The year or two after I graduated UConn felt aimless even as I worked. It was a struggle to fit into America after my emotions and ethics had been put through the ringer by LBJ and Nixon. I don’t speak much of those times. Several of us camped in the forest off Mason Road together until we were booted out by the armed property owner. That August I searched for a safer replacement spot in what we now call Joshua’s Trust’s Tower Hill Preserve. It wasn’t.
In those days the imposing and creepy Chaplin house still stood, uninhabited, its turret and empty windows guarding the shaded stone walls that lure one into deep woods. It was our own local “House of Usher”. Finding I could pull a car up into the old farm road far enough to be out of sight, I got out and explored.
After hiking past rusted evidence of previous human activity, various objects riddled with bullet holes, I picked a good site by Stonehouse Brook with clean water and cheerful reflections. It was far enough off the road to be quiet even in daytime. The tent went up quickly. As dusk fell and crickets and katydids began their singing, I readied my sleeping bag and flashlight for some reading: Carlos Castaneda’s “The Teachings of Don Juan”, a mystical mushroom-induced literary hit of that time. Above my orange tent, a million stars whirled silently across the night. I drifted right off. When the jarring noises started, I incorporated them into my dream.
Suddenly they began again, immediately outside my flimsy nylon shelter. A furious clangor: large rocks being slammed together and the ‘whump’ of wood hitting wood, with what sounded like angry muttering in deep voices. Instantly alarmed, I began to sit up, then froze and pulled my bag closer around me. It was late at night, and I was completely alone.
The vocalizations seemed to come from a height well above that of a human form. My hair stood on end, my adrenaline roared. This was a quality of fear well beyond my previous experience. I was gasping for air; my heart was pounding. The loud sounds moved around the tent, accompanied by stomping feet heavy enough to vibrate the ground. Though it sounded like chanting, it was clear that whatever fiercely resented my presence was not human. More than one creature had me helplessly cornered.
After a time I heard them moving away. My ears worked as never before, trying to warn me of any other sounds. I lay dead still although trembling from head to toe, another experience I had previously only read about. I was hugging myself tightly and could not stop. The forest finally became still, and I knew this would be the last night I spent in these woods. I would heed this warning. The last few hours of the dreadful night went by in a semi-conscious state.
Morning’s glow slowly lit the roof of the tent. I raised myself, still shaky, and zipped open the tent door as stealthily as I could. Two boulders, each far bigger than one hand could lift, confronted me. The ground around my campsite was trashed. Broken branches lay amid what looked like enormous footprints. I wrapped my tent around the sleeping bag, lifted it with both arms, and made it to my old Dodge Dart as fast as I could. Locking the doors, I drove down Tower Hill Road, stopped in front of a row of houses, and sat there…for a long, long time.
Rain and snow, wind and time have washed away any evidence of my awful experience, and whatever large and angry beings I had the misfortune to encounter may have moved north, as does the rest of our environment.
You’ve walked the loop trail at Tower Hill these past few years ignoring its occasional eeriness. You may have done so just a week ago with Deb Field. Perhaps you even hike there alone. That I won’t do. Like others, I thought my own death was an unproven theory. Regrettably, I have become, as Castaneda wrote, “a man of knowledge”.
Later research has turned up some relevant information: Even Native Americans had stories of large hairy humanoid forest dwellers. The very first recorded Bigfoot sighting occurred in 1765 in the Great Barrington area. And the most recent nearby report was in Woodstock, CT in February 2009. Food for thought, hikers.
Happy Halloween!
George Jacobi
