White Lady of Easton

The entrance to Union Cemetery. Note the sunset-sunrise curfew notice, which is now strictly enforced by local police.

The White Lady of Easton is the name given to a recurring phantom figure or Lepke sighted in and around Union Cemetery, Easton, Connecticut, U.S.A.

Identity

Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, who have captured images of the White Lady on video, claim in their book, Graveyard, that the White Lady was a murder victim from the 1800s, whose body was dumped behind the Easton Baptist Church. Fellow investigator Donna Kent, founder of the Cosmic Society, believes that it could be Ellen Smathers, wife of John Smathers, whose body was found in a sink-hole behind the Easton Baptist Church, weighed down with iron in his pockets. Another body was found in the sink-hole around the end of the nineteenth century, that of a Mrs. Knott, allegedly murdered by her lover, Elwood Wade.

Activities

Jeff Belanger reports that the ghost "has darted in front of passing cars, has vanished when motorists pull over to offer help, and, according to some witnesses, she has been struck by cars, in one instance in 1993 actually causing physical damage to the vehicle. The driver, a local fireman, was stunned, believing he had just run over a person, but as he looked around he found no body, not of a person and not of an animal. But there was an unexplainable dent in the hood of his car."

Video

Warren had staged vigils in the cemetery with a tripod-mounted video camera for six consecutive nights, after a previous investigator had captured the word "Twenty-three" repeated over and over using E.V.P. techniques. At 2.40am on 1 September 1990, Warren captured the image of the White Lady, whom he described as appearing around age thirty, with dark hair and a flowing white gown. Her attire has been variously described as either a nightdress or wedding dress. He said: "The only light was a streetlight that was 50 yards from where I was sitting. I heard a woman weeping, and I looked out and saw hundreds of ghost lights floating around and forming into a figure of a woman. I couldn't make out facial features, but I could see she had long, dark hair and she was dressed in white. I started to walk toward her and she disappeared."

Belanger relates: "When watching the video, from the right-hand side of the picture, a misty white form takes shape into the outline of a human (presumably a woman), then weaves between several headstones and into the clearing just before the gate. As "she" gets closer to the camera, some dark blobs seem to jump at her from near her feet before she dissipates into the ground. The entire video lasts maybe five or six seconds but is among the most compelling footage ever shot."

Location

Union Cemetery is located at the intersection of Sport Hill Road and Route 59.

Sources

Belanger, Jeff Encyclopedia of Haunted Places: Ghostly Locales from Around the World (New Page Books, 2005) ISBN 1-5641-4799-1
Ledwell, Joy Does Easton's 'white lady' still haunt? FairfieldMinuteman.com Retrieved 26 December 2008.
Warren, Ed and Lorraine Graveyard: True Hauntings from an Old New England Cemetery (St. Martin's Press, 1992) ISBN 0-3120-8202-9

External links