Halloween Haunts: “Halloween in the Hudson River Valley”

Halloween Haunts: “Halloween in the Hudson River Valley”
by Katherine Kerestman

www.CreepyCatLair.com

An excerpt from Creepy Cat’s Macabre Travels: Prowling around Haunted Towers, Crumbling Castles, and Ghoulish Graveyards (WordCrafts Press, 2020)

Halloween in the Hudson Valley – where the holiday (as we know it today) was invented by Brom Bones, who transformed a harvest celebration into a night of terror when he galloped on a midnight black steed carrying his pumpkin head and tossed it at Ichabod Crane. I was driving Route 80, spanning the breadth of Pennsylvania, back into history, to the time when the Dutch first came to the American shores, where they encountered the dark, alluring mystery of the Catskills and the Pocantico Hills where lurked fearsome beasts and terrifying native people whose skin had a reddish cast that scared the paler Europeans. It was not difficult to conjure that world as I drove – the inky black of the night was just yielding to the dawn, and I thought of Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle awakening from his twenty-year slumber to discover himself in a strange new realm of wonder and enchantment. I spurred my mechanical steed down and up the steep gradients of the Pennsylvania road as the gradually brightening sky revealed that I was driving into a thick grey mist which was rising from the valley too far below to be seen through the fog. A road sign quite unnecessarily declared Fog Area. By the time I was driving past the Dubois exit sign the fog was thick and black; yet, I was able to discern the steep rocky cliffs of the Appalachians. Bright orange, red, and yellow-robed fall forests stood an honor guard next to the freeway. As the sky yielded more light I could see huge clouds of mist billowing up from the the valley. A sign for Bald Eagle State Park was visible in the orange sky. As I entered New York, road signs increasingly featured Dutch names with all their “vons” and oh-so-many “o’s”. I anticipated with delight the sight of the Tappan Zee Bridge.

I love coming back to some places. The Hudson River Valley (which includes Tarrytown, Sleepy Hollow, and Irvington) is rich in its heritage of ghost tales and macabre lore. Jewel -toned mountains and hills, the old Dutch buildings, and the prevalence of jack-o-lanterns hint of secrets contained in this vale. I had chosen the Doubletree Hotel in Tarrytown for my home this week because it is within easy walking distance of Lyndhurst, and because of a sentimental association with Dark Shadows Festivals, the last two of which were held there. After settling into my room, I set out for Philipsburg Manor to experience The Unsilent Picture, a black-and-white cult movie whose inspiration came from Washington Irving’s The Adventures of the Mysterious Picture. Filmed in Van Cortland Manor (another Dutch colonial property), this bloodcurdling Halloween film is shown annually at the Philipsburg Manor Visitors Center. The movie is silent, except for the non-verbal noises (such as grunts, slurps, and sneezes); the macabre music and acoustic sound effects are produced by a live performer. At the close of a long day of hiking up and down the mountain-side estate of Kykuit, settling down to enjoy a macabre tale well-told was a spine-tingling pleasure.

The Old Dutch Church is a stone building on a hill next to the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where Washington Irving is resting, at this time teeming with lantern-tour visitors. Built by Adolphus Philipse in 1687, the Old Dutch Church has been in continual use since (except during the Revolution). Many-paned windows are set into thick white walls. Pale golden light is cast by brass candlestick chandeliers appended to the dark brown rafters over the pews and by the brass sconces punctuating the walls. The congregation assembles before a jack-o-lantern preacher who is perched on the raised pulpit that is reached by a winding wood staircase. This is Washington Irving country, the land of the Headless Horseman, the source of America’s favorite holiday – Halloween.

In the dimly candle-lit ancient space, the sexton welcomes the audience to the Reformed Dutch Church. Spooky organ music is played by Jim Keyes as Jonathan Kruk begins his rendition of the tale that put Sleepy Hollow on the map. The place where the Pocantico  crosses the Hudson River and flows into the Tappan Zee, in the words of Irving, “continue[s] under the sway of some witching power. . .[that] holds a spell over the minds of the good people. . . the whole neighborhood abounds with old tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions.” Mesmerized listeners sit spellbound by Irving’s’ words and Kruk’s faithful evocation of Irving’s iconic character — enjoying the experience in a church that had been old even when Irving lived here.

“America’s first storyteller,” Irving introduced the gothic tale to a fledgling nation in the early nineteenth century. The continent was, as yet, a much unexplored, unmapped, dark and mysterious wilderness in its abundant and mountainous woodlands (remember, the colonists had come from a largely deforested Europe), and Irving found in the landscape inspiration for his tales of mystery and terror. The colonists’ fright of the unknown that hides among the tangling branches and creeping vines in the dark, deep forest, in the caves and precipices of the rough high hills is best conveyed by Irving in his account of Rip Van Winkle, an Everyman who is bewitched by mysterious mountain creatures when he wanders too far into the wilderness.

Westchester County still thrives on the legacy of Washington Irving. Until in 1996, when it decided to change its name to Sleepy Hollow, the town currently known as Sleepy Hollow was called North Tarrytown. Tarrytown is right off the Tappan Zee Bridge and is connected by Route 9 (Broadway) to Sleepy Hollow to the north and Irvington to the south. Route 9 is a hilly road where parking spots are at a premium; parallel to the road, and at the bottom of the slope, are the Hudson River and the train station. From the Tarrytown train station, the Metro North Railroad commuter train offers a convenient way to travel to New York City.

All of my Hudson River Valley destinations are within a few miles of the Tappan Zee Bridge, along Route 9. The route is lined with inviting small vintage shops and restaurants — Thai, Indian, and Italian among them, Subway being the only chain restaurant in sight. I particularly enjoyed the Tarry Tavern, where I savored the butternut squash soup and the squash and pear ravioli in a period setting.

One afternoon I drove to the neighboring town of Irvington — to visit Sunnyside, the many-windowed cot situated on the bank of the Hudson, the house in which Washington Irving once lived. Having been devastated by the untimely death of his fiancé of consumption in 1809, then law-student Irving departed for Europe to attend to the family business. After a seventeen-year sojourn across the water, where he wrote most of the works we love so well, he returned to America a celebrity.

His Sunnyside home is a fairy-tale stone country cottage over which the tree branches reach, promising to completely cover it from view in time. Its sweetness calls to mind the alluring cottage of the witch in Hansel and Gretel. Irving’s nieces, who lived with him in the old manse, loved séances, spiritualism, and crystal balls. (For modesty’s sake, nineteenth-century séance participants would touch a rope rather than join hands, the guide explained. He also said that people used to place a spoon under a table leg, which they could then press with their feet to cause the table to move up and down.) Poe, Scott, and Dickens were friends of Irving and visited him at Sunnyside. The docent threw out an interesting bit of gossip:  after Dickens had stayed here and met Irving’s relative Ebenezer, he wrote his own famous ghost story — A Christmas Carol — whose main character is named Ebenezer.

Snug Sunnyside’s cozy rooms are small, gabled, and carpeted with soft furniture and warm textiles. The dining room table is set for a Van Tassel banquet with meats, fruit, and pastries. I looked for the doughnuts Ichabod loved so well. Irving’s office holds first editions of the Author’s Edition of his books. An exhibit displays many other incarnations of Irving’s most famous story (including a cereal box).

I lingered after the house tour for the second and third performances I was to enjoy that week of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. This annual evening affair at Sunnyside is called The Sleepy Hollow Experience. It includes a scavenger hunt and contest related to classic gothic fiction; among the clues are quotations from Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Yellow Wallpaper. Storyteller David Neilsen tells Irving’s romance in an outdoor performance, and visitors can be photographed in Victorian mourning attire. As the sky grows dark, a handsome young Washington Irving takes his seat at a candlelit writing desk, penning his spectral tale while visitors gaze upon him with awe and take pictures of the author at work.

The sun is setting when the performance begins on the three-sided wrap-around porch of Sunnyside. Now illuminated by eerie red light, the quaint fairy tale cottage is decidedly scary. Ichabod, lantern held aloft, is wandering about as if looking for something, in a sort of agitated frenzy. He leads the audience around the corner to the Hudson River side of the cottage, where the changing red, blue, and green lights and spooky mist create a ghoulish atmosphere for the performance of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, a musical re-telling of the beloved story. Photos are encouraged, and the audience is invited to participate. The performance takes place at four stages (the porch, the yard behind the house, the grove, and the horse path). At the Van Tassels’ harvest party in the grove, the audience drinks toasts with the guests and characters pose for pictures with people in the audience. That evening one little boy was distraught – as he posed for a picture with Ichabod, Brom Bones knocked Ichabod’s hat off his head. When the child burst into tears, Ichabod comforted him and told him that Brom was mean. The final act involves guests lining the horse path behind a fence, as the Headless Horseman gallops by, his terrifying pumpkin head tucked beneath his arm.

During my visit to the Hudson River Valley, I travelled twice by rail into New York City — to revel in two seasonably-spooky Broadway musicals (Wicked and Beetlejuice) and to taste other delectable Manhattan pleasures. A confluence of benevolent celestial influences had converged, it seems, to augment my adventures, for I was assigned a seat on the train beside fellow connoisseurs of the macabre — a garrulous brother and sister from Alabama who had come north to vacation in Salem and Sleepy Hollow. They were Dark Shadows aficionados, too, who had also visited the Lyndhurst mansion. We travelled convivially along the Hudson River in enthusiastic tête-à-tête about the rumored upcoming television resurrection of Dark Shadows. Fiendish luck continued to guide my course that day: the hostess at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Dining Room — whose five-star pumpkin-themed brunch is good enough to die for — seated me at a table next to that of another couple who love Dark Shadows and things horrific; they divulged to me that they had visited Edward Gorey’s home in Massachusetts.

As my Hudson Valley Halloween was drawing to a close, I was positively oozing in creepy sentimentality — from having participated in this heartfelt communal fête of the classic American ghost story.

Biography:

Katherine Kerestman is the author of Lethal (2023), Creepy Cat’s Macabre Travels: Prowling around Haunted Towers, Crumbling Castles, and Ghoulish Graveyards (2020), and Haunted House and Other Strange Tales (Hippocampus Press, 2024), as well as the co-editor (with S. T. Joshi) of The Weird Cat  (2023) and Shunned Houses: An Anthology of Weird Stories, Unspeakable Poems, and Impious Essays (2024). More than 60 of her Lovecraftian and gothic poems, essays, and short stories have been featured in Black Wings VII, Penumbra, Journ-E, Spectral Realms, Illumen, Retro-Fan, Dissections, Off-Course, Lovecraftiana and other discerning publications. Katherine has a B. A. in English and History (John Carroll University) and an M. A. in English (Case Western Reserve University), thinks Dracula and Wuthering Heights are the greatest books ever written, and is wild about Dark Shadows and Twin Peaks. Her name is etched among the inscrutable glyphs of the Esoteric Order of Dagon and the Dracula Society. Interested parties may stalk her at www.creepycatlair.com

Foreword

Katherine Kerestman has been writing fiction for only a few years, but her scholarly and academic credentials go back several decades. She has charmingly delineated her own perspective on life as follows: “In the 1660s, I would have been burned at the stake for being a witch. In the 1760s, I would have been committed to Bedlam. In the 1860s, I would have been consigned to the role of old maid housekeeper (unpaid) for a male relation in need of domestic help. Mercifully, I grew up in the 1960s.” In the realm of weird fiction, H. P. Lovecraft and Bram Stoker are among her chief influences; but other weird phenomena, ranging from witch-haunted Salem to Dark Shadows to Twin Peaks, have also nurtured her imagination. An avid traveler, she has written Creepy Cat’s Macabre Travels (2020), wherein she has roamed both the Old World and the New World in quest of strangeness. And the title of that book testifies to both her devotion to felines and her awareness of the fundamental weirdness of that enigmatic species.

All these elements can be found in the compressed tales in this volume. The mastery of the short-short story takes a special set of skills on the author’s part. Such a form requires an unusually intense application of Poe’s strictures on the “unity of effect,” whereby every word of a story contributes to its denouement. The short-short story—sometimes designated as a prose poem or (in modern parlance) as “flash fiction”—is uniquely suited to weird fiction, because the meticulous build-up of realistic details can be dispensed with, in exchange for the sudden irruption of the weird or supernatural and the characters’ frenzied reactions to it.

In story after story, Kerestman manifests her adeptness at the abbreviated narrative, whether it be set in the past (where she utilizes her knowledge of archaic English to evoke prior eras in a faultlessly accurate prose idiom) or in our own seemingly mundane age, where the weird can burst upon us when we least expect it—checking into a hotel, taking a walk in the woods, browsing in a bookstore, coming upon a stranger in a museum. And the poems scattered throughout this volume testify to Kerestman’s ability to manipulate an even more condensed and intense form of expression for the purpose of inciting terror.

All this is not to say that Kerestman cannot also work successfully in the longer tale: her novella Lethal was published in 2023 by PsychoToxin Press, and other of her tales have appeared in magazines, anthologies, and online venues. But her unique ability to infuse strangeness into the compact mode of the short-short story should be a lesson to us all that, in the hands of a gifted artist, less truly can be more.

—S. T. Joshi