Creepy Connecticut Lore from Ed’s Childhood

[00:00:00] Astonishing Legends Network. It's Flashback Friday, and you know what that means. A classic episode of Scared All The Time's fan-favorite bonus show, New Fear Unlocked, is out of the vault and on the main feed. This episode originally aired on Patreon July 17th, 2025, but is being played by you right now. Disclaimer. This episode includes the usual amount of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect around here.

[00:00:27] But in the event it becomes an unusual amount, expect another call from me. You can't take a week off...

[00:01:24] Hey everybody, welcome back to New Fear Unlocked. I'm Chris Cullari. And I'm Ed Voccola. And this week we have a very special New Fear Unlocked that Ed has found. Ed, do you want to set this up? Yeah, sure. So, you know, I'm traveling, you're crazy, and we were trying to figure out this week's New Fear Unlocked, and I was like, you know what I think we have? I think we have when we were babies.

[00:01:50] So, basically, what you guys are about to see is a rare look, or I guess listen, to baby Chris and Ed in their first ever interview. Yeah, it's like Muppet Babies, but for us. Yeah, if Muppet Babies sounded like shit, but I've gone and fixed it. All right, so basically we had done very early on, I think it was our second recording we ever did, was Abandoned Towns. So we didn't release it until way later, because we weren't proud of it or whatever.

[00:02:18] And it ended up being one of my favorite episodes. There would be no Galooka Goo if there was no Abandoned Towns. There would be no people commenting on you fucking CNS Asquatch documentary or whatever. Yeah. Without it. So, basically, the thing about it, though, is that it was the steepest part of our podcasting learning curve when we did it. We had like 13 different mics. I was on, once again, the wrong coast. So what happened was part of Abandoned Towns, there's a very famous abandoned town in Connecticut called Dudleytown,

[00:02:47] and I had a friend from high school who had gone and snuck in or whatever when we were in high school. And so I decided to reconnect with that person almost 20 years later to be like, we have a podcast. He's like, where can I find it? And I'm like, well, one episode's out. I promise it's a podcast. It's real. Will you come on our podcast and talk about it? And he said yes. Do you remember this, Chris? Barely. I mean, to be honest, when you told me that you were thinking about running the Dudleytown interview, part of my brain was like, oh, that's right.

[00:03:17] I really enjoyed that interview. The other part of my brain was like, could you remember a single thing about that interview? And I couldn't, but I remembered having a good time doing it. Which must have also been a false or implanted memory because when I was going through it, it was a fucking nightmare. So to set up the scene, Chris is on a computer. I'm in Connecticut in my friend's kitchen. We're using a very directional microphone that only picks up like what's really right in front of it.

[00:03:46] Me and my buddy are trying to like, we're trying to use a pair of wireless headphones, one in each of our ears, like one for each of us. So we can hear what you're saying on the computer. We would just lose you for long tracks. You would lose us for long tracks. I sound like I'm across the street during the interview for parts of it. Like, it's so crazy. And when I was listening back through this, there was like a ghost or something that kept fucking up everything, which happened once before for us. Yeah. I don't remember what episode.

[00:04:15] Oh, another crazy thing is it's the first time we heard frogs on the show because I asked you about what that sound is. Wow. The birth of frog plus mode. Yeah. I'm like, what's that infernal noise or whatever? Uh, which now everyone will soon hear because I left it in, but this is scared all time and I'm me. So I did do a pass to make this the most listenable experiences as you can. It was an undertaking, but we love our audience and we'll move mountains if necessary.

[00:04:43] Even if pushing these mountains is make just come across as a very negligible amount. I'm sure you could play this audio in the sphere with a video of us and people wouldn't know the difference. You cleaned it up so nicely. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's definitely cleaned up a lot. So what you're about to hear is a discussion that was actually made as an abandoned towns bonus content before we even knew what we would need bonus content for. We did two pieces of bonus content with abandoned towns.

[00:05:08] We did this interview and then we did a, I interviewed you about Centralia and Pennsylvania, which I'll also have to clean up at some point and release. But until then, I say, let's just get into this ESPN classic presentation of abandoned Dudleytown, Connecticut. We're here with Pat Townsend. You still go by that? Yeah. Okay. Here with high school buddy, Pat Townsend, after many years of nothing.

[00:05:34] So we're doing the show, Pat, we were doing was about abandoned towns. And I wanted to talk about Dudleytown in Connecticut, something that I know you've been to and I was always too scared to go to. But I also remember in high school, you told a story about going there that really freaked me out. And I thought it was you and your brother, but now you're telling me it's you and a friend. Yeah. So people who listen to the show, please welcome to Scared All Time. Very warm Scared All Time welcome to Pat Townsend.

[00:06:03] He's going to tell us a little bit about Dudleytown, a fairly famous and or infamous abandoned town in Connecticut. All right, y'all. Hello. Hello. So yeah, I just said it's a new Ed way back in high school. And yeah, we decided, me and Ed a long time ago, I convinced him let's go ghost hunting throughout Connecticut. And we went to a few other spots. He did not like it. So basically from there, I decided to head up to Dudleytown.

[00:06:32] It's in Cornwall and it's just right past Kent in a very strange location in Connecticut. If you know anything about it, the geography is just very strange. It sits in like a valley of like three hills. So it's just always dark. And now it's... What the fuck? Oh, we got music. Sorry. iTunes opened for literally no reason on my computer. And it just started blasting audio in our ears. But now we're back. All right. So you're saying it sits in a valley. Yeah, it's a valley. It's a dark...

[00:07:02] People that own it now, it's the Dark Entry Forest Association. Which I looked up and they've owned it for like a really long time, weirdly. Yeah, from like the 1920s, I think. Yeah, it's very strange. It's just a parcel of land that's just been kind of like passed around from like owners and whatnot. But it was an early settlement in Connecticut. A bunch of tragic stuff happened there, mostly like economic reasons why people kind of left for the most part. But so the story goes, like when I went there, it was around 2003. So we were in high school.

[00:07:32] Yeah. Junior. And I was there with a buddy. And the first time we went, we just couldn't find like a good place to park and kind of like you have to sneak in. There's signs everywhere. It's like trespassing, you know, monitored, blah, blah, blah. So the first time we went up there, we couldn't find anything. So we just hitched on back. And then we planned it a little bit better, drove back up a little bit earlier, found a good spot. And then we snuck in, you know, like good high school kids do.

[00:07:57] And just when you're just walking through the woods, it's very eerily quiet. It started getting, it's dark. It was, it was, we know it was day out, but it was still just dark. It's mainly because of the geography of the land and whatnot. The forest is old and trees are huge and just dark. And there's just no, no life. Just no, like no birds, no squirrels. Like you don't hear anything. Yeah. You just don't hear. Like when you go into a forest in Connecticut, you hear like a squirrel, a chipmunk. They're all over the goddamn place. They're nothing, just nothing.

[00:08:28] And then like our flashlights, I mean, who knows how old the batteries were or whatnot, but they just kept going in and out and not really working well. The camera that we did bring, it was a digital at the time. You know, you have to fill in with like the actual like double A batteries or triple A's. A cyber shot. Yeah. Yeah. Three megapixels. Yeah. Pretty much. It's just the weirdest thing.

[00:08:57] So not only is the fucking, so Chris, not only is the fucking audition acting insane and not letting me adjust. What was that noise now? What was that? It's not letting me adjust. It just keeps pushing it to some crazy high level. It also just keeps opening iTunes for no reason on the computer and just starts playing the trailer for scared all the time. Oh, maybe.

[00:09:25] Well, that's better than it playing like sympathy for the devil or something. Either way. That is weird though. Welcome to Connecticut. It's a, it's a strange, it's a strange state. Fuck. It's a strange state. All right. Well, we'll just keep trying. If it keeps opening, I'll just keep canceling it. But that is fucking weird. All right. So sorry. So yeah, getting back to like the camera, just, you know, we're just blindly just snapping a photo, waiting a couple seconds, snapping another photo. And then you just kind of run like that. Camera kicks out relatively quick.

[00:09:54] Flashlights kick out. We're just like, fuck. Like we got to get out of here. It's getting dark. The electricity just keeps dying. It just, it just, it just did not work well for us at that time. Probably because we're high school kids and we have no idea the concept of how long a battery lasts. But so yeah, it just was, it was the whole thing. And then from there, like I remember my buddy just walks, let's say about 20 yards away from me and I'm over there and I just get like very eerie feelings.

[00:10:22] It's like you always kind of like someone's like watching you or something's heavy. You can constantly tell that something like maybe moving to the corner of your eyes. That could just be the paranoia of, you know, you're trespassing on private property. Who knows? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like I remember shouting over to him and I'm yelling pretty loud considering that, you know, we're not supposed to be there. And he just doesn't hear me. And I'm like, he's like 20 yards away. How can you not hear me? So like, I remember like running up to him being like, hey man, can we go now? Like I'm not comfortable. And I was like, didn't you hear me yelling?

[00:10:51] He's like, nah, I was just staring at some weird stuff over here. I was like, what? Can we just leave? Like, it's just not fun. And then did you guys get far enough in that like you got to the ruins? Like any evidence of this original colony or no? No, that time that we went up, like we were just lost. We were just lost. It was a miracle that we even made it back out and got to our car and got out of there. And we're just like, we're not going back there again. It was just uncomfortable. Wow. So that was just like my first general experience with the Dudleytown area.

[00:11:19] Then of course, you know, years later in 2012, I remember I was up in Kent, up at Kent Falls, which is like 20 minutes away. And people that I was there with, you know, they're cutting out. It's a nice little park and go splash around with them, waterfalls. They cut out and I was like, well, I'm about 20 minutes away. Let me just scoot on up to Dudleytown. Why not? So I went there by myself.

[00:11:45] And this time it was, I made it to where like you can see some of like the old stone platforms or like the houses, the settlement once was, or at least some structures stood. And there's like stone walls and same thing. And this is in 2012. So what, good, like nine, nine years later? I can't do that kind of math, but it's got to be close to a decade. Yeah. And, and yeah, same thing still just eerily quiet.

[00:12:14] Just no life. Your, your words feel heavy. It's like you're short of breath. It's just, it's weird. It's just a very weird, heavy place to kind of be. And it's also in a valley, right? So it's like you are constantly in the dark because on three of the sides, the sun has gone behind mountains. Yeah. And you just, that's why it's literally called the dark entry for society. It's just, it's just dark. Oh, okay.

[00:12:40] Well, that, that is both makes it less creepy, but also the fact that they just acknowledge that it's dark there all the time is kind of creepy in and of itself. And I think you, is that the name of the road? Yeah. So there, there is also like a road that's like, it's just a dirt kind of road that goes through. It's known as the dark entry. It's just, it's just, it's just unsettling. You know, it's like, you don't want to go to a place where it's titled dark entry. Yeah. Are the, are the ruins there?

[00:13:08] Are they, are they just like small houses or were there ever larger buildings there or what kind of stuff is, is out there? I mean, the only thing that I saw was, like I said, just like some old Connecticut style, like rock walls that, you know, were put there in like the 16th, 17th, you know? So that's pretty much all that I got to. Cause like I said, it's just, I was there by myself on this, on this occasion. And it was, I got, I got, I got freaked out.

[00:13:37] It was the same feelings you had 10 years earlier, like being watched. Being watched. Like I could have sworn that there were things moving at the corner of my eyes. And it's just like, you just keep turning your head around. I'm getting real paranoid. I was like, you know what? I don't really feel like getting arrested or getting whatever from whatever presence you might call it there. So it was just booked it. That was like the last time I was there. And it was like equal, you're saying equal parts, insanely quiet with, I think something's watching me.

[00:14:05] So it's like this feeling of I'm being watched, but there's zero evidence of anything around you. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like Dudleytown really became like a paranormal activity kind of place in like the 80s, thanks to the Warrens here in Connecticut. They basically went there in the 80s and just like declared it like demonic land, more or less. So did something specific bring them there or they just had heard creepy stories and decided like, hey, you know what?

[00:14:35] We could put something else on the list. Yeah. It's kind of really what it came down to because in that area, the old settlements that were there were the people that live there. A, there wasn't really a lot of people that lived there to begin with. It's just bad land. They tried to use it for like farming. It did not work well because Connecticut soil is terrible. It's just rocks and sand.

[00:14:59] I mean, that's honestly why there's so many rock walls in Connecticut because they were trying to like till the soil and it was just more rocks. And they built walls out of the shit. Yeah. Pretty much. So it's like, and then, and then there were just some deaths. There are a few people that were murdered by Native American raids at the time because, you know, we just stole their land and they're mad. So they're like, wow, sweep through, kill whoever. Uh, and then a couple of people went mad is what the term used at the time.

[00:15:28] Uh, you know, like insane is another word that used, uh, it's just like generally just not a good place to live. Uh, for, for like a good while, there was a, there was like a guy, like a hermit that lived on the property somewhere and he built a bunch of structures. And it's just, it's just crazy stuff that happened there. But it was really the eighties that gave Dudley town, it's name that brought the ghost community. So that's.

[00:15:54] But now you, I believe you had said, or I'd read or what have you that there was fucking like a lot of pesticides or what happened there? Yeah. So that, that happened earlier in from the eighties. So in like, I think I want to say around the sixties or seventies, that whole area was just sprayed with DDT. Huh. Why? Why? For mosquitoes or? I, I, I honestly do not know. I just, I just remember reading about it because I did some research into it. This was like years ago.

[00:16:23] So it doesn't mean trying to remember it, but like, it was just like, yeah, they sprayed it with like DDT, which could explain why there is no life there because they just murdered it all with agent orange. You know? And so, but like, and I don't know how long that lasts and whatnot. And there's also like the aquifers that run through Connecticut and whatnot are also pretty high in mercury. Uh, so that could have led to the people going mad because, you know, they get heavy metal poisoning. Yeah.

[00:16:51] I mean, one of the things I think is, is so interesting about Dudley town is that for a place that never really had a specific scary story, like there wasn't the Croatoa written on the tree. There wasn't, you know, it's just sort of this, this vague place where people feel creeped out and some bad stuff happened, but I don't know.

[00:17:11] There's, there's a, it's almost like a, an ink blot for abandoned places where you can kind of look at it and decide what kind of abandoned place it is to you and what scares you about it. Yeah. I really do think that the Warrens really stamped that demonic place. If you go there, don't take anything with you. Don't leave anything behind. Like they really stamped that on it. So like when you go there, you, you're going into that place with that kind of mentality. Right.

[00:17:39] And not to mention there are just signs everywhere that say like no trespassing, no, no, no trespassing. Well, that's the thing that weirds me out the most is just how patrolled it is. It's so weird to me that it's, and maybe because of the Warrens making it so popular in the eighties, they were like, we just don't want to fucking deal with people coming here every week.

[00:17:58] But the fact that there are roving police and or private security constantly, like 24 hours a day around this weird holler in Connecticut that has no significant value in terms of agriculture or fucking business. Like why is it have so many no trespassing signs, so many fucking patrolled guards. And that I think probably adds to the lore of this place. Like we got to go see what they're hiding.

[00:18:26] What are they hiding in Dudleytown? Yeah. Because even with like, you know, sure, it's a ghostly tourist attraction kind of, but I mean, even still, how many people a year are really trekking out to Dudleytown that you need like roving patrols 24 hours a day seems a little much for something like that, you know, which is on its own. Yeah, it's not Salem. Yeah.

[00:18:50] I mean, or even, you know, I'm sure you get more kids going to like abandoned malls and those don't have 24 hour police protection stretching back to the 1920s. Well, I will say there's two things that I find funny is that my mom definitely went to Dudleytown in like class trips in the 70s. So it explains a lot if it's post DDT. Yeah. They're still just taking shitty kids schools to like, hey, go sleep on the ground.

[00:19:18] Go sleep on the ground wet with pesticide. Hey, are you enjoying this old episode of new fear unlocked? If so, don't forget that you can stay up to date with brand new commercial free episodes of it every week. The main show's off. Now, here's one of those ad breaks you could be avoiding.

[00:19:40] Speaking of abandoned places that aren't Dudleytown, I think Chris and I spoke a little bit about in the episode, or at least we spoke earlier about Fairfield Hills. Which I found to be funny because I'm sure you've heard this, Pat. Yeah. It's like, it's so funny to me that Fairfield Hills, remember they shot the movie Sleepers there? Yeah, they shot Sleepers there. As children, we all knew that the crew left equipment there because they were so scared.

[00:20:09] It's weird to me that kids are talking about like Dolly Track when we're in middle school. It's weird. Like, why did we all hear that? Why do we all know that story? Yeah. Fairfield Hills, I would say, because I've been there too, also as a dumb high school kid, because what else are you going to do? And back then, the tunnels that connected the buildings were still open and not like filled in. So you could find ways into them.

[00:20:38] And yeah, there was some very strange things going on in those tunnels. That was a much more eerier place than Dudleytown was. Like, Dudleytown just gave you a sense of just like something with heavy just kind of like on you, just like around you but at a distance. Whereas in Fairfield Hills, when you were on that property, especially in the tunnels, you felt like something swallowed you. And you're just like, I need to get out of here like now.

[00:21:08] You always heard strange noises echoing through. It could have been a raccoon, you know, off in the distance with making noise or something. But it was just very, very creepy. That was the place I don't ever want to go back to. It just was not fun. Well, yeah, that's the kind of place where like, like I was saying, Dudleytown is sort of this vague thing where like a place like Fairfield Hills, like a sanitarium, you're aware of the weight of the human suffering that occurred there.

[00:21:34] It's very present as opposed to something that's just like this abandoned town in the woods has more of an allure of mystery to it. Sure. And now, Pat, you were just saying that this was before they filled in the tunnels. Yeah. So tell me a little bit. Do you know anything about the tunnels and why they were filled in or what was the tunnel? Why were there tunnels? I mean, so like the tunnels, because Fairfield Hills is very like infamous in this area.

[00:21:58] It's just kind of like another black stain on Connecticut's history because it was just awful. It was like what occurred there and a lot of just a lot of legends and myths kind of come out of Fairfield Hills and what went on there. But the tunnels were mainly because like what they were doing made a lot of patients very aggressive and rightfully so, especially when someone's messing around with you and they shouldn't be.

[00:22:29] So it's like, and there's just no, there's no fences on like the property or like walls. Which sounds very Connecticut. Yeah. It's like we don't want any, like you don't want to like oblite in the town. Do you know what I mean? Like Westport has no exits on the parkway. Yeah, nothing. It's like they don't want anything that's not beautiful in Connecticut. Like, so I imagine like we can't put up fences and seem unsightly. Pretty much. So it's like then, so like they had to figure out a way to take patients from building to building. So they installed tunnels.

[00:22:57] So it's just like they would just wheel patients under the ground from building to building. That sounds, it sounds terrible. Because the idea, I guess, being that if you did it outside, they can make a run for it. Make a run for it or it would be seen by people and nobody wanted to see that. So hide it, you know, hide it. Yeah, that's, that's crazy. I'd never, I'd never thought about the aesthetic implications of housing the mentally ill. That's Connecticut for it, yes.

[00:23:25] Well, it's like, I don't know if you can call most of the patients in there. I don't know if they were just mentally ill or not. It's just, they're just tortured, really. It's really what went on there. Yeah. And then when it shut down, they just opened up the doors and were just like, okay, go. And that was basically it. The people that were there at the time just flooded out. Yeah. Left. Just left, just left. That was it. You're just like, oh. Yeah, that was deinstitutionalization all across the country.

[00:23:50] Ed and I worked on a show that shot at an old asylum, not asylum, but it was like a mental health complex. A lot of not great rooms in that building. Yeah, a lot of, a lot of very. Remember the mirror rooms? The like weird little kid mirror rooms? Yeah. There were a lot of really questionable activities, I think, happening there. And the story we heard was that they had slowly, because deinstitutionalization had been such a

[00:24:17] clusterfuck, this place, they decided they were slowly going to release people so that you wouldn't have that wave of patients hitting the streets. And at some point, they had the whole complex open, but they only had one guy there. And they kept this place open for this one guy until they finally got rid of that guy. And then everybody finally left. But I think the only thing eerier than a truly abandoned asylum or institution is probably an

[00:24:46] institution that is abandoned except for the one, I imagine, Joker-like patient that's honestly chained up somewhere. It's like, how bad do you have to be to be the last person to go? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Full staff. Yeah. Full staff. Around the clock. And then, and then it's still just going to be like, all right, we'll get out of here. Like, just don't prevent anything to the public society. He still just let go, just last. Yeah, that's stupid.

[00:25:14] So anyway, yeah, Fairfield Hills, definitely something that a lot of people we know like ventured there. But as you said, it's fucked. It was just very, so, so creepy. And since they've collapsed all those tunnels. Not so much collapsed. Some of them did collapse in and others were just kind of like buried off so you can't actually get into them anymore. So they closed off. I believe one of the colleges in Connecticut purchased a lot of the buildings and they're like, they're renovating it really. They're just like, they're renovating building by building.

[00:25:43] So it's just like, it's slowly trying to become something else, but it's still very creepy. When I was in the tunnels, we found a wheelchair. That was one of the most unsettling wheelchairs ever. What does that mean? So it's like, when you see a wheelchair, you think it's like, oh, okay, it's just a wheelchair. It's just a chair with wheels and helps you move somebody that, you know, can't walk or whatnot. No, this one, this one was, it just was slatted boards like all the way down. Oh my God. Slatted everything.

[00:26:11] And you could tell that they were used to be like old buckles. So it's like you sat in this chair and you were just buckled to this chair. It had like a headrest. You could, so if you were in the chair and being moved, you were completely immobilized and just, there was nothing you could do. If the chair tipped over, you just went with it. You didn't fall out of the chair. You were attached to the chair. That was the scene. That fucking sucks. Yeah, scene, scene that, that old wheelchair that we found in one of the, one of the tunnels was very unsettling. And that was just like, nope, I'm done. Bye. So you were in a tunnel.

[00:26:41] You didn't necessarily like get into the patient rooms yet. You were still living in that, that tunnel life. Yeah. That good old tunnel life. And you, so you saw like some Silent Hill shit. Yeah. Straight up, straight up chud stuff. Yeah. So you saw some chud shit. Mm-hmm. And yeah. I mean, it's just funny how many things that in Connecticut people were like, we got to do this. We got to go. And then so quickly we're like, fuck it. Let's go home. Let's just, let's just leave it. Yeah. Just terrible. This was a mistake. Pretty much. I mean, now there's whole YouTube channels.

[00:27:10] Where's, um, is Danvers in Connecticut? Danvers, Connecticut. Sounds like it could be here. It's where they shot, um, Session 9 was like at a, at another abandoned. Uh, I do know Session 9. Great, great film, by the way. It's a really good movie. You work in that field a little bit. I love that, that movie. Does that, now you, you work, that's not what you do though. No, no, no. Yeah. Session 9, that was a, that was the movie about what? The guys that go in to clean the asbestos? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really creepy. It's, it's very good.

[00:27:38] Oh wait, I'm thinking of something entirely different. Yeah, yeah. I was like, that's what you do, right? No. I'm thinking of, uh, Station A? Who the fuck? What am I thinking of? What's the movie with, uh, Carol Danvers from fucking the Marvel movies? And they like, work with like, like troubled youth. Oh, yeah. Um, Short Term 12. Short Term 12 is what I was thinking of. Session 9, Short Term, way off. Way off. That's a very, very, very different movie. A very different movie. I just Googled it and I cannot find a Danvers, Connecticut.

[00:28:08] Yeah. Oh, well maybe it's, it's somewhere in New England. I don't know. I mean there's Danbury, Connecticut. Yeah. Danbury also has some weird stuff going on about it, you know. It's known as the Hat City, Danbury. Mm-hmm. And the, I remember we had to play sports against them and I want to say the name of their team was the Mad Hatters. They are still the Mad Hatters. Yeah. So, and that's because they made hats there, but the, the, whatever they mused in the brims, like mercury over the fucking. Yep, it was always mercury. It was always, in Connecticut, it's all mercury. Mm-hmm.

[00:28:35] And so, yeah, people would lose their minds working at the hat factories. So we go insane. Working with all that stuff, which is why they're the Danbury Mad Hatters. Those, those are some pretty bad vibes for a high school football team. Yeah. I mean, it's just a different time. It was something where you're, you're proud of your fucked up shit too. Yeah. Where, you know what I mean? It was like, oh, it's like, oh, these are the, this is the Westport Radium Girls. Yeah. Well, because if they, if they'd grown up during that time, they probably would have been working in the hat factory instead of at school. Yeah. So pretty much.

[00:29:06] Pretty much. That's true. It's a nice throwback to the way things used to be, the good old days. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it's been, it's, it's nice to have, it's nice to have somebody come on like Pat who did a lot of the stuff that I was too afraid to do. Cause that, what he described here was definitely like graduated from him being like, hey, do you want to come to the cemetery with me and fucking take pictures and see orbs or whatever? Yeah. Like I did that. I didn't go to the next level.

[00:29:35] So it's great to have somebody who's, who did what I didn't do and come on the show. Well, I mean, back then we, we, we went around to a couple of key, key spots. One of the, one of the places in Connecticut where the white lady shows up. My brother claims he saw the white lady. Ooh. Yeah, I know. That's cool. Yeah. I mean, Connecticut's got, Connecticut's got a lot. There's a white lady. There's a, did you ever come with us? Did you ever come with us to Drack Drive? No, I did not go to Drack, Drack Drive.

[00:30:00] It's just like a road called like Velvet Street or something in real life in, in Trumbull that, yeah, I have stories from there. I might've even told them on the previous recording, but yeah, Ray and I, Ray, friend of the show, Ray, we did some, some stuff on Drack Drive. Well, I mean, if you grew up here, you definitely heard the legends about the melon heads. I want to do a whole episode on melon heads. That's a, that's a, that's a tricky subject to cover in 2024. It is.

[00:30:30] Is it because ****? Yeah, because ****. Well, the thing is like, oh, there's so many legends about the, about the melon heads. What is that noise? Did you hear that noise? Oh, that was my frog, sorry. Oh, cool. All right, I've got some frogs chirping in. All right, cool. All right, okay. Well, we, it comes up pretty loud and clear. Well, the frogs might've heard us talking about melon heads. They, you know, they're like cousins at, at this point. If you, if you know like the lore behind it. And there was like, there's like 10,000 different stories about the melon heads. They were, it was like people like incestuous, like when they were like ****. No, no, no. Oh, that's a whole other layer you're adding, Ed.

[00:31:00] That's a whole other layer that'll get us canceled. For, for, for Connecticut, it was always the, the story of like a professor or Dr. Crow, something like that. And he did experiments on like unwanted children. And he basically like pumped their, their skulls full of fluid. That's why they had these misshapen melon heads. And he basically kept them feral. And as the story goes, like that they broke out one day and. Started fucking. And well, killed him and ate him.

[00:31:29] And then just fled into the woods of Connecticut. And, uh, and then hunted in packs. Like that's what it was always told. Like velociraptors. Raptors. Yeah. I know. It's like, it's like, guys, don't go around in the woods at night. The melon heads are watching you. But I mean, did your parents use that? Uh, my dad did. Yeah. My dad did too. Yeah. To like keep us, to get us home at night. Exactly. To be like, oh, the melon heads are out there. Yeah. And you're just like, what is a melon head? And he explains it to you. Like, that's the most terrifying thing I've ever heard of. See, I asked and he was like, it doesn't matter. So you seem to know a lot more than I did.

[00:31:58] My dad was like, just be home. You don't want to know what a melon head is. Yeah. Yeah. Your dad was nicer. My dad went into great detail about it. Telling us about how they would rip you apart and drag you back into the woods to gnaw on you for like a week straight while you slowly died. You're like, okay, thanks dad. Well, some people in the Facebook, our Facebook group have requested feral children. And so we could probably do like a feral children melon head thing. I don't think it's difficult to talk about, Chris. No.

[00:32:24] Well, yeah, I think we could, because there are melon heads in other states. I think Ohio has a melon head legend. So they're around. And yeah, I mean, I think we could find a way to talk about them respectfully. No one's found a melon head, right? I'm saying like, because if you're like, listen, we actually found a tribe, an untouched tribe of melon heads. And they're also all just f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing gnaw. And I get it.

[00:32:54] We don't want to touch that. But the Connecticut melon heads are just like spooky stories. No, they're... I mean, they're... I don't think... They are spooky stories, except for the fact that I do think most of the melon head legends are probably inspired by people with encephalitis who were like thrown out of their communities and may have been living in the woods. Like I do think there is a grain of truth to some of those legends. And we'll just start at the top of the show if this is about encephalitis people.

[00:33:22] You know, we're not punching down on encephalitis people. No. But yeah, so yeah, those were my stories about Dudleytown and Fairfield Hills. Just two creepy places. Both are kind of just like black stains on Connecticut. Things are falling behind you. Yeah. It's all, luckily Chris's audio is all just frogs. Yeah. Fucking, fucking Melonhead just ran by it. My cat somehow. Pretty much. Through a jewel case.

[00:33:47] My cat somehow opened her, her litter box has like a heavy door on the front of it because it's like a piece of furniture and she somehow ripped the door open and it slammed down on the ground. So I apologize. Hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go. I'm just saying. Amazing. All right. Well, Pat, thanks so much for sharing those stories with us. Ed, we're hoping that you can maybe be our Connecticut correspondent for spooky places that the rest

[00:34:17] of us dare not go. And we will post this up for the fans and we'll talk to you soon. I mean, yeah, I've been to a lot of great places around New England. So yeah, easy. Awesome. Thanks, man. Thank you guys for having me. Tons of fun. Thanks, bud. Hey guys, hopefully you enjoyed hearing baby Chris and Ed attempt to interview someone. It was a blast then and a great example of how far we've come now. Huge thanks to Pat Townsend for sharing his stories of multiple abandoned places in Connecticut

[00:34:44] and priming a potentially politically incorrect boogeyman episode in the future. Hell yeah. We'll see if we do that. You know we can't say no to a questionably ethical episode about anything. So you'll be hearing that at some point. Yeah, how did the heads become melons? We'll find out. And then the last two things I wanted to say while I have you is one, we mentioned Agent

[00:35:09] Orange potentially being sprayed at Dudley Town and my dad while driving on this trip told me that Agent Orange is made in Connecticut. I guess we have an answer to the melon heads. Yeah, maybe. So we'll see if that comes up again. And then two, we talked about Fairfield Hills in the episode and they're actually trying to do something with Fairfield Hills now that includes having a farmer's market there where the dumpling place I work at is actually pretty well represented.

[00:35:37] They're now slinging dumplings at Fairfield Hills, which is crazy. Nice. And a brewery has opened called the New Asylum Brewery that I'm definitely going to try and check out before I come home. Cursed. Cursed name. Honestly, tempting fate. Yeah. So anyway, I just want to let people know those two fun facts before we let them go. But this is, you know, this was fun. It was fun for me to just kind of go down memory lane and just see like it's just so crazy how much better we are now.

[00:36:06] I'm not saying what you listened to was bad, but I think we can all agree that if we did the interview today, it might be a little better. I want to do more interviews. I've really grown to enjoy interviewing people. And I think I'm getting better at asking questions. And we have a platform for it now. Like when we interviewed people, even for this episode, it just seemed like it never really fit anywhere in abandoned towns without feeling like, okay, and now we're going to go to an interview and then come back. So it's nice to have a place where we can put an interview without feeling like we're

[00:36:35] shoehorning it into an episode or anything. So anyway, thanks everybody. This has been New Fear Unlocked for this week. It was two years in the making, weirdly. And worth every minute. I think so. Until next time, I'm Chris Cullari. And I'm Ed Voccola. And this has been New Fear Unlocked. We will see you next time. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. The theme song may say this show has no name, but as you know, it actually has a name.

[00:37:03] New Fear Unlocked. The thing you guys always say, that's the name. There's nothing more after this. Not necessarily.