 |
 |
 |
|
Experts see activity that spooks many
Posted on Tuesday, July 01, 2008 (CDT) by Isis
 Don Carter is a skeptic, so he is careful not to say that Milford is haunted. But the paranormal investigator devotes two chapters to the city in his new book "Connecticut's Seaside Ghosts" (Schiffer Publishing Co., $14.99) and said in a recent interview that he could have written much more on Milford. "The cemetery alone and the stories there are worth their own book," he said.
Carter and a team from the New England Paranormal Video Research Group first came here in October 2006, to visit the Milford Historical Society's three houses on Wharf Lane. On that site are the Stockade House, which served as Milford's first hospital, and the Eels-Stow House, once owned by Capt. Stephen Stow, who died of smallpox while caring for Continental Army soldiers abandoned by their British captors when they became ill. Stow did his selfless deed in a building that no longer exists, near the site of the present City Hall.
Since the land that makes up Milford has been occupied for so long — at least 1,000 years by Indians and since 1639 by European colonizers — it is logical that if spirits of the dead can linger in a place they'd be hanging around here. Carter relates several possible contacts with spirits in his book, without giving an opinion either way about their veracity.
"I can tell
you that the Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) in the Stockade House is
a good one. A voice can be heard saying 'Get Out!' While that is a
pretty common EVP, what makes this one unusual is its strength and clarity — everyone agrees on what was said.
"But is it evidence that
the house is haunted? It is possible,'' said Carter a historian and a
security consultant. "There are no experts in this field; anyone's
opinion is as good as anyone else's.'' One local person who apparently
attracted the attention of an uneasy spirit is Ellen Aftamonov, a
member of the Milford Historical Society.
"I didn't see anything; it
wasn't an apparition,'' said Aftamonov, who was working in one of the
society's houses. "I heard a voice call my name when there was no one
else in the house. Another time I was alone in the office and when I
went to close the door,
I felt something brush my
hand.'' Carter said that the "sensitive'' person on the team, Gail
Syring, felt that there were three separate entities in the house,
including the patriarch, a man named Paul. A search of historical
records has not turned up any owner of the Eels-Stow or Bryan-Downs
houses named Paul, the author said. It is likely that Aftamonov's
encounter was with a serving girl named Marjorie, whose bedroom was
where the historical society volunteer heard her name. "Marjorie was
apparently a petulant hypochondriac who may not have done her share of
the work.
"Gail asked Marjorie if she
had ever contacted anyone before and (the spirit) said yes, that she
had spoken once to a woman and touched her twice, and she described
Ellen precisely,'' Carter related. "We keep the sensitive in the dark
so as not to contaminate what she pick up on;
Gail didn't have any
background on the houses or Ellen going in.'' So, is that proof that
the historical society property is haunted? All Carter will say is that
it is 'interesting,' the strongest term he ever uses. In his book, the
historian recounts several other purported contacts with 'entities' who
have died but not completely moved on.
Stratford, for example, had
the Phelps Mansion, owned by a minister in 1850 whose family was
plagued by unearthly doings, including a poltergeist that made effigies
of family members from their clothes. Carter said the incident was well
documented in newspapers of the day and that one theory was that the
haunting was caused by the spirit of Goodwife Ruth Bassett, who had
been tried, convicted and hanged for witchcraft 200 years before ...
and not far from the very spot where the Phelps Mansion was erected.
The book also recounts the
haunting of a little bungalow on Lindley Street in Bridgeport that was
said to have inspired the movie "Poltergeist.'' One of the most
publicized, well documented and credibly witnessed incidents of a
poltergeist haunting, the events of November of 1974 in a little
bungalow on Bridgeport's Lindley Street, are said to have been the
inspiration of Steven Spielberg's movie.
"For days, flying
furniture, strange invisible attacks and other inexplicable events were
witnessed at the home by shocked Roman Catholic priests, city police
officers and firemen, journalists and television reporters. It quickly
attracted national headlines, and still is a matter of much debate,''
Carter wrote on his Web site, www.connecticutseasideghosts.com
"The most interesting thing
about the Bridgeport poltergeist haunting is the many credible
professionals who put their reputations on the line by attesting
honestly to what they witnessed. Despite enormous pressure from their
superiors, friends and co-workers, none of them every recanted their
testimony.'' One Milford Historical Society member, scientist Timothy
Chaucer, is not impressed with any of the "evidence'' usually provided
for paranormal encounters.
"Unfortunately what we wish
to happen sometimes does happen. But just like fish, dogs and other
living beings, when we're gone, we're gone.
"As much as we'd like to
think that we can hang around and haunt people, there just is no
evidence for that,'' said Chaucer, director of the Milford Marine Life
Museum.
"Whether there is an
afterlife or not is an open question but there is profit in getting
people to believe in something that there is no evidence for.'' But
Chaucer's was the minority opinion on the society's board of directors,
which opened the houses to Carter and his team. In a video prepared for
the summer museum season, society publicist Susan Carroll-Dwyer has
some fun with the notion of ghosts.
As she is describing the
contents of one of the houses, something that is either a spirit or a
person wearing a sheet appears in the background. The video is at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzXQBSGEd-M Carter, who has degrees in
law enforcement and history and is a U.S. Army veteran, said he can
understand skeptics because he is one himself.
"But unlike Harry Houdini,
who was a hostile skeptic who almost took it too far, I know that there
are forces in the world that I don't understand.''
Copyright: The Connecticut Post Online
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
| |
|
