FRANK JULIANO
MILFORD ? Don Carter is a skeptic, so he is careful not to say that Milford is haunted.
But the paranormal investigator devotes two chapters to the city in his new book "Connecticut's Seaside Ghosts" (Schiffer Publishing Co., $14.99) and said in a recent interview that he could have written much more on Milford. "The cemetery alone and the stories there are worth their own book," he said.
Carter and a team from the New England Paranormal Video Research Group first came here in October 2006, to visit the Milford Historical Society's three houses on Wharf Lane. On that site are the Stockade House, which served as Milford's first hospital, and the Eels-Stow House, once owned by Capt. Stephen Stow, who died of smallpox while caring
for Continental Army soldiers abandoned by their British captors when they became ill. Stow did his selfless deed in a building that no longer exists, near the site of the present City Hall.
Since the land that makes up Milford has been occupied for so long ? at least 1,000 years by Indians and since 1639 by European colonizers ? it is logical that if spirits of the dead can linger in a place they'd be hanging around here. Carter relates several possible contacts with spirits in his book, without giving an opinion either way about their veracity.
"I can tell you that the Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) in the Stockade House is a good one. A voice can be heard saying 'Get Out!' While that is a pretty common EVP, what makes this one unusual is its strength and clarity ? everyone agrees on what was said.
"But is it evidence that the house is haunted? It is possible,'' said Carter a historian and a security consultant. "There are no experts in this field; anyone's opinion is as good as anyone else's.'' One local person who apparently attracted the attention of an uneasy spirit is Ellen Aftamonov, a member of the Milford Historical Society.
"I didn't see anything; it wasn't an apparition,'' said Aftamonov, who was working in one of the society's houses. "I heard a voice call my name when there was no one else in the house. Another time I was alone in the office and when I went to close the door,
I felt something brush my hand.'' Carter said that the "sensitive'' person on the team, Gail Syring, felt that there were three separate entities in the house, including the patriarch, a man named Paul. A search of historical records has not turned up any owner of the Eels-Stow or Bryan-Downs houses named Paul, the author said. It is likely that Aftamonov's encounter was with a serving girl named Marjorie, whose bedroom was where the historical society volunteer heard her name. "Marjorie was apparently a petulant hypochondriac who may not have done her share of the work.
"Gail asked Marjorie if she had ever contacted anyone before and (the spirit) said yes, that she had spoken once to a woman and touched her twice, and she described Ellen precisely,'' Carter related. "We keep the sensitive in the dark so as not to contaminate what she pick up on;
Gail didn't have any background on the houses or Ellen going in.'' So, is that proof that the historical society property is haunted? All Carter will say is that it is 'interesting,' the strongest term he ever uses. In his book, the historian recounts several other purported contacts with 'entities' who have died but not completely moved on.
Stratford, for example, had the Phelps Mansion, owned by a minister in 1850 whose family was plagued by unearthly doings, including a poltergeist that made effigies of family members from their clothes. Carter said the incident was well documented in newspapers of the day and that one theory was that the haunting was caused by the spirit of Goodwife Ruth Bassett, who had been tried, convicted and hanged for witchcraft 200 years before ... and not far from the very spot where the Phelps Mansion was erected.
The book also recounts the haunting of a little bungalow on Lindley Street in Bridgeport that was said to have inspired the movie "Poltergeist.'' One of the most publicized, well documented and credibly witnessed incidents of a poltergeist haunting, the events of November of 1974 in a little bungalow on Bridgeport's Lindley Street, are said to have been the inspiration of Steven Spielberg's movie.
"For days, flying furniture, strange invisible attacks and other inexplicable events were witnessed at the home by shocked Roman Catholic priests, city police officers and firemen, journalists and television reporters. It quickly attracted national headlines, and still is a matter of much debate,'' Carter wrote on his Web site, www.connecticutseasideghosts.com
"The most interesting thing about the Bridgeport poltergeist haunting is the many credible professionals who put their reputations on the line by attesting honestly to what they witnessed. Despite enormous pressure from their superiors, friends and co-workers, none of them every recanted their testimony.'' One Milford Historical Society member, scientist Timothy Chaucer, is not impressed with any of the "evidence'' usually provided for paranormal encounters.
"Unfortunately what we wish to happen sometimes does happen. But just like fish, dogs and other living beings, when we're gone, we're gone.
"As much as we'd like to think that we can hang around and haunt people, there just is no evidence for that,'' said Chaucer, director of the Milford Marine Life Museum.
"Whether there is an afterlife or not is an open question but there is profit in getting people to believe in something that there is no evidence for.'' But Chaucer's was the minority opinion on the society's board of directors, which opened the houses to Carter and his team. In a video prepared for the summer museum season, society publicist Susan Carroll-Dwyer has some fun with the notion of ghosts.
As she is describing the contents of one of the houses, something that is either a spirit or a person wearing a sheet appears in the background. The video is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzXQBSGEd-M Carter, who has degrees in law enforcement and history and is a U.S. Army veteran, said he can understand skeptics because he is one himself.
"But unlike Harry Houdini, who was a hostile skeptic who almost took it too far, I know that there are forces in the world that I don't understand.''
Click link below to view video on youtube
http://www.connpost.com/ci_9732012?source=most_viewed
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