On the 19th of December, 1745, an article was published in the Boston News-Letter, an early colonial newspaper, which reported what is believed to be the first account of the now-infamous "Woodstock Poltergeist. The account details an event wherein an anonymous visitor to the rural town of Woodstock discovered a house which was assailed by a barrage of supernaturally levitated stones which ocurred on December 6th of the same year.
Though the article itself does not explicitly state whether the town mentioned is the same Woodstock, CT that we are all familiar with, though the similar nature of the incident to other reports from later dats indicate that this is very likely to be the case. Because of this, we consider this to be the first reported incident of a haunting localized within the Woodstock area. Attempts to ascertain further information about the original author of this letter or further information about the Davenport family, whose residence is reported as the afflicted site in the letter, have so far proved unsuccessful, though this project is currently ongoing.
Though any reports prior to this have yet to be discovered, we currently feel confident that the incident which produced this haunting likely dates back to slightly earlier in the century, given the reported severity of the incident.
This incident is not believed to have resulted in any casualties.
The Autobiography of Melinda Moore , distant relative of successful Boston businessman and Woodstock native Henry Bowen, features a report of a paranormal incident which occurred in Roseland Cottage, Bowen's Woodstock summer home, which attests the following:
Uncle Henry was clearly very proud of his summer home, but I personally felt quite ill at ease at the cottage. The sharp, angular exterior always struck me as imposing, despite its fairly small stature - it always appeared to me as the blighted ancestral manor of a British Romance, the likes of which my dear sister always wished me to read [...]
It appeared as though inexplicable events plagued the grounds of that house. Occasionally, loud crashes would proceed our discovery of some object in a formerly empty room which had fallen to the ground, destroyed [...] Uncle Henry always claimed that a gust of wind was responsible for the incident, but so often Diana and I would find an object resting place to be disquietingly far from its origin, and quite frequently in a room where all the windows were firmly shut, that we never agreed with his explanation. Uncle Henry was always a very logical man, while Diana and I were much more prone to fancy [...]
One particularly unsettling incident which I can vividly recall ocurred when I was but a young girl, barely older than 10 years, if that. It was an insufferably hot night, and, struggling greatly to fall asleep, I was startled by a series of not particularly loud but clearly audible sounds coming from the sitting-room. In my childhood bravery, I determined to investigate the incident; though I had no candle, the abnormally bright light of the full moon, which came through the open windows, was more than enough to guide me. I recall how uncomfortable the night itself felt; the sordid heat and damp air clung to me and weighed me down. Upon reaching the sitting-room I discovered a peculiar scene: a few objects which I had believed to be prior resting on tables lay on the ground, but most strangely, a few stones appeared to be scattered across the floor, which had certainly not been in the sitting-room before I had retired for the evening. At that moment, I felt a slight breeze fly past my head, followed by a sound of impact with the wall behind me; turning around, I discovered another stone had seemingly been launched from somewhere else in the room, towards me, missing by just a short distance. I turned back, but I could not see anyone else in the room [...]
Though I accept the most practical description for this event is, as Uncle Henry claimed, that I had simply had a bad dream, I recall that the incident felt unsettingly real to me personally. Whether or not this even truly ocurred, I am certain that any house which may invite itself to be the site of such ghastly scenes, real or contained entirely within the minds of children, cannot be a truly innocent dwelling [...]
Though Moore herself calls her own veracity into question, the similarity of this incident with others reported allows us to be confident that Moor encountered a true haunting at Roseland Cottage. It also implies that some sort of persistant haunting was ocurring at the house in the mid-1800s.
A letter, submitted to us by a donor who wishes to remain anonymous after the debut of this archive, reports another account of the Woodstock haunting. Most details of this letter have been redacted for privacy reasons, though small portions of the account are currently publicly available. The author of this letter was visiting their cousin in Woodstock and wrote the following:
I never really thought much about it when you complained that Tom and I were constantly getting into trouble, but something really concerning happened to us up in Connecticut. This one wasn't our fault, though. Anyways, one night, we met up with a couple of his friends and just went out, grabbed a few drinks, all that. Not entirely sure how it happened, but we ended up wandering around the woods outside of town. Honestly, it's a wonder we didn't get lost [...]
We came across this clearing, and I had this really bad feeling. Nothing really looked all that wrong, I suppose, but I just generally felt like something wasn't right there. Not sure if anyone else felt the same; but I'm sure they did after what happened next. You aren't going to believe this, but I promise you, it happened. There was this ring of rocks in the middle of the clearing - it looked kinda like one of those Irish fairy circles Grandma used to tell us about. Well, when we got close to it, some of the rocks started floating! I thought I was losing my mind, but then - and this is the scary part - one of them flew straight at Tom, hitting him square in the arm. Well, safe to say we ran like hell out of there, Tom especially. Now, you might just think we had too much to drink, but it really happened. Tom's got the bruise to prove it.
Though the details of this particular letter is sparse on details, it indicates the continuing presence of a haunting in the Woodstock area, as well as the means by which this haunting typically manifests. Further details of this incident are currently to remain private by request of the donor.
The following account of the Woodstock haunting was submitted to us by a reader after the launch of this archive. Though it is an unverified personal account, we have placed it here in order to provide a cohesive history of reports of the Woodstock poltergeist, up to just a few years ago:
The weekend before the 4th of July, 1994, my Boy Scout troop went on a camping trip up from New Haven to Woodstock. I was 13 at the time, just old enough to not really be scared by most things, but still pretty impulsive when it came to my decision making. A couple of guys I knew decided one night to sneak out of camp and wander around the area. I went with them, for some reason, even though there isn't really all that much to see up there. A lot of forest, a few old houses, but nothing that I hadn't seen in other places around Connecticut. We were close to this one old house that I thought was really creepy - I can't remember what it was called, but I think it was some kind of tourist attraction, but not something we were there to see. Something just felt kind of off to me, but I didn't want to say anything - didn't want to look scared in front of everyone else, you know. Well, you can probably guess what happened: We got pelted with rocks, just like in that old newspaper. There was definitely nobody around to throw them, that's for sure; and it wasn't even a particularly rocky area, as far as I can tell. It's like they were being conjured out of thin air. I'm glad I finally get to tell somebody about this; we definitely didn't tell anyone in the scout troop about what happened, since none of us wanted to get in trouble for sneaking out, and I hadn't really kept in contact with any of those guys after I moved away. I wish I had some pictures or something, but unfortunately my word is all I have
This account features what is possibly the second reference of Roseland in respects to the Woodstock poltergeist, and depicts generally similar circumstances to the rest of the earlier-dated incident reports. This supposed mention of Roseland was submitted to us before Incident #0502078 was known to us, possibly implying the veracity of this story, though it is still impossible to confirm whether or not this should be viewed as a legitimate incident report.