WHOEVER has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains, and they are regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky, but, sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of glory.
Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle, a Posthumous Writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker
RIP VAN WINKLE, like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow emerges from the sludge of childhood memories, cloaked in reds and oranges, made crisp with the first cool breeze of autumn. I pity the generations born after Tim Burton got a hold of Sleepy Hollow and painted that Washington Irving story in blues and blacks. It’s a beautiful film, but he missed an essential part of the story, the autumn connection.
Luckily he didn’t get his hands on Rip Van Winkle and so I still have that direct pipeline into the feeling I got from the story as a child.
Just guessing, I likely ran across both stories in the Autumn. TV programmers also seemed to associate the two stories with that season.
Those of us who grew up in rural areas lived with a different kind of Autumn. You didn’t have to take the yearly pilgrimage to check out the fall foliage. You were surrounded by it. The cornfields turned brown and were ready for picking and the entire landscape changed to a new palette.
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The Catskill, Katskill, or Cat River Mountains, derived their name in the time of the Dutch Domination, from the catamounts by which they were infested, and which, with the bear and the deer, are still found in some of their most difficult recesses. The interior of these mountains is in the highest degree wild and romantic. Here are rocky precipices mantled with primeval forests, deep gorges walled in by beetling cliffs, with torrents tumbling as it were from the sky, and savage glens rarely trodden except by the hunter. With all this internal rudeness, the aspect of these mountains towards the Hudson at times is eminently bland and beautiful, sloping down into a country softened by cultivation and bearing much of the rich character of Italian scenery about the skirts of the Appenines.
Washington Irving, Spanish Papers, and other Miscellanies hitherto unpublished or uncollected
As you wind up Interstate 87 northward through the Hudson Valley, the Catskill Escarpment rises up dramatically, forming a wall to your west, an ominous introduction to one of the country’s most mysterious regions.
This area was originally a high plateau, which over the past few million years has been carved by rivers and streams into the mountains we see today. Glaciers widened the ravines and rounded off the mountain tops, forming the Catskill’s unmistakable shapes. The process continues, so slowly we can’t see it except from repeated visits when our years pile up. But it’s hard to see the slow, steady effects of nature from the highway, where the fast moving sleight of hand of man seeks to reshape this region for it’s own, commercial purposes.
And yet the mystique clings to these peaks as surely as the mist which shrouds their summits when you time it just right and get lucky with your visit. No amount of roadside kitsch can dilute the haunted atmosphere which hangs on the valleys and dales of the Catskills.
There’s a feeling we get when mountains rise and fall so suddenly. The Catskills aren’t like much of the Appalachians, spread out lazily across the horizon. It’s more compact, tightly squeezed and the hollows seem darker, or as Irving wrote, “long blue shadows over the valleys”, the air a bit cooler and wherever you smelled wood smoke in the early years of our country, you found talked of mystery and imagination.
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Rip Van Winkle was born on the Hudson River
At the foot of these fairy mountains, the voyager may have descried the light smoke curling up from a Village, whose shingle roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is a little village of great antiquity, having been founded by some of the Dutch colonists, in the early times of the province, just about the beginning of the government of the good Peter Stuyvesant (may he rest in peace!), and there were some of the houses of the original settlers standing within a few years, built of small yellow bricks, brought from Holland, having latticed windows and gable fronts, surmounted with weathercocks.
Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle, a Posthumous Writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker
We’re a nation of immigrants so it’s no wonder our folk tales are based on those from other lands. Much of this country was Dutch, and a European feel colored much of the early history of the area. Folklore, like people, travel along highways, and in the earliest days the highway which led from relative civilization to the Catskills was the Hudson River.
As many of us remember from childhood history class, upstate New York was explored by Henry Hudson, on his ship the Half Moon, giving that mighty river its name. Hudson made friends with the native Americans, trading with them and hearing their stories. He was searching for the northwest passage across the continent, for a shortcut to the Orient. He went as far as Albany before turning back, convinced, rightly, that the passage would not lie in that direction.
As they followed the current south, back towards New Amsterdam and fall coming on, they sailed past the Catskills. It was about midnight when Hudson heard music coming down from the mountains. Intrigued, Hudson and a few crew members went to shore, in search of the source. They climbed up into the mountains and the music got louder.
Reaching the edge of a cliff, Hudson came across a crew of men, short in stature, with long, crabby beards, dancing to the strains of this unearthly music, their eyes glowing red. Seeing Hudson and his men, the dwarves welcomed them and brought them closer to the firelight. They were treated to a strong draught, brewed in the mountains, heady and intoxicating and the men took to dancing around the fire, mingling with the dwarves while their Captain sipped a single glass and spoke to their leader, learning something of their mysterious secrets.
Hudson decided it was time to return and sail on, but when he went to call to his men, he couldn’t find them. He soon realized they had become absorbed by the dwarves, taking on the same features and looking little like they had when they left the ship. Hudson remembered being warned about these metal working residents of the Catskills, from the tales told to him by the native Americans.
The leader of the dwarves explained to Hudson it was simply the effect of the liquor, and as it wore off they’d return to their former selves. The Captain took leave of their hosts and marched the transformed crew members back down the mountainside to their ship, and true to his host’s word, they were back to the their normal features and height when they awoke, though sporting insanely nasty hangovers.
Twenty years later, Hudson was dead, set adrift by mutineers and never seen again. But on that anniversary of that night, and every twenty years after, Hudson and his crew step once more into the firelight and dance and play nine pins with the dwarves in the moonlight, the sound of falling pins like thunder across the mountains.
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The Catskill Mountains, as I have observed, maintain all the internal wildness of the labyrinth of mountains with which they are connected. Their detached position, overlooking a wide lowland region, with the majestic Hudson rolling through it, has given them a distinct character, and rendered them, at all times, a rallying point for romance and fable. Much of the fanciful associations with which they have been clothed may be owing to their being peculiarly subject to those beautiful atmospherical effects, which constitute one of the great charms of Hudson River scenery. To me they have ever been the fairy region of the Hudson. I speak, however, from early impressions, made in the happy days of boyhood, when all the world had a tinge of fairyland. I shall never forget my first view of these mountains. It was in the course of a voyage up the Hudson, in the good old times, before steamboats and railroads had driven all poetry and romance out of travel. A voyage up the Hudson in those days was equal to a voyage to Europe at present, and cost almost as much time; but we enjoyed the river then; we relished it as we did our wine, sip by sip; not as at present, gulping all down at a draught, without tasting it. My whole voyage up the Hudson was full of wonder and romance.
Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle, a Posthumous Writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker
How the spirit of Rip Van Winkle took over rock and roll
Well, I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, Tell where are you going?
This he told meSaid, I’m going down to Yasgur’s Farm,
Gonna join in a rock and roll band.
Got to get back to the land and set my soul free. Joni Mitchell
For many of us, the story of Rip Van Winkle is our introduction to folklore. Washington Irving was one of our first writers of renown, so it’s logical to start with him. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is more advanced, more intense. Rip Van Winkle reads like an American fairy tale, and weaves into its fabric threads of our country’s birth. It’s taught early in the year, as the history classes are still in the colonial era, merging seamlessly into autumn, the time of year when the story is set.
When we reach middle age, the strains of that story are set so far into our past that it could be in our DNA. Mention the name, or mention the Catskills and our mind turns orange and red with autumnal memories, the smell of leaves freshly fallen and the sound of our feet crunching over and through them. The landscape glows, and all the magic, all the mystery returns on those first cool breezes.
This was a pilgrimage I was destined to make from the time I was in first grade, far too long in coming. The history of the Catskills didn’t end with Irving. The Catskill’s theater scene, and horror tales of standup comedians playing the resorts wormed their way into my young mind from watching Johnny Carson. Woodstock made it a musical mecca, and over time it became harder to remember that initial feeling I got when I heard the word Catskill. It had been influenced by too many currents. I knew I had to get back to the garden if you will, back to what drew me there to begin with. And so as I hurtled up Interstate 87, I took the Saugerties exit and headed towards Woodstock.
On entering the amphitheatre, new objects of wonder presented themselves. On a level spot in the centre was a company of odd-looking personages playing at nine-pins. They were dressed in a quaint outlandish fashion; some wore short doublets, others jerkins, with long knives in their belts, and most of them had enormous breeches, of similar style with that of the guide’s. Their visages, too, were peculiar: one had a large beard, broad face, and small piggish eyes: the face of another seemed to consist entirely of nose, and was surmounted by a white sugar-loaf hat set off with a little red cock’s tail. They all had beards, of various shapes and colors. There was one who seemed to be the commander. He was a stout old gentleman, with a weather-beaten countenance; he wore a laced doublet, broad belt and hanger, high-crowned hat and feather, red stockings, and high-heeled shoes, with roses in them. The whole group reminded Rip of the figures in an old Flemish painting, in the parlor of Dominie Van Shaick, the village parson, and which had been brought over from Holland at the time of the settlement.
Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle, a Posthumous Writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker
This mountain zone is, in fact, the great poetical region of our country, resisting, like the tribes which once inhabited it, the taming hand of cultivation, and maintaining a hallowed ground for fancy and the Muses. It is a magnificent and all-pervading feature that might have given our country a name, and a poetical one, had not the all-controlling powers of commonplace determined otherwise.
Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle, a Posthumous Writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker
As I came off the interstate and approached the toll booth, I turned down my car stereo. It was a George Harrison album, and the guy in the booth lit up. He’d just bought an anthology of Harrison’s, after being without his music for years. That’s the kind of thing you expect as you approach Woodstock.
Woodstock is much more to rock and roll than the festival that borrowed its name, which wasn’t even held in Woodstock, but fifty miles away. That weekend might have taken over the name, but rock and roll took over the town even before the festival.
Dylan came here to recover from a motorcycle accident. His backing band followed and the locals started calling them The Band, which stuck.
Living in the Catskills changed The Band. They had spent years on the road, touring with Ronnie Hawkins as the Hawks, then with Dylan. It was a chance to get off the road, to live in a house rather than hotel rooms and vans. According to their keyboardist, Garth Hudson who still lives in the area, it was a chance to “get reacquainted with screen doors and dishwashers and going to the dump.”
The metamorphosis eerily reflected Henry Hudson’s crew who partied with the dwarves in the mountains and took on their characteristics. Rolling Stone wrote that when they landed in Woodstock, “They grew beards, split firewood, collected antique rifles, planted marijuana in the woods and began dressing like nineteenth-century frontier gunslingers, in wool vests and denim shirts and cowboy boots. ‘They looked unlike anyone we’d ever met,’ remembers folk musician Happy Traum, who moved to Woodstock the previous year, ‘like something from another world’”
Their music changed too. The nucleus of The Band came from Canada, supplemented by a drummer, Levon Helm, from Arkansas. Inspired by Dylan’s poetry, and the tales they heard from Levon about the American south, and from years on the road, they sang about an America disappearing and in some cases, long gone. Their music took on the flavors of America’s past, forging a new sound.
Together, Dylan and The Band recorded The Basement Tapes in the basement of a house three of the members lived in, called Big Pink, in the woods between Woodstock and West Saugerties. There they gave a big shot in the arm to the new style known as country-rock, and almost single handedly invented the sound and style of music which is now known as Americana or roots music, though it took about half a century for it to catch on.
George Harrison came for Thanksgiving to visit Dylan, and saw his days with The Beatles were nearly over. Eric Clapton came for a visit and was inspired to quit Cream. Both wanted to join The Band, so enamored were they by the sound, the lifestyle and the organic way they had of making music. Van Morrison followed and moved in nearby, and most of the New York scene at least visited. Todd Rundgren took a job engineering and producing records in nearby Bearsville, working for Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman who had a vision of Woodstock as a mecca for artists.
The Woodstock Music and Arts Fair made his dream a reality and Woodstock went from being the sleepy little Catskill village it was into what it is today. There are drum circles on Sundays in the village square, head shops abound, peace and love fills the air.
But there’s nothing worse than seeing your childhood put up for sale, which is always how I feel when I’m in a hip, rock and roll or even witchy shopping district. So after the cursory walk through town, I got back in the car and followed the main street into the countryside, and after a brief detour looking for Todd Rundgren’s psychic imprint on Mink Hollow, made my way north.
The other arts, along with Rip Van Winkle led the way to making the Catskills a tourist destination,
James Fenimore Cooper is credited with writing the first American novel, and his native Americans in The Last of the Mohicans travelled the trails of the Catskills. The poets that Washington Irving spoke of did in fact write of the region, long before the folkies and the rockers made their stamp on it. William Cullen Bryant wrote of a visit to Kaaterskill falls in winter …
Midst greens and shades the Catterskill leaps,
From cliffs where the wood-flower clings;
All summer he moistens his verdant steeps
With the sweet light spray of the mountain springs;
And he shakes the woods on the mountain side,
When they drip with the rains of autumn-tide.
But when, in the forest bare and old,
The blast of December calls,
He builds, in the starlight clear and cold,
A palace of ice where his torrent falls,
With turret, and arch, and fretwork fair,
And pillars blue as the summer air.
The Catskills have been called America’s first wilderness. Only a couple hundred miles from New York City, artists started flocking to the mountains when tourism started early in the 19th century. The Hudson River school was America’s first art movement, a collective of artists who worked in the region, and they brought the beauty of the landscape to the attention of the world. Thomas Cole kept a studio in the town of Catskill, and across the river Fredric Edwin Church built his electric home Olana overlooking the Hudson with the Catskills beyond.
The further north you go the more the signs of the sagging tourism industry jumps out at you. What was once upscale is now often in ruins. The resorts of old are increasingly boarded up, or in ruins with only the big players who can afford full service and nightly entertainment still in business.
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On nearer approach he was still more surprised at the singularity of the stranger’s appearance. He was a short square-built old fellow, with thick bushy hair, and a grizzled beard. His dress was of the antique Dutch fashion—a cloth jerkin strapped round the waist—several pair of breeches, the outer one of ample volume, decorated with rows of buttons down the sides, and bunches at the knees. He bore on his shoulder a stout keg, that seemed full of liquor, and made signs for Rip to approach and assist him with the load. Though rather shy and distrustful of this new acquaintance, Rip complied with his usual alacrity; and mutually relieving one another, they clambered up a narrow gully, apparently the dry bed of a mountain torrent. As they ascended, Rip every now and then heard long rolling peals, like distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather cleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused for an instant, but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those transient thunder-showers which often take place in mountain heights, he proceeded.
Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle, a Posthumous Writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker
Outside of Saugerties is a wilderness area known as Devil’s Kitchen, the name thought to have been inspired by the boulder infested gorge that runs through it, forming caldrons of swirling, churning water. Early settlers reported that during storms, they’d hear banging coming from below, like the sound you’d hear coming from a very large kitchen.
Like much of the Catskills, and many places with high overlooks and sheer bluffs, Devil’s Kitchen has seen its share of fatalities by unfortunate or careless hikers. Those foolhardy enough to hike the area at night, or intrepid campers spending the night in the area report seeing strange lights in the forest, swinging to and fro, like lanterns being carried by the ghosts of the miners who used to work here. Mining, particularly blue stone was once big business in the Catskills, and many miners met their fate in these hills around Devil’s Kitchen. So it would be no surprise to find their spirits still trying to find the way home, the light of their lanterns being the only sign of their continued existence here in this world.
From a science website called The Weather Dork I found what seems to be a typical encounter with the ghost lights of Devil’s Kitchen …
“There is a small campsite at the top of the cliffs above Devil’s Kitchen. This campsite is frequented by kids that live in West Saugerties looking to sneak away into the woods. I have never been to the campsite personally, however, a friend from high school did frequent the campsite and told me of a story that happened to him and three others.”
“It was late September and the four boys hiked down the path leading to the campsite above Devil’s Kitchen. My friend told me that the path was littered with downed trees and bushes that prevented a steady pace. At the campsite, they boys made a fire and began cooking dinner. Soon after dinner while the boys were talking around the fire, they began to hear moaning and whispers in the trees around them. At first they believed the wind and trees were creaking and moaning but to make sure they grabbed flashlights and began walking around the area to see if anyone was nearby. They walked down the path that led to and from the campsite. When they came around a corner they saw a light floating in the path about 40 feet in front of them. The boys called out to whoever it was standing on the trail. There was no response. Another light appeared behind the first and slowly floated toward the closest. (Mind you this path is full of trees and there is no way to hold a lantern steady while negotiating the trail.) The boys called out again but there was no sound. They put their flashlights together to try to see as far down the path as possible but there was no figure or person, just a light among the downed trees.”
“The light disappeared. At this point the boys went back to the camp to pack up to leave; however, when they got back to the camp and were putting out the fire they could hear the voices and rustling in the woods all around them. While walking as fast as they could down the path to get back to their cars they could see lights in the woods around them. Finally they made it down the trail and cliffs and went home.”
I love these places where the locals go to engage in their libations and tell their ghost stories. But I’m looking for Rip Van Winkle, and by all accounts he’s to be found a little further north and to the west. And since I wasn’t prepared to camp on the heights of Devil’s Kitchen, I pressed on.
Washington Irving and the cultural appropriation of native American folklore
“I was a lively boy, somewhat imaginative, of easy faith, and prone to relish everything that partook of the marvellous. Among the passengers on board the sloop was a veteran Indian trader, on his way to the Lakes, to traffic with the natives. He had discovered my propensity, and amused himself throughout the voyage by telling me Indian legends and grotesque stories about every noted place on the river, such as Spuyten Devil Creek, the Tappan Sea, the Devil’s Darts Kammer, and other hobgoblin places. The Catskill Mountains, especially, called forth a host of fanciful traditions. We were all day slowly tiding along in sight of them, so that he had full time to weave his whimsical narratives. In these mountains, he told me, according to Indian belief, was kept the great treasury of storm and sunshine for the region of the Hudson. An old squaw spirit had charge of it, who dwelt on the highest peak of the mountain. Here she kept day and night shut up in her wigwam, letting out only one of them at a time. She made new moons every month, and hung them up in the sky, cutting up the old ones into stars. The great Manitou or master spirit employed her to manufacture clouds. Sometimes she wove them out of cobwebs, gossamers, and morning dew, and sent them off, flake after flake, to float in the air and give light summer showers. Sometimes she would brew up black thunder-storms, and send down drenching rains, to swell the streams and sweep everything away. He had many stories, also, about mischievous spirits, who infested the mountains, in the shape of animals, and played all kinds of pranks upon Indian hunters, decoying them into quagmires and morasses, or to the brinks of torrents and precipices. All these were doled out to me as I lay on the deck, throughout a long summer’s day, gazing upon these mountains, the ever-changing shapes and bites of which appeared to realize the magical influences in question. Sometimes they seemed to approach, at others to recede; during the heat of the day they almost melted into a sultry haze; as the day declined they deepened in tone; their summits were brightened by the last rays of the sun, and later in the evening their whole outline was printed in deep purple against an amber sky. As I beheld them, thus shifting continually before my eye, and listened to the marvellous legends of the trader, a host of fanciful notions concerning them was conjured into my brain, which have haunted it ever since.”
Washington Irving, Spanish Papers, and other Miscellanies hitherto unpublished or uncollected
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What strikes me about the passage above, indeed about much of Irving’s writing in both Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, is the wealth of native American folklore. European Americans today shy away from that, keeping it separate from their own folklore. It’s likely guilt for the horrible treatment our ancestors dished out on those people, and still do.
But folklore doesn’t have to be tied to a particular people. Folklore is ingrained into the landscape. The features that inspire the tales inspire all cultures that pass through it. Irving didn’t hesitate to bring the native American tales into his own, just as he pulled from European folklore when writing Rip Van Winkle, which is easy enough to understand. The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon Gent, which contained both stories was written whilst staying in England, and England was a melting pot thousands of years before white people set foot on North America.
The neolithic people who first started raising stones to the heavens, arranging then in circles for the most part, didn’t pass their DNA to the Britons of today. It’s believed that the neolithic people who started Stonehenge, and who built many of the monuments still in existence today first came to Britain from the area around the Aegean Sea. It’s been proposed that 90% or more of those people died out or were replaced by the stock of the Beaker culture, which was replaced by successive waves of invaders. With each wave came new stories to imprint on the landscapes they found. Folklore is tied to the land, as much or more so than it is to a people.
So Irving didn’t hesitate to use the native American tales he heard in the Hudson Valley, and integrate those with the folklore of the old Dutch culture which first settled the region. And so we gain a better understanding of the beliefs that swirled around this region during Irving’s life, and the colorful strains of folklore which ran through it.
Not that Irving knew much about the Catskills at the time he wrote Rip Van Winkle in 1819. He only saw those mountains from a boat on the Hudson as he floated by on a handful of trips north, and incorporated tales and travelogues to flesh his description.
But there was at least one occasion where Irving had set foot in the Catskills. Whilst visiting a wealthy land owner on the east side of the Hudson, across from the Catskills, he accompanied the fellow’s daughters to some land their father owned around Saugerties and Woodstock. Woodstock at the time was little more than a sawmill, but the scattered farmhouses – cabins and brick houses which he writes about in Rip Van Winkle would have been found in the Saugerties area. And like the story, the people who lived there would have spoke a combination of Dutch and English, and were well versed in the ways of local folklore and fear of witchcraft. They too would have been quite familiar with the native American tales, which would influence their own.
The Catskill tourism industry began with The Catskill Mountain House. Built by a group of merchants from the nearby town of Catskill, it was situated on a plateau with sweeping views of of the Hudson valley on one side, and two forested lakes on the other. It was already a noted viewpoint, immortalized by the artists in Hudson River School, as well as writings by John Bertram and James Fenimore Cooper.
And long before that, the native Americans has their own tales to tell of the place. Writing in Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, first published in 1896, Charles M. Skinner told the tale of the Catskill’s most famous witch, likely lifted at least in part from Irving’s description in Rip Van Winkle.
“When the Dutch gave the name of Katzbergs to the mountains west of the Hudson, by reason of the wild-cats and panthers that ranged there, they obliterated the beautiful Indian Ontiora, “mountains of the sky.” In one tradition of the red men these hills were bones of a monster that fed on human beings until the Great Spirit turned it into stone as it was floundering toward the ocean to bathe. The two lakes near the summit were its eyes. These peaks were the home of an Indian witch, who adjusted the weather for the Hudson Valley with the certainty of a signal service bureau. It was she who let out the day and night in blessed alternation, holding back the one when the other was at large, for fear of conflict. Old moons she cut into stars as soon as she had hung new ones in the sky, and she was often seen perched on Round Top and North Mountain, spinning clouds and flinging them to the winds. Woe betide the valley residents if they showed irreverence, for then the clouds were black and heavy, and through them she poured floods of rain and launched the lightnings, causing disastrous freshets in the streams and blasting the wigwams of the mockers. In a frolic humor she would take the form of a bear or deer and lead the Indian hunters anything but a merry dance, exposing them to tire and peril, and vanishing or assuming some terrible shape when they had overtaken her. Sometimes she would lead them to the cloves and would leap into the air with a mocking “Ho, ho!” just as they stopped with a shudder at the brink of an abyss.”
Skinner also wrote of another bit of folklore, attached to the place.
“On the rock platform where the Catskill Mountain House now stands, commanding one of the fairest views in the world, old chief Shandaken set his wigwam,—for it is a mistake to suppose that barbarians are indifferent to beauty,—and there his daughter, Lotowana, was sought in marriage by his braves. She, however, kept faith to an early vow exchanged with a young chief of the Mohawks. A suitor who was particularly troublesome was Norsereddin, proud, morose, dark-featured, a stranger to the red man, a descendant, so he claimed, from Egyptian kings, and who lived by himself on Kaaterskill Creek, appearing among white settlements but rarely.”
On one of his visits to Catskill, a tavern-lounging Dutchman wagered him a thousand golden crowns that he could not win Lotowana, and, stung by avarice as well as inflamed by passion, Norsereddin laid new siege to her heart. Still the girl refused to listen, and Shandaken counselled him to be content with the smiles of others, thereby so angering the Egyptian that he assailed the chief and was driven from the camp with blows; but on the day of Lotowana’s wedding with the Mohawk he returned, and in a honeyed speech asked leave to give a jewel to the bride to show that he had stifled jealousy and ill will. The girl took the handsome box he gave her and drew the cover, when a spring flew forward, driving into her hand the poisoned tooth of a snake that had been affixed to it. The venom was strong, and in a few minutes Lotowana lay dead at her husband’s feet.”
Though the Egyptian had disappeared into the forest directly on the acceptance of his treacherous gift, twenty braves set off in pursuit, and overtaking him on the Kalkberg, they dragged him back to the rock where father and husband were bewailing the maid’s untimely fate. A pile of fagots was heaped within a few feet of the precipice edge, and tying their captive on them, they applied the torch, dancing about with cries of exultation as the shrieks of the wretch echoed from the cliffs. The dead girl was buried by the mourning tribe, while the ashes of Norsereddin were left to be blown abroad. On the day of his revenge Shandaken left his ancient dwelling-place, and his camp-fires never glimmered afterward on the front of Ontiora.”
And where you find high cliffs overlooking water and native Americans, you inevitably find folklore telling the tale of lover’s leaps. Skinner captured one here in the Catskills:
“The name of Indian Maiden’s Cliff—applied to a precipice that hangs above the wild ravine of Stony Clove, in the Catskills—commemorates the sequel to an elopement from her tribe of an Indian girl and her lover. The parents and relatives had opposed the match with that fatal fatuity that appears to be characteristic of story-book Indians, and as soon as word of her flight came to the village they set off in chase. While hurrying through the tangled wood the young couple were separated and the girl found herself on the edge of the cliff. Farther advance was impossible. Her pursuers were close behind. She must yield or die. She chose not to yield, and, with a despairing cry, flung herself into the shadows.”
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As to the Indian superstitions concerning the treasury of storms and sunshine and the cloud-weaving spirits, they may have been suggested by the atmospherical phenomena of these mountains, the clouds which gather round their summits, and the thousand aerial effects which indicate the changes of weather over a great extent of country. They are epitomes of our variable climate, and are stamped with all its vicissitudes. And here let me say a word in favor of those vicissitudes, which are too often made the subject of exclusive repining.
Washington Irving, Spanish Papers, and other Miscellanies hitherto unpublished or uncollected
At the foot of these fairy mountains, the voyager may have descried the light smoke curling up from a village, whose shingle-roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is a little village of great antiquity, having been founded by some of the Dutch colonists, in the early times of the province, just about the beginning of the government of the good Peter Stuyvesant, (may he rest in peace!) and there were some of the houses of the original settlers standing within a few years, built of small yellow bricks brought from Holland, having latticed windows and gable fronts, surmounted with weather-cocks.
Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle, a Posthumous Writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker
As you approach Palenville the Rip Van Winkle connection is impossible to miss. There’s the Rip Van Winkle car wash, Rip Van Winkle Trailer Park, and countless others, all looking to cash in on the mystique Washington Irving bestowed upon the place.
For a fictional story written by person with little knowledge of the area, it’s surprising how eager the locals are in laying claim to being the actual village in the story. Along the road which led to the Catskill Mountain House, there was a house which claimed to be Rip Van Winkel’s home. The bridge connecting the towns of Catskill and Hudson was named for Rip. Catskill laid fervent claim to have being Rip Van Winkle’s village, going as far to have Rip in its official town seal. But Irving had never visited Catskill when he wrote the story. Palenville also made the claim, erecting a sign saying it was the home of Rip Van Winkle. The town does lie at the foot of the mountain where Irving describes Rip walking, the Kaaterskill flowing down, but it didn’t exist when the story was set, and was barely in existence at the time it was written.
The reality is the village where Rip Van Winkle lived was a amalgamation of several places, most likely based on Saugerties and there is some evidence that in the description of Sleepy Hollow in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Irving is actually writing based on his memories of that town as well.
Irving himself chose not to be drawn in to identifing the village he was writing about, and even hinted at its fictional nature. When answering a letter written inquiring about where Rip hailed from, Irving wrote “I can give you no other information concerning the localities of the story Rip Van Winkle, than is to be gathered from the manuscript of Mr. Knickerbocker…perhaps he left this purposely in doubt. I would advise you to defer to the opinion of the very old gentlemen with whom you say you had an argument on the subject. I think it probable he is as accurately informed as anyone on the matter”
In the 1950s, Rips Retreat sprung up in Haines Falls, between Palenville and Tannersville. Featuring Dutch cottage architecture, or rather the 1950s version of fairy tale architecture which was popular at the time, it was populated by costumed interpreters, featured colonial era arts and crafts, and even old Rip himself was there to greet visitors.
For all the arguments about the location, not much has been said about the name. Doubtless the name has a big part to play in the longevity and popularity of the story, as it positively drips fairy tale vibes. Writing for The Saugerties Times, Robert M. Place relates how a local historian tipped him off to the best theory yet.
Irving lived for a time in Haledon, New Jersey and was friends with the Van Winkle family who lived in nearby Totowa. They had a boy with a broad smile that looked like a tear, and so his nickname was Rip.
Sounds perfectly plausible.
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Tales from along the Rip Van Winkle Trail
Country drives have always been a way of life for me. It started as a child, riding along with my grandma and grandpa on Sunday afternoons. He was a part time farmer and loved driving the backroads and checking out the crops. Like much of my generation who grew up near the country, we spent our high school years and beyond, cruising the country roads whilst violating a whole host of laws.
Autumn in the Hudson Valley is tailor made for drives. The scenery is gorgeous any time of the year, but especially so in the fall when the landscape is painted in reds, oranges and browns. The shade in the hollow feels otherworldly, the sound of rushing water comes through the car windows as you pass rushing streams billowing over rocks, and occasionally hurtling over small cascades.
Route 23A leaving Palenville is known as the Rip Van Winkle Trail. Originally built by convicts from Sing Sing prison in 1915, for a four mile stretch you are indeed in a wilderness which Rip Van Winkle would feel right at home.
Some claim a form of time travel is possible here, even if not intended. One person posted on the internet, where all things are true, that while driving through this part of the Catskills they noticed they were low on gas, and luckily came upon a gas station and general store. The cars outside were new looking, but dated from the 1940s. Inside the shop there were no modern products at all. The gas was only $2.85 for a full tank.
There are other mysteries along this road. Outside of Tannersville it’s said that you might see Hank, the Tannersville Brakeman. His duties included climbing out of the train to change the switches on the tracks, but one night old Hank found his arm caught on the switch. Raising his lantern to see to free himself, the engineer took that as a sign to proceed, and drove over the hapless brakeman, leaving his unfortunate arm attached to the switch. It’s said you might still see Hank wandering the wilderness, accompanied by a large white dog, shining his lantern in the darkness. In a more grisly version of the story, he attacks groups of kids attending camp, ripping off their arms. When residents of Tannersville see a faintly glowing light in the distance, they shudder in response.
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At length he reached to where the ravine had opened through the cliffs to the amphitheatre; but no traces of such opening remained. The rocks presented a high impenetrable wall over which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell into a broad deep basin, black from the shadows of the surrounding forest. Here, then, poor Rip was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog; he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure in their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man’s perplexities.
Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle, a Posthumous Writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker
Between Palenville and Tannersville there’s a parking lot off to the left, just after a hairpin turn. At one time this was Rip’s Lookout Point, which had a wishing well in front of the small building which served as a souvenir stand, luncheonette, and gas station. There were viewing glasses to peer into the forest, where you could see where Rip took his big nap, and the spot I was about to make for on foot. It also offered spectacular views of Kaaterskill Clove and off into the further distance. It was closed in the early sixties and sold to the state, and now it’s the parking area for Kaaterskill Falls.
Folklore has it that in 1942, a young couple decided to stop at the falls for a romantic tryst. Coming back to the car, they heard a loud banging, somewhat like thunder, and quickly realized it was a landslide. The man was crushed there in the car, and his lover was in a coma for several months. It’s believed that if you drive this section of the road, late at night, you might still see him alongside the road, looking for his lady. One woman told of seeing a man standing by the road, dressed all in black, and when she asked if needed assistance, he vanished. Others say he only appears to couples to warn them of one of their impending deaths.
Perhaps the most frightening part of the walk is that from the parking lot to the base of the trail which leads to the falls. You’re either on the road or the shoulder, with cars whizzing by. The hairpin turn at least slows them down, and it’s not long till you’re met with the rushing waters of Bastion Falls across the road, and below you where the overflow runs out beneath the road and off the side of the mountain.
Depending on the amount of rain, Bastian Falls can be a trickle, or it can be a cascade of small falls to the side of the larger one, fanning out and over rock ledges into a reflecting pool below. On days when the falls are flowing strong, you could be forgiven for thinking these were the falls Irving wrote about in Rip Van Winkle. And since he’d never been here when he wrote the story, it doesn’t really matter. But settling for this view is to rob yourself of a journey into the Rip Van Winkle wonderland.
Before Irving’s time, the Catskills were thought of as a wild and savage place, populated by hostile Indians, teeming with dangerous wildlife and where a person could easily find themselves lost, and either starving or eaten. The mood put off by these mountains was ominous, the rumors and tales fearsome. Farming which had always been an iffy proposition in the area rapidly became less than profitable, with cheaper crops coming in from the west now. Irving’s story helped put the Catskills on the map as a tourist destination, America’s first, albeit one with a mythical and somewhat supernatural history.
Kaaterskill Falls were believed to be the home of the Catskill witch, mentioned earlier. Another tale of the Catskill witch from Charles M. Skinner’s Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land echoed in Rip Van Winkle related that “Sometimes she would lead them to the cloves and would leap into the air with a mocking “Ho, ho!” just as they stopped with a shudder at the brink of an abyss. Garden Rock was a spot where she was often found, and at its foot a lake once spread. This was held in such awe that an Indian would never wittingly pursue his quarry there; but once a hunter lost his way and emerged from the forest at the edge of the pond. Seeing a number of gourds in crotches of the trees he took one, but fearing the spirit he turned to leave so quickly that he stumbled and it fell. As it broke, a spring welled from it in such volume that the unhappy man was gulfed in its waters, swept to the edge of Kaaterskill clove and dashed on the rocks two hundred and sixty feet below. Nor did the water ever cease to run, and in these times the stream born of the witch’s revenge is known as Catskill Creek.”
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On foot in the world of Rip Van Winkle
I grew up in the midwestern United States in the sixties, and our family would travel every other year to Florida for vacation. Along the way you’d spot See Rock City painted on the side of barns, and one year dad decided to make the pilgrimage up Lookout Mountain so we could in fact, see Rock City.
This was about the time Dylan and The Band were moving to Woodstock. For a child, Rock City was a magical experience. The trails wound through rock formations, going increasingly higher till you reached Lover’s Leap, where you could see seven states. Or so the story said. Along the trails were gnomes and other fairy tale statues, imported from Germany. It was the brainchild of the wife of a developer who created a housing development atop the mountain and christened it Fairyland. As he saw what his wife had created, he decided the public would pay to see it and the rest was history.
For me, that was one of my earliest introductions to fairy tales, and I’m pretty sure Rip Van Winkle was there as well, along with a rock formation in the shape of a witch. There was a hall with tableaus of famous folk tales, lit by blacklight. Yeah, it was pure kitsch, but to a five year old it was sheer magic.
That’s what I felt on the road to Kaaterskill Falls, and along the trail to the falls themselves. There were no gnomes in the forest, there didn’t need to be. There was enough of that sort of thing along the highway, be it in disarray and falling apart, or only memories. The great thing about being introduced to fairy tales and folklore at an early age is that it’s easier to believe.
Long before I was exposed to Tolkien and his dwarves, mining in the Misty Mountains, there were the dwarves high in the mountains overlooking the Hudson River, learned from Irving. And in Tennessee, I saw the real thing high upon Lookout Mountain.
When you believe as a child, it’s easier to remember as an adult. Along the path to Kaaterskill falls, climbing the stairs carved into the stone, I remembered believing, and realized there’s a part of me that believes still.
It’s about a half mile up the trail to Kaaterskill Falls, and you hear them before you see them. They fall in two segments, the first being a 180 foot cascade into a large clifftop pool, and then another 90 foot down to the base, where large rocks make for excellent places to sit and take it in.
I’ve been lucky in most of my trips to Kaaterskill Falls, visiting on weekdays just before or after the peak fall foliage season to minimize the crowd size. On this day, my first trip there, I had the place to myself, having only met one couple who were coming back as I went up the trail.
It seems inconceivable that Irving had never visited here when he wrote Rip Van Winkle, because Kaaterskill Falls are tailor made for the story. There needs to be the hike to the site, for if they were more accessible the crowds would be larger, the noise of humanity encroaching too much. As it is, if you can find yourself here alone, you can feel nature surround you and get a sense of the power it wields,
Sitting at the base of the falls, your senses come alive. Even on the hottest days it’s considerably cooler here. The mist from the rushing water cools you off further. The smell of the place … the water, the decomposition of leaves and other vegetation wafts heavily in the air. The light filtered through the trees and on the rushing water dances magically, twinkling in the shade. The sound envelops you, the roar of the falls above, the trickle of the stream around you and rustling of leaves and branches in the trees.
If you put yourself in the shoes of the early settlers, what seems beautiful now could carry a real sense of menace and terror. There are the beasts of the forest, any number of which could have killed you in the past. We haven’t always been the fearsome predator we are today. The earliest settlers would have had at best a musket to defend themselves, and with those you have one shot and you better make it count. Needing time to load and prime it seems a matter of luck, more than strategy. Bears and wildcats don’t stand idly by while you prepare to defend yourself. Rattlesnakes don’t give a lot of warning before striking. A knife against a bear might save your life, but you have the long walk back to civilization, torn to shreds which you’d likely not survive.
There are the cliffs to contend with, slippery from the spray, where people regularly fall to their deaths even now. Or maybe in that we’re in worse shape and more careless than in the past, as in 2018 four people died at Kaaterskill Falls while taking selfies here. Death by Instagram. It’s easy enough to follow the trail, but the trail in early days wasn’t clearly marked, had no steps cut into the steep sections, and it would be easy to find yourself lost in what at the time would have seemed like an endless wilderness.
And of course in the early days there were native Americans, some friendly, some hostile to contend with. In short, there are many ways to die in nature, even in a place possessing such natural beauty. In the roar of the falls you find those reminders, of just how small we are when we we’re reduced to nothing more than another beast in the forest.
It’s easy to see why the Mohicans feared and respected the place, and believed it to be the resting place of the creator.
Asher B. Durand, Kindred Spirits
The artists of the Hudson River School loved Kaaterskill Falls, and the first one known to have painted it was Thomas Cole, in a painting dating from 1826, just seven years after Rip Van Winkle appeared on paper. Cole also painted the falls with a lone Mohican warrior looking out over the falls (shown earlier), though perhaps the most famous painting of Kaaterskill Falls was by Asher Durand. Titled Kindred Spirits, it was painted in 1849 and depicted Thomas Cole and William Cullen Bryant together in a synthesized wilderness of Catskill landmarks. The painting was meant to be a eulogy for Cole, who had recently died, merging with Bryant who had immortalized Kaaterskill in verse.
Catterskill Falls by William Cullen Bryant
Midst greens and shades the Catterskill leaps,
From cliffs where the wood-flower clings;
All summer he moistens his verdant steeps
With the sweet light spray of the mountain springs;
And he shakes the woods on the mountain side,
When they drip with the rains of autumn-tide.
But when, in the forest bare and old,
The blast of December calls,
He builds, in the starlight clear and cold,
A palace of ice where his torrent falls,
With turret, and arch, and fretwork fair,
And pillars blue as the summer air.
For whom are those glorious chambers wrought,
In the cold and cloudless night?
Is there neither spirit nor motion of thought
In forms so lovely, and hues so bright?
Hear what the gray-haired woodmen tell
Of this wild stream and its rocky dell.
‘Twas hither a youth of dreamy mood,
A hundred winters ago,
Had wandered over the mighty wood,
When the panther’s track was fresh on the snow,
And keen were the winds that came to stir
The long dark boughs of the hemlock fir.
Too gentle of mien he seemed and fair,
For a child of those rugged steeps;
His home lay low in the valley where
The kingly Hudson rolls to the deeps;
But he wore the hunter’s frock that day,
And a slender gun on his shoulder lay.
And here he paused, and against the trunk
Of a tall gray linden leant,
When the broad clear orb of the sun had sunk
From his path in the frosty firmament,
And over the round dark edge of the hill
A cold green light was quivering still.
And the crescent moon, high over the green,
From a sky of crimson shone,
On that icy palace, whose towers were seen
To sparkle as if with stars of their own;
While the water fell with a hollow sound,
‘Twixt the glistening pillars ranged around.
Is that a being of life, that moves
Where the crystal battlements rise?
A maiden watching the moon she loves,
At the twilight hour, with pensive eyes?
Was that a garment which seemed to gleam
Betwixt the eye and the falling stream?
‘Tis only the torrent tumbling o’er,
In the midst of those glassy walls,
Gushing, and plunging, and beating the floor
Of the rocky basin in which it falls.
‘Tis only the torrent–but why that start?
Why gazes the youth with a throbbing heart?
He thinks no more of his home afar,
Where his sire and sister wait.
He heeds no longer how star after star
Looks forth on the night as the hour grows late.
He heeds not the snow-wreaths, lifted and cast
From a thousand boughs, by the rising blast.
His thoughts are alone of those who dwell
In the halls of frost and snow,
Who pass where the crystal domes upswell
From the alabaster floors below,
Where the frost-trees shoot with leaf and spray,
And frost-gems scatter a silvery day.
‘And oh that those glorious haunts were mine!’
He speaks, and throughout the glen
Thin shadows swim in the faint moonshine,
And take a ghastly likeness of men,
As if the slain by the wintry storms
Came forth to the air in their earthly forms.
There pass the chasers of seal and whale,
With their weapons quaint and grim,
And bands of warriors in glittering mail,
And herdsmen and hunters huge of limb.
There are naked arms, with bow and spear,
And furry gauntlets the carbine rear.
There are mothers–and oh how sadly their eyes
On their children’s white brows rest!
There are youthful lovers–the maiden lies,
In a seeming sleep, on the chosen breast;
There are fair wan women with moonstruck air,
The snow stars flecking their long loose hair.
They eye him not as they pass along,
But his hair stands up with dread,
When he feels that he moves with that phantom throng,
Till those icy turrets are over his head,
And the torrent’s roar as they enter seems
Like a drowsy murmur heard in dreams.
The glittering threshold is scarcely passed,
When there gathers and wraps him round
A thick white twilight, sullen and vast,
In which there is neither form nor sound;
The phantoms, the glory, vanish all,
With the dying voice of the waterfall.
Slow passes the darkness of that trance,
And the youth now faintly sees
Huge shadows and gushes of light that dance
On a rugged ceiling of unhewn trees,
And walls where the skins of beasts are hung,
And rifles glitter on antlers strung.
On a couch of shaggy skins he lies;
As he strives to raise his head,
Hard-featured woodmen, with kindly eyes,
Come round him and smooth his furry bed
And bid him rest, for the evening star
Is scarcely set and the day is far.
They had found at eve the dreaming one
By the base of that icy steep,
When over his stiffening limbs begun
The deadly slumber of frost to creep,
And they cherished the pale and breathless form,
Till the stagnant blood ran free and warm.
As a result of Rip Van Winkle and Washington Irving, the Hudson River painters and poets, and the close proximity to New York City and New England, the Catskills were swamped with tourism from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Lands that had been cleared for farming were returned to wilderness which was good. But there were efforts to tame the wilderness as well, to make it more tourist friendly. Kaaterskill Falls were dammed at the top so that the flow of the falls could be regulated and made more consistent. The falls were made to perform for tourists in effect, and visitors were charged a fee to watch.
But today, the peak of tourism seems to have passed, except for the rush of traffic during fall foliage season, and it’s possible to find yourself alone in the world Washington Irving created in his imagination, which luckily enough is a world that did and does exist.
You can go further up the falls, along a stone stairway but it’s clearly marked that you’re not supposed to. Even the lower steps are slippery and wet enough that I didn’t see the need to risk life and limb climbing up. Plenty of people do, but I was here to sit and wonder, not look for the quintessential viewing platform. Had I wanted that, I would have driven to the top and took the trail to the overlook. I wanted a pilgrimage, and it’s what I got.
A ways into the woods you’ll find the remains of a luxury hotel, skeletal and a reminder of its more gloried past. You also find a plaque, halfway up the staircase of the falls themselves, speaking of Vite, the Bayard of Dogs who fell to his death jumping from the top of falls to his master at the bottom on June 19, 1868. It’s thought by many that the dog still haunts the falls, barking and howling in the woods.
Taking a long pull from the flask I had brought – not dwarfish liquor but equally effective, I laid back on the stones and let the sounds, the smell, the feel of the coolness on my skin sink in, and tried to nap like Rip Van Winkle.
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By degrees Rip’s awe and apprehension subsided. He even ventured, when no eye was fixed upon him, to taste the beverage, which he found had much of the flavor of excellent Hollands. He was naturally a thirsty soul, and was soon tempted to repeat the draught. One taste provoked another; and he reiterated his visits to the flagon so often that at length his senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in his head, his head gradually declined, and he fell into a deep sleep.
Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle, a Posthumous Writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker
How long I sat at the falls I can’t say, as time does stand still. But it was certainly less than the 20 years Rip Van Winkle spent napping. My reverie was interrupted with the sound of a couple coming up the trail, and I thought it best to leave the spot to them for a bit, and started back down to the mundane world, where dwarves don’t party with you in the mountains, but with a part of the mountains forever inside me.
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When you awake you will remember everything …
When you awake you will remember everything …
You will be hangin’ on a string from your…
When you believe, you will relieve the only soul
That you were born with to grow old and never know
Wash my hands in lye water
I got a date with the Captain’s daughter
You can go and tell your brother
We sure gonna love one another all night
You may be right and you might be wrong
I ain’t gonna worry all day long
Snow’s gonna come and the frost gonna bite
My old car froze up last night
Ain’t no reason to hang my head
I could wake up in the mornin’ dead
And if I thought it would do any good
I’d stand on the rock where Moses stood…
Robbie Robertson and The Band
Route 23A from Kaaterskill Falls back to Palenville is marked by some incredible S turns, with equally incredible views. Even if you didn’t have to slow down to stay the effects of gravity, you’d want to just for the scenery.
I was making my way towards the town of Catskill, passing near Salisbury Manor in Leeds, a colonial era house with a long history, sometimes dark. In 1755, Anna Dorothea Swarts, a servant at the Manor fled from the house, after suffering the abuse of its owner, William Salisbury. Nobody knows much about Anna, as she’s sometimes described as being Scottish, German or a mix of African and native American. But Lord Salisbury gave chase and caught the unfortunate girl. He claimed he had simply tied her to the back of the horse for the walk home, and she had fallen and was drug to her death. He was acquitted, but it was commonly thought he’d intentionally tied the girl to back of the horse and slapped it on the ass and let it rip her to pieces as it drug her back to the house.
Regardless of exactly how she met her doom, that wasn’t the last heard of Anna. A New York City newspaper reported in 1824 that “Sometimes sighs and lamentations were heard in the air, like the plaintiveness of the soft whistling wind. … A white horse of gigantic size, with fiery eyeballs and distended nostrils, was often seen to run past the fatal spot, with the fleetness of wind, dragging a female behind, with tattered garment and streaming hair, screaming for help. At other times the horse would appear to drag a hideous skeleton, clattering after him, half enveloped in a winding sheet.”
Curiously, there’s a variant of the story, this time about a man by the name of Ralph Sutherland. The story is the same, with the exception that Sutherland is found guilty and condemned to hang. But since he was a member of the gentry, the sentence was postponed till he was 99 years old. This created an uproar, and to soothe the public he added a stipulation that Sutherland wear a noose till the time came for his execution.
Sutherland went back to his house, tossed away the noose and drank himself into a stupor. When he awoke, the noose was once more around his neck. This time he threw it in the fire but when he awoke again, it was once more tight against his throat. No matter how he tried to dispose of it, when he awoke it was back.
One night the girl appeared to him, terrifying him and he begged her forgiveness, but she would have none of it. From that point on she would appear when he least expected it scaring the living shit out of him, sometimes appearing as a skeleton, sometimes reenacting her death with the aid of a phantom horse, sometimes throwing rocks against his window or scraping her nails along the glass. He tried to drink away his curse, even tried to join the company of others, careful to wear the noose, but people wanted nothing of him.
How it ended no one is sure. Some say he carried on like this, the phantom preventing his death till he turned 99 and the sentence was carried out. Still others say he reformed and the sentence was lifted, but he continued to wear the noose voluntarily, to remember his foul deed and what he was, so he would never fall into his old ways. My favorite version said that over time he grew used to the girl’s ghost, and they became something like friends, then fell in love and the true horror was that their love couldn’t be fulfilled, because of the obvious differences between their states of consciousness, i.e. she was dead. When he turned 99, the sentence was carried out and they were finally joined together.
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And then I was in Catskill town. It’s a lovely old colonial town, with historical houses and buildings a plenty. Had I time I would have pulled off for a tour of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, to see the studio of one of the most renowned of the artists of the Hudson River School. As it was, I made my way across the Hudson via the Rip Van Winkle bridge, and to Olana, the home of another of the artists, Fredric Edwin Church.
Olana is a curious home, sitting high on the hills overlooking the Hudson, the Catskills looming beyond. It’s an excellent example of Orientialist architecture, with elements of Victorian, Persian and Moorish. Across the Hudson lies the Catskills. In the other direction lies the Poconos. The house was closed for the night, but I spent some time watching the sun dip lower in the sky, the sunset washing the Catskills with pinks and reds, before heading off into the fresh Hudson Valley night.
Want to read more about the haunted Hudson Valley?
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