Pachaug State Forest and the Hell Hollow Witch

Join Joe and Rob as they discuss Pachaug State forest, home to some very creepy legends such as the witch Maude who chases people from her grave, Mrs Gorton, be careful not to pick her Lilacs, and a native American girl, whose disembodied scream has been scaring unsuspecting people in Hell Hollow since her death in the 1600's

Transcript

So before we kick off and start in on the meat of the episode I want to share a few things about Tales, Trails and Taverns that have been happening. I kind of figured that spooky season, October and around Halloween would be see a bit of an uptick in viewership, and it certainly has, so I want to share what ive seen as well as thanking our loyal listeners. Rob I told you Monday that we broke through 500 downloads in the month of October already, would it surprise you to hear that when I wrote this, we had broken through 600? Crazy right, and we have two more episodes coming out this month. 

The next milestone is that the Instagram page is over 20 thousand followers strong, Pretty good huh, even the 19 year old kid I work with is impressed by that. Even the website, tales trails and taverns .com is seeing an uptick in viewership. So if you’d rather read about our adventures and see the pictures weve taken along the way, you check out the blog posts. Again at talestrailsandtaverns.com.

And for the next big announcement, we have started a meetup group, you may have heard me bring this up before but meetup.com is place to find likeminded people to for all kinds of activities, I have been on there for many years now and have met a lot of great people, and been on some great hiking adventures. So for those of our listeners in the New England area who want to join us on our spooky adventures we’re going to be hosting hiking events, Probably one or two a month at some of our favorite spots. Rob you need to sign up too so I can make you an organizer, then you can lead hikes to the pet cemetery and anywhere else in the Freetown state forest. 

This Sunday I’m leading the first hike out in Pachaug state forest, we’re going to be hiking a loop around Hell Hollow, so everyone who joins us can get a first hand glimpse of the area, the old stone walls, foundations, maybe even find a grave or two. I’ll also be sharing all the ghost stories that I know about the woods while we’re out there. Of course you don’t have to wait, or join us to hear these ghost stories, because, segway to intro, this episode is about the Pachaug state forest, and the Witch of Hell Hollow. 

So some of our longtime listeners might find this to be familiar, and for good reason, Mt Misery and the witch of Hell Hollow is the name for episode six, so it’s been over a year since I recorded that episode. And honestly, this state forest has so many trails we could probably do one a week for three months. 

But a few weeks ago I wanted to take my son on another nice fall hike and I found what alltrails listed as the Hell Hollow trail. 3.8 miles, 301 feet of elevation and the description reads as such.

“Enjoy this beautiful area that winds through the forest, passing the creek and water features. This is a great trail for trail running and hiking. There are options to extend or shorten the hike with many other trails nearby. Caution: Pachaug state forest is used for deer hunting, be sure to research the hunting season and wear appropriate , highly visible equipment.”

First thing I’m going to say is that this is not a good place for trail running. This trail is extremely rocky. You need to wear boots that support the ankle. No joke. And the second thing is that when I recorded the hike it alltrails said we did 4.75 miles. Not the 3.8 it listed. I mean that’s fine, my son was a champ, he only slowed down on the two steeper inclines, and side note, when we do the hike, this Sunday were starting in a different spot than the one alltrails has and going in the opposite direction, this will mean that we won’t have to drive down the dirt road, and the two really steep inclines will be downhill instead. 

We saw a lot of stone walls along the trail, even one spot where it looked like there had been a foundation at one point. The one thing I didn’t see was the grave site of Maude. Supposedly along Hell Hollow road theres a pile of stones marking the grave a woman who lived on a farm there. And Rob since I know you’re a fan of the Damned Connecticut website, I’m going to read their article about Maud.

“The Damned Story: In the Hell Hollow area of the Pachaug State Forest, there are multiple local legends regarding Maud’s (or Maude’s) Grave. It has become a place shrouded in a bit of mystery and legend, and one that seems to draw ghost hunters and curiosity seekers, as well as a number of bored teenagers.

So who was Maud, and why is her grave so troubled? Some claim she was a witch who was persecuted by the locals and then hanged, while others claim that she was the daughter of a witch who was tortured and killed. Another group will tell you that she was simply a child who got lost in the woods or died of smallpox. Then there are others who think she is related to the screaming spirit of a Native American woman slain by British soldiers.

Or it could be all of the above. Or not.

According to the best-researched account we can find (from The Day of New London), Maud Reynolds was almost 2 years old when she died in October of 1890. The death certificate states the cause of her death as diphtheria, a common and sometimes fatal ailment in the 19th century, but there some accounts suggesting that family members thought she may have choked on a piece of apple. For reasons only known to her family, she wasn’t buried with other deceased relatives in the Reynolds family cemetery, but instead was laid to rest in a spot closer to their home — some speculate it was so that the 5-foot-tall cement cross that originally marked her grave could be seen from the house by her grieving parents. The cross has since been knocked down, and now Maud’s unmarked grave is now in the middle of woods; at the time of her death, it was at the edge of a field belonging to the family farm, but that has long since been reclaimed by the surrounding landscape.

Apparently, there is another more popular grave site nearby in the Sterling end of Hell Hollow, marked with a broken head stone inscribed Maud. The dates (1647-1654) don’t match those of Maud Reynolds, and as it made of cement (unusual for grave markers), there’s speculation that it’s a hoax, or simply someone else named Maud. This one is better known, and seems to be the one most of the legends surrounds, and thus, draws more attention. We haven’t been able to find any specific stories of witch persecution or execution in the area, but that certainly doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

In addition to these two stories, there’s also a legend of a Native American woman who was killed by early colonists in the late 18th century, and whose screams can still be heard in the forest today. (Fisher cat, anybody?) The Pachaug Forest is also allegedly home to a number of other ghostly entities, detailed in The Hauntings of Pachaug Forest by David Trifilo (which you can read about here).

As you might imagine, a mysterious grave in the forest has inspired many legends and “friend of a friend”-type stories, the most popular of which is along the lines of “teenagers party on or desecrate the grave, and then soon meet tragic deaths.” Others suggest that by simply coming close to the grave is enough to upset Maud, and she will move the rocks on her grave in protest. Also, it’s alleged that by simply saying her name aloud in the vicinity of her grave can bring about a curse that will follow you home.

Of course, everything from ghosts and spirit mists to orbs and cold spots have been experienced here. The disembodied cries of a young girl have also been reported, and others have recorded EVPs. In addition to supposed feelings of dread, there are also urban legend-like accounts of a mysterious woman instantaneously appearing in the middle of the roadway, getting hit by a car, but not actually leaving a solid corpse behind.

So although Maud may has long been laid to rest, many believe she’s not resting peacefully.

Our Damned Experience: We have yet to visit either site, so we haven’t met either old compromising, enterprising, anything but tranquilizing, right-on Maud.

If You Go: Little Maud Reynolds’ unmarked grave is supposedly just off of Hell Hollow Road in Voluntown. It’s marked by a pile of rocks.

To get to the second, possibly fictional Maud’s site — apparently, also a pile of rocks — take Hell Hollow Road into Sterling and cross Route 49 onto Cedar Swamp Road. On the right is a Cedar Swamp Cemetery; beyond that you will find a path into the woods and shortly past a stream, there’s a large gnarled dead tree and a small stone foundation — the broken headstone is right in this area.”

So you can tell from this article that there are many ghost stories associated with the forest and with Hell Hollow. I mean, you hear a name like Hell Hollow and you immediately think that its going to be haunted right, and it gets even strange when you realize that the area was heavily settled, with hundreds of people calling the place home from the 1600’s up until the great depression, and maybe many more for an unknown length of time before colonization, here’s a little history about the forest.

The name Pachaug comes from the native American term for bend in the river, the area had been inhabited by the Narragansett, Mohegan and Pequot tribes who were relentlessly pushed out by white settlers in the 1700’s. A settlement was established along the Pachaug river called Voluntown. The land the town was built upon was initially granted to veterans of King Phillips war and was originally called Volunteer Town. This is actually very interesting to me because of all the other places in Rhode Island that I’ve been looking into that has a connection to King Phillips war, Particularly everything that connects to the great swamp battle, or more accurately the great swamp slaughter. That’s for another episode. 

Once there the settlers realized how bad the land was for agriculture, being littered with stones, sand and hills the people could barely make a living. In the 1700’s the Ct general court deemed the area to be unsuitable for settlement. Honestly reading that the first time doesn’t surprise me one bit, knowing that the Marine corps base known as 29 palms was originally declared unfit for life by the Navy, and then the Marine Corps was like we want it, we’ll make people live there, good for training. Yeah, doesn’t surprise me that the government would give veterans land that’s basically unfit for settlement. 

So they tried building mills along the river but new technology kept making the mills obsolete, or at least unprofitable and by the time of the great depression Voluntown was all but abandoned. The Pachaug state forest was established on land no one wanted and the government was able to buy the land back cheap from people who were trying to get out of the area. This is the reason Pachaug now stands at a staggering 27000 acres. I will tell you Voluntown is still there, It’s small, with the population sitting at 2570 people in the 2020 census. That’s not much more than the 1930 census of 651.

So I’m going to read an article, called Pachaug Forest Home To Ghostly Sightings

By Amy Beth Preiss

Norwich Bulletin

It’s going to explain some of the more famous hauntings better than I could. 

“It was dark and he couldn't see anything, but he heard a strange rustling of leaves and then a loud screeching sound.

 Hunter Henry Tabor thought it might be a wild boar. Or maybe a bear or bobcat. But in the end, he could never really convince himself it was an animal.

 But he did know one thing -- he wanted to get out of Pachaug State Forest as fast as he could.

 Most of the state's largest forest is in Voluntown, but parts of it stretch into North Stonington, Griswold, Sterling and Plainfield. The forest is vast and it is haunted.

 Tabor has been hunting there for 30 years.

 "You hear these like screaming noises," Tabor said. "You hear a lot of certain noises like that, that aren't typical. It gets you nervous in the woods."

 He is not the only hunter paranoid about going into the forest. He said he has many friends who feel the same.

 The scream Tabor heard might have been the cry of a lone Indian woman said to have been murdered in the forest in the 1600s.

 It's a story included in "The Hauntings of Pachaug Forest," by David Trifilo.

 According to Trifilo, an Indian girl was killed by English soldiers in the Hell Hollow section of the forest. Ever since, cries attributed to her have been heard there. Trifilo said Hell Hollow was never permanently settled because of its reputation as haunted.

 Barry Gullickson has hunted the forest for 15 years and also has heard the odd screaming sounds.

 "It's an eye opener, it's like a piercing sound," Gullickson said.

 The ghost of a little girl named Maude has been appearing for 100 years on Hell Hollow Road near her gravesite. That legend is included on Web sites on Connecticut hauntings.

Trifilo also points out in his booklet that people driving through the forest are driving through a former village. Hundreds of people lived there from the 1600s until the Great Depression. The forest still contains many foundations and burial sites.

 Other legends include a woman from the 1860s who threatened death to anyone who stole from her lilac bushes. Mrs. Gorton guarded the lilacs at her home on Bailey Pond Road, according to Trifilo's book. A young boy said to have stolen some lilacs disappeared one October day while fishing by Mrs. Gorton's pond.

 Author Trifilo claimed he saw one of the forest's ghosts -- a Breakneck Hill guard who appears randomly walking back and forth at a bend in Breakneck Hill Road. This was the story that sparked Trifilo's interest in haunted tales from the forest.

 Trifilo said the spirit he saw most likely was a soldier from the Narragansett wars of the late 1600s and early 1700s. In his pamphlet, he said the legend of the Breakneck Hill Guard can be traced back to 1742 when the first sighting occurred.

 According to Trifilo, he was making a sharp turn on Breakneck Hill Road when he saw a tattered colonial soldier carrying a long musket over his right shoulder marching across the road. When Trifilo slammed on his brakes, the man disappeared.

 "I could not bring myself to tell anyone about what I had seen for many weeks," he wrote in his pamphlet. "I thought everyone would think I was crazy or something, but he's there as sure as the sun rises in the morning, that guard is still doing his job at that bend in Breakneck Hill Road."

 Town Clerk Cheryl Sadowski said few people come to Town Hall inquiring about the legends or seeking directions to the so-called haunted sites.

 And not everybody in town is convinced the forest is haunted.

 "Maude's Grave -- that's all I can tell you," Preston resident Jerry Marjniak said. "I have heard of guys that went down there and disrupted her grave, brought them to a church in Griswold and within a few weeks they died."

 Wally Hill, who has lived in town for more than 10 years, also knows about Maude's grave.

 "Everybody and their brother talks about that," Hill said. "But I don't believe in ghosts."

 Attempts to reach Trifilo for this story were unsuccessful.”

So far we have Maud, two mauds rather, one that is a two year old girl, maud Reynolds, and one that may or may not be a witch, or fake. And we have a native girl, whose screams can be heard repeating in the woods near Hell Hollow, replaying her brutal death at the hands of some colonial men. The Breakneck Hill guard, who this author claims to have seen in the middle of the road but immediately vanished before his eyes. I will tell you that I’ve driven down breakneck hill road after dark a few times, in search of the guard, it’s a gravel road and takes about ten minutes end to end and it is in fact creepy as shit. And Mrs. Gorton, whose house you can apparently still find, or at least what’s left of it, but if you do go, he warns you not to pick the lilacs. 

The last entity that were going to talk about is probably my favorite, not because I want to see or experience it, but just because it seems so mysterious. Theres not many stories to pull from, and searching for it online yields very little, even the best articles only mention it in passing, allowing the named ghosts to have the spotlight. But I like this one, so I’m going to tell you about it. Hikers and hunters have reported seeing a black mist in the forest, sometimes a black figure, sometimes a fifteen foot shadow. It doesn’t make any noise, no screams like the native girl, no footsteps, it doesn’t disappear quickly like the guard, or throw stones like maud, no, this misty black shadow follows you. Keeps pace as you make your way through the forest. Some say it stays just off the trail, some claimed it stayed behind. You have to wonder what it wants. Is it making sure you leave, is it after your energy, your aura maybe. But that’s not all. For an unlucky few, the shadow begins to get closer, not content to keep pace, it wants to catch up, and when it gets close enough, the victim gets rushed, the shadow engulfs them on the trail before finally disappearing.