Seneca Hill Ghost LbNA #21022 (ARCHIVED)
Map
Nearby Boxes
Add Note
Add Location| Owner: | Adoptable |
|---|---|
| Plant date: | May 30, 2005 |
| Location: | |
| City: | Minetto |
| County: | Oswego |
| State: | New York |
| Boxes: | 1 |
| Planted by: | Craftymouse  |
|---|---|
| Found by: | coopdevaul |
| Last found: | May 15, 2008 |
| Status: | FFFFFFFFF |
| Last edited: | May 30, 2005 |
***UPDATE 1/12/08***The ghost has left us! Well, we've had some close calls with this box, but our luck finally ran out. The box is gone, likely lost to the groundskeepers at the cemetery who had begun some major work near her hiding spot. Thanks to all who found this letterbox! We hope you enjoyed the hunt and the story! ---Craftymouse and Dandelion
Hike Distance: Minimal (drive-by)
Terrain: Historic ...slightly haunted
Creepiness factor: 10+
SPECIAL NOTES: This letterbox has been planted inside a cemetery. We chose this particular place because of its rich history and relevance to the subject matter of the box. If you object to the placement of this box, please refrain from seeking it out.
Don't forget to print out the clues for "Here Lies Henry", also in Riverside Cemetery.
There is no ink or pen in the box. Please, please, please rehide very well and be careful not to be seen ‘boxing by anyone- living, dead, or undead! The purpose of this box is to have some good spooky fun, but please remember to be respectful. DO NOT seek out this box if there are people nearby. DO NOT disturb mourners should there be any. You can always come back on another day. The cemetery is very old, but burials are still held here. Pause to remember our many veterans here. This cemetery is open until dusk…not that you’d want to be there any later than that anyway!
This letterbox is located in the Riverside Cemetery on Route 57, just south of the city of Oswego. This area is known as Seneca Hill and it is the site of a haunting that has been going on for many years. Dick Case, a writer for the Post-Standard in Syracuse wrote a column about the ghost of Seneca Hill several years ago. Here is an excerpt from his column to give you some background on the story:
People think something’s going on at Seneca Hill, across the Oswego River from Minetto. They aren’t sure what it is.
Henrietta Jaskula wrote to me about an experience she had near the Oswego County hamlet July 8, 1992. She’s sure of the date because she keeps a journal: “I was alone and traveling on Route 481 (about a mile south of the Oswego city line), about 10-11 a.m., heading for Baldwinsville. It was near Dutch Ridge Road, on the right-hand side, I saw a woman walking on a raised hilly area. She had on an old-fashioned outfit. It honestly looked to me like a gray dress, white bib apron and white collar and she wore a white bonnet. It looked like a Pilgrim woman. She also carried a straw basket on her apron. This area has no houses.
“It startled me. I slowed down but did not stop. A car behind me also slowed down. I guess it startled them, too.”
Henrietta was about 1,000 feet from the Pilgrim. She looked in her car’s rearview mirror as she moved away. The figure was gone.
I called Henrietta and she talked about the experience, which left her puzzled. She couldn’t believe what she’d seen; what was that odd-looking woman doing there, next to the busy highway?
Henrietta lives in Oswego. A while later, she mentioned the mysterious stranger to her friend Ann Dobbs, who lives in Minetto. Ann grew up a mile from Seneca Hill. At that point, Henrietta knew nothing about the Seneca Hill ghost stories. She’d never seen anything quite that upsetting.
“Ann said she knew about the woman people see at Seneca Hill,” she explained. “She hadn’t seen it, but others had.”
Henrietta told me she stored the story until a few weeks ago, when she read a newspaper article about Rosemary Nesbitt, who’s even more of an institution in Oswego County than the ghost of Seneca Hill. She’s city historian and director of the White Marine Museum at Port Oswego. It seemed Rosemary had given one of her story hours. Among the stories she told was the folk tale about the terrified woman seen running along Route 57 at Seneca Hill. She had a little girl in tow. Several people reported the same experience during the 20 years since Rosemary first used the story in a radio broadcast. She's tracked it back to the turn of the century.
Henrietta decided to share her experience with me. Could she have seen the same woman, in a less frightening situation? The next thing I knew, I was standing on Route 57, looking south at Seneca Hill and listening to Rosemary Nesbitt re-create her history with the Seneca Hill ghost. Two horses grazed in the field across the road. The river's just over there, beyond the trees. The wind blew. Leaves snapped off the trees and rolled along the ground.
"I personally don't believe in this sort of thing," Rosemary was saying, "but people do see something."
She first heard the story from a friend 20 years ago. The friend made Rosemary promise never to connect her to the telling. It was, the friend emphasized, a real experience, just like Henrietta's.
"It was in early November, on a night when the moonlight seemed to cover everything around here," Rosemary began. "My friend said it was so bright she was tempted to turn off her car lights.
"She came down that knoll up there and saw a woman running along the edge of the road. The woman had on a high-neck dress and she was barefoot. She was pulling a little girl, about 6 years old, who also wasn't wearing shoes." Rosemary's friend said she got a look at the woman's face as the car passed her. It had terror written all over it. And the face was real, not transparent, according to her. She told Rosemary she stopped the car, got out and ran up the hill after the woman and child. At the crest, she said she lost sight of them. "It wasn't like they vaporized; they just weren't there." She went to a house, the first she saw. She knocked on the door. No one answered. The friend's next stop was the state police station at Minetto, across the bridge over the river. She said to the trooper on duty he'd better check out Seneca Hill because something awful was going on. The trooper replied he'd seen lots of reports about the terrified woman, over time. There were so many, in fact, he said, they asked a psychic from Syracuse to come up and check out Seneca Hill.
It checked out. "The psychic called it The Seneca Hill Manifestation," Rosemary said.
Her friend's story fascinated the historian, who is retired from the drama faculty at SUNY Oswego. Rosemary tried to research it. She talked to neighbors and looked in old histories. Nothing.
"That's the odd thing about this; there's nothing here. Usually, you can find a terrible event, like a murder, to tie into the story. Not with this one." Rosemary picked up other Seneca Hill experiences after she recreated the story for a Halloween broadcast on an Oswego radio station. One man told her he'd had an encounter with a fleeting woman at Seneca Hill about 25 years before, which would be almost 50 years from today. He drove west on Route 45, toward The Hill, late at night. Suddenly a woman ran in front of his car and up on the porch of a house, Rosemary figures is on the north side of 45, almost to Route 57. The woman apparently went into the house. Her informant told Rosemary he turned to his wife in the car and asked what she thought of the woman. What woman? his wife replied.
An even stranger report came from an 81-year-old Oswego woman who said her father bought a house on the east side of the city, near Fort Ontario, which turned out to be haunted. He came to Oswego in 1906. Her father worked at the fort. Officers there told him they saw the ghost of a woman leave the cupola of the house "and end up here, at Seneca Hill," Rosemary said. We walked along the road, waiting for a revelation. None happened. Rosemary's been told there have been years when cars lined Route 57 on Halloween night, waiting for a glimpse of the ghost. Most of the reports she knows about were in early November. Henrietta's experience in July 1992 took place about a mile from where we stood, well within the square formed by routes 57, 481 and 45 and Dutch Ridge Road. What did Rosemary make of this?
"When I studied in England, I had a professor who had this theory he called `the camera theory.' He said everything that happened in an area is imprinted on something like a giant negative. Things are just there; they're not happening again and certain people may be able to see them." Rosemary smiled. "Maybe that's what my Irish grandmother used to call `second sight.' There's something going on here."
CLUES:
Although Riverside Cemetery is not exactly located within the square area formed by Routes 481, 57, 45 and Dutch Ridge Road, it’s very near to the place where I personally had an encounter with the ghost! The entrance to the cemetery is on Route 57, on the left if you’re coming from Oswego, and on the right if you’re coming from Fulton. If you were to travel all the way to the farthest graves in the cemetery, you’d be on top of a wooded hill overlooking 481…almost exactly the place of my encounter – which you’ll read about when you find the ghost.
Remain in your car until I tell you to get out….for your own safety!
When you enter the Cemetery, you’ll see a sign notifying you that this place is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The roads in the cemetery take many twists and turns and cross back over themselves many times so be sure to follow my directions carefully, lest the ghost find you wandering and alone. From the entrance go right. The beautiful stone historic chapel is on your left. The first road on your left would take you to the circle in front of the chapel, but you want the second left. You’ll pass WATKIN, MCCARTHY and FREEMAN on your right. At the first Y, go right. You’ll pass STOWELL. At the second Y, go left (it comes quickly after the first Y). LITTLEFIELD and FARWELL are on your right.
Continue straight at the next intersection, passing DIMENT on your right. You’ll need to go straight again at the next intersection. Ahead of you is a small mausoleum for CONDE. Go to it, then around it, keeping it on your right. At the next Y go right. There’s a tall obelisk for ROBINSON on your left with six uniform headstones in front. Ahead of you is a bridge that you must cross. The surrounding waters are still, but may hold secrets. The trees and vines nearby seem to reach out for your car! Don’t linger near the water, she may try to catch you there! Hurry away, up the hill straight ahead, into the older section of the cemetery. At the top of the hill, you’ll be very near the ghost in her crypt, but there are other things that you must see before you meet her. Take the right-most path, passing The Honorable Edwin Allen and his family on your left. Edwin is a former mayor of the City of Oswego. I have a photo of his home that was taken in the 1880’s in my possession. Continuing around his circular plot, you’ll see a particularly disheartening gravesite to your right, behind a stump. The Oswego Children’s Home, founded in 1852. While only one child’s headstone is visible, I’m sure there are others there with her.
You need to go left, passing Franks’ stump and anchor on your left, followed by a large memorial for George Beale Sloan who was a speaker of the NYS Assembly and a member of the NYS Senate.
You’ll come to an intersection with a pump in the middle. Kate Kellogg is watching to make sure you go straight across the intersection. On the left you’ll see an interesting head’stone’ for DR. MACFARLANE. Pass by STACY on the left and the road turns the corner left at STONE. You’ll need to stop at the next intersection and leave the safety of your car. You can pull off the road a little bit into the grassy area on the right. The MCCAFFREY plot is here. Greet them all: Henry, Mary, Harry, Walter, Frederick and Ida. Say a special hello to Ida. The Honorable Henry D. McCaffrey is also a former Oswego City mayor and once lived in the same house that I live in now. I have a photo from the 1880’s of the house. Standing in front is a little girl. That would be Ida. Dandelion and I feel a special bond with her, from seeing her looking out at us from the old photograph. In a bizarre and creepy coincidence, this letterbox was hidden 49 years to the day from when Ida passed away. She never married. There’s something else that the McCaffrey’s have in common with Dandelion and I. Can you guess?
You must leave the McCaffrey’s and your car and follow the road going downhill. You’ll walk past SHERMAN on your right. The road will turn to the left and on the corner will be the BENNETT, RICHARDSON, BATES plot. Go up the stairs to meet them all…Harriet, Maxwell, Jacob, Naomi, Lawrence and….
Run for your life back down the stairs and turn right, heading for the corner across the road with the stairs leading to James Duane Henderson. He will offer you no protection on your search, but will guide you in the right direction. Directly to the left of his stairs is a seldom travelled path leading into the woods. A few steps on this path and you'll see a grouping of six trees, two rough and four smooth, on the right. Behind these trees lurks the ghost. Uncover her bark and stone crypt to release her. Be sure no one sees you.
Please rehide her well. When you've finished stamping in, don't return to your car yet. There's another letterbox to be found. Exit the seldom travelled path and follow the road as it turns the corner at the BENNETT, RICHARDSON, BATES plot (taking you away from your car, not towards it). BRITTON is on your right and an obelisk for ROOT is on the left. When you get to the large stone for SHELDON, stop!
Edward Austin Sheldon was a pioneer in educational methods. He was principal of the Oswego Primary Teachers’ Training School, which became the Oswego State Normal and Training School in 1866, and is now known as SUNY Oswego. A statue of him can be seen in front of Sheldon Hall on the Oswego State campus. But wait…did you just hear that? You’ve lingered here far too long already! Malvena Guimaraes is watching you from her crumbling tomb across the road. You'd best be moving along. This is the starting point for "Here Lies Henry". (His clues are listed separately).
Hike Distance: Minimal (drive-by)
Terrain: Historic ...slightly haunted
Creepiness factor: 10+
SPECIAL NOTES: This letterbox has been planted inside a cemetery. We chose this particular place because of its rich history and relevance to the subject matter of the box. If you object to the placement of this box, please refrain from seeking it out.
Don't forget to print out the clues for "Here Lies Henry", also in Riverside Cemetery.
There is no ink or pen in the box. Please, please, please rehide very well and be careful not to be seen ‘boxing by anyone- living, dead, or undead! The purpose of this box is to have some good spooky fun, but please remember to be respectful. DO NOT seek out this box if there are people nearby. DO NOT disturb mourners should there be any. You can always come back on another day. The cemetery is very old, but burials are still held here. Pause to remember our many veterans here. This cemetery is open until dusk…not that you’d want to be there any later than that anyway!
This letterbox is located in the Riverside Cemetery on Route 57, just south of the city of Oswego. This area is known as Seneca Hill and it is the site of a haunting that has been going on for many years. Dick Case, a writer for the Post-Standard in Syracuse wrote a column about the ghost of Seneca Hill several years ago. Here is an excerpt from his column to give you some background on the story:
People think something’s going on at Seneca Hill, across the Oswego River from Minetto. They aren’t sure what it is.
Henrietta Jaskula wrote to me about an experience she had near the Oswego County hamlet July 8, 1992. She’s sure of the date because she keeps a journal: “I was alone and traveling on Route 481 (about a mile south of the Oswego city line), about 10-11 a.m., heading for Baldwinsville. It was near Dutch Ridge Road, on the right-hand side, I saw a woman walking on a raised hilly area. She had on an old-fashioned outfit. It honestly looked to me like a gray dress, white bib apron and white collar and she wore a white bonnet. It looked like a Pilgrim woman. She also carried a straw basket on her apron. This area has no houses.
“It startled me. I slowed down but did not stop. A car behind me also slowed down. I guess it startled them, too.”
Henrietta was about 1,000 feet from the Pilgrim. She looked in her car’s rearview mirror as she moved away. The figure was gone.
I called Henrietta and she talked about the experience, which left her puzzled. She couldn’t believe what she’d seen; what was that odd-looking woman doing there, next to the busy highway?
Henrietta lives in Oswego. A while later, she mentioned the mysterious stranger to her friend Ann Dobbs, who lives in Minetto. Ann grew up a mile from Seneca Hill. At that point, Henrietta knew nothing about the Seneca Hill ghost stories. She’d never seen anything quite that upsetting.
“Ann said she knew about the woman people see at Seneca Hill,” she explained. “She hadn’t seen it, but others had.”
Henrietta told me she stored the story until a few weeks ago, when she read a newspaper article about Rosemary Nesbitt, who’s even more of an institution in Oswego County than the ghost of Seneca Hill. She’s city historian and director of the White Marine Museum at Port Oswego. It seemed Rosemary had given one of her story hours. Among the stories she told was the folk tale about the terrified woman seen running along Route 57 at Seneca Hill. She had a little girl in tow. Several people reported the same experience during the 20 years since Rosemary first used the story in a radio broadcast. She's tracked it back to the turn of the century.
Henrietta decided to share her experience with me. Could she have seen the same woman, in a less frightening situation? The next thing I knew, I was standing on Route 57, looking south at Seneca Hill and listening to Rosemary Nesbitt re-create her history with the Seneca Hill ghost. Two horses grazed in the field across the road. The river's just over there, beyond the trees. The wind blew. Leaves snapped off the trees and rolled along the ground.
"I personally don't believe in this sort of thing," Rosemary was saying, "but people do see something."
She first heard the story from a friend 20 years ago. The friend made Rosemary promise never to connect her to the telling. It was, the friend emphasized, a real experience, just like Henrietta's.
"It was in early November, on a night when the moonlight seemed to cover everything around here," Rosemary began. "My friend said it was so bright she was tempted to turn off her car lights.
"She came down that knoll up there and saw a woman running along the edge of the road. The woman had on a high-neck dress and she was barefoot. She was pulling a little girl, about 6 years old, who also wasn't wearing shoes." Rosemary's friend said she got a look at the woman's face as the car passed her. It had terror written all over it. And the face was real, not transparent, according to her. She told Rosemary she stopped the car, got out and ran up the hill after the woman and child. At the crest, she said she lost sight of them. "It wasn't like they vaporized; they just weren't there." She went to a house, the first she saw. She knocked on the door. No one answered. The friend's next stop was the state police station at Minetto, across the bridge over the river. She said to the trooper on duty he'd better check out Seneca Hill because something awful was going on. The trooper replied he'd seen lots of reports about the terrified woman, over time. There were so many, in fact, he said, they asked a psychic from Syracuse to come up and check out Seneca Hill.
It checked out. "The psychic called it The Seneca Hill Manifestation," Rosemary said.
Her friend's story fascinated the historian, who is retired from the drama faculty at SUNY Oswego. Rosemary tried to research it. She talked to neighbors and looked in old histories. Nothing.
"That's the odd thing about this; there's nothing here. Usually, you can find a terrible event, like a murder, to tie into the story. Not with this one." Rosemary picked up other Seneca Hill experiences after she recreated the story for a Halloween broadcast on an Oswego radio station. One man told her he'd had an encounter with a fleeting woman at Seneca Hill about 25 years before, which would be almost 50 years from today. He drove west on Route 45, toward The Hill, late at night. Suddenly a woman ran in front of his car and up on the porch of a house, Rosemary figures is on the north side of 45, almost to Route 57. The woman apparently went into the house. Her informant told Rosemary he turned to his wife in the car and asked what she thought of the woman. What woman? his wife replied.
An even stranger report came from an 81-year-old Oswego woman who said her father bought a house on the east side of the city, near Fort Ontario, which turned out to be haunted. He came to Oswego in 1906. Her father worked at the fort. Officers there told him they saw the ghost of a woman leave the cupola of the house "and end up here, at Seneca Hill," Rosemary said. We walked along the road, waiting for a revelation. None happened. Rosemary's been told there have been years when cars lined Route 57 on Halloween night, waiting for a glimpse of the ghost. Most of the reports she knows about were in early November. Henrietta's experience in July 1992 took place about a mile from where we stood, well within the square formed by routes 57, 481 and 45 and Dutch Ridge Road. What did Rosemary make of this?
"When I studied in England, I had a professor who had this theory he called `the camera theory.' He said everything that happened in an area is imprinted on something like a giant negative. Things are just there; they're not happening again and certain people may be able to see them." Rosemary smiled. "Maybe that's what my Irish grandmother used to call `second sight.' There's something going on here."
CLUES:
Although Riverside Cemetery is not exactly located within the square area formed by Routes 481, 57, 45 and Dutch Ridge Road, it’s very near to the place where I personally had an encounter with the ghost! The entrance to the cemetery is on Route 57, on the left if you’re coming from Oswego, and on the right if you’re coming from Fulton. If you were to travel all the way to the farthest graves in the cemetery, you’d be on top of a wooded hill overlooking 481…almost exactly the place of my encounter – which you’ll read about when you find the ghost.
Remain in your car until I tell you to get out….for your own safety!
When you enter the Cemetery, you’ll see a sign notifying you that this place is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The roads in the cemetery take many twists and turns and cross back over themselves many times so be sure to follow my directions carefully, lest the ghost find you wandering and alone. From the entrance go right. The beautiful stone historic chapel is on your left. The first road on your left would take you to the circle in front of the chapel, but you want the second left. You’ll pass WATKIN, MCCARTHY and FREEMAN on your right. At the first Y, go right. You’ll pass STOWELL. At the second Y, go left (it comes quickly after the first Y). LITTLEFIELD and FARWELL are on your right.
Continue straight at the next intersection, passing DIMENT on your right. You’ll need to go straight again at the next intersection. Ahead of you is a small mausoleum for CONDE. Go to it, then around it, keeping it on your right. At the next Y go right. There’s a tall obelisk for ROBINSON on your left with six uniform headstones in front. Ahead of you is a bridge that you must cross. The surrounding waters are still, but may hold secrets. The trees and vines nearby seem to reach out for your car! Don’t linger near the water, she may try to catch you there! Hurry away, up the hill straight ahead, into the older section of the cemetery. At the top of the hill, you’ll be very near the ghost in her crypt, but there are other things that you must see before you meet her. Take the right-most path, passing The Honorable Edwin Allen and his family on your left. Edwin is a former mayor of the City of Oswego. I have a photo of his home that was taken in the 1880’s in my possession. Continuing around his circular plot, you’ll see a particularly disheartening gravesite to your right, behind a stump. The Oswego Children’s Home, founded in 1852. While only one child’s headstone is visible, I’m sure there are others there with her.
You need to go left, passing Franks’ stump and anchor on your left, followed by a large memorial for George Beale Sloan who was a speaker of the NYS Assembly and a member of the NYS Senate.
You’ll come to an intersection with a pump in the middle. Kate Kellogg is watching to make sure you go straight across the intersection. On the left you’ll see an interesting head’stone’ for DR. MACFARLANE. Pass by STACY on the left and the road turns the corner left at STONE. You’ll need to stop at the next intersection and leave the safety of your car. You can pull off the road a little bit into the grassy area on the right. The MCCAFFREY plot is here. Greet them all: Henry, Mary, Harry, Walter, Frederick and Ida. Say a special hello to Ida. The Honorable Henry D. McCaffrey is also a former Oswego City mayor and once lived in the same house that I live in now. I have a photo from the 1880’s of the house. Standing in front is a little girl. That would be Ida. Dandelion and I feel a special bond with her, from seeing her looking out at us from the old photograph. In a bizarre and creepy coincidence, this letterbox was hidden 49 years to the day from when Ida passed away. She never married. There’s something else that the McCaffrey’s have in common with Dandelion and I. Can you guess?
You must leave the McCaffrey’s and your car and follow the road going downhill. You’ll walk past SHERMAN on your right. The road will turn to the left and on the corner will be the BENNETT, RICHARDSON, BATES plot. Go up the stairs to meet them all…Harriet, Maxwell, Jacob, Naomi, Lawrence and….
Run for your life back down the stairs and turn right, heading for the corner across the road with the stairs leading to James Duane Henderson. He will offer you no protection on your search, but will guide you in the right direction. Directly to the left of his stairs is a seldom travelled path leading into the woods. A few steps on this path and you'll see a grouping of six trees, two rough and four smooth, on the right. Behind these trees lurks the ghost. Uncover her bark and stone crypt to release her. Be sure no one sees you.
Please rehide her well. When you've finished stamping in, don't return to your car yet. There's another letterbox to be found. Exit the seldom travelled path and follow the road as it turns the corner at the BENNETT, RICHARDSON, BATES plot (taking you away from your car, not towards it). BRITTON is on your right and an obelisk for ROOT is on the left. When you get to the large stone for SHELDON, stop!
Edward Austin Sheldon was a pioneer in educational methods. He was principal of the Oswego Primary Teachers’ Training School, which became the Oswego State Normal and Training School in 1866, and is now known as SUNY Oswego. A statue of him can be seen in front of Sheldon Hall on the Oswego State campus. But wait…did you just hear that? You’ve lingered here far too long already! Malvena Guimaraes is watching you from her crumbling tomb across the road. You'd best be moving along. This is the starting point for "Here Lies Henry". (His clues are listed separately).