Giovanna Truong

Nestled in the atrophied heart of the city, beyond the iron gates of Old Campus, is the uneasy sprawl of the New Haven Green. It is like any ordinary park. The children play their sports under the pulse of the sun as their elders watch them from the shady benches. Around them the city spirals into a noisy cavalcade of hurried life. Tires on wet pavement, coins rattling in purses, the hisses and squeals of city buses. In the core of that loud spiral, in the Green, sits an unperturbed silence. The Green is an oasis of grass in the desert of city life. For newcomers, it might even be a nice place for a picnic. For those of us who know better, the Green’s air of peace is nothing more than a ruse hiding something sinister behind it. In fact, what looks like a park and sounds like a park, is really a massive graveyard long destroyed.

Deep within the earth of the Green remain the bones of thousands of people, long dead and rotted away. Their headstones were ripped up and moved to Grove Street, but they were all left behind. The silence of the Green is no peaceful refuge but a simmering rage. One that tumbles over itself thousands of times as every lingering soul trembles in fury. While the spirits cannot stalk in the daylight, they still cast their unease across the Green. Enough to cause people to scurry away the minute the sun begins to set. When it does, the Green spills itself empty, save for the silence of the dead long forgotten. For when the sun sets upon the lawn, and the last echo of life is heard, you best not be seen on the darkening Green.

They say that if you were to remain after dark, when the moon casts its drowsy gaze upon the greying lawn, you will hear something faint beneath the silence. An echo of a whisper hovering just beneath what your ears can perceive. It is a quiet calling, just discernible enough for you to wring meaning from it but not enough for you to understand it. The echo will lure you deeper into the Green with nothing but the yellow fog of the streetlamps to lead your way. As you meander through the maze of sidewalks, the echo will grow louder. This time, it is a muffled chorus of voices, as if you were hearing a conversation through a wall. Still, you will not understand what it is that the echo is saying. So, you venture further into the park. As you do so, you will notice that just beyond the corners of your eyes, the shadows cast by the lamps will blur rhythmically in the space between what you can and cannot see. Almost as if the shadows are breathing. In and out, the shadows move as if they were waiting. But waiting for what?

The echo will lead you to its source in the deepest part of the darkened Green. Only those who have lived to tell the tale have recounted in fits of screams and agony what exactly it was that waited for them in the moonlight. Some say it is an immense darkness, a tangle of nothingness in the center of the park. A void so black and empty that it cannot be understood by the human mind. The mind tears itself apart rather than attempting to understand what cannot be understood. Others say that at the end of the echo is evil itself. So hot and vile that few have the words to explain it. One woman once reported going to the source of the noise, only to find herself hung upside down by her shoe from her bedroom ceiling fan, with no knowledge of how she got there. One group of Yale first years once recalled going through the Green at night to go to a cookie shop and then found themselves at the opposite end of the park, nearly thirty-two hours from when they first entered. Yet it only felt like a brisk walk. One man took his wife with him to stargaze in the Green and then got back home, only to discover that his wife had different colored eyes. Across all these stories, lies one thread of similarity: the horrific realization that they were not alone on the darkened Green.

Right before the dark heart of the New Haven Green, those who were allowed to leave, unscathed or forever changed, all remember the dance of the shadows. The shadows that were suspended in the lamplight had the form and shape of something human. According to those poor souls that found their way into the center of an ancient evil, there were thousands of shadows. Each took the shape of a person but not quite. They were always out of focus, as if the shadow could not remember what a human looked like. These shapes, these remnants of darkness moving in the lamplight, are perhaps the echoes of the lives buried under the Green, trampled in the daytime and forgotten. They are furious at the state of their existence. Their graves were snatched away and a giant park was plopped on top of their earthly tomb. So, every night, they climb up from the pits and roam the Green in hopes that whatever lies at the center of the Green devours the unfortunate lives who make their way in. These ghastly shadows are vindictive and clever. They lure you into the Green with their dance and watch as you become ensnared with curiosity for the mysterious echo at the core of the park. Be warned: know that if you follow, you follow them to your doom.