Something New

On any particular street in any city, you will find at least one home people have gifted with a reputation for being awful. These range from the obscure to the obscene, anything between the place being haunted to the place being the scene of more than one horrific tragedy. Often times these rumors hold little value in terms of historical accuracy, and other times people are too afraid to find out if what people claim is going on is truly happening. Either way, give or take, nine times out of ten, the rumors are proven incorrect and people breathe a collective sigh of relief, but still mark the house as a bad omen. Eventually it gets torn down, or some brave soul purchases it, leaving a sign in front that acts as some kind of warning to anyone willing to give taking a visit a shot. Other times the house simply sits, left to crumble in on itself.

However, on one particular street in the relatively small state of Connecticut, there is a house that seems to both create rumors and live up to them. Constructed sometime in the 1890’s by a family whose name cannot seem to be found anymore by regular people and historians alike, the house sits at the end of one Waterford Street, unassuming enough to passersby, who only give it a sidelong glance before moving about their days, going to a job or school or wherever they intend to be, but the house itself almost seems to threaten anyone who dares to look at it for more than a brief moment. Like it could swallow an entire person whole and no one would ask any questions.

The house’s exterior is marked by its weathered appearance, the paint coming off in rather large pieces as time wears on. Vines have crept their way up the right side of the house, and the windows are boarded up, the planks of wood even there so old that they’re beginning to rot. The roof has caved in in some places, and a tree at one point fell into the home and still has not been removed. No one dares to get close enough to get rid of it.

It is this house, this crumbling old thing, which spawns most of the town’s rumors. They begin simple enough, with the stereotypical haunting and tales of murder and disappearances. Not long after these rumors began making their way throughout the neighborhood, a family who at the time lived on the street, at the other end, had a dog that ran away. They searched for weeks, posting notices wherever they could. When they found the dog’s body in the front yard, its eyes wide open and a bloody chunk of tongue hanging from its mouth, the family promptly moved away. Some people figured the dog had been killed by someone and later moved there to conform to the rumors floating about town, but most immediately fed into the rumors they created, marking it off as the dog wandering into the house, the house and whatever was in it killing the dog, and spewing its remains into the front yard.

After a series of disappearances much like the first, with all of the same outcomes, more people buy into the thought of the house being the reason these animals are dying. Those who still cling to the assurance that some madman is behind the slayings are generally overruled by their family and neighbors, told they are afraid of accepting the truth, and various other things of that nature.

And then came the spring of 1973, and the disappearance of a local girl named Charlene Mayfield. Six years old with brown hair and green eyes, the girl vanished from her front yard one afternoon while her mother was making her a sandwich. The mother says she took her attention off of the girl for no more than two minutes, and when she returned, Charlene had vanished. The mother knew of the animal slayings on Waterford Street, which was three streets from her own, and almost immediately feared the worst. She called her husband home from work and alerted the local authorities, who from there immediately went to the house on Waterford. When they couldn’t find the girl outside of it, three officers – Brandon Marsh, Thomas Sutterfield, and George Brampton – made their way inside. They found the girl upstairs, sitting in the middle of what appeared to be, at one point or another, a young girl’s room. When Sutterfield asked the girl what she was doing, she smiled and simply replied, “I was playing with Sally.” When she was asked about Sally and who she was, Charlene seemed confused. “Can’t you see her?”

Of course, none of the officers that day could. Once they returned the Mayfield girl to her own home, they went back to the house, expecting to find another young girl somewhere inside. They were inside for five hours before one officer, Marsh, stumbled out onto the porch. He was dirty and bruised, and gasping for breath. He later refused to speak about what they’d seen, and both Sutterfield and Brampton were never seen nor heard from again. Numerous searches were executed, all to no avail. No bodies ever appeared in the yard, animal or human, after that point.

And so the house sat quietly for the next ten years, but the rumors didn’t. At least a dozen people over the course of this time tried to find out who Sally was or might have been, but no one ever found anything, not even a surname for the family who built the accursed place. It was as if all records of anyone who ever lived in the place had been erased, or like they had never existed to begin with.

In early 1984, a family, the Parkers, moved into the town and purchased the home on Waterford Street. Almost immediately the husband, Neville, began working on fixing it up for he and his family to live in. And almost immediately, he was warned of the home’s history. He seemed unfazed, and people truly began hoping that perhaps if the house were fixed up and didn’t look as frightening as it seemed to, the rumors would vanish on their own. People started driving by the place more often, watching the new man practically rebuild the home from the foundation up.

Within two months of near constant work, the house looked wonderful. The exterior was a brilliant white, new windows had been installed, and the vines had been stripped away. The roof had been replaced, and wooden fence had been erected, a fence that broke only to create a walkway to the new porch. It looked like a nice house locked in a fortress, and while people didn’t much care for the fence and the way that it almost seemed like it was there to keep the house in, the house didn’t seem as frightening as it once did. The Parker family moved in a short time later, and everything seemed peaceful for the next year and a half.

Then, authorities guess between three and four in the morning on August 6, 1985, Neville stabbed his wife to death and beat their two children, ages five and seven, in the face and neck with a hammer. A neighbor heard a single scream, more than likely from the wife, and called the police. They arrived just as Neville was about to shoot himself, and quickly subdued and arrested the man. Later on, Neville couldn’t find any reason for why he killed them, and seemed to have trouble even recalling the events of that night. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, and later committed suicide with a knife he had crafted. During his five years in prison, he was labeled a model prisoner, and spent most of his time helping the other inmates with their daily tasks. He has been said as stating that

he regretted killing his family, even though he had no idea why or how he’d even done it. Some prisoners at the time also recall him speaking of “shadow people”, mysterious figures that had inhabited his home on Waterford. When asked to explain, he refused.

And so again, the rumors began spreading like wildfire. Speak of demons inhabiting the home by devout Christian-Catholic families and word of something paranormal from not-so-religious people began making its way around, and soon dares began popping up in high schools in the area. Dares to spend the night in the house, dares to simply venture inside for five minutes.

And that's where this story begins, with four teenagers and a cafeteria table.