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Bara Hack: Village of Voices

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Leaferne

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sacomm.com/barahack.htm
Link is dead. None of the captures archived at the Wayback Machine contain any content other than offering the domain for sale.

August 30, 1971, several students of parapsychology made the first of three visits to Bara-Hack, a Connecticut village that had long been abandoned and was rumored to be haunted. They sought documentation and photographic evidence of these stories.

After setting up a base camp in a nearby state park, they embarked on an investigation that would change their lives forever.

Discover what they found by following the links below,

... if you dare
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I thought we had a "creepy Connecticut" thread on here but guess not. Has anyone else heard of this? Any eastern US FTMBers who've been there?

I also came across this:

The Secret of Grantchester Meadows

Relatively well known is the lost settlement of Bara Hack in Pomfret, Connecticut, otherwise known as the "Village of Voices". What is less well known is that the town of Scituate, R.I., has its own version of Bara Hack...of sorts. Actually, all that remains is a couple of crumbling foundations of what once may have been a two story farmhouse and an adjoining barn, located quite a distance along an overgrown wooded path, along Rt.12 (also known as Tunk Hill) in the southwest section of Scituate. Although the exact history of the foundations remains a mystery, it was most probably an antiquated farm residence which was allowed to fall to neglect after the advent of the Scituate Resevoir, in the early part of the 20th century. During the early 1970's, a teenage lad and some of his buddies began to frequent the spot, and began affectionately referring to the area as "Grantchester Meadows", after the title of a piece on a Pink Floyd album ("Umma Gumma")...and the name just kind of stuck. However, as peaceful and secluded as this area may have been, a few local residents soon began experiencing what could only be decribed as brief "time lapses" while standing in or near the main foundation...an uncanny sensation that they were somehow momentarilly being "included" in the past as well as the present! These sensations have been described as a brief feeling of dizziness, or light-headedness, with no apparent natural explanation. Also in or near the area, the seemingly solid-looking specter of an older gentleman, dressed in what appears to be dark 19th century clothes, has reportedly been spotted. When spoken to, so they say, he will not reply, but will simply continue to stand there eerilly staring...before sometimes instantaneously appearing in another location altogether!

In the early to mid 1970's, this area was also known to have been utilized as a location for some sort of pagan rituals...although the members of this "coven" seemed never to have littered or abused the landscape in any way.

To my knowledge, nothing really unusual has been reported to have taken place in the area known as "Grantchester Meadows" during the past several years. Then again, the area is protected as Watershed Property...so the next time you happen to be out on a rural drive along the Scituate Resevoir, please demonstrate proper respect for the area, and perhaps stop and politely chat with a consevation officer!
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Source
Link is dead. No archived version found.
 
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It seems that the location for the VIlliage of the Voices is well known, so it's not a hoax from what I can tell...:

LINK to a school field trip page, perhaps set up by a local individual.

It's interesting, and around the same time as the Belmez faces, I think....
 
MrRING said:
And the leader of the investigation in the Villiage of Voices has a fairly extensive website:

http://www.newenglandghosts.com/
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The photos aren't a lot to look at though, he could have saved a lot of time scanning if he'd focused his camera or cleaned the windows of the house he was taking pictures of, most of them seem to be more imagination than anything else.
 
Moe Bara-Hack linkage:

tangledforest.com/tangledf/barahackx.html
Link is dead. See subsequent post for access info and the full text of the MIA webpage.

Village of Voices, Bara-Hack

Bara-Hack is near Pomfret. It is a village deep in the woods of northeastern Connecticut. It's name was Bara-Hack, Welsh for "breaking of bread." It was founded in 1780, by two Welsh families. The founders of the town was Obadiah Higginboth (1750-1803), and the other was
Jonathan Randall. The first ghostly sightings were from the Randall's slaves. They said that they could see ghosts at dusk reclining in the branches in a certain elm tree in the burial ground. The town has been unoccupied since 1890, and is now just visible by it's cellar holes, and small cemetery.

Bara-Hack almost immediately became known for being haunted. In 1927, Odell Shepard wrote in his book, The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, as
follow:

Here had been their houses, represented today by a few gaping cellar holes out of which tall trees were growing; but here is the Village of Voices. For the place is peopled still... Although there is no human habitation for a long distance round about and no one goes there except
the few who go to listen, yet there is always a hum and stir of human life... They hear the laughter of children at play... the voices of mothers
who have long been dust calling their children into the homes that are now mere holes in the earth. They hear vague snatches of song... and
the rumble of heavy wagons along an obliterated road. It is as though sounds were able in this place to get round that incomprehensible corner, to pierce that mysterious soundproof wall that we call Time.
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The reclining ghost is interesting because it makes it sound like some of the early incarnations of the Bell Witch. As I brought up on an earlier thread:
5) Materialization - appeared at a dog-thing, a bird thing, and a girl in a green dress before the main haunting. Also, during the period of 4 different personalities, it appeared as a woman with a family that appeared in a field and was shot at, only to disappear and the spirit claimed that one was injured by a bullet. Also, it took a fancy to one fellow who felt it climb into bed with him. It also shook people's hands.
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If I recall the details correctly, one of the times the woman and children were seen, they were sitting in a tree.

Creepy.
 
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Found a posting from Google Groups (the old dejanews):

So, friends and compatriots and parrots and whatnot, I returned to Bara-Hack in Pomfret, CT again last week. This time the crew was just me and my life-long friend, Matthew. Unlike the previous time(s) I've been to the site, we have something to report! First, is the energy. Maybe it can be attributed to nerves, but then, I never get nervous enough to shake like I was before we even got out of the car. And I had no real reason to be nervous, seeing as I've been in these woods before at night, and under spookier conditions (fog and such). And nothing could be as bad as when I tried to go through the woods when the ground was an ice slick. Needless to say, clumsy me never made it to Bara-Hack that night, which was a huge waste of gas. Ah well. So, yes, both of us were shaking while we were still a good three miles away, driving towards the path that would take us to the settlement. I should note he really had no reason to be nervous, as he lives in a haunted house. But, hey, *maybe* it was simply nerves. I like to think it was the energy of the place. Eh.

We have also since found out from a friend of Matthew's who lives in
Pomfret that the woods are off-limits and private property and all that, so
I guess our plans for a daytime trip our off. Oh well, I'm too intrigued to
stop just yet, and if they really wanted us out of there they'd tow our car
from the side of the road. Or so I figure. Ah well.

So, anyways, we made our way to the settlement. Again, as with previous times, we only found three or so discernable foundations, and we figure there must be more *somewhere*, as three houses do not a village make. On our way to the settlement we were startled a few times by animals scurrying near the path, but animals are hardly supernatural (unless they are WonderBunnies or something), so we paid no mind to them. Once at the settlement proper we looked around, noticing that some recent visitors had built a fire near the village, and had done so intelligently, making a fire pit and all that. We also found a dirty sock. Being a wholly non-phantom sock, we disregarded it as a plain old sock, though we did take one picture of it later on for S&Gs.

After looking around, we decided to head up the mountain to the cemetery. But as we started up the cemetery path, we started hearing all sorts of phenomenon. We heard what sounded like camera shutters (????) going off ALL around us, and whispering voices. We also heard what sounded like rock on rock (think Blair Witch Project noises), and some noises we simply could not explain in any words. We figured the path didn't really want us on it at the time, to cause such a fuss. As we turned to return to the village proper, Matthew shushed me . . . aparently, he heard the sounds of a blacksmith working nearby. Funny that, at nine-thirty at night. At any rate, we headed back to the village, breaking ut the camera. We shot off the end of an old roll he needed to use up, and then loaded a fresh roll.

We invited the spirits to come out and pose (though not in those terms, of
course), and snapped off a good 60% of the film around the foundations.
Then we decided to go find the ruins of the mill. The shape of the land
being what it is, and the volume of the brook being what it is, it was hard
to find the brook by sound, which is all we had to go by . . . we took one
path in the opposite direction of the brook without knowing it, and we both
stopped at the same time and looked at eachother. At the same exact time, we had gotten and urge to turn around and go the other way. Sure enough, at the opposite end of the village from where the path we tried to take started was a path we had failed to see . . . and a path that led us straight to the mill, to boot.

What's left of the mill is a pile of debris in the middle of the brook.
We shot off some shots there, from different angles and all that. We
fancied hearing the sounds of children playing, but that MIGHT have been the wind in the trees, though I've never ever ever, with all my experience of living in the woods, heard wind in trees make the sounds of children. After a few minutes at the mill, we headed back towards the village, and then back up the cemetery path. Nothing happened this time as we headed up it, so we went straight to the cemetery. We didn't have any film left to take shots up there, but we did come to the assumption that the cemetery was cared for until recently, or is still cared for, perhaps by the 4H club that we think owns the woods. There's a horse trail that runs near the cemetery with fresh droppings on it, and the yard is clear of any growing plants or trees . . . not to mention broken markers are fixed up (although markers that were broken in November are still broken). We noticed that until you reach the cemetery, the dogs in the town around the woods only bark occasionaly. As soon as you get inside the cemetery walls, the dogs bark non-stop. And I mean non-stop, until you leave the cemtery. I'm not sure what the connection is, or if there is one, but this has happened every time I go to the site. I find it hard to believe the dogs can see us, seeing as how we're up a mountain, in the deep woods, dressed in all black. But anyways, we also heard a cow moo while we were up there, which was a tad odd. We eventually left the cemetery, and in doing so solved the previous mystery of the "vanishing path" I have talked about before; from the perspective from where you are, up the hill, looking down at the path, you really can't see it. Brush and such just obscures it. So we did find the path, and took it back to the village, and headed home.

I can't WAIT to get that roll developed, probably tomorrow. I will be
posting any relevent photos at the OMPRS web site when we get them in.
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Behold the miasma of cliquey chat that is...alt.folklore.ghost-stories!
 
MrRING said:
tangledforest.com/tangledf/barahackx.html
Link is dead. See subsequent post for access info and the full text of the MIA webpage.
Click to expand...

The MIA webpage can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20051215061141/http://www.tangledforest.com/tangledf/barahackx.html

Here's the full text from the MIA webpage ...
Village of Voices, Bara-Hack

Bara-Hack is near Pomfret. It is a village deep in the woods of northeastern Connecticut. It's name was Bara-Hack, Welsh for "breaking of bread." It was founded in 1780, by two Welsh families. The founders of the town was Obadiah Higginboth (1750-1803), and the other was Jonathan Randall. The first ghostly sightings were from the Randall's slaves. They said that they could see ghosts at dusk reclining in the branches in a certain elm tree in the burial ground. The town has been unoccupied since 1890, and is now just visible by it's cellar holes, and small cemetery.

Bara-Hack almost immediately became known for being haunted. In 1927, Odell Shepard wrote in his book, The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, as follow:

Here had been their houses, represented today by a few gaping cellar holes out of which tall trees were growing; but here is the Village of Voices. For the place is peopled still... Although there is no human habitation for a long distance round about and no one goes there except the few who go to listen, yet there is always a hum and stir of human life... They hear the laughter of children at play... the voices of mothers who have long been dust calling their children into the homes that are now mere holes in the earth. They hear vague snatches of song... and the rumble of heavy wagons along an obliterated road. It is as though sounds were able in this place to get round that incomprehensible corner, to pierce that mysterious soundproof wall that we call Time.

One of the most extensive investigations was in 1971 and 72 by a group of college students led by Paul F. Eno. Eno wrote their account of their adventure in October and November 1985 issues of Fate magazine. They were escorted to the site by Harry Chase, a longtime resident of Pomfret, who knew Bara-Hack well. The students experienced strange phenomena the few times they visited the place. Although the village site was over a mile away from homes, they heard barking of dogs, lowing of cows, and the occasional human voice from the nearby dense woods. They also heard the laughter of children, which they attempted to tape, but it would not record. In the evening they saw bluish streaks or blobs. Eno wrote in his article:

For more than seven minutes we watched a bearded face suspended in the air over the cemetery's western wall, while in an elm tree over the northern wall we clearly saw a baby-like figure reclining.

On another one of their expeditions, a member of the group said his hate had been pulled off and lodged in a tree. Another man that went because he knew how to operate the cameras, he was restrained by an unseen force, he could move in any direction except towards the cemetery. The group also heard the rumbling of a wagon, and the shouts of a team driver, starting in the cemetery and then moved through a section of dense woods.

Directions: Go to Abington Four Corners (in Pomfret), at the intersection of Route 97 and 44. Go north on route 97, then take a left onto a side road and park just beyond Mashomoquet Brook. There is an overgrown cow path, follow it for about a quarter mile to the lost village. It is uninhabited but is private property.
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