Today's leg of our geocaching road trip adventure takes us from eastern Pennsylvania, through New York, and into Connecticut in search of a Haunted Cemetery. There's one thing I can say for sure about the northeast... too much traffic! We drove some nice backroads up here but even they were busy. Not a whole lot of stops today, but let us see if we can find some ghosts! Climb aboard the GeoJeep and let's go.
After breakfast this morning we hit the ramp to the Interstate. The next few counties I already had completed on my geocaching counties map. So we drove north on I-99 and then east on I-80 into Union County, Pennsylvania.
The last exit before leaving the county, I caught the off-ramp for a quick urban park-n-grab geocache in a parking lot (GC20E51). Then a few more miles later at a rest area in Montour County (GC2TVJG). Taking I-81 north and having all those counties already, the next stop is off I-84 eastbound. Another quick off exit geocache stop for Wayne County, PA (GC8NKGZ).
Finally next up in Pike County, PA, it was a 2-stage geocache at an interesting location. The Simons Town Cemetery (GC1JPJV) is a small well kept cemetery with just over 200 burials dating back to the early 1800's. This stone wall that outlines the boundary is original and approximately 200 years old. As for the geocache itself, I found the first stage but not the second.
Crossing over into New York, it wasn't until we got into Putnam County that I made a quick exit off of I-84 for a parking lot geocache to claim that county (GC4ZZFV).
Now it was 6:00 in the evening before we finally made it to our destination. My wife and her granddaughter are fans of the "Annabelle", "The Conjouring" and similar paranormal movies. They like all those scary movies. To me... they're comedies. Mainly because of watching them jump, scream, and react to all scary scenes! They're having heart attacks, I'm laughing!
Well it was here in Greater Bridgeport County, Connecticut and in the small community of Upper Stepney that we come to our last geocache of the day. Located in the supposedly haunted Stepney Cemetery (GC40985) are the graves belonging to Ed (1926-2006) and Lorraine Warren (1927-2019). They were paranormal investigators and were highly regarded to be the leading experts of the supernatural.
They were frequently asked to give lectures and speak about the supernatural phenomena around the world. They consulted police investigations multiple times in relation to satanic ritualistic murders. Authors of many books, some which were made into movies, they were one of the few handpicked investigators who looked into the Amityville Horror Case and later consultants for the filming of the movie. He was one of only seven religious demonologists in the country.
The Stepney Cemetery, formerly known as the Birdsey's Plain Cemetery or the Beardsley Plain Cemetery, was officially established in 1794. The oldest headstone is that of Nathaniel W. Knapp from 1787. The "haunted" part comes in several folklore stories. The most common is that of the "Lady in White." A dark haired woman in a long white Victorian dress who supposedly originally buried in the Union Cemetery four miles away. Sometimes she makes her way here for a visit in the Stepney Cemetery. Some say she's looking for a lost love. Other stories say she was murdered and wants to reveal the guilty person. And another legend was that she was falsely accused of murdering her husband and wants to tell her side of the story. For our visit on this day, we didn't see any ghosts or strange activity.
As for the geocache, it was another cemetery DNF for the day. We "Did Not Find" any cemetery caches or cemetery ghosts today. And getting late, we decided head west and to get back to a more rural less congested area, grab some dinner and find a hotel.
Until we meet again...
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