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    Haunted Catskills
    Haunted Catskills
    Haunted Catskills
    Ebook142 pages2 hours

    Haunted Catskills

    By Lisa LaMonica

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    About this ebook

    Discover the ghosts who wander these upstate New York mountains—includes photos!
     
    Washington Irving called the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York a “spellbound region”—and the ghosts that linger from more than four hundred years of history provide proof of Irving's intuition.
     
    In Hudson, Maggie Houghtaling’s ghost haunts the Register-Star building, where she was hanged in 1817 for murdering her child—a crime for which she was later cleared. The ghost of a young Native American girl haunts Claverack Creek, where she threw herself into the water when her father forbade her to be with the man she loved. In Greenport, Peter Hallenbeck was murdered by his nephews in his home, where his spirit still lingers. Discover these and other eerie tales of hauntings in the Catskill Mountains in this collection of fascinating stories and local lore.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMay 28, 2013
    ISBN9781625840899
    Haunted Catskills
    Author

    Lisa LaMonica

    Lisa LaMonica is an author and illustrator in upstate New York who has received awards for her artwork. She was nominated for Artist of the Year in 2002 by the Columbia County Council on the Arts. Lisa teaches art privately, at her local community college, and at the Hudson Youth Department. She has attended the Hudson Children's Book Festival, the largest of its kind in the Northeast, every year since its inception. Many of this book's images are from the Library of Congress, Historic Hudson, the Hudson Area Library History Room, and private contributors.

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      Book preview

      Haunted Catskills - Lisa LaMonica

      CHAPTER 1

      THE REGISTER-STAR BUILDING

      The Register-Star building in Hudson, New York, was originally the town’s jail. The first woman to be executed in New York was hanged here, and her ghost is known to haunt the location.

      On October 17, 1817, Margaret Maggie Houghtaling (aka Houghthling) was hanged in Hudson, Columbia County’s county seat, for murder.

      One website states that Houghtaling was convicted of killing her baby but that after the execution, a neighbor confessed to the crime. Women were often executed for the murder of their illegitimate children; it was a great stigma to have a baby outside of marriage, and this was why some of them decided to risk killing these unwanted children. Concealing the birth of a child was also a capital crime at one time, and five women in U.S. history were hanged for the crime. It did not need to be proven that the baby was murdered; the woman could be convicted even if the baby had actually been stillborn or had died of natural causes in the first hours of its life. The website does not explain the basis for that assertion, but the information may have come from an 1887 pamphlet mentioned on two other sites. The publication’s title reads, in part, MAGGIE HOUGHTALING. AN INNOCENT WOMAN HANGED. THE TRUTH REVEALED AT LAST. A STARTLING CONFESSION.

      And then there’s this story, taken from the UFO-Free Paranormal website (www.ufofreeparanormal.com), about the same building:

      Hudson is a small city about 30 miles south of Albany on the Hudson River. It began as a whaling and trading town and as such developed a certain element. For a time, it was, in fact, the red light district for upstate New York.

      Map of Columbia County. Courtesy of Ron Toelke.

      It was in this context that a young lady of negotiable affection was arrested for the murder of one of her clients. She was tried and convicted and spent the last few months of her life in the town jail awaiting execution. After the sentence was carried out, it was discovered that her boyfriend had actually committed the deed. Ever since, the ghost of the woman has haunted the building.

      The Register-Star building. Courtesy of Hudson Area Library.

      The jail has long since been moved, and the site was occupied by the offices of the local paper, the Register-Star for quite some time. The ghost, however, remains. It takes the form of a small woman with long black hair. She can even be mistaken for a living woman but disappears if approached for a closer look.

      Employees at the Register-Star can sometimes hear someone walking around at night in parts of the building after their co-workers have gone home, and over the years, townspeople have claimed to see images of hanging people from inside the windows at night while walking down Warren Street.

      CHAPTER 2

      THE HALLENBECK HOUSE

      Peter Hallenbeck was murdered by his nephews on Christmas Eve 1901. Now uninhabitable, the Hallenbeck home has been the site of unexplained disturbances over the years. In those days, the home was located in what was a hamlet of Greendale within Greenport. Following are excerpts from local newspapers at the time of the murder:

      HUDSON, Dec. 27—The coroner’s inquest in the case of Peter A. Hellenbeck [sic] of Greenport, who was murdered at his home last Tuesday, was continued today by Coroner Lisk. The four young men under arrest on suspicion of being implicated in the murder are Willis, Burton and Frederick Van Wormer and Harvey Bruce. Hellenbeck [sic] was shot down in the doorway of his house, about eighteen miles from Kinderhook, where the prisoners

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