Outdoor structure case — Roraback Wildlife Management Area, Harwinton, Connecticut.
History
Roraback WMA is among Connecticut’s largest state wildlife management areas (roughly two thousand acres in Harwinton). The Roraback family assembled the property beginning in the 1930s; it was later gifted to the state (estate of Lewis P. Roraback, 1980s) with the request that it remain open-space recreation land—hunting, fishing, trapping, hiking—not a developed park. The political Rorabacks included J. Henry (John Henry) Roraback, a dominant early-20th-century Connecticut Republican figure and founder-era force behind Connecticut Light & Power. Contemporary press (including a 31 May 1937 Time notice) reported his death by self-inflicted gunshot after prolonged illness—not the lurid multi-tragedy folk tales that later attached to a woods cabin.
Local ghost lore
Oral tradition around a remote cabin has included: a house fire that killed a family; a later builder who murdered his household; a priest who turned the cabin into a chapel and was “crucified” at his altar. Ghosthound’s own write-up by Brent Dematteo treats those stories as circulating legend, then contrasts them with public-record Roraback history. Field reports from investigators include orbs/fog on film, cold/warm spots, hair-tugs, distant screams, an IR figure of an older man, and at least one scratch injury—anecdotal, logged, not court-admissible proof.
Ghosthound sessions (~4 years apart)
- July 1998: Abandoned Cabin 7/98
- 7 March 2002: Abandoned Cabin 3/7/02
Article: Roraback by Brent Dematteo.
Access: DEEP wildlife rules; do not enter unsafe structures.
