Sleepy Owl, Connecticut

           Sleepy Owl is a small town in southeastern Connecticut.  It was established in 1690 and has a population of 4,292.  Route 54 serves as its main street and follows through to its neighboring towns, Wilburton and Orchard Valley.  Raven River, which flows into Lake Black Feather, also serves as a boundary between Sleepy Owl and its eastern neighbor, Donovan’s Grove. Its time zone is Eastern, its zip code is 06000, and its area code is 860.  Sleepy Owl is also home to the Tomahawks football team.  Its school colors are white and gold (yellow.)  Their rivals are the Wilburton Rams and the Donovan’s Grove Falcons.

HISTORY

           The town’s original habitants were Eskimos from the north and later, the Pequot Indians.  In the early seventeenth century, the Dutch and Irish began to populate the land.  In 1690, wealthy Dutch settler Jeremiah Huford purchased the land, but hadn’t named it until his wife, Elizabeth Huford, saw an owl sitting on a dead tree’s branch with its eyes shut and suggested the name “Sleepy Owl.” Jeremiah agreed to the name as it seemed to fit with the land’s quiet and eerie atmosphere.  The Huford’s only son, Jeremiah the second, inherited their fortune in 1702 and built the now historical landmark, Huford House.  He also created strong alliances with the Pequot Indians and invited many of them to his annual costume balls every autumn—a radical decision among some of Connecticut’s elite. 

HUFORD HOUSE

             Huford’s philanthropy was cut short on October 31, 1757, when he and several others were found murdered in his home.  The case was never solved and it is rumored that the murdered party’s ghosts haunt Huford House to this day.  Two years after the murders, silversmith Franklin Geffer of Portland, Maine, bought Huford House and abandoned it three days later.  Over the next 156 years, seventeen families moved into Huford House, but all of them left within two weeks.   “We were in constant fear of our lives,” Sherman O’Heilly said to the Sleepy Owl Times in 1914. “We heard screams and saw objects flying across the room—flying at us!  We even saw people walking through walls.  They looked like they had been mangled!”  There have been six exorcism attempts in the last century, but to no avail. Since 1913, the mansion has been vacant and considered too fragile for living conditions. It was named a historical landmark in 1950. Since then, it has been the subject of many tabloid newspapers and radio talk shows.  New Warner Pictures has also optioned it for a movie, though it is still on the shelf with no director or producer committed to it.

PIRATES OF 1700s

             Sleepy Owl had its share of pirate robberies in the eighteenth century, particularly in the 1750s and 1760s.  The most memorable example was when notorious pirate Captain Sylas Zebekiah met his end.  Zebekiah had pillaged every harbor town from Bar Harbor, Maine to what is now Cape May County, New Jersey.  In 1769, the government tracked down Zebekiah and his crew aboard the Blood Runs Cold vessel.  They managed to lure the ship from the Atlantic to Raven River and eventually cornered it in Lake Black Feather.  After a three hour battle, government troops were able to sink the Blood Runs Cold and all aboard it, including Zebekiah, perished.  In the 1990s, divers discovered many artifacts at the bottom of Lake Black Feather and some of the ship is believed to still be intact.  The Sleepy Owl Historical Society is currently trying to raise money to bring more artifacts and if possible, what’s left of the Blood Runs Cold vessel to the surface.

HALLOWEEN

             Sleepy Owl is similar to Salem, Massachusetts, Sleepy Hollow, New York, and Anoka, Minnesota in that much of its economy depends on Halloween season.  Every Halloween, Sleepy Owl throws a party in its town square, which attracts hundreds and even thousands of persons.  Visitors and residents alike are treated to a lengthy buffet, party games, a live band, and a mock haunted house, which was formerly the Meriweather house.   The celebration, however, is only part of Sleepy Owl’s fame.  Its dark side is that many statistics show Sleepy Owl as having one of the highest murder rates among suburbs in the country.  Almost all of Sleepy Owl’s murders have taken place on Halloween night.  Local police attribute this to rowdy party goers and out-of-town criminals.  

 

NOTEABLE RESIDENTS

JAY SASSACUS - Millionaire and philanthropist who owns the Pequot Casino in Hartford, CT.

THEODORE MERIWEATHER - Former owner of Meriweather Market, which went bankrupt in 1953.

A shot of the annual Halloween party that takes place in Sleepy Owl, Connecticut.  The party usually consists of a large buffet, children’s games, and a rock band, which performs in the town gazebo.  2008.

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