MYSTERIES NORTH THROUGH THE HIGHLANDS

HUDSON RIVER - NORTH THROUGH THE HIGHLANDS

I think a Person who is thus terrified with the Imagination of Ghosts and Spectres much more reasonable, than one who contrary to the Reports of all Historians sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the Traditions of all Nations, thinks the Appearance of Spirits fabulous and groundless.

JOSEPH ADDISON, The Spectator, 1711h

Heading north. History closes in on us like the hills.  The names of places talk:  Cold Spring.  A lovely 19th century town with a Victorian bandstand, old buildings and gardens restored. 

Mt. Taurus (Bull Hill), Breakneck Mt., Storm King Mt., Sugarloaf Mt., Fishkill Bay, Mt. Beacon, Newburgh Bay- an 8 mile bay spanned by the Newburgh Beacon Bridge.

Soap Hill, Murderer's Creek, Wappinger's Creek.  The oldest settlement 1695.  History doesn't record dates of the Indian settlements that existed thousands of years before.  Poughkeepsie, Hogback Hill, Esopus Creek, Sturgeon Point.  The Atlantic Sturgion came up river to spawn.  It wears an armor of bony plates and can weigh up to   800 pounds, and measure 14 feet long. Sturgeon eggs, caviar, and smoked Sturgeon are of course much prized.  The mighty fish has almost disappeared from the river and it is now illegal to fish Atlantic Sturgeon.

     

What we call 'urban renewal' has mostly exorcised many of the Hudson River ghosts.  And it is a ghostly place, of strange rock formations, and shifting history and culture all through the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

 From small fishing settlements, to Dutch invasion, Revolutionary war, Industrial Revolution.  Judith Richarson's book, Possessions: The History and Uses of Haunting in the Hudson Valley is a good book to read on the subject of the Hudson River ghosts.  She attributes the many ghost sightings to social and historical upheavel the Hudson River Valley has endured.

Everyone you meet who lives or works on the river has a ghost story. Realestate agents make the choice to tell or not.  It's a toss up how best to sell historic homes along the Hudson.  Creaky floor boards, slamming doors, lights flashing on and off, tales of something pressing down on beds at night, holes dug in yards, computers booting up unaided, televisions suddenly coming on. Don't underestimate the technical acumen of old ghosts.

Indians maidens cry and search for their husbands and children all along the river.  Young girls in white nightgowns moan and float through bedroom walls,  a Revolutionary soldier in a bloody uniform rides up and down along the river.  Anna Dorothea Swarts, a young servant girl who was dragged to death behind a horse ridden by her master William Salisbury. She and Polly Pell are unusual as they have names and known circumstances of death.  Polly, remember, was killed in a sleigh accident, her body washed ashore on Pollepel Island.  And it's a crowd out there with her.  Many ghosts walk the island.  Drunk and unruly sailors were put off ship there, to be picked up on the ship's return downriver.  Many of those ended up as ghosts, of course.

Spook Rock. Another named ghost is Dutch party-goer Van Dam. Drunk,  he tried to row across the river and didn't make it.

The ghostly Lincoln funeral train with its skeletal band and skeletal guard of both Union and Confederate soldiers floats through solid deisel freight trains down the tracks of both sides of the river.  They say the air is warmer upon its passing.

The Patch Road witch is still around since the 1960's.  One of the latest of a long line of the not yet departed.

Washington Irving ploughed this rich ghostly ground for his famous story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow featuring the headless horseman. Sleepy Hollow.  So named as the lore is that the Indians put a curse on the place which makes certain travelers there so sleepy they fall off horses, or boats, upon entering the region. 

A misty morning on the river, you'll see the ghosts too.