The Green Lady of Burlington

THE PRESENCE OF a benign and beautiful female ghost haunting the town cemetery in rural Burlington has been verified not only by the many area residents who have sighted her in the past thirty years, but also by Ed and Lorraine Warren of Monroe, Connecticut's best-known and most indefatigable ghost hunters. Known throughout the Avon-Burlington-Simsbury region as the "Green Lady of Burlington," this restless spirit always appears in the form of a greenish mist, but with a well-defined body and a soft, pretty face lighted by an enigmatic smile.
Perhaps because of her generally happy features, quiet ways and non-threatening actions, stories about the Green Lady usually contain some imaginative explanation of her continuing presence in the town cemetery and speculation about her identity. Also, because she may be Connecticut's most boring ghost, her legends are almost always endowed by the story-teller with elements of violence or catastrophe, using motifs well-known by folklorists to "migrate" from one supernatural legend to another. So far as they can be reasonably established, however, her identity and motivations remain a total mystery. She just materializes unexpectedly, glows green for a time, smiles her sweet smile and then disappears.
Like most ghost stories, tales of the Green Lady of Burlington are most prominent in the legend repertoire of young people ranging in age, say, from early adolescence through the mid-twenties. This age group has been both active in seeking out the ghostly figure in green and in passing along accounts of her appearances. The versions of the Green Lady legend printed below were all told about twelve years ago by a student at Eastern Connecticut State College (now University), who, in characteristic fashion, was not an eyewitness to any of the things recorded in the stories. Rather, he had heard them from others and then tried to repeat what he had heard as accurately as possible.
The legends are set down here exactly as the student informant tape-recorded them, because with all their grammatical slips, digressions, repetitions, abrupt shifts in subject matter and gaps in continuity, they illustrate well the style of oral story-telling. In short, they reveal what legends really sound like at the point of transmission, before some writer has intervened to pretty them up for a reading audience. Even so, a reader of these verbatim transcripts should be able to get to know the Green Lady of Burlington and to sense the fun of immediate participation in the traditional lore she has inspired.
This is a story that concerns a lot of the people around Burlington, Connecticut. I don't live too far from there. I live in Simsbury. Most of the people around the area know the whole story. People have kept clippings, newspaper clippings, about it, since this has been going on a hundred years now. It happens at a gravesite in Burlington. It's near a dump and it's in the backwoods. It's a well-known place to go. It's closed off now. The police patrol the area and they have a fence around it, and people that are caught in the graveyard were persecuted [sic] by the police department. Of course, with so many deaths in the graveyard and people getting killed, murdered and so forth, they had to close it off for security sake. I've been down there about twice.
The story that I've heard is that the lady who used to live near the graveyard -- and this happened in the 1800s -- was drowned. There's a swamp or small lake near a house there (or a pond) and she was drowned mysteriously. I don't know if her husband had done it or someone in the area. Supposedly on her grave, she does have some remarks, but I don't quite remember what they were. Something about if you disturb her grave, she will haunt you, or whatever. She'll haunt you until she comes back -- or something like that.
But she is supposed to be green. It was a swamp area and when she had risen from the swamp, she was covered with this green slime. It looks like a green mist. Kids have been in there. There's a house right next to where she used to live. There's no lights of course. It's a back road. It's a small cemetery. And there's a story, if you were caught around her grave, something will happen. Quite a few people have seen her.
* * * * * There's numerous stories about the graveyard and this is just a story about what happened to two or three kids -- two kids, as a matter of fact -- that were in the graveyard. They were playing around the graveyard and they got startled and scared. There's two huge oaks in front of the graveyard and you can drive your car into the graveyard. They drove their car in the graveyard and they must have gotten so scared they didn't know what they were doing, apparently, and hit one of the oaks and they were killed instantly.
* * * * * The house is right near the graveyard that she [the Green Lady] used to live in and if you pass near there, there's her portrait in the window! There's only one light on in the house and that's a light on the portrait. Of course, they never have the shade [drawn]. The shades are always open and the picture may be seen from the road. She was buried right near the swamp.
* * * * * This story concerns the Green Lady, also. My brother was in there [the graveyard] once. It was about midnight or afterwards. It was in the early morning. He was in the graveyard with some of his friends. Out of nowhere a guy, apparently, with a lantern had chased them from the graveyard, screaming. Of course, they didn't wait to find out what did happen. But they did run. That, of course, is an unknown story, too. It may have been her husband or someone. I don't know. He has supposedly gone, like, mad. Also, if you bring a girl with you into the cemetery, the precaution you 're supposed to take is to cut the girl's fingernails beforehand, 'cause the Green Lady may possess her body and turn on you. And this is also another story that goes along with her.
So, there are some of the things that they say about the Green Lady of Burlington. Just remember, if you ever chance to be driving along that back road in Burlington by the town cemetery and see a lighted portrait in a window of the house nearby, don't turn in at the graveyard before clipping your fingernails. And if you do happen to come face to face with the misty-green ghost, watch out for those oaks when you leave. After all, the lady really means no harm.

from Legendary Connecticut by David E. Philips / ISBN 1-880684-05-5 / $17.95

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