WEBVTT

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You get up, You've made a
mistake leaving the path. You turn around

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and you start to run as best
as you can. The trees all look

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the same. Did the path move? It's too late. The forest will

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never let you go. Get ready
for a campfire story. I'm Edwin,

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I'm Michelle, and we'll share spooky
stories with playful banter that'll keep you up

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at night. So throw some wood
on the fire and put a wiener on

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a stick. We're telling you a
campfire story tonight. Are you ready for

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a campfire story? That was my
owl? That means yes, I guess.

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So yeah, that means yes,
because I'm out here in the woods

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with you, so obviously it means
yes, I'm ready. Here we go

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haunted forests. So a long time
ago, there was an English nobleman who

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was the administrator and financial agent of
King Read the seventh. His name was

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Edmund Dudley. While the king was
sick, it was said that Dudley ordered

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his friends to get ready and assemble
in arms in case the king died.

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It's assemblant army. Ooh, so
like be ready to take over? Yeah

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yeah, yeah, yeah, that's
what I imagine. Okay, okay,

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anyway, that was the crime he
was charged with, and he was imprisoned

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in the Tower of London for constructive
treason. But the real reason, though,

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is that they didn't like the way
that he handled the money. Plus

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he got super rich for managing money. Politicians today they do that too,

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and yet they still have their heads
on. Unfortunately, he was beheaded from

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his descendants supposedly because of this thing. Legend says the rest of the family

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was cursed. Because of that,
the descendants of Edmund Dudley crossed the ocean

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and settled in America, bringing along
that curse with him. Where they settled,

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it was named Dudley Town, Connecticut. Dudley Town isn't really a town

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or a city like. It's actually
just like a little village that's like private

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area and it's part of Cornwall,
Connecticut. But that place had crops that

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failed, people that went pretty insane
and violent deaths. You see, the

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family had gotten a hold of this
book in order to get rid of that

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curse. However, things just got
worse because of it. They opened the

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gates of hell. So the town
didn't give them anything back. No business

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could thrive, and again no crops
worked like it was just bad in this

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article that I found. The curse
came quickly to those people that moved into

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that mountain town, and one of
the very very first victims was Nathaniel Carter.

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This is like seventeen sixty ish when
he was on a business trip,

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his wife an infant child were brutally
murdered by Native Americans. Shortly after he

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was murdered, another one of the
Dudley's who had owned the property purchased in

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Dudley Town. His name was abel
A bl Abi e l Abiel. Abiel

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Abiel called him Abel that works for
me. Abel himself ended up getting dementia

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due to his old age and died
in the town at ninety years old,

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which sounds like a pretty good life. I mean, you lived up to

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ninety. But then one of their
friends, the name was Gershen Hollister,

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he fell to his death while he
was building a barn. People there talked

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about demons and ghosts and everything,
including this guy William Tanner. Tanner went

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insane and claimed that this strange animal
from the forests had actually killed Gershon.

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All these rumors of demons, ghosts, and everything were common among the people

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that lived there. Another thing that
happened in that town was that this woman,

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Sarah, was struck by lightning in
front of her home in eighteen oh

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four after hearing the news. He
was the husband who was a general war

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hero, Herman Swift from the Revolutionary
War also went insane. He was just

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kind of like not there for the
rest of the time. But also another

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incident that happened was Mary Cheney,
wife of presidential nominee Horace Greedy. She

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killed herself a week before the election
of eighteen seventy two, and then Greley

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lost his bid to grant and the
curse was blamed in all of these cases.

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I mean, it's a high concentration
of weird things happening because the town

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is so small. There's like twenty
six families. Yeah, so that's a

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lot of tragedy to happen in like
a very small part of a population.

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That's what they say. It was
a curse. And I don't know if

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you believe in curses, but I
kind of do. I mean, I

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think it might be a curse that
whether you're cursed to like, you believe

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it and you yourself rationalize it and
then it's true because it's you know,

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curse or it's external and like,
yeah, you have very little control over

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all these other things that are just
happening. As this town entered the twentieth

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century, the curse still continued.
One of them was John Patrick Broffei,

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one of the final residents of the
town. There was almost no one there

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at this point. There was no
business, nothing that could happen there.

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He couldn't grow things, just nothing
worked anyway. His wife died of tuberculosis,

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and then two of his children wandered
off into the woods and never returned.

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And then he also went into the
woods and was never seen again.

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Z Okay and their house later burned
to the ground in a mysterious fire.

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Oh my god, it's just like
gone, like you're gone. Not even

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your belongings made it. That is
so tragic, it's funny. I mean,

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that is so cursed. However,
historians can actually find a link to

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this first migration of the curse from
the Dudley's and they just consider this an

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internet rumor. Nothing's really there.
The place isn't haunted, But the real

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story is pretty creepy. Again,
Let's go back, right, So let's

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go back to the seventeen forties,
Thomas Griffs, Gideon Dudley, and then

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other members of the family started settling
in this area we know as Dudley Town,

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again not an actual official city or
town. Two hundred years later,

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the land is still kept as a
private land trust, but there are still

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traces of that original village and people
that started visiting the town in the eighties

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actually just to check it out because
it's really creepy. They call it the

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Dark Entry Forest. So now enter
the Clark family. Doctor William Clark,

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who was a doctor of like a
cancer studies person, bought a house there

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when he visited with his wife and
fell in love with Dark Entry Forest.

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They were from New York, so
they wanted that piece. So him and

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his wife were at the cabin they
had built out there and he had to

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go do something in New York.
But when he got back, his wife

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wasn't anywhere to be seen, like
she just wasn't there, and he was

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like, that's weird. But then
as he's coming closer to the cabin,

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he hears screams and laughter and like, just weird someth's happening, Like somebody's

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laughing as they're being really loud.
He goes up sees her his wife had

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lost it. She was freaking out, screaming, saying that there were strange

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creatures in the woods. She killed
herself. Not long after that, Doctor

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Clark stayed around. He actually got
remarried, but then he died in nineteen

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forty three. But before that he
actually founded the Dark Entry Forest Association and

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it was made to preserve the forest
areas around there. Michelle, do you

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remember the Blair Witch Project. I
do. Yeah, it's been making news

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lately. Yeah, I wonder why
like that, Well, it's because the

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actors never got paid. Oh,
that was one of the top thirty I

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think highest grossing movies. Did that
whole thing where they pretended it was real

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contracts, right dude. Also,
yeah, they made a mistake to it.

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When I was looking into it.
They sold distribution rights for one point

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one million, which sounds like a
lot. No, it's not a lot

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for that. How much that movie
grows, Yeah, it grossed a lot.

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But also, like if you made
a movie for however little they made

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it for, and then you're like, what somebody wants this, you'd immediately

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do it for those who may not
remember what it's about. Right, So

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it's a story of three film students
that they go into the woods and then

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they get lost, and then the
footage that they actually managed to record is

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what's found and what's being played,
and people are drawing their own conclusions on

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it. The story was made so
that you think that it was real.

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You would find interviews, newspaper articles, like even in the credits they said

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that the actors were dead or whatever
or like never found or something. I

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never found it, I remember,
I was kind of believing it. I

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was like, yeah, this is
a very creepy stuff. That specific story,

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it takes place out in the haunted
forest, drew a lot of attention

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to Dudley Town because they said that, oh, it's a similar thing vibe,

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we should go there. So people
started going there late nineties, but

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before then, in nineteen ninety three, through an interview in very reputable Playboy

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magazine, they had this interview with
Dan Aykroyd and said that this place,

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Dudley Town, was the most haunted
place on earth. He grew up as

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a spiritualist in Canada. Like again, I don't keep up with this like

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Michelle does. It's not like well
known that he's a spiritualist, but his

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dad has like written books on spiritualism
and stuff like that. Wow, you

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know, spiritualism is where you communicate
with spirits via Wuiji Bord or whatever.

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That's like a whole religion. So
he grew up in that. Interesting.

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But because of this interview, people
started going there vandalizing the place. But

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this was made worse by the Blair
Witch Project because the interview happened first,

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and the Blair Witch Project came out, and then it just like all hell

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broke clues, like people wanted this
experience. And by the way, this

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is before smartphones, right, like
this is maybe around the time the s

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kick was out. Maybe I don't
not sure, but I remember a time

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where like you would go somewhere just
to go, like, not to film,

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not to take pictures, not YouTube, not to make tiktoks. You

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would go somewhere just so you could
tell your friends. After that you went,

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yeah, you just went to go. Yeah. And people found out

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about this, but they started going
to Dudley Town so much that the association

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they were like no more like and
they're not nice about it. You can't

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even park there, like they're like
not allowed, you can't do this.

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But they're having people that sneak in. They say that they experience ghosts and

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they hear voices and they see where. Yeah, because of the curse of

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Dudley Town. How true is it? Scientifically? I'm not a scientist and

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I didn't even look this up,
but were there was something in the water

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or like you say, a gas
leak or like you know, I mean,

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yes, it could be a lot
of things. It could have just

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been the food contaminate, like drinking
water contamination. Maybe. When I looked

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this up on Wikipedia, there was
a scientist little short statement about it.

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Turned out the records actually do show
that this place was originally occupied by the

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Mohawk Nation as sacred ground. However, the village's decline has been attributed to

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the distance from clean drinking water and
unsuitable soil for cultivation. And yeah,

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avoid those woods at all cost.
My campfire story has a trigger warning.

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If you're sensitive to suicide, you
know, if that bothers you, tune

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in next week, Edwin. You
are hiking in Japan, you ignore what

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looks like a bunch of warning signs
all around the trailhead. You're experienced,

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and that means they clearly don't apply
to you. You've heard that there's a

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great view of Mount Fuji from this
trail, and as you hike, you

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notice the forest is silent. No
birds, no insects. As you walk,

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even the sound of your feet crunching
on leaves seems muffled. There's no

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phone service, but you saw a
TikTok post a while ago about a shortcut,

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and you decide to leave the trail. The trees get thicker and the

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forest gets darker. As you walk, you begin to notice the people's belongings

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scattered along the ground. Different shoes, a hat, an old backpack,

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just scattered throughout the woods. Some
are dirty and look like they've been there

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for years. Some are more recent. You've been walking off trail for quite

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a while. Now. That's when
you hear it, a scream. Where

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did it come from? You head
towards it. You hear it again,

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someone needs help. You trip,
and when you look up, you are

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face to face with the rotten corpse. It had been there for some time.

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You hear the scream again, this
time it's all around you, deafinite.

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You get up. You've made a
mistake leaving the path. You turn

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around and you start to run as
best as you can. The trees all

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look the same. Did the path
move? It's too late. The forest

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will never let you go. WHOA, there's a forest in Japan that's home

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to ghosts. The trees have grown
so closely together that visitors will spend much

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of their time in semi darkness.
The gloom is relieved only by the occasional

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stream of sunlight that gaps through the
tree tops. What people remember the most

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about this forest is the silence beneath
the fallen branches and decaying leaves. Of

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the forest is volcanic rock. In
the year eight hundred and sixty four,

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Mount Fuji experienced a violent, six
month eruption that buried entire villages and left

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behind a massive field of hardened lava. The stone is hard and porous,

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and full of tiny holes that eat
all noise. This forest's official name is

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Ahoki Gara, but most Japanese call
it Ujikai, which means sea of trees.

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Oh, that's beautiful sea of trees. But we know it by its

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unfortunate common name, the suicide Forest. I remember first hearing about this through

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Paul's Oh that's it. Yeah,
he went there and then found somebody who

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died and filmed it and then he
published it. That was dumb. Yeah,

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it was very weird, disrespectful.
Yeah, Logan Paul went to the

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forest and actually found a victim of
suicide hanging from a tree, and medical

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responders came and they filmed the whole
thing and then he put it online and

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it's like laughing in the video.
Yeah, it's really not good. The

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Suicide Forest has become really popular on
social media. It's in movies, it's

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in the media. It has like
this mysterious reputation. But there are legends

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around it and it is kind of
considered a sacred place. But one of

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the legends that has haunted this forest
is that in feudal times, when food

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was scarce and the situation was desperate, a family might take a dependent elderly

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relative, typically a woman, to
a remote location and leave her to die,

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you know, so they could save
the food so they could be the

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young. Yeah, whether that happened
or not, there's not really a lot

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of proof that that happened. That
might be more of like a fictionalized folklore

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in Japan that that happened a lot, because it doesn't Like scholars seem to

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dispute whether they call it senoside was
ever common in Japanese culture, They don't

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think it was so. Yeah,
it s e nic id, But some

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believe that the ghosts or the ura
are the vengeful spirits of those old people

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that were abandoned to starvation and left
the mercy of the elements, and they

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dedicate themselves to tormenting visitors and luring
the sad and the loss off their pass

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you know, like, I was
curious about how this forest became so associated

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with suicide. Mount Fuji, like
other mountains in Japan, are considered a

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sacred space, and the forests that
surround them are considered a sacred space.

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So for more than a thousand years, Buddhist monks have retreated to the forest

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to practice an extreme form of self
denial and meditation that ended in death.

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According to one tradition, monks would
meditate in the forest for a thousand days,

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subsisting on nothing more than leaves and
bark. Then they would be quote

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unquote buried alive to continue meditating in
an underground crypt. The ultimate goal was

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to transform the body, while still
alive, into a shukusibutsu, a type

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of living mummy, which is pretty
crazy. And there are eighteen of these

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self mummified bunks on display in Japan
still, although scientists believe they were actually

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mummified after their deaths. But the
goal is to be alive and mummified.

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So that was something that actually did
go on there. And then in the

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sixties there is an author named Seyesho
Matsumoto who published a short story called Tower

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of Waves, which centers on starcross
lovers. You know, they're kept apart,

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out of their control, you know, And it ends with the woman

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in the story writing a farewell letter
to her lover, taking a bottle of

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pills and dramatically going into the hoki
Gara forest and disappearing. That became like

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a huge smash hit in the sixties. There's tons of adaptations that still get

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made. It's like, you know, the way Romeo and Juliet comes back

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into fashion over and over and over
again in Western cultures. You know,

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it goes out, comes back in, goes out. So I kind of

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imagine that's what's happening there. But
this book put it on the map as

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a popular suicide destination. But that
wasn't the thing that really cemented it.

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The thing that cemented it was that
there's this infamous book published in the nineties

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called The Complete Suicide Manual. Oh
I just got chills. I don't know

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why it is. Yeah, you
should get chills because it's pretty demented.

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The Complete Suicide Manual. It's sold
over one million copies. It's never been

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translated into English, it's only in
Japanese, and it went out of its

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way to really romanticize the forest as
the perfect place to die, and bodies

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have literally been found with this book, which Japan actually does have a romanticized

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idea of suicide. It does have
one of the suicide highest suicide raids in

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the world. Yeah, so like
there's like less shame to it. Yeah,

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I guess there's less shame. Or
it's also like they have that thing

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where like samuraize, Yeah, you
can fall on your soul and then kamikazi

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pilots, you know, like there's
things like that. The Ahoki Gara Forests

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sees more suicides than any other location
in the world except for the Golden Gate

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Bridge. But yeah, the Internet
is littered with disturbing images from the Suicide

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Forest, from the abandoned personal effects
and the undergrowth to human bones. If

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you dare to venture into this legendary
place, do as the sign says and

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stay on the path. The story
about hearing the corpse scream or whatever that

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happened to somebody. They were walking
along and they heard screaming and they ran

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towards the screaming and it was actually
just a dead body under a tree.

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But think about all that energy in
that forest. The woods are a spooky,

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scary place man. Whether they're in
Japan or whether they're in Connecticut,

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it's a dark place. And if
you're ever thinking about suicide, call the

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suicide hotline. Talk to a friend. The number is nine eight. It's

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a suicide crisis lifeline. You can
text them, you can call them.

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They're twenty four hours English and Spanish. Baby ben Coforna have a comment from

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the night guard. Okay, The
question was know if someone who has had

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contact with aliens, do you believe
them? The answer was, I don't

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have someone who's seen aliens. But
my Bible teacher claims to have seen a

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ghost and even has a photo of
it. Well, they should call in

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to tell me a ghost story then, because I don't know why they're holding

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out on me. Geez. But
anyway, thank you for comment. Yeah,

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thanks a lot. And also we
want to hear that story obviously.

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Yeah, you gotta tell us.
Also from the episode what do you Know

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about the Bermuda Triangle, the question
was does a Bermuda triangle have supernatural stuff

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going on? What do you think? And then the answer was maybe depends

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on how people see it though,
because supernatural stuff has a different definition in

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each individual's mind. Ooh, okay, okay, that's a good point.

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By the way, big fan.
I listen to all your podcasts, Edwin

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and Michelle. Oh that's nice.
Yeah, thank you. Send us your

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little comments and we'll read them on
the air. We love to hear from

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you. I guess we'll put out
the fire because we didn't start it.

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Dang it. We've been in the
doctor this whole time. All right,

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guys, Well, we'll see you
next week for more tales around the fire.

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Campfire Story is hosted by Michelle Newman
and Edwin Kovarubias. This podcast was

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edited and sound designed by Sarah Worhez
Wendel, a VW sound