00: Um, I love these accounts.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: I think they're probably my favorite.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh, she goes on to note that um at the Union Cemetery, there are numerous 19th-century graves of young women who died during the prime of their lives.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: One suggested identity that has been proposed for the White Lady of Easton is Harriet B.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: Seeley.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: Though there are quite a few Harriet's at the Union, none match this name precisely.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: Assuming that there um there has been a misreading or a conflation of different women, there are two possible candidates, Harriet Seely Bryan, who died in 1836, and Harriet R.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: Seeley, who died in 1853.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: Sadly, both match this criteria.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: Um, okay, and so let's go into their stories.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: It says Harriet Seely was the daughter of Patience and Elijah Seely.
26:04
SPEAKER_00: She was born on October 19th, 1815, and she married Titus A.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: Bryan.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: Oh, these just wonderful biblical names, on February 10th, 1836, and nine days later she died.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: Oh.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: The grief of her family is expressed on a tombstone so worn away today that is barely legible.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: Um, let's see, we can read her tombstone.
26:28
SPEAKER_00: It says, Harriet Bryan, wife of Titus A.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: Bryan, and daughter of Elijah and Patience, Seely, died February 19th, 1836, age 21.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: Strongest ties, how soon they're severed, brightest prospects soon are gone, fairest blossoms soon are withered, borne by death until the tomb.
26:50
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's very sad.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: Chords and papers.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: Records indicate that she died at home, at the home of her husband in Washington, Connecticut.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: And we can only imagine that she had just arrived when her body was returned to her childhood home for burial.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: Whether illness or accident, her life certainly was cut short unexpectedly.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: Many serious diseases such as cholera were prevalent in Connecticut at the time, and travel between cities and towns helped spread infections prior to any understanding of germ theory and proper sanitation.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: So that kind of fits and tracks with, you know, at least, you know, when we go back to the concept of what happened at Dudley Town, not being fresh water and all that sort of stuff.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: So that kind of it just kind of kind of happened during that time.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: We they didn't have the luxuries that we certainly have now.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it says, what of her widowed husband?
27:45
SPEAKER_00: He returned to Washington and remarried the next year, perhaps as a tribute to his first wife.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: He named his eldest daughter, born in 1839, Annis Harriet Bryan.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's sweet.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so the second possible candidate uh could be Harriet R.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: Seely, married to Ezra Shearwood Seely in 1850.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: When she was 24, she gave birth to a son on May 20th, 1853.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: The infant did not long survive, and Harriet died on May 28th.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: Her gravestone epitaph has a chillingly simple yet sorrowful passage.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: Um, okay, let's see if we can read this.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: Harriet R.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: Seely, wife of Ezra Seely, died May 28th, 1853, aged 27 and six months.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: Also, their infant son died May 21st, 1853.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: Nay, do not weep.
28:38
SPEAKER_00: You'll all come soon.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that is very eerie.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: It's also, I mean, obviously, it's all just so Victorian, isn't it?
28:52
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps then at the core of the White Lady legend in Easton is the tragic memory of a mother bereft of her child in her final moments of life, giving rise to the belief that her spirit could not rest in peace until she finds her infant son.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: In truth, both of these women could have inspired the white lady legends since their deaths coincide with a transitional period in America or in American spirituality that moved from an era where the loss of a loved one was often perceived as a chastisement from God to a world where 19th-century consolation and mourning literature allowed people to embrace their emotions of grief and loss.
29:33
SPEAKER_00: Popular manuals encouraged families to spend long hours near gravesides with other grieving families, sharing memories of the departed and their hopes for heavenly reunion.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: The spirits of the dead were believed to exist in a plane closely connected to that of the living, as this was the dawn of the age of table wrapping, seances, and spirit photography.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: Connecticut newspapers from the time mention both spiritualist lectures in Bridgeport and reports of locals claiming to see ghosts on the road at night in Easton and in neighboring towns.
30:08
SPEAKER_00: So that definitely fits.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, it's like we're just getting right to the bottom of it.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then she has a really awesome.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: This is it's very, very hard to read.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's a spiritual telegraph periodical from 1856.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then she goes on to say, in a sense, the White Lady of Easton is really in amalgam.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: In her glowing white aura, she represents more than any one woman or any one family's tragic loss.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: Um, so she kind of gets into, you know, getting it a little bit more past the supernatural and kind of, I guess, more metaphorical, but I don't know.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: I don't like the idea of we we see these apparitions in these cases all the time, but it's it is very sorrowful and it is very sad because we know that the the land holds energy, we know the the land holds that hurt.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's in the Bible, you know, that the land cries out.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: So we kind of know that, but I don't like the idea of people and souls just being trapped.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: Like that.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: I don't like that for them.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: I want them to be in heaven, so does God.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: And so I would be remiss if I did not close out this episode with uh some sort of reporting from the BFRO and something to do with Bigfoot for sure.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: Um, okay, and this is also in Lichfield County, Connecticut.
31:37
SPEAKER_00: This is November 1st, 1987, so kind of close to this time of year.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: Um, so location details.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: This happened on Town Hill Road, Route 219, going toward New Hartford from Bakersville.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: All right, and it says my friend and I were out late on a Saturday night visiting some girls.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: We didn't have a car, and we had walked about seven or eight miles to arrive.
32:03
SPEAKER_00: We were both on the JV soccer team at our high school, and even though the season was over, we were in very good shape.
32:09
SPEAKER_00: For this reason, we jogged maybe half the trip, which got us there in time for Saturday Night Live.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: It got to be late and we knew we had a long trip back to his place.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: I felt fine and wanted to leave after awkwardly watching TV with this girl.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: Getting to this location was easy because it was mostly downhill, but getting back was going to take longer.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: We were still in good shape, so we jogged most of the way back up the long hill on town road to 19 uh near Bakersville.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: It was a crisp night without much moonlight.
32:43
SPEAKER_00: We had grown comfortable jogging side by side in the middle of the road.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: Since it was so late, nobody was out driving, and we set a consistent pace for about two hours.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: We finally made it to the top of the long hill where Route 219 flattens out.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: We were caught casually jogging in the middle of the road, past houses and an occasional farm when we heard a bad sound.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: It made us stop dead in our tracks, and we were both frightened.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: It came from the left of the road, perhaps behind a farm and a distant and a fair distance away.
33:17
SPEAKER_00: I distinctly remember turning my head as the sound swept from left to right and thinking to myself that it's a big sound.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: I would like to comment on the sound.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: I have spent a lot of time in the woods of Connecticut, and I was familiar with sounds from the area, uh, wildlife, including birds, squirrels, coyotes, dogs, etc.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: I immediately asked my friend, what the heck was that?
33:40
SPEAKER_00: He responded that he did not know.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: From the left, the sound was a cry that sounded like a cross between a baby and a woman screaming bet bloody murder that started very high, held for a number of seconds, and then came down in the pitch.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: When it got lower, it changed into a broken cackle that made the echoes more pronounced.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: It was very disturbing and unlike anything we had ever heard.
34:04
SPEAKER_00: I asked my friend if he wanted to stay and check it out, but he was very disturbed and did not want to hang around.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: It was a bad sound that you don't want to hear in the middle of the night.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: We stood there for a few moments, confused and scared, and decided to get going.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: We continued jogging for another hour, discussing along the way what it could be.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: Eventually we began we became more relaxed and the conversation moved on to other things.
34:29
SPEAKER_00: Um things were fine again, and we were making good progress over the a few more miles when we heard the sound again, this time on the right side and the road of the road and closer.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: Again, it was a blood-curdling scream that held for a few seconds, slowly descended into pitch and cackled at the end.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: But on the other side of the road and closer, we were now more scared and both had the feeling we were being followed or tracked.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: I turned to my friend and said pointedly that we might need not get another chance like this again.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: And I grabbed his arm.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: In panic, he cocked his right arm back and said some expletives to it um okay.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh and he wanted to lay me flat out right there.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: Okay, he sprinted down the road without me, and I had no choice but to follow him since I lost sight of him in the dark.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: I caught up with him soon enough, and we were quietly and we quietly jogged the remainder of the distance to his house, though we were very shaky.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: For years, he was not open to talking about what we heard, and he apologized for threatening me and leaving me standing there.
35:38
SPEAKER_00: When I disc when it was discussed, we never came to a decision about what it was.
35:43
SPEAKER_00: A few years ago, I came across the BFRO website and started reading reports.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: I listened to a few audio recordings, but nothing clicked until I read reports of screams.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: The recordings on the site are like moans and long whoops, but some reports describe a more stressed vocalization that puts the listeners instantly into panic.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: This is what we heard.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: It's a really, really bad sound that is confusing because it sounds sort of familiar, but is so extreme it's difficult to describe.
36:14
SPEAKER_00: The reports I have read that describe the scream include hunters and military folks who pretty much bolt when they hear it.
36:21
SPEAKER_00: Since this happened, I have worked professionally in molecular genetics and neurobiology at Yale University.
36:29
SPEAKER_00: And I have also had careers in the financial industry as a quantitative analysis and as a sound designer and audio engineer to the musical instrument industry.
36:39
SPEAKER_00: Whatever made that sound was able to project over a great distance and kept up with us over enough miles to convince us we were being stalked.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: I cannot say for sure that what that sound was, but based on other credible reports in the BFRO database and the similarly similarity to other screams and our own responses, a Sasquatch is my best candidate without invoking the supernatural, which I personally would never do.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
37:09
SPEAKER_00: Looking into the database for reports from Connecticut, the only one I found was surprisingly in the same county, Lichfield.
37:16
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's wild.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: So that was between 3 and 5 a.m.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: Boy.
37:25
SPEAKER_00: It was cold but not freezing and pretty dark without a moon.
37:29
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, that's insane.
37:31
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that is a crazy, crazy encounter.
37:34
SPEAKER_00: Lichfield, it is popping off there.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: Ugh, yeah, I don't like the it's like a there's just the the cackle at the end.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: From Sleepy Hollow to Deadly Town to the White Lady of Easton, the stories differ, but the echo is the same.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: Every haunting begins with absence.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: Every curse begins when something sacred is forgotten.
38:01
SPEAKER_00: The people of these valleys believed in spirits and signs and strange lights, but somewhere along the way, they lost the deeper light that once guided them.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: Well, if you guys have an encounter like that, you can definitely write in and let me know.
38:21
SPEAKER_00: Guys, I would love hearing your feedback and your comments.
38:24
SPEAKER_00: Keep them coming.
38:25
SPEAKER_00: Um, I think that's gonna do it for this episode of Sasquatch and Sourdough.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: This was a fun one.
38:31
SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm glad that it came together in the end.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: I always enjoy diving into Sleepy Hollow and I love making these connections.
38:38
SPEAKER_00: It was definitely cool.
38:39
SPEAKER_00: So if you guys uh want to connect, you can do so uh on the website, sasquatchandsourdough.com.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: You can send uh email sasquatch and sourdough at gmail.com.
38:50
SPEAKER_00: Find me on Instagram.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: That's a good way to send me a DM, but just get in touch because I love connecting with you guys.
38:57
SPEAKER_00: So that's gonna do it.
38:58
SPEAKER_00: Until next time, remember the truth is out there, God is with you, and everyone always ends up in the kitchen.
39:26
SPEAKER_00: You have been listening to Sasquatch and Sourdough.
39:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm Christina, and thank you so much for tuning in.
39:32
SPEAKER_00: Sasquatch and Sourdough is so much more than just a podcast.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: We are a community of kindred spirits, united by our curiosity and fascination with the extraordinary.
39:42
SPEAKER_00: And we want to bring you into the conversation.
39:45
SPEAKER_00: So whether you've had a brush with the unexplainable, seen something that you can't quite wrap your head around, this is your space.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: We invite you to join us as we break bread and break down the barriers between the known and the unknown.
40:00
SPEAKER_00: If you want to share your story, you can email us at Sasquatch and Sourdough at gmail.com or send us a DM on Instagram.
40:08
SPEAKER_00: Until next time, remember the truth is out there.
40:12
SPEAKER_00: God is with you, and everyone always ends up in the kitchen.