History, Natural History & the Arts
The science of the brain was changing throughout the 19th century. Medical researchers were peering ever deeper into cerebral mysteries and one question piqued their interest more than any other: who has the biggest brain?
This episode of the Long Island History Project podcast turns for answers to Dr. James R. Wright, medical historian and retired professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Calgary. [Read more…] about Whatever Happened to Walt Whitman’s Brain?
October is the month we celebrate Halloween and the anniversary of General John Burgoyne’s surrender at the Battles of Saratoga. It is also the month which precedes a much anticipated national election, which many look forward to, yet others fear the consequences.
One of the candidates seeking office has used a term, which for better or worse, has entered the American lexicon, “childless cat women.” Intended as a rather nasty insult, it has been seized upon by some as a mantra of opposition.
In Upstate New York, where Halloween includes spooky local lore, and where Burgoyne’s surrender took place, it might be interesting to consider a “childless cat woman” of the past who had also been considered a witch. [Read more…] about The Witch of Saratoga: Angeline Tubbs, History & Folklore
Fall fungi comes in a wide range of appearances, often in striking shapes and colors. Due to the moist air of autumn in New York State, our parks and trails abound with opportunities to see them in all their uniqueness.
Many of them have fantastically creepy names or appearances, just in time for the spookiest time of year. [Read more…] about Fall Fungi: A Primer
Instead of throwing your leftover Halloween pumpkins or jack-o-lanterns into the garbage, some local governments and community groups host pumpkin smashes or pumpkin drop-off events where residents are invited to continue the family fun by smashing and/or dropping off their pumpkins for composting or feeding farm animals. [Read more…] about How To Plan A Halloween Pumpkin Smash Event
Halloween is full of spooks and frights, and one of the most celebrated holidays in the US, but also one of the most wasteful. To keep your Halloween green by following these tips: [Read more…] about Greening Your Halloween
Internationally recognized Bat Week is October 24th through October 31st. The celebration raises awareness about the critical role of bats in the environment and a time to appreciate New York’s nine bat species.
Outdoor enthusiasts are encouraged to refrain from visiting caves and mines during the fall and winter months. Bats spend the winter hibernating in these underground cavities where relatively constant, warm temperatures protect these mammals from harsh winter temperatures above ground. [Read more…] about Bat Week! New York State’s Bats & How To Protect Them
With the chill in the air and pumpkins popping up everywhere, many folks are making plans for Halloween. Signs are out inviting ghosts and goblins, large and small, to join historic cemetery tours that highlight the resting places of the victims of murder and mayhem as well as the rich and famous, some even by candlelight.
If you’re thinking of adding a cemetery visit to your agenda, these tours offer safe ways to weave through complicated landscapes and monuments for the dead. For many reasons, however, the last ten years have also seen a marked increase of people visiting historic cemeteries around Halloween on their own. [Read more…] about Cemetery Etiquette for the Halloween Season
In this episode of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast, Mairi Cowan, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto, Mississauga, joins Liz Covart to investigate the life of a young French woman named Barbe Hallay and her alleged demonic possession.
Cowan is the author of The Possession of Barbe Hallay: Diabolical Arts and Daily Life in Early Canada (McGill-Queen’s Univ. Press, 2022). [Read more…] about Possession and Exorcism in New France
The new book Witches and Warlocks of New York: Legends, Victims, and Sinister Spellcasters (Globe Pequot, 2022) by Lisa LaMonica is a collection of legends and historical accounts about witches and warlocks from the Empire State. [Read more…] about Witches and Warlocks of New York
One neighbor calls our house “the spider house” because so many orb weavers spin webs outside our large living room windows. Our spiders work on their webs at dawn and dusk, and I watch their silhouettes against pastel skies as they move like aerialists – twisting, pulling, building, repairing. [Read more…] about The Architecture of Spider Webs
The topic of this week’s The History Twins podcast is Washington Irving‘s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” and storytelling duo Carla and Keyes discuss the classic 1819 tale of a headless goblin that haunts Sleepy Hollow, in the town of Mount Pleasant, Westchester County, NY, in search of his missing head. [Read more…] about Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Podcast)
The October 2022 episode of Crossroads of Rockland History turns its attention to the haunted history of Rockland County, NY. First, host Clare Sheridan read the mysterious story of Lavender, and afterward we revisited a 2014 episode of “Crossroads” featuring an interview with the author, historian, and ghost hunter Linda Zimmermann.
Whether it’s the house on LaVeta Place in Nyack; Bosco; Clarkstown’s Jane “Naut” Kanniff, and the last witch trial in New York; the Goblin of the Dunderberg, or others, Linda Zimmermann knows them all and shared many with us. [Read more…] about Haunted History of Rockland County
Each fall, tens of thousands of people from around the world flock to Sleepy Hollow in Westchester County, New York to visit the burial ground made famous in Washington Irving’s 1819 tale, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. In Irving’s tale of “the Headless Horseman,” a German soldier is said to return to the grave-site, in search of his head that was lost during America’s Revolutionary War. [Read more…] about Hulda of Bohemia: The Accused Witch of Sleepy Hollow
The Haunted History Trail of New York State is home to the largest collection of haunted and Halloween events statewide. Nearly 500 events – the most since 2019 – are offered now through Halloween and range from guided ghost walks and themed Halloween parks to historical haunted tours and paranormal investigations. [Read more…] about Haunted History Trail Offers NY State Halloween And Haunted Events
The ossuary under the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini at Via Veneto in Rome houses the skulls and bones of some 4,000 former Capuchin monks who were interred there between 1631 and 1870. The dead were buried without coffin and later exhumed to make room for newly deceased. Their remains were transformed into “decorative designs.”
In the summer of 1867 Mark Twain visited the Capuchin Convent and recorded his observations of the crypt’s “picturesque horrors” in The Innocents Abroad. What the novelist witnessed were arches built of thigh bones; pyramids constructed of “grinning” skulls; and other structures made of shin and arm bones. Walls were decorated with frescoes showing vines produced of knotted vertebrae; tendrils made of sinews and tendons; and flowers formed of knee-caps and toe-nails. [Read more…] about Macabre Mania From Charles Allan Gilbert to Andy Warhol
Ah, October; the month when summer has truly fled and winter can be felt in the air. Leaves explode in color and then lose their grip on life. Geese and other waterfowl beat a hasty retreat for warmer climes.
Some flowers we typically see in the spring are apparently confused and put out a few end-of-season blossoms. And everywhere we turn, yards and businesses are decorated for Halloween. [Read more…] about Celebrating Bat Week
Precocious, blanket-toting Linus from the Peanuts comic strip awaited the Great Pumpkin each Halloween night from 1950 to 1999. If anyone else had been stood-up that many times, they’d have thrown in the blanket for sure.
Perhaps Linus’ resolute faith that the mythical pumpkin would show up was because every year brings the world a greater pumpkin. [Read more…] about Great Pumpkins: A Ton Of Fun
There have been quite a number of witchcraft trials in what is now New York State, including in Westchester County, and on Long Island. In the midst of the American Revolution, in the town of Salem (now near the New York-Vermont border in Washington County, NY), there was another witch trial, of a sort.
Salem, NY, much like Salem, MA, has a very religious past. The community is said to be founded by Presbyterian Rev. Dr. Thomas Clark, who had emigrated from Ireland in the mid-1760s with his congregation, part of a Presbyterian schism. Clark’s congregation first settled in nearby Stillwater, on the Hudson River but eventually landed in what is now Salem, NY, where they purchased a 25,000 acres among the mostly New England settlers already established there. [Read more…] about 1777 Claims of Witchcraft In Salem, Washington County
In the United States, the first witch trial is believed to have occurred in Springfield, Mass., in 1645. A fervor for hunting witches led to an increase in prosecutions in New England, and New York, in the 1650s and 1666s. Women would be accused of witchcraft within New York’s colonial borders into the mid-1700s. Some of these trials would have a lasting impact on the colony and the country.
The 1650s was not an easy time to be a woman, especially if a neighbor held a personal grudge. In East Hampton, Long Island in 1657 Elizabeth “Goody” Garlick was accused of witchcraft, after 16-year-old Elizabeth Gardiner Howell became ill and suffered fevered dreams and delusions. [Read more…] about Witchcraft Claims In East Hampton, Long Island
Halloween is a time when representations of witches make their frequent appearance. The United States has a complicated history with witchcraft and the occult, due in part to its puritanical past and influx of diverse cultures.
Most Americans are familiar with the Salem Witch Trials (1692-1693) in Massachusetts, but trials for witchcraft have probably occurred as long as trials have existed, and still do in places where belief in magic is strong. In Europe people were tried for witchcraft throughout the 1700s. [Read more…] about Westchester County’s Katharine Harrison, Accused Witch
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