Community Corner

Is This Woodbury Barn Haunted?

"We've been calling it the 'haunted barn' for years, but we finally realized that the space actually does have a ghost," Kerry Simmons said of this Woodbury barn.

The Woodbury Lions are hosting a haunted hayride in October but a barn on the property that's used during the Halloween attraction may really be haunted.

“We’ve been calling it the ‘haunted barn’ for years, but we finally realized that the space actually does have a ghost,” Barn Chairman Kerry Simmons said in a press release.

Woodbury Lions' Club member Frank Longo told Patch via email that the situation is quite real and not just dreamt up to hype the hayride.

"There have been a number of things that we've experienced there that we cannot explain," he said.

Workers reported strange voices while they were working late at night and the occasional gust of wind when all the doors are closed, said Simmons. The barn was built on private property located near Three Rivers Park, but is owned by the town, Longo said.

“Some of our members refuse to work in the barn after dark,” he said. “Nothing more than a couple of good scares have happened so far, but we don’t know what may occur in the future.”

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The Naugatuck-based Connecticut Soul Seekers Paranormal Investigations group investigated the barn and posted the attached videos on YouTube.

"There were some very strange things that happened not only in the barn but things we captured on audio and video," Nicole Ortiz of Connecticut Soul Seekers told Patch.

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While at the barn on Friday, Oct. 4, she said the team observed a rare occurrence.

"It appears that something goes from left to right in front of the camera," said Ortiz.

It's quick and that's one of the reason why she said it's rare — spirits tend to move too quickly to be seen easily, she said. Her husband Angel Ortiz was in another area of the barn with a member of the Lions Club and shortly thereafter, he said he thought he saw something.

Then his camera battery completely drained and the camera went off, Ortiz said. A loud noise came from another area shortly after that.

"It sounded like something was tossed in another room," she said. 

While attempting to recreate the noise, Ortiz said the members deduced that the sound was that of a socket wrench being dropped.

"We dropped it and it made the same sound," she said. "They [spirits] use the batteries and electronic sources to either make things happen or manifest themselves."

Ortiz acknowledged that not everyone believes in the supernatural and she's quick to say that's fine.

"We're not trying to turn a skeptic into a believer," she said. "We're more or less just trying to show people that these are the images we capture. These are our theories. People can make up their own mind."

The Connecticut Soul Seekers members fall on different areas of the skeptic-spiritualism scale and that's a good thing.

"We are always trying to look at what the natural answer can be first," said Ortiz. "We want to know that what we're getting is actually something and that's why we're such a great team. We do have that melting pot of people who believe different things." 


So readers, have you encountered any supernatural happenings? 


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