DUDLEYTOWN
2005 (PIPE CLEANERS, GLUE,
FELT)
Dudleytown was a small town located in a densely forested area known as Dark Entry Forest. It is near Cornwall Connecticut. The town existed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but was mysteriously and suddenly abandonned. Many of the residents of the town suffered terrible bad luck and insanity that was brought upon them by an old curse put on the Dudley family. The curse of Dudleytown began in England in 1510 when Edmund Dudley was beheaded for plotting to overthrow King Henry VIII. At the time of his execution a curse was placed on his family saying that all of his descendents would be constantly surrounded by death and horror.
In 1747,
Gideon Dudley, and his two brothers Barzallai and Abiel moved to the area of Connecticut
that became Dudleytown. Abiel was the first victim of the curse in America.
He went completely mad and had to be looked
after by the rest of the villagers. General Swift, who had served under General
George Washington in the Revolutionary War, settled in Dudleytown with his
wife Sarah Faye Smith. In 1804, Sarah Faye Smith
was struck by lightning on her own porch, after this General Smith went mad.
Horace Greeley, the founder of the New York Tribune was also a resident of
Dudleytown. He went mad after his wife Mary Greeley hung
herself in 1872. Just after his wife's death, Horace Greeley lost his bid
for the United States Presidency.
The Carter
family that lived in Dudleytown was suddenly struck with an unidentified fatal
disease. This disease killed all the members of their family but did not spread
to other people in the village. Another resident named William Tanner was
accused of the murder of Gershorn Hollister but throughout the trial he insisted
that he hadn't
murdered him but that a strange hooved creature had come out of the woods
and slashed Hollister. There were many similar reports of upright hooved creatures
with glowing green eyes coming out of the woods. John Patrick Brophy's family
also suffered from the curse. His wife died of consumption and his two children
mysteriously disappeared into the woods where some say they were taken by
the hooved creatures. Brophy's house burned to the ground shortly after and he went
mad. He left Dudleytown and was never seen again.
In the 1920's a cancer specialist named Dr. William Clark, bought a piece of land in Dark entry forest and built a summer home there for him and his wife. One summer when they were staying there, he was called into New York City on an emergency and when he returned he found that his wife had gone mad. She said that the forest had attacked her and that she had seen green ghosts and strange beasts coming out of the woods. After this episode she spent the rest of her life in a mental hospital.
Today only
the foundations of the town remain but people that visit there still claim
that they are somehow affected by the curse.