Tag Archives: Stafford CT

Aug 14 2020

What Is That At Hydeville Pond? Stafford, CT

There’s something about old mills that make you pay attention to them. Like an old cemetery, they stand as a reminder of an earlier time that has moved on. Old mills have stored the energy of hundreds of people who labored hard and spilled their sweat amid conditions that today would be considered hazardous to employees.

Some old mills still stand as home to new thriving businesses within their old walls. Some have been abandoned for years. And some keep on an old worker or two who never left when their earthly shift was done.

The old Hydeville Company mill was built in 1860 around water from the Hydeville Pond in Stafford CT. It has seen a few businesses over its time, but the longest running was the Phoenix Woolen Mill that existed from 1868 through 1939. For most of its life the Phoenix Mill was run by Edwin C. Pinney and his son Charles B. Pinney.

After Phoenix closed a few other businesses popped up in the building, but didn’t last.

Today, this huge place sits in neglect and disrepair – although there is evidence that others are still using a part of it that is somehow still standing. The place is crumbling down around itself. It’s a ghost of what it once was. It makes you wonder why those that still occupy a part of it haven’t tried more to save the building. It’s even beautiful in its neglect and disrespect.

The property consists of two main mill buildings at 104 and 108 Hydeville Road. Included in the original plan for the mill businesses were multi-family employee housing units. One was located on East Street, three on Hydeville Road, and two on Satkowski Drive. Of all the housing, the places on Satkowski Drive most hugged the shores of Hydeville Pond near a small waterfall.

We wanted to check the old mill out and were going to ask anyone there if it would be alright to look around the buildings that are still standing, but the place was locked up and there’s chain link fencing around access to doors. So, instead we walked around the area and stopped to observe Hydeville Pond as it was probably a water power source for the mill. The place seemed like a wonderful area to enjoy nature. But – it wasn’t. The idyllic area soon turned odd. Birds stopped chirping and everything took on a quiet darkness.

As we took a look at what seemed to be a small pond above a little dam and waterfall there was a whitish mist that floated over the area. It moved and started meandering between the trees. The apparition, or whatever it was, floated above the pond, darted to the left and hung over the shore on a property that must abut the pond at that point.

It was weird and the whitish figure didn’t move.

Not really knowing the area, we left and decided to see what else could be seen of the pond. We drove out of what I think is Hydeville Road and went to the left. You could see the pond from the backside of where the water went over the small falls. There was a lot of vegetation both in the water and around the road side area to the water. This place is listed as a ‘reservoir’ – it looks more like a puddle.

All of a sudden a large orb manifested near the shore, at about the same point we had seen it earlier from the waterfall area. It floated a bit more to the right toward what must have been someone’s yard just off shore. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing. After a few minutes, the orb reappeared next to the shore of the pond and again moved into the yard it seemed to have gone into previously.

Maybe something happened to a mill worker or their family in that area. It would be good to delve into old records of that time, but given what world conditions are these days, that investigation is going to have to wait.

     – ashanta

May 5 2018

A Haunting or A Lingering Energy?

We’re still fairly new to the Quiet Corner of Connecticut.  This area got its nickname because this is a fairly rural area.  It’s a very rural area if you’re used to suburban living with everything you need just down the street from where you live.  Around here, groceries can be half an hour away.  We’ve found, also, that some of the ‘quiet’ comes from the fact that unless you’re born around these parts, you’re always an outsider.  Conversations are kept polite and stories about ‘happenings’ only come from other transplants that still haven’t been completely taken into the fold.

We bought this place out of necessity.  Our other house sold quickly, we had to move out even faster, and there wasn’t a lot of inventory on the market at the time.  The first time we saw it in person is when we moved in  —  Unless you find an exceptional real estate agent,  not motivated only by the vision of commissions dancing in their head,  this method is not recommended.

The surroundings here are quaint and quite pretty.   Wildlife, and I mean the forest kind, is abundant.  And crime is low on the scale – which is a nice thing.  The energy here, though, is odd.  It doesn’t have a good flow and it’s not an even flow…there’s a strangeness about it.  It’s something that was difficult to put your finger on until a couple of months ago when something may have become plausible.

Someone from another town told us of an accident that happened many years ago somewhere in the vicinity of this house.  If it wasn’t our house, there are only three others it could have been.  We’re all lined up on the same side of the street.

A child was on her bike and started heading down the driveway.  These houses sit on the side of a mountain and as such, the driveways are a nasty pitch upward from the street out front to the rear of the houses.  The road out front is the only major route connecting area towns to major highways.  The child could not stop at the bottom of the driveway and careened out into traffic.  Traffic couldn’t stop in time.

In the short time we’ve been here there have been three or four major crashes right around the front of these houses.  Two have hit our retaining wall that abuts the sidewalk.  The last one split the utility pole next to our driveway into two pieces.  A truck flipped over on its side in front of the next house down from here.   Our neighbor right next door, who we partially share a driveway with told us that a couple of years ago a car took out three utility poles right in front of both our houses….

I can’t help but wonder if the tragic event that took that little girl’s life so many years ago didn’t create an area of negative energy that precipitates other accidents.  Negative energy could certainly be created by such an horrific situation that affected so many lives.  The child may not know how to leave the area or find her way to a different plane.  When she feels she is able to pull someone to her that may be able to help, another accident happens.

I also wonder if this negative pocket of energy hasn’t existed in this particular part of town for a very long time causing many accidents over decades that go unremembered or recorded.  This thing almost feels as though it waits and claims what it wants when its energy starts getting low.

I’m not sure if the little girl can be helped or if any of this energy can be mitigated, but have decided to try and reach out to both and see where it goes from there.  It’s a start.

–  ashanta

 

Apr 18 2018

A Cigar-Shaped Craft

Stafford  isn’t far from Bradley Field in CT, so air traffic is a fairly frequent occurrence.  But one afternoon in late November 2017, it wasn’t a Boeing or an Airbus that made an appearance.  While sitting in a shopping center parking lot, waiting for her husband, a woman saw a large, cigar-shaped, metallic craft emerge from the Northeast.  There were no apparent wings or tail structure.  The object was drifting rather low above tree level and didn’t make any noise.   She looked around the parking lot to see if anyone else was noticing it, but anyone who was outside seemed focused on their shopping bags, vehicles, and/or cell phones.

She continued to watch the craft’s trajectory toward the Southwest.  It continued on and went behind a stand of tall trees and out of sight.  She kept watching, expecting it to re-emerge from the other side of the copse, but that didn’t happen.  The object never re-appeared.  There was no apparent place it could have landed and there wasn’t any kind of a crash anywhere.  It simply vanished.

I have neither heard nor read about any other account of this sighting.  I did check on Peter Davenport’s National UFO Reporting Center website, (nuforc.org), in the state of Washington and found eight UFO reports for central MA and six UFO reports for northern CT within a week or so of this sighting, but found nothing from the Stafford area.

How many people look up a lot these days to gaze at the stars, watch the clouds, or even take in a beautiful sunset?  Ancient peoples studied the heavens to determine and plan their cycles of life.   In the twenty-first century, people study the horizon of their cell phones, glued to mundane messages that don’t foretell much past the next few coming hours.    We miss so much and don’t seem to care if we are in touch with our greater universal existence or not.

– ashanta