Mohawk Valley history is spirited with stories of the supernatural. Tales of hauntings enliven the rolling landscape where the blood of tenacious French and Indian War soldiers and loyal Revolutionary War patriots saturated the soil. Ingenious captains of commerce constructed stately homes and halls of hospitality where their restless souls still roam. Murderers slayed for taking lives hang on at their execution site. Although the eerie encounters arise from 18th century confrontations, 19th century trade and 20th century murder, the departed spirits who inhabit the region share a communal haunted history spanning centuries.

Head toward central and upstate New York and discover this region’s ghostly history . . . photos included! The Mohawk River winds through upstate and central New York, and along its meandering path residents and visitors have encountered the supernatural. In Utica, ghosts grace the stage of the Stanley Theater. Spirits of Revolutionary War soldiers still march on the Oriskany Battlefield and linger in Schoharie’s Old Stone Fort. And some former residents of Beardslee Castle in St. Johnsville, Boonville’s Hulbert House, and the Seashell Inn of Sylvan Beach have resisted vacating. Here, authors Dennis Webster and Bernadette Peck, along with the other members of Ghost Seekers of Central New York, uncover the mysteries behind these and many other haunted places of the Mohawk Valley.

Often shrouded in an eerie mist, the Adirondack Mountains are a perfect backdrop to the mysterious and the haunted. Troubled spirits of former patients roam the campus of the historic Dr. Trudeau Tuberculosis Sanitorium just outside Sarnac Lake. The ghost of Grace Brown, tragically murdered by her lover in 1906, drifts over the waters of Big Moose Lake. A long-deceased runaway slave remains a guest at the Stagecoach Inn in Lake Placid. The Sagamore Resort on an island in Lake George has been welcoming vacationers since 1883, and many have never left. Held captive in a remote mansion by her husband until her death, Mary Rhinelander still wanders the burned-out ruins of her earthly confinement. Writer and paranormal investigator Dennis Webster highlights the scariest haunts the Adirondacks can offer.

The house was a neat, though a lowly one. It bore traces of newness, for the bark on the trunks which supported the little veranda had not yet mouldered away. Nevertheless, it was not built by the owner's own hands; for when he came there he had much to learn in the rougher arts of life; but with a carpenter from a village some nine miles off, he had aided to raise the building and directed the construction by his own taste. The result was satisfactory to him; and, what was more, in his eyes, was satisfactory to the two whom he loved best--at least, it seemed satisfactory to them, although those who knew them, even not so well as he did, might have doubted, and yet loved them all the better. The door of the house was open, and custom admitted every visitor freely, whatever was his errand. It was a strange state of society that, in which men, though taught by daily experience that precaution was necessary, took none. They held themselves occasionally ready to repel open assault, which was rare, and neglected every safeguard against insidious attack, which was much more common. It was the custom of the few who visited that secluded spot to enter without ceremony, and to search in any or every room in the house for some one of the inhabitants. But on this occasion the horse that came up the road stopped at the gate of the little fence, and the traveler, whoever he was, when he reached the door after dismounting, knocked with his whip before he entered. The master of the house rose and went to the door. He was somewhat impatient of ceremony, but the aspect and demeanor of his visitor were not of a kind to nourish any angry feeling. He was a young and very handsome man, probably not more than thirty years of age, sinewy and well formed in person, with a noble and commanding countenance, a broad, high brow, and a keen but tranquil eye. His manner was courteous, but grave, and he said, without waiting to have his errand asked: "I know not, sir, whether I shall intrude upon you too far in asking hospitality for the night, but the sun is going down, and I was told by a lad whom I met in the woods just now that there is no other house for ten miles farther; and, to say the truth, I am very ignorant of the way."

Includes the proceedings of the annual meeting of the Society.

Hislop writes living history. Father Jogues is there, as are Sir William Johnson and Molly Brant, Nicholas Herkimer, DeWitt Clinton, Eliphalet Nott, the Remingtons, Charles Steinmetz, and a host of others. Fur trading, land grabbing, Dutch, Palatines, Yankees, the Battle of Oriskany, the Erie Canal, the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad, General Electric are all part of the story of The Mohawk. Hislop's presentation of this unique region is both informative and compelling.