In the spirit of the Halloween season, The Star-Review has unearthed some creepy chronicles from the area’s bygone days.
Some are well-known ghost stories — we’ll let you draw your own conclusions — but others really did take place in the area.
Read on for some history about your favorite haunts:
Lugubrious Liverpool
Liverpool Village Historian Dorianne Elitharp-Gutierrez said there are several “haunted” places in the village, even the Liverpool Village Museum at the Gleason Mansion on Second Street.
Elitharp-Gutierrez said the village rents out the upstairs rooms to small businesses, and tenants have heard mysterious footsteps in the hallway.
Several years ago, the Onondaga Historical Association held a “living history” tour that stopped at the Village Museum. One woman said she felt a hand on her shoulder during the tour, but when she turned to look, there was no one there.
The corner of Balsam and Second streets are said to be haunted as well. One of the corner’s supposed ghosts is a woman who accidentally set herself on fire while cooking and ran across the street for help. A house built circa 1860 stands on the site of a tavern that fell into disrepair.
“Children claimed that place was haunted and knew to run past that corner because they didn’t want to deal with it,” Elitharp-Gutierrez said.
Elitharp-Gutierrez also quoted the well-known story of the Hawleys. On Jan. 2, 1822, the newlywed couple, Louisiania and Harvey Hawley, set out in a sleigh to cross Onondaga Lake to visit Louisiania’s relatives in Johnstown.
“They were never heard from again,” Elitharp-Gutierrez said.
The Hawleys apparently fell through the ice and froze to death. Searchers found their unique pinto horsehair trunk floating on the lake. They then found the sleigh with the newlyweds inside. Harvey had the reins wrapped around his neck, and the water surrounding the grisly site was a deep blue.
“She had a pocket full of indigo [dye] she was going to take to her mother,” Elitharp-Gutierrez said.
Carnegie’s Pier 57 Restaurant on Oswego Road is said to be haunted by the ghost of Lisa Siler, whose estranged husband shot and killed her in 1989 at what was then Pronto’s Restaurant.
Manager Nicole LaFluer-Valentino said she’s never seen the ghost, but many of Pier 57’s employees have reported seeing things move of their own accord.
“They say she’s a friendly ghost and she doesn’t hurt anybody,” LaFluer-Valentino said.
Spooky Cicero
Though he’s adamant that he doesn’t believe in ghosts, Cicero Town Historian Tom Mafrici shared some true tales from the crypt.
Prof. Francis P. Lantry was a Manlius resident who was principal of the Cicero Union School on Route 11. Mafrici’s law office now stands on the site of the school.
In 1888, Lantry fell upon hard times. He was in debt and had started going blind. Lantry checked into the Astor House hotel in New York City, where he planned to commit suicide.
Ever the scholar, Lantry decided to document what it was like to die from a morphine overdose. He wrote down his pulse and how he felt after each pill he took. After 100 pills — “enough to kill a horse,” Mafrici said — he still wasn’t dead.
Eventually, Lantry managed to kill himself and his unusual death was reported in The New York Times.
In her 1964 book “A Vanished World,” Anne Gertrude Sneller told of the Talcot family, who lived just outside of Cicero at the turn of the 20th century. Mr. Talcot had two teenage daughters, Delia and Catherine, and a little daughter, Charlotte.
After Mrs. Talcot’s death from consumption — what is now called tuberculosis — Mr. Talcot began sexually abusing his teenage daughters.
“Since Ma died, he’s made us take her place — in his room — at night,” Delia told a neighbor.
Delia and Catherine both died of tuberculosis before they could take their father to court for his crime. Charlotte went to live with Mrs. Jackson, the woman in whom Delia had confided.
Mr. Talcot was bitten by a “mad dog” and died of rabies. Though they tried to tend to him in his illness, his neighbors said after his death, “Sometimes a man gets what he deserves.”
