Here is something I wrote and I will be doing a spoken word of soon.
Ringgold Street, West Hartford, CT
I had an exciting walk the other night. I took one of our dogs, Nugget, for a long, brisk walk around our little city neighborhood just past midnight. We walked down the street and cut through a little wooded area then went down through the park behind it. The illumination was high as the moon was near-full in the sky. Since we’ve been at our flat on Oakwood Street, we often scout the area on walks.
The park stretches into a large grassy area right past the little woods. The grass in the park rolls for a spell to the end of a cul-de-sac that ends at a street named Ringgold. On Ringgold there is a cemetery, I’ve walked by it few times now, mostly in the day, and a couple of times past sunset. I hadn’t made it down on one of my night patrols yet.
Ringgold is a quiet street. It starts three or four blocks up from the cul-de-sac at a T intersection at Park Road which connects the main areas of West Hartford and Hartford proper. Park Road is only busy during business hours. On one side of Ringgold starting at the T intersection is a small city bank, two or three blocks of a quiet condominium community, a small street leading to a neighborhood of mostly three-story multi-flat homes, then a few well-kept old homes with lovely lawns, then ends at the cul-de-sac attached to the large grassy park.
On the other side of Ringold, across the street from the bank is an older still well-kept home. Down much that side of Ringgold the rest of the land is fenced off, like it and the house are one property. It’s an odd tract of land in the populated eastern parts of West Hartford. The space is well maintained but still retains a sense of old to it, like it remembers wilder days before the encroachment of city and suburb. Most of the land is a seasonally dry watershed with overgrown trees near a center drainage basin, like an old creek.
Near the basin grows one of the most beautiful willow trees I’ve ever seen. A few days earlier I properly introduced my son to the willow on one of our walks. I haven’t met a Willow of note since my childhood, I was excited to show him how cool the shaggy trees can be. We snuck through an opening in the fenceline to see what it felt like under its thick canopy of wisps. It was worth a little trespassing, it was safe. We snuck in through a gap in the chainlink where the property belonging to the house’s fence stops and a different one surrounding the cemetery begins. In a fenced area about a block wide, lies an old, unmarked cemetery. Its gravestones face toward the watershed basin away from view from Ringgold Street.
The cemetery is closely manicured, just grass and gravestones. At the center of the formation of fifty or so white stone grave markers is a tall statue of a cross. The gate to enter the cemetery is locked up without away to easily sneak in without jumping the fence. In-between the cemetery on the cul-de-sac next to the park is a small, deeply overgrown tract of land, its trees and plants look defensive and unwelcoming. Next to that is the cul-de-sac, then the grass that flows up a tall hill into the park I like to stride.
Nugget was behaving in a way I appreciated. He was alert but not overly curious, just the way I like my little patrols to go. With Dax, our older pup, I used to be able to walk around with him off the leash. We were a team and we acted as extensions of that team. I felt like Nugget and I were moving as a team, like we were using each other’s senses to detect and respond to the night around us. He’s a good pup. When we’re in tune, he’s a lot of fun to get to be around.
We moved through the park onto the cul-de-sac. I like to stay on the side with the cemetery. There isn’t a sidewalk on that side but I like to be off on my own. Doesn’t hurt that the dogs can get a good sniff of interesting things and they don’t piss on pretty landscaping.
The cemetery seemed still even though the nighttime critters were all a holler on the humid August air. All the stone was vibrant white under the Moon’s clear shine, contrasted by the dark lush green on midnight grass. The night blasted a beautiful chaotic harmony of sound. The cemetery always seems quiet, but that night it was the embodiment of stillness. It was nice. Sound all around it but its solitude was like a wall against the night’s noise. Sounds seemed to spill over it from the woods in the watershed basin behind it.
The pup and I began to transition from the fence line that separated the cemetery from the lawn that my kid and I snuck through. We heard gentil footsteps behind us on the other side of the fence. The steps sounded like they were walking on top of the dew saturated grass and walked right through the fence that separated the lawn from the cemetery. The grass didn’t move, but Nuggets ears were tall and probing the night like radar dishes that found an incoming craft. His pointed nose caught as much sense as my eyes.
With nothing there and the night becoming louder, we moved past the cemetery farther down Ringgold toward the bank, the old house, and the busier road. I did what I always do when confronted with nighttime creepies; I took a deep breath, chest out, shoulders square, I kept my senses alert, and I briskly walked to a place I had more control over. We moved down the way across the street toward a brightened area under a yellowed streetlight. The footsteps matched our pace and continued behind us. Nugget’s head was on a swivel but carried on with our walk without a pull.
Moving forward I’d lost track of the feeling of those steps behind me. We continued to walk until we got under the streetlight. I brought a joint with me. I lit it up, took a deep drag, and took a nice long look around. Nugget took a shit in a little bit grass on the further edge of the cast light from above. I bagged Nuggets business up for disposal and we made our way back home, down Park Road and back toward Oakwood Street.
Weird feeling man. As creepy as the experience was, when I no longer heard the steps, I immediately missed them. I longed for the anticipation I felt in my bones caused by that weird moment in an otherwise normal experience. Existential realization momentarily manifested and disappeared with the footfalls of ghosts. Real or imagined but rawly felt, none the less. Night creepies can make a normal walk feel exciting. I bet New England is super creepy in the winter. I look forward to experiencing it someday.
Addendum.
My Mom and Aunt Mary came to stay with us. I told them about the Ringgold experience. My Aunt told me she “bet dollars to doughnuts” that the cemetery was part of an old church. Sure, enough I added new search parameters to my investigation, and it is the cemetery for a convent that has been recently sold and renovated into apartment housing. I should’ve remembered my history training instead of relying on google-fu.
Lessons:
Be bold, be brave, have a plan for escape.
Take your camera and use it. The pictures you take are yours and not copyrighted by someone else.
Trust your training (experience) and try to apply it where ever you can.
Links:
Article about the nunnery becoming apartments.
The order of nuns who use to run the site. They seem like cool people, the Sisters of the Neighborhood, trying to help people where they are.
https://catholicarchives.ie/index.php/sisters-of-saint-joseph-chambery
Corner of Ringold and Park, go south on Ringgold to Tract 40 that is the cemetery. Don’t forget to use digitized public records.
dobbshead 