Halloween Haunts: Living in Halloween Central by J.G. Faherty

I can honestly say I live in Halloween Central. No, I’m not referring to how extensively I decorate the house for my favorite holiday (although my wife would beg to differ); I’m referring to my geographic location. Specifically, the Lower Hudson Valley region of New York State.

It is, without a doubt, the perfect place for a horror writer to live.

The area comprises several counties – Rockland, Westchester, Orange, Dutchess, and Putnam—and all of them have a history rich in haunts, spooky tales, and strange phenomenon. North of Manhattan, south of Albany, it’s an area whose history of ghostly, bloody, heart-pounding occurrences dates back to before the Revolutionary War.

Probably the most famous tale to emerge from the region is the Headless Horseman. Penned by Washington Irving, it tells the story of his encounter with a deadly apparition. However, what some folks might not know is that there is a basis of truth in Irving’s story. He lived in the town of Sleepy Hollow, where tales of the Horseman – a Hessian artilleryman decapitated during the Battle of White Plains in 1776 – sprang up soon after the war ended. However, there is more to it than that. Local legend has it that he and a relative of Irving were actually suitors for the same woman, and he was killed a duel. Before dying, he put a curse on the entire Irving clan. After he was buried in the old town church, he began to haunt the Irving family, to the point where many of them left town.

But the legend of Sleepy Hollow, while perhaps the best known of the region, isn’t the only one. In fact, it’s not even the oldest, nor the most terrifying.

The Native Americans of the area considered many locations along the Hudson to be haunted or filled with supernatural creatures. One such location is Pollepel Island, which lies just north of West Point. Known today as Bannerman’s Island, after the arms magnate who purchased it in 1901, it was long shunned by the locals because of its reputation for housing not only ghosts (mostly the spirits of people who died in tragic accidents in icy winter waters) but also a population of flesh-hungry goblins who would make short work of anyone foolish enough to be caught on the island after dark. Whether the stories are true or not I can’t say, but the island’s history is a tragic one. Explosions, people dying prematurely of illness, fortunes lost… perhaps it carries a bit of bad luck that the original inhabitants of the area knew about.

Another local legend passed down from the Native Americans was that of the faeries, or mountain folk, who Washington Irving used in his story “Rip Van Winkle.” Many scholars like to talk about how “Rip Van Winkle” is a humorous story about a hen-pecked husband, but accounts of ghosts and faeries in the region date back to long before the Revolutionary War. Did Irving simply take a common European plot and rework it in a local setting, or did he perhaps witness something during one of his walks in the country?

I could go on and on – a quick search turns up more than 15 ‘haunted’ houses and hotels (including several that have been featured on various ghost hunting reality programs), dozens of roads where spirits supposedly walk at night, rocks and cemeteries possessed by specters, and even haunted mines.

But I want to talk about other things. Things that add to the overall creepiness of the region.

For instance, the town of Pine Bush is recognized as the UFO Capital of New York. Less than an hour from my house, there have been more than two thousand UFO sightings in the area since the 1980s. And while the sightings go back to the 1960s—and possibly even earlier—it is the sheer volume in the past 30 years, along with the details mentioned by the observers, that make the Hudson Valley so famous for its extraterrestrial visitors. Beginning in the 1980s, a series of encounters began that often resulted in multiple sightings per day or night of the same craft in different towns. Many of them were the same – a boomerang shaped vessel as long as a football field – hovering over a highway or field. Or, in a few cases, the local nuclear power plant. Police officers, town officials, aviation experts, and even pilots witnessed the strange craft. The nuclear plant security guards shot at it with shotguns when it got within a few hundred feet of their position. And the sightings became the subject of several books and a television special. Since the 1990s, the sightings have dwindled, but even now two or three are reported each year.

But one need not look into space to find strange creatures. The Hudson Valley has a pretty good reputation for another one: Bigfoot. Sightings of this mythical creature in the region go back to before the earliest European settlers. Some say it’s dark and hairy; others report it to be lighter colored with a non-furry face. It’s been spotted from the southern parts of Rockland, where national park land is shared with New Jersey, all the way up to the Catskill and Adirondack regions where civilization hasn’t totally encroached on wilderness yet. Unlike its more famous cousins in the South and the Pacific Northwest, New York’s Bigfoot doesn’t have a reputation for violence. Of course, that doesn’t mean you should walk up and say hello if you happen to see one!

Growing up in an area like this, it’s no wonder I became enamored of horror at an early age. When most kids were playing baseball or fishing, my friends and I were apt as not to be found exploring in Revolutionary War cemeteries, investigating abandoned houses, or watching the skies at night.

Because that’s what you do when you live in Halloween Central.

TODAY’S GIVEAWAY: J.G. Faherty is offering three e-books, one per winner, winner’s choice from his published catalog! Enter for the prize by posting in the comments section. Winners will be chosen at random and notified by e-mail. You may enter once for each giveaway, and all entrants may be considered for other giveaways if they don’t win on the day they post. You may also enter by e-mailing membership@horror.org and putting HH CONTEST ENTRY in the header.

J.G. FAHERTY is a life-long resident of New York’s haunted Hudson Valley and has been a finalist for both the Bram Stoker Award® and ITW Thriller Award, and he is the author of six novels, eight novellas, and more than 50 short stories. He writes adult and YA dark fiction/sci-fi/fantasy, and his works range from quiet suspense to over-the-top comic gruesomeness. He enjoys urban exploring, photography, classic B-movies, good wine, and pumpkin beer. 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, www.jgfaherty.com, and http://jgfaherty-blog.blogspot.com/

Excerpt from CARNIVAL OF FEAR, available at http://tinyurl.com/CoFnew

Rather than promote my current novel, THE CURE (available at http://tinyurl.com/The-Cure-Novel) I thought it would be more appropriate to provide an excerpt from my Halloween-themed novel, CARNIVAL OF FEAR, which has just been re-released.

Shortly before midnight on October twenty-ninth, with a full moon riding high overhead, a strange occurrence took place on the one-lane road near the east pasture of Dan McCready’s farm.

An ink-black circle, barely visible against the night sky, appeared without a sound. Twenty feet in diameter, the vertical disk shimmered with a disquieting energy on a wavelength not friendly to the human eye. Twin lights appeared within its dark depths, followed by a rumbling, clattering noise. Moments later, an eighteen-wheeler rocketed from the otherworldly tunnel. With a horrendous squeal of air brakes, it slowed down and turned onto the unpaved lane paralleling Dan McCready’s east field. Then it turned again, this time into the field itself. Several other trucks followed, their spectral emergence leading the way for a caravan of pickups, SUVs, and mobile homes. Gothic lettering on the sides of the trucks spelled out Carnival of Fear in giant, blood red script.

As soon as the last vehicle exited, the supernatural ring disappeared without a sound.

In the field, the vehicles arranged themselves in a rough circle several hundred yards across, as if forming a modern-day wagon circle. Once the last truck parked, all engine noise ceased. The sudden quiet was absolute; the type of quiet where the only audible sound is the soft background buzz that lets you know the nerves in your ears are on standby. No tic-tic-tic of engines cooling in the chill October air. No sound of truck doors opening or closing. In the cabs, no tiny, glowing red lights gave evidence of drivers smoking cigarettes.

Within the circle, a wispy, roiling cloud of fog began to form. The mist thickened, swirling about itself and building like cotton candy; solidifying, condensing, and growing more opaque with each passing second.

Shards of the heavy fog broke away and assumed individual shapes, featureless at first, but growing more recognizable as additional cloud matter attached itself. Squares and rectangles, circles standing on edge. Something large and triangular.

The shapes drifted about the field to various locations. As more vapor coalesced, their size and definition improved. True outlines became identifiable. The triangle morphed into a tent-form that grew into a circus big top. The squares and rectangles formed concession stands and game booths. The circles mutated into rides, the Ferris wheel and merry-go-round rapidly expanding to full size. In the very center of the ghostly midway, the largest aggregation of mist took on the form of a castle two stories high. Towers and turrets, tiny, rectangular windows, even a drawbridge.

When no more wandering mist remained, a burst of blackness erupted from the center of the circle, a silent explosion of lightlessness that, for the space of one heartbeat, covered the entire field in a shroud of unholy energy. In his living room, Dan McReady slumped in his easy chair, a victim of too much beer and the nightly news. When the force wave of darkness washed over him, tearing the flesh from his bones and ripping his soul away, it happened so fast he never even awoke.

He would be one of the lucky ones.

When normal light returned, a carnival stood revealed. Rides, booths, the big top, all of it colored in vivid oranges, yellows, reds, blacks, and browns to proclaim the official arrival of Halloween.

Rising above the other structures, the Castle of Horrors stood as the centerpiece of the midway. A sign, written in crimson, dripping letters, pronounced ‘Terror! Blood! Mayhem! Monsters, Ghouls, and Murderers! Experience the agony of the damned!’ A second sign proclaimed ‘The World’s Most Terrifying Haunted Mansion! Enter At Your Own Risk!’

In the unnatural quiet, the Carnival of Fear waited.

Soon it would be time to feed.

“CARNIVAL OF FEAR is aptly named–Faherty takes us on an outrageous journey into nightmare that’s equal parts Bradbury and Barker. From the opening page, this one rips into high-gear and takes you on a funhouse ride you’ll never forget.” —Thomas F. Monteleone, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of more than 36 novels and several anthologies

“As a person who loves Carnivals, Haunted Houses, Halloween, and Horror, this book has everything I could hope for! No matter what time of year it is, CARNIVAL OF FEAR will transport you to a cold October night filled with fun and fear!” —Richard Christy, Charred Walls of the Damned and Sirius/XM producer