Haunted Utica: Mohawk Valley Ghosts and Other Historic Haunts

UTICA

Chapter 1

THE HISTORY OF UTICA

The city of Utica is centrally located in New York State and lies next to the New York State Thruway between Syracuse and Albany. Utica sits in the geological region that many refer to as the Mohawk Valley. Utica is a city long revered for its embrace of immigrants and refugees from around the world who have flooded the area with the sounds, tastes and colors of many cultures. Utica, oddly enough, was not the original name of this community nestled on the banks of the Mohawk River. The Iroquois were the original inhabitants of the area, with the Mohawk Valley mainly occupied by member tribes the Mohawk and Oneida Indians. The Iroquois have many legends, but Utica being haunted goes back to the legend of Oniate, also known as Dry Fingers. This vengeful spirit consisted of a disembodied mummified hand and arm that would punish with afflictions those who behaved badly. Perhaps Oniate is still around today moving from home to home in Utica.

The Mohawk Valley and Utica were first settled in the late eighteenth century by the Europeans who built Fort Schuyler, named after Colonel Phillip Schuyler, a hero in the French and Indian War. The fort would eventually dissolve, but the area would adopt the name Old Fort Schuyler. This would be the name for years until local men gathered in Baggs Tavern to decide on a new name for the village. Names were written on slips of paper with every man present scribing his wish for the new name. It was Erastus Clark who wrote down the name Utica, an ancient port city in Carthage that was the first colony to be founded by the Phoenicians in North Africa.

The name Utica was incorporated in 1798 and stands to this day. Utica would thrive and grow on the backs of Italian, Welsh, German, Polish and Irish immigrants who would labor in textile factories that blossomed along the Mohawk River. Utica Sheets, one such company, was known worldwide for its top-quality textiles. Utica’s population swelled in the early to mid-twentieth century and hosted expansion into manufacturing that enjoyed the central location and access to the Barge Canal, the Mohawk River and, post World War II, the New York State Thruway. Utica would decrease in population in the latter part of the twentieth century as jobs were lost and industry moved to other countries. However, the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries proved a boost to the area, with new refugee populations from Bosnia, Somalia and other countries. Utica today is known as a city that loves and embraces people, religions, cultures and colors from around the globe. The city hosts hundreds of grand estates, structures and buildings that are awe-inspiring and hand-built with top craftsmanship. It’s these grand old places that host ghosts and spirits in the night.

Chapter 2

FOREST HILL CEMETERY

Utica, New York—August 3, 2013

The Forest Hill Cemetery sits atop a hill on the edge of the city of Utica and hosts the last resting place of many of the power brokers, politicians and founders with lasting legacies from the past couple hundred years in history. Forest Hill Cemetery has over fifty thousand people buried and continues to add to that number, as it is still very active.

The first thing you see when you approach Forest Hill is the Gothic stone main entrance that is unlike that of any cemetery you will ever see. Inside are buried people from kings of industry and powerful politicians to orphans and lunatics from the Utica Asylum. Just a taste of some of the historic graves:

• At one time, Roscoe Conkling (1829–1888) was considered one of the most powerful men in the United States. He was mayor of Utica, Oneida County district attorney and United States senator and was asked numerous times to sit on the Supreme Court.

• Samuel Beardsley (1856–1932) participated in the War of 1812, was the Oneida County district attorney and served as a United States congressman, New York State attorney general and chief justice of the New York State Supreme Court.

• John Butterfield (1801–1869) ran the company Butterfield, Wasson & Company that would go on to be American Express. He was instrumental in the early stages of telegraph communication. His son Daniel was a general for the Union during the Civil War, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and composed the military tune taps.

Gothic entrance to Forest Hill Cemetery.

• Ellis Roberts (1827–1918) was editor of the Utica Morning Herald and a member of the United States House of Representatives. He was assistant United States treasurer and then became treasurer of the United States when he was appointed by President William McKinley.

There are also dozens and dozens more people of distinction buried in the hallowed historic grounds of the Forest Hill Cemetery.

It would prove difficult for the Ghost Seekers to decide what graves to visit in the night. We would have to follow Bernadette’s psychic intuition, Gerard’s vast knowledge and Tony’s favorites. The trio did not disappoint on their guidance, and we experienced a magical paranormal evening in a place of overflowing history and tragedy. It’s the human condition we all live every day.

The night began with a meeting in the office of Gerard Waterman, superintendant of Forest Hill. His elegant office is attached to the Gothic stone entrance and is adorned with handcrafted furniture that represents a history all its own. The Ghost Seekers of Central New York was represented by lead investigator and founder Bernadette Peck; her husband and crackerjack paranormal investigator, David Peck; and paranormal investigators Helen Clausen and Dennis Webster. We were thrilled that we would be given the honor of being the first ever ghost-hunting group to be able to investigate Forest Hill after dark. The caretaker locked the doors as the sun fell over the western rim of the Earth. We talked with Gerard and his son Brian Waterman, who would be along for the investigation. We would have the husband-wife team of Tony and Darlene Desiato as our tour guides. The group had handpicked several of the most interesting grave sites in the hope that their beauty would be a conduit for activity.

It was a balmy summer night with no wind or rain in the forecast—a perfect night to troll a cemetery for the personalities of the dead. Before we could start, we needed the sun to fall completely over the edge of the earth to envelope Forest Hill in delightful darkness. We went into the meeting room adjacent to Gerard’s office, where the Ghost Seekers of Central New York was given the special privilege of looking through the interment logs, which are the records of the dead and buried from 1849 through the modern age. We marveled at the overstuffed volumes that had been handwritten in beautiful quill ink that one never sees today. It was interesting to see the names, ages at death, causes of demise and the plots in which they are buried. Reasons of death were listed as exhaustion, unknown, consumption, insanity and dozens of others. The saddest part was reading about the young children, especially the ones who had come from the House of the Good Sheppard or had been orphans. Gerard told us that Forest Hill has a massive amount of people buried on its grounds and continues to add new residents.

Entrance to the Forest Hill Cemetery around 1900. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

We asked Gerard and his son Brian if they had any ghost stories or if any possible paranormal incidents had happened at Forest Hill. They told us of the man who was walking his pair of beagles on the dirt road up by plots 12 and 13, by the chapel, when he saw two young boys dressed in nineteenth-century clothing. They were clearly ghosts, as the man stated that he could see through them. The boys ran into the woods and evaporated. We could only hope the spirits would come alive to greet us. Even when there is reported haunted activity, we can never expect or guarantee anything happening on an investigation. All we can do is hunt for the paranormal game.

We started out with an opening prayer to bring forth friendly spirits and discourage any dark entities from interloping in our sphere. Little did we know that we would get a paranormal rarity within the first few minutes. As the group was walking up the main drive, we were all talking. We had our digital recorders on for the entire spiritual hunt in case we might capture something on our travels. We also had our K2 meters to monitor electromagnetic activity, as well as digital cameras and a night-vision digital video camera that was being operated by David.

We were only a few hundred yards up the road when we all noticed that David had stayed back and was pointing his camera at the grove of trees lining the road. We waited while Bernadette walked down alone to join her husband. I had a feeling something was happening, as they stayed there for a few minutes. When they rejoined all of us, we received a shock. David had been filming the trees. In the squid-ink dark, our human eyes do not have the rods and cones that allow us clear view, but a night-vision camera makes things clear. David had been filming the woods and captured the ghost of a young woman dressed in late nineteenth-century clothing peering at him from behind one of the trees. He froze. He took a step to the right to try to get her completely. She moved when he did, as if she were playing some kind of paranormal hide-and-seek. This was incredible. Bernadette was floored, as she says David, who had been on hundreds of investigations over a multi-decade career of ghost hunting, rarely has this type of event. We all paused. It was a rare occurrence. When this was happening with David, I had taken a photo of the same woods but farther up, and I picked up a couple spirit lights and orbs in between some trees.

Interment records reviewed by Forest Hill superintendent Gerard Waterman and paranormal investigators Bernadette and David Peck.

We walked all the way up to our first spot, next to a beautiful headstone that had a carved stone anchor on the top. Out of the respect for the living relatives, we have decided not to mention specific graves or names of locations where we did our electronic voice phenomenon (EVP) or the exact headstone where evidence was found. I will make one exception to this rule at the grave of the consort—or, as they would use in