Monsters of Grenhaven Part 5: Night Walkers

Here's the last entry in James A.S. Lee's "Monsters of Grenhaven". Posted with permission from the author.

"THE NIGHT WALKERS

On a cold autumn night in September, 1923, night security officer Atwood Delacey was making his rounds at the Whitney Shipping House near the waterfront when he noticed a strange pair of beings wandering along the edge of the rooftop. According to Delacey, the creatures resembled “walking wishbones or bobby pins”. They were nothing but round heads on a pair of long, stilt-like legs. They were covered in plates or scales, including jointed bands of armor running down their legs and a ring of rectangular “windows” around the middle of the main body. One of the creatures was half the size of the other and seemed to constantly scurry after its larger companion like a puppy following its mother.

Delacey watched the beings pace back and forth for about ten minutes before he went into the building to investigate. When he got to the roof, though, the creatures were gone.

This would be the first and only sighting of the so-called “Night Walkers” in Grenhaven. But a similar creature was seen on several occasions far to the Northwest in Boston Corner, New York (originally part of Massachusetts).

From 1825 to 1898, people would occasionally report sightings of a stilt-legged “Pumpkinhead” monster wandering the hemlock forests that clung to the sides of the nearby Taconic Mountains. This mysterious visitor only added to the appeal of Boston Corner, which was already infamous as a wild, lawless town of prize fighters, drunks, criminals and black marketers.

In the summer of 1854, one of the sightings led to an outright hunt for the creature. According to the Boston Corner Gazette, a local man ran yelling into the crowd at a prize fight claiming to have seen the Pumpkinhead skulking around an alley. The crowd fled in a panic, which naturally angered the two pugilists in the ring, Gottlab Straw and Douglas “Ducky” Poole (nicknamed after his peculiar limp caused by an old injury). Eager to take revenge on the creature that had ruined their show, Straw and Poole collected a small militia to “drive the damned thing back to Hell once and for all”. In the end, though, no trace of the Pumpkinhead could be found. This event is the inspiration for the Massachusetts folk song “Ducky on the Hunt”*

No one knows precisely what the Grenhaven Night Walkers or the Boston Corner Pumpkinhead were. Some have suggested they were beings from another world that had slipped through a window into our plane of existence. Others have claimed that the creatures are some sort of unknown Earthly animal. Still others have suggested that they are nature spirits or elementals that have always inhabited the Northern woods. Supposedly there are Native legends about them going back centuries. Those who believe this theory have pointed to strange wooden statues of the beings found in the woods around Boston Corner shortly after the sightings began. These, they claim, were created by prehistoric Indians to pay homage to the spirits.

These claims have been called into doubt, though, by Mohican spiritual leader Joseph Tallpine, who says that there is no record of any being even remotely resembling the Pumpkinhead in his people’s legends. Furthermore, examination of the “prehistoric” wooden statues showed that they were freshly cut and carved around the same time that the sightings began, suggesting that they were probably created by locals to drum up more publicity. 

*see Ephram Switon’s “Gandydancing: Folksongs of Working America”

Also, here's a list of other books by Lee, from the back of the pamphlet:

Monsters of Grenhaven Part 4: The Leyaks

Here's another entry from James A.S. Lee's "Monsters of Grenhaven", posted with the author's permission.

"THE LEYAKS

The terrors of the witch trials are a dark shame on the history of New England. While the infamous trials at Salem are the most well known, Connecticut actually has the dubious distinction of being the first place in the New World where people were tried and executed for witchcraft. The hysteria began in 1647 and would continue for nearly fifty years, during which time 33 women and two men were murdered by the courts of the witch-hunters. Oftentimes the victims were older women who lived outside the community, or women who “knew too much”, or were too inquisitive and interested in the natural world. Most of the perpetrators were likely motivated by greed. Many of the women accused were married but without children, and thus would inherit their husband’s property upon his death. If she died first, however, her husband’s valuables would be given to the community once he died. Thus having the wife executed as a witch meant the accusers would be able to get their hands on the husband’s goods when he passed.

When public opinion outgrew witch-craft hysteria, some looked back and saw the trials for what they were. Righteous judges became cruel torturers, and accusers were cast anew in the light of greed and avarice. In Grenhaven, which has had its own shameful history of witch-trials, a legend sprang up surrounding the execution of alleged witch Mary Carrington. Her accusers, John Colwen, Silas Orne, Mary Goodwin and Wilbur Greensmith Jr. were motivated by a desire to seize the successful woodworking shop of Carrington’s ailing husband. After Mary was hanged, it is said that the Earth beneath her feet cracked open and the Devil Himself emerged to punish Colwen and the others along with the sentencing judge, Enoch Hathorne. Though the five fled, the Devil chased them all the way to East Haddam, where he left his hoofed footprints in the glen known as Devil’s Hopyard. In desperation, they offered to give their tormentor all of Carrington’s property in exchange for their souls. The Devil accepted their deal and allowed their souls to remain on Earth. However, he took their bodies down to Hell, leaving them as disembodied spirits forced to wander the Connecticut woods for eternity.

With the arrival of immigrants from Indonesia in the late 19th century, a new wrinkle was added to the tale. Along with these new citizens came the tradition of the Leyak (pronounced “Lee-ak”, the y is silent), sorcerers-- usually female- who could detach their heads from their bodies at night and fly about with their entrails hanging from the ragged stump of their neck.

According to the tales, Rangda, the queen of these creatures met the wandering ghosts of Colwen, Orne and the others and offered to give them new bodies if they would serve her. Desperate to the point of insanity, the ghosts agreed and instantly found themselves restored to human form. Come nightfall, however, they discovered the true horror of their situation as their heads ripped off of their bodies and flew into the night. These New World leyaks continue to serve Rangda in the hopes that she will someday grant them their freedom and allow them to either assume normal human lives or at least finally find the sleep of death.

Though the Grenhaven Leyaks exist primarily in folk tales and ghost stories, a few sightings have cropped up over the years. In 1903 a hunter reported seeing three black, ragged-looking objects approximately the size and shape of human heads floating through the forest. In 1935, workers tearing down the ruins of the retired Meyers Mill along Wolsten Creek reported hearing sobs and choking sounds from the woods at night, and being terrified by shadows that floated just outside the light of their fires. In 1941 a pharmacist snapped the haunting “DeBois Photo” which appears to show the blurry image of a man’s floating head and entrails drifting across a bridge.

Then of course there are the numerous sightings and legends among Grenhaven’s Indonesian population, which are covered in full in the author’s book “Ghosts of Bali: Indonesian Folklore in the New World”.

Monsters of Grenhaven Part 3: Lou Carcolh

Here's another entry from James A.S. Lee's "Monsters of Grenhaven". Posted with the author's permission.

"LOU CARCOLH

If you are walking in the woods and you happen upon a strip of grass long and winding as a ribbon with blades that are thin and brown like hair, tread not upon this peculiar foliage or you may become a meal for the dreaded Lou Carcolh.

The Lou Carcolh, so the old folks of Little France say, is something like a snail and something like a serpent. There is no precise description of the beast since almost no one has seen it. At least, no one who has escaped its traps. The Lou Carcolh is believed to inhabit caves beneath the woods outside Grenhaven, in particular, the section of forest called “Leeds’ Hop” is said to be the preferred territory of this malevolent mollusk.

To feed, the creature extends from its burrow its flat, ribbon-like tentacles which can each be almost a mile long. These tentacles are covered with sticky brown hairs rather like a sundew. Indeed, some stories claim that the Lou Carcolh is not an animal at all, but a gigantic, mobile species of the common Drosera found in New England bogs. Others have compared the beast to Spaghetti worms (Loimia medusa) of the South Pacific. Like the Lou Carcolh, these annelids live in burrows- though theirs are in heads of coral rather than underground- and drape their long, sticky tentacles along the reef to ensnare prey.

Legends of the Lou Carcolh originated in Southwestern France, near the border with Spain. According to the legends of Nouvelle France a rich Huguenot merchant, Etienne Coustou, collected several of the creature’s eggs as curiosities and took them with him when he sailed to the New World to escape Catholic persecution. Upon arrival he was robbed in the port. Among the items stolen were several Lou Carcolh eggs. Apparently at least one of them hatched and survived to haunt the dark hemlock hills surrounding Grenhaven.

Not all of the eggs were stolen, however. Two still remain in the possession of the Coustou family. They have put them on display at various times, the latest being a display of family treasures at the Trompe-l’oeil House.

Though some have suggested that the “eggs” are nothing but polished spheres of peridotite, this hypothesis must remain untested for now since the Coustou family has refused to allow anyone to examine the eggs."

Monsters of Grenhaven Part 2: Noah's Raven

Here's another entry from James A.S. Lee's "Monsters of Grenhaven" manual, posted with the author's permission. Lee told me he used to pass these out at cryptid and paranormal festivals to promote his books. Seems Thom and Dr. Barnes were fans.

"NOAH'S RAVEN

Bezu and Anna Brasselay were returning home on a cold autumn’s eve after a long day selling cloisonné at the October Market in Mystic. As they started to cross the Hetman bridge, Bezu drew the horses to a halt. In the center of the bridge crouched something large and black. Anna thought it might be an injured bear or a man in a heavy coat. Then the thing rose to a height two heads taller than a man and turned to look at them. Both merchants cried out in fright as the red-glowing eyes- round and large as the full moon- fixed on them. The apparition remained motionless, skewering them to the spot with its gaze. Then it opened a set of wings so massive that the tips touched the railings of the bridge. It then rose straight up into the air, according to Bezu’s later report to the Grenhaven Gazette. “It did not crouch and leap as a bird would,” he said. “Nor did it flap its wings. No sir, it rose straight up with legs and wings held stiff as if it was a marionette lifted on strings.”

Such was the first known sighting of the strange flying being that would terrorize Grenhaven and surrounding farms for six months in the autumn and winter of 1887.

The beast was given many names in the beginning- Devil Bird, Devil Moth, Snollygost, Grey Scratch. But the moniker that ultimately stuck was Noah’s Raven. This unusual name has its origins in the famous dinosaur tracks that are abundant in the central valley of Connecticut. In 1802 Pliny Moody was plowing his fields in Hadley Massachusetts when he uncovered large, three-toed fossil footprints. Impressed by his find, Pliny installed the tracks as a step on his front porch and allowed the curious to come see them. Religious leaders declared that the tracks had come from the mythical raven that had been dispatched from Noah’s Ark to find land after the Flood.

Later, famed geologist Edward Hitchcock would identify the footprints as belonging to a giant prehistoric bird. Later researchers would correctly identify the prints as belonging to a bipedal carnivorous dinosaur called Eubrontes.

It’s not clear how the Eubrontes tracks came to be associated with Grenhaven’s “Devil Bird”, particularly since the city lies in the gneiss highlands far from the sedimentary sandstones of the Central Valley where the tracks are found. It’s thought that the comparison may have been made in jest when a set of tracks were installed in the Grenhaven Natural History Museum.

Regardless of the name’s origin, it’s doubtful that anyone seriously thought the Devil Moth was genuinely the bird from Noah’s Ark or that it had made the tracks. But the name still stuck.

After Bezu and Anna’s original sighting, the Raven made several appearances throughout town. Shopkeeper Hiram Levy repeatedly saw the creature crawling head-first down the Moonlight Tower that illuminated the center of town.

Farmer Jean Barré saw it gliding over his fields “stiff as a board without even a flap of its damned wings!”

Many witnesses reported being filled with dread upon seeing its red eyes. One man even claimed that it also had a glowing horn or carbuncle on its forehead.

Sightings of Noah’s Raven abruptly ended on March 7th. That night, a terrible fire swept through the city, destroying many homes and historical buildings. Several people have remarked on the fact that the Raven was no longer seen after the fire. Some believe it actually caused the conflagration. Others swore they saw it consumed in the flames. Still others have postulated that the being may have been a harbinger, it’s sudden disappearance prophesying the disaster.

There is an eerie addendum to this story. A few weeks after the fire, several people including Bezu and Anna were visited by an odd man who claimed to be a “census taker” and would ask mundane, seemingly random questions such as what someone had had for breakfast or how much paper they had in the house. He would typically end his interrogations by asking people if they had seen or heard of Noah’s Raven. If the interviewee responded yes, he would insist that what they had seen was a misidentified owl or crane, or even a case of hysteria-induced hallucination. If the person objected, Frost was said to repeat his assertions in an automatic way, as if reading from a script. Eventually he would simply end the conversation and abruptly leave.

Those who encountered this stranger remarked on his constant, unnerving smile which never wavered throughout the encounter and which led to people referring to him as the Grinning Man. Many also noted the unusual paleness of his skin and the way it seemed too thick and almost detached from the underlying muscle and bone. His clothes were said to be two sizes too small and thirty years out of fashion.

What connection, if any, the Grinning Man had to Noah’s Raven is unknown."  

Monsters of Grenhaven Part 1: Sandbar Devils

Hey everyone. I opened a new packet of letters from Thom and found this pretty neat little manual about local legends and monsters. Grenhaven has a long, long history of supernatural goings-on. Heck, we're one of the most "monster-heavy" places in New England.

James A.S. Lee is a folklorist and monster-hunter who has become quite the celebrity around here. Every giftshop stocks his books. He even opened a "Museum of the Paranormal" a few years ago down by the harbor.

"Monsters of Grenhaven" was a small pamphlet that summarized a few of the entries from his book "The Raven and the Devil", which is a pretty engrossing read if you can find a copy. With his permission, I'm posting a few pics of the interior, plus a complete transcript of the text.

I'm going to break the entries into several posts to keep things at a reasonible length.

Here's the first entry:

THE SANDBAR DEVILS

“What is it? the Devil! The Devil, you say? The very one. Seems he’s tired of leaving his footprints in hopyards and has decided to take a dip in the sound.”

Such was the opening line of the article in the Grenhaven Evening Gazette that first introduced folks in Connecticut to the strange aquatic critters known alternately as Sandbar Devils, Devil-Squids, Ol’ Sandy or, in more recent years, Stego-Squids.

The first Sandbar Devil was sighted in 1896 by local fisherman Burton Hall, who saw it basking at low tide on one of the sandbars that choke the mouth of the Connecticut River. He said it resembled a giant “anomalous shrimp” with a row of spines along its back. Hall also described the beast as being “black as jet, with a pearly sheen like opal.”

Sandbar Devils didn’t really get big until 1901, when multiple students from Grenhaven University on a boating tour of Long Island Sound reported seeing a small school of the creatures frolicking “like otters” amongst the bars. Witnesses described the creatures as having distinctly segmented bodies like lobsters, but with large wings or fins along their flanks. The Devils’ heads were adorned with two thick arms or tentacles, “great appendages,” said witness Archibald Browning, “lined with barbs on the undersides that I don’t doubt could have ripped a man to ribbons.” Perhaps the most unusual features of the creatures, though, were their tails, which bore double rows of spikes not unlike the prehistoric stegosaurus. Thus the more colorful, comic-book name “Stego-Squids.”

The most famous sighting of these beasties came in 1911. On a misty morning in early spring, amateur marine biologist Martin Leeds was out in his boat collecting specimens for his private cold-water aquarium.

“I’d just pulled up a big stone covered with Ciona (intestinalis. A kind of tunicate or sea squirt- ed). As I was pulling it up in the boat, I saw a huge black shape- nearly as wide from wing-tip to wing-tip as I was tall- glide under my keel. I thought it must be a ray of some sort, but then it came back and flipped on its back and extended these long, jointed arms out of the water and grabbed the rock with wicked-looking hooks all along the undersides. I remember them real distinctly. They were white at the roots, staining to amber near the tips, like barnacles on the shore rocks. The thing’s mouth was weird. Like a pineapple ring, or a lamprey’s mouth, you know? I fought it for a bit. It kept tugging and hissing and spitting jets of water from that pineapple-ring mouth. Finally I let go and it took the rock back down, I guess to eat those tunicates. Or maybe, I don’t know- maybe it had laid some eggs on the rock that I’d overlooked, and it was just protecting its young. Anyway, last thing I saw was that sharp, spiny tail slapping the side of my boat. You can still see the scratches it left.”

Stego-squids have been sighted off and on over the decades, usually among the sandbars at the river’s mouth. Though one witness reported seeing one all the way up by Rocky Hill near the historic ferry.

Skeptics have dismissed the sightings as misidentified rays or skates. Perhaps even an errant mantra ray that came in from the Atlantic and got lost. Those who believe the Sandbar Devils are real, unknown animals have suggested that they could be a new species of squid, or perhaps even large swimming lobsters. Famed folklorist and cryptozoologist Paul Brighton believes they may be a type of mantra ray whose “horns” have evolved into long, flexible grasping appendages."