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Halloween Haunts 2013: Halloween in the Hudson Valley by JG Faherty

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Halloween has always held a special place in my heart, even before I ever thought about becoming a horror and science fiction writer. While there is never one single reason a person can trace to a love of all things spooky, without doubt one of the factors in my own personal horror-mania has to be that I grew up in one of the most haunted places in the country, a region where Halloween isn’t just a holiday, but a part of life.

I’m talking about the lower Hudson Valley of New York.

Stretching from Manhattan to Albany County, there are probably more haunted places, creepy legends, and historical oddities per square mile than any other place you can imagine. Space prevents me from listing every legend and tale I grew up with, but below are some of the more popular ones, just to give you an idea of the dark aura of the region.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The most well-known tale of the region. School kids everywhere learn about Rip Van Winkle and The Headless Horseman, but for locals it’s more than just a fable. Old timers still tell about meeting people involved in, or related to participants in, the actual story (there is fact behind the veil of legend). If you go to Sleepy Hollow, you can visit the graves of the main characters in the story. You can see the church where tales of the devil were told. And you can walk across the bridge where the Headless Horseman still to this day appears on foggy nights.

Bannerman’s Island & Armory. Also known as Pollepel Island. A small island in the Hudson River that played a key role in several wars dating back the Revolutionary War. Rumored to be haunted all the way back to the 1600s, when the local Native Americans believed it to be populated by ghosts and goblins, it was purchased by famed arms dealer Francis Bannerman, who built an armory and weapons storage center there in 1908, in the form of a giant castle. In 1920, several tons of explosives detonated accidentally, destroying large portions of the building. A fire in 1969 rendered the whole castle unsafe.

Spook Rock Road. A hilly road in Suffern, NY. There is one place where as you go down the hill, if you stop and put the car in neutral, you will roll backwards up the hill. The legend is that at that spot, a Revolutionary War soldier was murdered because of his illicit love affair with a Native American girl. The girl then committed suicide at the same place. Lots of towns have similar tales, but I can personally vouch for this one. It is a very weird thing to experience.

The Bronx Zoo. Although it’s hard to believe a large metropolitan zoo could be haunted, there is a tale for the Bronx Zoo. In 1906, an African pygmy named Ota Benga was actually installed as a zoo exhibit, in the primates section. Public outrage led to the exhibit being cancelled after only two weeks, but in that time Benga grew angry and violent over his treatment by zoo ownership and patrons. At one point, he even fashioned a crude bow and shot arrows at rude visitors. In 1916, after being a free man in the U.S. for many years, he committed suicide. Since then, rumors of his spirit haunting the zoo have persisted.

Doodletown. Settled in 1762, it was populated by descendents of French Huguenots and various English-speaking peoples. At its height, the isolated hamlet boasted 50 houses and two churches. By 1965, most of the inhabitants had either moved away or been forced out by eminent domain when the state bought the land as part of its parks system. Today intrepid hikers can still walk through the cemetery and, if they remain overnight, receive visits from ghosts.

Big Foot. That’s right, New York has had numerous Big Foot sightings over the years, and the Hudson Valley is one of the main areas for them. Descriptions range from black to pale tan, but all of them talk of a tall, hairy creature with a flat face that runs on two legs.

Letchworth Village. Once a thriving mental institution, it is now a collection of abandoned buildings scattered across several hundred acres. Founded in 1911, its grand ideals quickly deteriorated into a history of overcrowding, lobotomy and shock therapy experimentation, polio vaccine testing, and physical abuse. It was the subject of a Geraldo Rivera expose in 1972. Today people can walk through the grounds, and many people illegally explore the buildings, where tales of ghosts abound.

Clausland Mountain. In Orangeburg, NY, in the center of an old Army base, is a series of tunnels that join some of the old buildings. Supposedly, one of them leads to a portal into Hell.

Pine Bush. A small town in Orange County, it is the UFO capital of the world. Huge numbers of sightings occurred there in the 1980s and 1990s, including objects shaped like boomerangs, saucers, and wedges. Residents also reported strange lights in the woods, aliens walking on the streets, and loud noises.

The Bloody Man. This tale dates back to the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, when local soldiers would report seeing a red, bloody man with no skin roaming the land after battles, searching for wounded and dying soldiers to feast off of.

The Devil’s Hole. In Bear Mountain, NY, there is supposed to be a lake (some say it’s a river inlet) where a whirlpool waits to suck unwary swimmers down to Hell.

Cemeteries. Historical cemeteries abound in the lower Hudson Valley. Because of its extensive involvement in the Revolutionary War and the first settlements of NY, more than a few famous figures can be found with a little research. As children, we frequently played in a cemetery where the graves dated back to the 1700s (today a group of houses sits atop that site). In West Nyack, a small cemetery even sits in the middle of a mall parking lot, because of the historical significance of the cemetery preventing its movement to a new location.

That’s just a small taste of how I live in an area of perpetual Halloween. The tales above—and so many others—were recounted in various ways each Halloween season; at school, at home, and among friends. We rode to those places on our bikes and took class trips to visit them. And, in turn, we’ve passed them on to our friends and children.

And now I get to pass them on to my readers, as I did with my novel Cemetery Club, which incorporates portions of the Letchworth Village history.

Faherty_bioJG FAHERTY is the author of THE BURNING TIME, CEMETERY CLUB, CARNIVAL OF FEAR, THE COLD SPOT, HE WAITS, and the Bram Stoker Award®-nominated GHOSTS OF CORONADO BAY, along with more than 50 short stories. 2014 will see the release of his next novel, HELLRIDER, as well as several short stories and novellas. He writes adult and YA horror, science fiction, and urban fantasy. He enjoys urban exploring, photography, hiking, and playing the guitar. As a child, his favorite playground was a 17th-century cemetery, which many people feel explains a lot. You can follow him at www.twitter.com/jgfaherty, www.facebook.com/jgfaherty, http://about.me/jgfaherty, and www.jgfaherty.com.

Read an excerpt from Hellrider (forthcoming, Evil Jester Press) by JG Faherty:

Beginnings…

The town of Hell Creek knew all about death. In that respect, it was no different than any other backwoods Florida town. Like so many of its neighbors, Hell Creek had been built on the bodies of Native Americans (who the locals still called Indians, differentiating between them and their Asian counterparts by tapping their foreheads and saying ‘dot’ or ‘no dot’), settlers, and the unlucky men who’d laid the first highways through the alligator- and snake-infested swamplands.

There is a vaguely incestuous similarity to many small towns. The unconscious – and sometimes conscious – insularity hidden beneath a façade of cheerful hellos and friendly smiles. The gossip that runs daily life, operating like a cruel wizard behind a curtain of friendship.

And the verbal histories and legends of the people, often going back to before the community even had a name.

True to form, Hell Creek’s residents had a variety of tales and superstitions, everything from haunts and spookems to swamp monsters and zombies. Of course, only a few old-timers still believed the old yarns; for most folk, talk of ghosts and vengeful spirits was usually nothing more than a form of entertainment, a tool to scare children or trick tourists into buying “hand-crafted” artifacts and trinkets.

All in all, on the surface there was nothing special about Hell Creek other than its name, which it had earned because of the supposedly bottomless springs at the edge of town, from which fresh water flowed into the Everglades. To everyone who lived in the area, Hell Creek was nothing more than your average small town, a place where people still hung their wash out to dry, bacon fat was a staple in nearly every kitchen, and the Confederate flag continued to hold a place of respect on every porch and pickup truck. A place where crime most often meant drunk and disorderly or hunting out of season.

Certainly no one who lived there would ever have expected a murder in their sleepy town.

Or the horrible events that followed it.

Of course, things might have been different if they’d believed in ghosts.

 

CH. 1

Up until the moment of his death, Eddie Ryder’s night was already going so badly he figured there was no way it could get worse.

After another day of almost no business at the garage, of just sitting around twiddling his dick and sweating from the heat, he’d stopped at the Piggly Wiggly on the way home to grab a pack of smokes and a six-pack for dinner. As he set his purchases on the counter, the clerk’s face turned sickly pale. Despite a bad reputation in town, Eddie knew his mere presence wasn’t enough to warrant that kind of immediate reaction, which meant the clerk’s sudden anxiety had to be the result of something – or someone – else.

His fear was confirmed when a loud, raspy voice spoke from the entrance.

“Lookee here, fellas. If it ain’t our good friend, Little Eddie. I knew I smelled pussy.”

Without turning around, Eddie placed twenty dollars on the counter, pocketed his smokes, and picked up his beer.

“Don’t worry,” he whispered to the wide-eyed clerk. “I’ll make sure they don’t cause you any trouble tonight.”

The clerk nodded, too frightened to speak.

Eddie took a deep breath and then turned to confront the three Hell Riders who’d entered the Piggly-Wiggly. All of them wore denim vests with their names over their hearts and the club name emblazoned on the back in bloody script, curved around a skull wearing a Nazi helmet, all against a backdrop of the Confederate flag.

“Not in here, Hank.” Eddie nodded at the doors. “Out in the parking lot.”

Henry Bowman – Hank to everyone in Hell Creek – shook his head. Long, unkempt brown hair slapped back and forth in time to his movements. “No way, fuck face. Your ass is mine.”

Pointing a finger towards the ceiling, Eddie said, “Cameras, remember? You start trouble in here, you’ll end up in jail just like your brother.”

Leroy ‘Mouse’ Bates, the smallest of the Hell Riders, frowned. “He’s right. That’s how they got caught the last time. Camera got ‘em.”

“Shit.” Bowman jabbed a finger into Eddie’s chest. “You’re lucky we got a party to go to, otherwise I’d smear you across the parking lot. Guess you’ll have to wait for that ass beating. Don’t worry, though. We know where to find you. C’mon, boys, let’s get us some beer.”

Eddie stood aside as the three of them walked past, all sneers and laughter, then nodded to the clerk and left the store’s meager air conditioning for the wretched tropical heat and humidity that was summer in South Florida.

Ignoring the mosquitoes and biting flies that dive bombed him before he stepped two feet from the doors, he climbed onto Diablo. As the engine roared to life, he considered doing some damage to the three Harleys belonging to the Hell Riders – kick them over, run his knife along the gas tanks – but in the end he just drove past. Even though he was no longer a member of the Hell Riders, he still adhered to the prime tenet of biker rules, the same rule that had kept Hank and his friends from touching Eddie’s bike: You could do whatever you wanted to the person, but you didn’t fuck with their wheels. Or their mother.

The ten-mile ride back to the house gave Eddie too much time to think about gangs, mothers, and bikes, all of them constant problems entwined together and festering in his head.

It’d been almost a year since he’d taken his lawyer’s advice, pled guilty to the robbery charge, and accepted one year’s probation in return for ratting out fellow Hell Rider Ned Bowman, Hank’s older brother. Ned, the founder of the gang – group, according to the club’s lawyer – and the only member currently over the age of twenty-five, had molded an assortment of fifteen and sixteen-year-old acolytes into a troop of beer-swilling, hog-riding, petty criminals who were nothing more than Hell’s Angels wannabees, although none of them knew it back then. Eddie had been right there with them, thinking he was all big and bad, believing that the police were just like the rest of the town, quivering in their boots whenever the Hell Riders tore through town on their obnoxiously-loud Harleys. He’d had no idea the local cops, who they’d all considered dumber than dirt, had merely been giving them enough rope to hang themselves.

Sure enough, less than an hour after he and Ned had robbed the Piggly Wiggly by pretending they had guns in their pockets, Chief Jones and the boys in brown had rolled up on his house. It was then, with his mother and brother crying in the living room, that he’d learned about the cameras in the ceiling.

And realized he wasn’t nearly as smart or tough as he’d thought he was.

The prospect of actually spending time in prison had changed his life. Matured the hell out of him, much as he hated to admit it. Knowing he couldn’t leave an ailing mother and younger brother to fend for themselves, he’d taken the deal, even though it meant making instant enemies out of the derelicts he’d once considered not just friends, but brothers.

Thanks to Eddie’s testimony – and the bag of weed the cops found in Ned’s pocket – Ned Bowman ended up getting a ten-year stretch in the state prison, while Eddie was back to work two days later.

Since then, his life had gone from shit to hell.

6 comments on “Halloween Haunts 2013: Halloween in the Hudson Valley by JG Faherty

  1. Pingback: Halloween Haunts from the Horror Writers Association

  2. Great article! Some of those legends you mentioned were completely new to me, and the Hellrider excerpt was the icing on the cake. Looking forward to reading that one!

  3. I had no idea “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was based on real people, ect. That’s really cool. It must be amazing to live in a place so steeped with history and fables!

  4. Wow! Great area history and legends. Reminds me of growing up in Plattsburgh on Lake Champlain.
    Can’t wait to see HELLRIDER in print!

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