Supernatural Saratoga

Haunted Places and Famous Ghosts of the Spa City

Mason Winfield

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781596297005
• eBook ISBN: 9781614235231
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

The ghost walk tour leader and contributor to Haunted Rochester heads east for the horse races, famous springs, and a flood of paranormal phenomena.
 
Author Mason Winfield, operator of Saratoga's Haunted History Ghost Walks, chronicles the Spa City's spookiest legends, from the Iroquoian zombie-like vampires to Benedict Arnold's Halloween apparitions. The heart of the city brims with lore, as covens work in secret in the Devil's Den neighborhood and phantoms linger at the Arcade on Broadway. In the shadow of the Adirondacks, spectral lights appear on remote Snake Hill, and the Woman in White haunts Saratoga Spa State Park. Explore the creepiest legends of Saratoga history, where some gamblers never leave and demons lurk in the forests.
 
Includes photos!

THE GHOSTLY TEN

The George Washington Effect

In many regards, Saratoga Springs has a profile like an American coastal city: Charleston, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; New Orleans, Louisiana. It is a place with a couple centuries of dynamic history, a cross-cultural layout and a lot of energy. It has had wars, trauma, the fast life, affluence and some measure of that “meretricious beauty” that F. Scott Fitzgerald observed of Roaring Twenties America. Saratoga Springs ought to have ghost stories. Every place like it does.

Saratoga Springs has had legendary citizens and famous guests for two centuries. As one would figure, some of them come back as ghosts, at least in the folklore. This is predictable. I call it the George Washington effect.

It has been said that the founding father may have close to five hundred reported ghosts in North America. Is he truly such a peripatetic spook? Or is his memory so mighty that people imagine him at any suggestion? I jest during talks and on tours that if there is so much as an outhouse still standing in any one of the thirteen colonies and one little bit of toilet paper is out of order, folklore will finger Honest George as the invisible prankster.

Around western New York, for instance, the area I call home, Seneca statesman Red Jacket, 1812 war hero Winfield Scott and “murdered Mason” William Morgan have at least five reported stations each.

While I would never say that psychic phenomena, including the sightings of ghosts, do not take place, the evidence is usually not good to link it to a single known person. But it can’t be denied that the impression has settled over Saratoga Springs that a number of solid ghosts are at work.

When you visit the historical section of the Saratoga Springs library, you will see how common published tales are. The same ones are endlessly recycled. There are scads more that surface only a time or two, and far more to know that’s never been published. You’ll never get them all. The questions for me are: Which are the most prominent? Which would the general reader, especially a tourist, expect to see in a book like this? I will try in this chapter to give you an overview of the most famous personalized spooks and presences of the Saratoga region. Most of them are in the city.

THE DEVIL IN SARATOGA

So what is a ghost? I can’t tell you. I’ve never had one stop and explain itself to me, nor has anyone gotten one into the lab for a test of its ectoplasmic DNA. I can, however, tell you what the word means: “a supernatural apparition.” We have other terms for the physical phenomena that go on at haunted sites. “Ghost” should not be used synonymously with “spirit,” either. A spirit is a disembodied life essence. Most people who believe in spirits think of them as invisible. A ghost is something visible. Ghosts might be spirits, but those who think that all of those reported are spirits face some serious theoretical problems.

There are ghosts of people who aren’t even dead yet. The classic “crisis apparition” is often a supernatural image of Aunt Clara coming to her beloved niece hours before her actual death. There are some famous doppelganger—“double walker”—tales in which a living person seems to have seen his or her own “ghost,” merely as his or her older or younger self. One of the world’s classic experiences of this double walker befell Germany’s national poet Goethe. And what about the famed reports of bi-location—being seen in two separate places at one time—as reputed of Christian power people like Father Baker or Padre Pio? One of the images has to be an apparition, a ghost.

There are ghosts of things that aren’t human. We have all heard of phantom dogs, cats and horses. Is each considered to be a human spirit, merely “doing it kitty style”?

There are ghosts of things that were never alive. Ghosts of ships and trains are widely reported in the history of the world. Sometimes mass events, like whole phantom battles, are reliably observed. The guns, carts and clothing can’t all be “spirits.”

So by this logic, I can’t tell you that the devil—a supernatural apparition—isn’t fair game for a chapter about famous Saratoga-region ghosts. Old Scratch is old as sin and famous enough that everybody around the world has heard of him. The following are three devil tales from the region.

McDearmuid and the Devil

*I thank Ballston historian Rick Reynolds for this tale.

Sometime before the American Revolution, Angus McDearmuid landed in Ballston. His homestead was near the crossing of what is today Hop City Road and Devil’s Lane. No churchgoer, possibly even an atheist, McDearmuid had a tendency to call things as they looked and a knack for making himself unpopular.

McDearmuid’s ticket to the colonies had been unceremoniously punched when he ticked off an earl in his native Scotland, and he remained no friend to the Crown after the Revolution broke out. For once, he may have been able to keep his trap shut because his sympathies were not widely known in the Kaydeross. A squad of British soldiers and native allies on the prowl for rebels dropped by his homestead in 1780 and expected clear directions. A minor crisis arose.

Mrs. McDearmuid was using a “new” invention, a spinning wheel. It fascinated the Native Americans. Even some of the British had never seen it, and soon so many spellbound men were crowded into the house that the floor fell out from under them. Mrs. McDearmuid managed to excuse herself before the floor gave way and her bedazzled guests ended up in the basement. This may have been another of McDearmuid’s swipes at the Crown. There may have been no fatalities, but the discommoded British and their allies hauled themselves up and went on their way.

Mills, querns, spirals and spinning wheels have always been associated with the cycles of fate, the course of the human spirit and even prophecy. Maybe this event was some foreshadowing of the next notable episode of McDearmuid’s life. Not long after the end of the Revolutionary War, a thunderstorm that would have done justice to The Tempest maddened and drove off one of McDearmuid’s prize cows. McDearmuid went out into the torment after her.

The house on Devil’s Lane.

At one point in the night, McDearmuid got a funny feeling and saw something looming over him. Described in the records as “a large, black monstrous apparition,” it was pale of face, wore a wide-brimmed felt hat, walked on pig-hoofed feet, stared through fiery eyes and gave off a waft of sulfur. Convinced that he had seen the devil, the terrorized McDearmuid took off running, all the time vowing to himself that if the Almighty let him make it home, he would start going to church and mend his ways in other regards. He told this tale to his wife that very night and did as he had sworn for the rest of his life. This, we are told, is how Devil’s Lane came by its name.

Devil’s Lane. It is certainly a curious tract, this two-mile east–west cutover between a couple of more traveled roads. These avenues that attract supernatural rumor are often imagination-nurturing places. Devil’s Lane is no exception. You can see that it was one of those declivitous places that the Asians would have called yang: full of jagged edges and optical mystery. The Native Americans felt the same way about these places, though they didn’t use the same word.

The Devil and Nelly Jones

In the southern part of Saratoga County lived a hardworking man named George Jones. His wife, Nelly, was buxom, healthy and presentable, and most men would have thought George was well served. But Nelly was an interminable scold. After fifteen years of almost constant harangue, George was driven almost mad.

One Sunday, George Jones was walking in the heavy woods, pondering aloud how to end his problems—hanging, drowning, shooting himself. Each option seemed to promise at least a little discomfort, and he had had so much of the emotional variety in recent decades that even that seemed intolerable. It was then that a new idea came to him. “I’ll sell myself to the devil,” he said. As if for courage, he said it again. No sooner did he say it the third and final time than a deep voice boomed at his elbow, “And what woulds’t thou with me?”

Astonished, George turned. A tall stern-faced man stood before him in black clothes and a white neck cloth, the image of a preacher of the century in which they lived. And, from the sound of it, he was a good bargainer. The devil, they do say, is a lawyer.

I am not sure of the exact conversation, but I hear on good account that George Jones sold himself to the devil, so long as, for a term of ten years, Old Scratch took his wife. The deal was made.

A few mornings later, the tall stern-faced man showed up at the Jones household as Nelly Jones was busy at the washing. “Good morning to you, sir,” she said. “What can I help you with?”

“Help me by coming quietly,” he said. “It is you that I want.”

Only for a second was Nelly Jones on good behavior.

“Oh, it’s me you want, is it?” she said, putting up her dukes. “You black-coated hypocrite, where do you get the license? I’ll learn you to come here insulting an honest woman.”

The Prince of the Air moved confidently forward. But Nelly Jones had come up with some fireplace tongs and commenced drumming a sprightly beat on the devil’s head, sending him on a dive under the table.

None other than Washington Irving—a Saratoga visitor—noted that a female scold is usually a match for the devil. But Old Scratch was in fighting shape. It is little wonder that he’s lasted so long, and only Michael on the appointed day will take him out. With an offhanded gesture of his black-coated arm, the devil swept Nelly onto his demon steed, and no mortal can slip out of that saddle. Fast as the wind, its tail shedding sparks, the horse headed them hellward. They passed through Bear Swamp and neared the east side of Saratoga Lake. As the fearful Snake Hill loomed, Nelly Jones got the feeling that the devil was nearing where he was headed and that, if she had a last move to make, she had to do it soon. It was then that Nelly Jones spotted something curious.

They say that no matter how well the devil is dressed, there is always some giveaway, something about him that gives testimony to his bestial nature. Resting across the saddle in front of Mrs. Jones was a stubby pig-like tale. It was a blend of that of many animals, and it was poking out of a special slit in the back of the devil’s pants.

Nelly Jones took hold of the devil’s tail in both her strong hands and gave it a fearful twist. The devil snarled and groaned and tried to turn around. But Nelly Jones held tight. The devil tried to swing at her with his black-coated arms, but Nelly Jones just twisted harder. The devil yelped and groaned, and even the mighty horse pulled up. Desperate to be rid of the torture, the devil managed to get hold of one of Nelly Jones’s legs and tossed her off the magic saddle. She flew fifty feet in the air.

As if the hand of an angel guided her, Nelly Jones landed on a friendly haystack within sight of the White Sulphur Springs. She found her bearings just in time to spot the devil and his demon horse dive into the legendary fountain.

Nelly Jones straightened herself up and commenced the hike home on the old dirt road through Bear Swamp. She was surprised to find that her husband, George Jones, was nowhere in sight. He disappeared that very day and was never seen again on earth. Maybe his ten-year mortgage with the devil was foreclosed by the devil’s failure to get his wife. Maybe George Jones figured to take his turn in hell a decade early. Then again, maybe he just ran off. He was never heard from again by anyone in Saratoga County. But they say that where the wounded devil made his dive into the earth, a sudden fountain sprouted up at White Sulphur Springs, a familiar spot on the edge of Saratoga Lake.

The Devil in Stillwater

A young Stillwater man came of age in the late 1800s. He had never made any waves, but by his early twenties he had forgotten his faith and started to scorn the teachings of his parents, his school and his church. He became a drinker, a card player and a gambler.

One night, he sat gaming in a pub far from the village of Stillwater. It was an open question, from the darkness, whether it was closer to dusk or sunrise when he started walking home on a lonely road skirting Bear Swamp. It was one of those nights that gives imagination ready play.

As he walked on the dim dirt road, he heard occasional sounds behind him. The impression of a fellow hiker, even a pursuer, was quick to come to him. He was just as quick to reject it. None of his fellow gamers would be walking the way he was going, and he had none of the winnings for anyone to take.

Before long, he was sure that something was coming after him, and he was starting to be sure that it was no human pursuer. These were still the days when Bear Swamp was formidable. Memories of the duel between bear and panther were still alive in the gossip of the locals, and Mohawk tales of wizards and shape-shifters were still being told.

The pale moon broke through the clouds at one point, and the young Stillwater man was sure that something was after him. From the sounds, he could tell that it was running on two legs but was not wearing boots. Soon, he was certain that they were animal’s feet. He started to run.

Every time he looked behind him, the apparition of a bulky brute was closer. He caught an unusual smell, possibly sulfur, and started to think he was being chased by the devil. He ran faster.

He had started out more afraid than tired. The discrepancy was narrowing. He looked around for any source of respite or salvation. None appeared. It was a horror of dirt road, swampy ground and tree shadows under moonlight, hurling by him faster than he ever thought he could run. A little plank bridge loomed ahead.

His only hope was that the bridge would be too frail to carry his monstrous pursuer. As he drew near, he searched himself for a weapon, anything at all. He found a deck of cards.

An odd thought strayed into his head. In his school days, he had been taught to call cards “the devil’s playthings.” As he crossed the bridge, he tossed them into the stream below. His horrid pursuer dove after them, seeming intent to gather up every single one and making a slow process of it.

Within minutes, the lights of a pair of homesteads came into view, and hope that he might escape into the realm of life and light again came to him. Dawn came, and after a mighty sleep, he had the rest of his life before him. He never drank or gambled again, I’m told.

“HE IS WORTH A REGIMENT”

Like many Scots, Simon Fraser (1729–1777) was a fighter from his early years. He fought with the Dutch army against the Austrians in 1747. He joined the redcoats as a lieutenant in 1755 and appeared in Canada in the French and Indian Wars. The bit of French that Fraser learned in Holland came in handy. Then-captain Fraser and a batch of redcoats were sneaking across the St. Lawrence in a chowder-thick fog when a French sentry challenged their boat. Whatever he said back in the Gallic tongue let General James Wolfe and the English army pass by, and the 1759 Battle of Quebec became a British victory. Between wars, Fraser kept his powder dry and his iron hot by serving in Germany, Ireland and Gibraltar. By 1768, he was lieutenant colonel of the Twenty-fourt...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: Spas, Steeds and Spirits
• Native Spirits
• Spook, Snake and Devil
• The Ghosts of War
• Saratoga’s Haunted Architecture
• Spa City Sites
• The Ghostly Ten
• Conclusion: Saratoga Is Portals
• About the Author