Devil's Hopyard

Just a few miles north of the point where Routes 82 and 156 intersect in East Haddam, Connecticut, is a notorious spot known as the Devil's Hopyard. Stories of its strange nature have been told since before European settlers moved into the area in the seventeenth century.

Native Americans claimed that this 860-acre area, which features the Chapman Falls of the Eight Mile River, was home to God. Puritan settlers thought the the wild land was more likely a home for the devil and gave it its present name.

Under the Chapman Falls are rocks with perfectly round potholes in them. While geologists might tell you that these strange potmarks are the result of swirling eddies of water boring away at the stone, local lore has it that these curious depressions were drilled into the stone by the tail of Satan himself. Some say that the evil one has been seen sitting on a boulder at the top of the Chapman Falls. Others have seen and heard strange moving shapes, and in 1999 five men claimed to have been accosted by demonic creatures.