In the spirit of the Halloween season, The Baldwinsville Messenger has unearthed some lurid legends from B’ville’s past.
Lysander Town Historian Bonnie Kisselstein recommended we check out the archives of Anthony J. Christopher’s “Sketches of Yesterday” column, which ran in the Messenger in the 1960s and ‘70s. A little online research revealed some more spooky spots in the area as well. Read on:
The Ghost of Cooper Street
What is now Route 48 used to be called “Cooper Street,” Christopher wrote in a 1962 column. Peddlers walked to road trying to sell trinkets for a meager profit. One such peddler was found dead in a creek near the Van Ness farm, and his ghost is said to haunt the area.
“A practical theory of the phenomenon in lieu of the ghost would be that fog rising from the low creek might take on a peculiar misty appearance as it wafted across the road in dusky hours,” Christopher explained.
Jacksonville Cemetery
According to hauntedplaces.org, Jacksonville Rural Cemetery on Fenner Road has the ghost of a teenage girl wandering around. Visitors have also seen a black cat with glowing green eyes and have heard mysterious gunshots near the cemetery.
“To add to the eeriness, rumor has it that behind the cemetery is a forest with a stream that seems to pull visitors toward it,” the website said.
Whiskey Hollow Road
It’s probably just as well that Whiskey Hollow Road in Van Buren is closed to traffic at night. Even if you don’t believe in ghosts, the narrow, twisting road is still a little freaky.
Legend has it that the five-mile road has been home to “an aggressive, evil band of Satan worshippers” as well as the Ku Klux Klan. Some say the ghosts of these groups’ victims — mostly children — wander the road.
“Many have seen a bloody children’s blanket hanging in the trees over the roadway,” reads the account of Whiskey Hollow Road on weirdus.com. “Those who see this also usually encounter the ghosts of small kids wandering along the road. Sometimes they seem confused. On other occasions they have asked passerby for help, then have disappeared.”
That same website shares a story from “L. Krash,” a Syracuse-area native who dared her boyfriend to drive her down Whiskey Hollow Road after dark. The young couple discovered an assortment of animal bones arranged in a circle four feet in diameter.
“These bones had been stripped of all fur, all skin, all muscle,” Krash wrote. “Now I know enough about nature to know that there’s no way a number of different species are going to get together to die within a four-foot circle. And there’s no way those animals are all going to stay undisturbed by scavengers long enough to have all the material decompose completely off of their bones.”
