Happy Halloween JAR Readers! Some Spooky Stories from the Revolutionary and Founding Eras

We asked our contributors for their favorite spooky stories from the 1765-1805 era. Here are the responses:

Robert S. Davis

Colonel John Dooly of Georgia was assassinated, killed, or murdered in his home while a prisoner of war on parole. That event has spurred numerous legends and stories. Was he killed in retaliation for Elijah Clark’s attack on the Tory garrison in Augusta? Was his death out of revenge for something he did earlier or even before the war? Was he a sick old man? Dooly was Georgia’s first recognized folk hero. See “A Frontier for Pioneer Revolutionaries: John Dooly and the Beginnings of Popular Democracy in Original Wilkes County,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 90 (Fall 2006): 315-349.

Kelsey DeFord

After the French ceded part of Louisiana to the Spanish, Creoles revolted against the new Spanish government in 1768. It did not end well for the rebels; most were captured, jailed, or executed. Some of the leaders had their heads cut off and placed onto pikes. Branded as traitors, the reigning colonial government denied them a burial. Legend says that Catholic priest Pere Dagobert de Longuory took the bodies and heads (against the Spanish government’s orders and guard) in the dead of night back to the cemetery to be buried. The cemetery still stands today; there are reported sightings of Dagobert singing “Kyrie” around the cathedral.

Jude M. Pfister

While there are plenty of ghost or supernatural stories emanating from every nook and cranny of the American founding period, I suggest one of the earliest scary and spooky stories to be published by an American novelist. The multi-talented Charles Brocken Brown (1771-1810) of Philadelphia, was an editor, historian, journal publisher, and novelist. Between 1798-1800 Brown produced several novels that earned him the title of “America’s first novelist.” While this is debatable, there is no denying his brand of American Gothic/horror/terror, etc.

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In rapid succession he published Wieland, Ormond, Edgar Huntly, and Arthur Mervyn. These novels explore deep dark topics of the human psyche and its power over the physical world, including spontaneous combustion, murder, vows to supernatural voices, and suicide, among other topics. Deep forests and dark houses are a favorite setting for Brown. His work inspired much better-known nineteenth century writers such as Cooper, Hawthorn, of course Poe, Longfellow, and Melville.

While little remembered today, the Library of America has a volume of Brown which captures his most compelling writing. Or grab an inexpensive reprint of Wieland (his most widely reprinted novel), read it by candlelight, and ignore the shadows outside your windows.

Victor J. DiSanto, Nichole Louise

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was written in 1820, but the characters were inspired by participants in the capture of John André during the American Revolution. Like André captor John Paulding, Abraham Van Brunt, aka Brahm Bones, deceived his opponent by wearing a Hessian coat. Like Paulding, Van Brunt was of Dutch ancestry and the strongest, toughest man in Tarrytown. Like John André, Ichabod Crane was an educated man. Revolutionary Westchester 250 historian Erik Weizenberg has brilliantly detailed the parallels between Crane and André and how Washington Irving used Paulding as the model for Van Brunt, in his essay “The Revolutionary War Lives On,” in Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, eds, Rip Van Winkle’s Republic (Baton Rouge: Louisianna State University Press, 2022), 154-174.

Sandra McNamara

The Doan gang has finally become acknowledged in many ways these past eight years or so. Well, an uncle of mine, Wells Wade from Elizabethtown, New Jersey, printed counterfeit money during the Revolutionary War. Also from Elizabethtown was Jacob Brookfield and his wife Abigail Sayre. It was told fifteen years or more back that his son Jacob Brookfield donated the land for Dean’s Ridge Cemetery in Crowland, now Welland, Ontario. Several relations are buried there including, Brookfield, Glover, Buchner and Doan. Guess who is acknowledged as being buried there, but grave unmarked? Wells Wade. His wife? Mary Brookfield, sister of Jacob. Is the Doan missing treasure buried there? Maybe?

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Brady J. Crytzer

My favorite story for the Halloween season is the story of “The Wizard Clip.” In 1794, a German Lutheran farmer named Adam Livingston received a sickly guest into his home in Middleway, Virginia. After collapsing, the dying traveler asked for a catholic priest to issue his last rites; Livingston refused. In the months that followed, Livingston’s family claimed to be tormented by a malevolent spirit. Pottery was broken, strange noises were heard in the middle of the night, and the family was tortured by the incessant sound of clipping shears. Upon later investigation, every bit of clothing, fabric, and linen in the home had been sliced to pieces. In a desperate effort, Livingston called upon a German hex magic practitioner to cleanse the house, but the haunting persisted.

According to Livingston, he later had a dream of a Catholic priest draped in a black robe, and heard a disembodied voice declare “This is the man who can relieve you.” After some searching, Livingston contacted Father Dimitri Augustine Gallitzin, a former Russian prince turned frontier priest in central Pennsylvania. Known as the “Apostle of the Alleghenies,” Gallitzin performed a blessing on the home, and the hauntings immediately ceased. Gallitzin relayed this story, known as “The Wizard Clip,” to Bishop John Carroll of Baltimore.

Tim Abbott

The scariest stories are always of the sea. A ferocious blizzard struck coastal New England on December 26 and 27, 1778. It left drifts fifteen feet high in Rhode Island and froze nine Hessians from the occupying garrison at Newport at their posts. An ox team and driver were found frozen upright on Boston Neck, and most of the sheep on Nantucket were either buried in the snow or driven into the sea by the storm. “Nabby” Adams wrote: “the Brig General Annould belonging to Col. Sears and Company wrect and seventy Men frose to death there never was so mallonclery an event took place in this harbour before.”

Captain James McGee of the ill-fated privateer General Arnold and his crew of one hundred and twenty sought shelter outside Plymouth harbor. The anchor parted and the brigantine grounded. The crew cut away masts and rigging to lighten the vessel but the hold flooded and the crew clustered on the freezing quarter deck. Their cries of distress were heard ashore but the storm and ice prevented their rescue until late the following day, when most had perished and the survivors were badly frostbitten. The people of Plymouth ended up thawing some of the bodies in a local stream before they could be buried.

Woody Holton

As Thomas Kidd points out in his book, The Great Awakening, page 288: The Americans who invaded Canada under Benedict Arnold in the fall of 1775 paused in Newburyport, Massachusetts long enough to open Rev. George Whitefield’s tomb (he died there five years earlier) and cut swatches from his robe for good luck.

Don N. Hagist

After participating in some of the war’s most difficult campaigns including the trek through the Carolinas and the capitulation at Yorktown, Britain’s 33rd Regiment of Foot was posted in Nova Scotia in 1783. Two years later, in the early night of October 15, 1785, Lt. George Wynyard, a veteran of the Carolina campaign, sat up late with fellow officer Capt. John Cope Sherbrooke in a barrack room in Sydney on Cape Breton Island. Suddenly, someone appeared in the room, a tall young man, pale and emaciated, surprising Sherbrooke and terrifying Wynyard. The mysterious visitor walked silently past, casting an affectionate but melancholy eye towards Wynyard, and entered the next room, a chamber with no other exit. Wynyard grasped Sherbrooke’s arm, drew a breath, and muttered, barely audible, “My brother.”

Knowing Wynyard’s brother to be in another part of the world, Sherbrooke took Wynyard into the next room to find no trace of the ashen guest, even though there was not a window or door for escape.

Time passed, and they seldom spoke of the strange event at their remote post. But the following spring a letter arrived for Sherbrooke, directing him to gently break the news that Wynyard’s brother had died – on the very day and hour the apparition appeared in their room.

The strange story was often told by Wynyard and Sherbrooke, and was related in numerous publications in the nineteenth century, notably Accredited Ghost Stories by T. M Jarvis (London: J. Andrews, 1823).

Salina B. Baker

General Anthony Wayne died on his way home from a successful campaign on the western frontier in 1795 and 1796. He was buried at an army post in Erie, Pennsylvania. His death is often attributed to chronic gout, but it is possible that he was poisoned. Thirteen years after his death, his son Isaac attempted to bring his father’s remains home to Chester County on the other side of the state. Isaac Wayne successfully exhumed the casket, but found it too unwieldy to transport. Instead, he rendered the flesh off of the bones, then apparently divvied the bones into several parcels for easy transport.

Somehow, according to legend, some of the bones were lost in transit, so not all of the general’s remains were interred in the family plot. There is a story that his spirit still rides between Erie and Chester, searching for the missing bones. That may or may not be true, but the pot used to render his body, and fragments of his coffin, can be seen at the Hagen History Center in Erie.

Richard Briles Moriarty

Before Dr. John Kearsley Jr. of Philadelphia was imprisoned in October 1775 for conspiring with the British, he made a pact with fellow Tory John Ross that whoever died first would come back to visit the survivor. Kearsley claimed that, asleep in January 1777, he awoke to find the ghost of Ross standing before him. Ross, in Kearsley’s telling, warned that, if the Americans continued their rebellion, “the vengeance of God” would be “poured forth on the American people for their ingratitude, that superlative of sin which the Almighty always punishes.” Kearsley later told anyone who listened that Ross gave him a unique signet ring and a letter emphasizing the warning (“if ye will not believe me when risen from the dead, horrid judgments will attend you!”). Convincing listeners that he was losing his marbles, Kearsley, before dying in October, sent the letter and signet ring to Gen. William Thompson of the American Army. Ten days before Thompson died, the story goes, he was sealing a letter with the ring when Ross visited him, snatched the ring back, told Thompson his time was near, and disappeared. So has the letter. Did God forget to wreak vengeance on the Americans?

Gregory Safko, William M. Welsch

Along with the story of the Headless Hessian of White Plains, New York – interred in a cemetery in nearby Sleepy Hollow – there is the tale of another pair of Hessian soldiers who suffered the same fate at Fort Mercer in the Battle of Red Bank, New Jersey on October 22, 1777. Over 500 Hessians were killed during that battle.

Two of the Hessian soldiers had their heads blown off, and in haste their bodies were buried with each other’s head. Neither of these soldiers could rest in peace until this horrible mix-up was corrected. On moonlit nights they floated over the battlefield, searching for each other. In their search they frightened young and old alike. For decades these apparitions roamed many miles in Southern New Jersey, from Woodbury to Haddonfield. There were numerous accounts of one soldier appearing and disappearing, just before the other would appear and disappear. They were often seen with their shrouds rustling in the wind before fading into the trees on the banks of the Delaware. One night in the early 1900s they both met on Crown Point Road in Woodbury. They exchanged heads and immediately fell into dust.

David M. Griffin

In 1780 in Flushing, Long Island three privates of the British occupying army broke into a local dwelling house in the night and accidentally awoke the family. In a resulting skirmish involving the choking of the homeowner’s sister, one of the soldiers was shot through the throat and killed. The other soldiers escaped and were later captured and released. Locals accused Col. Samuel Birch, the commanding officer in the Hempstead area, of discharging the criminals without a trial. This criticism prompted Colonel Birch to insult the townspeople by only condemning the dead soldier and not the others. The dead soldier was tried, condemned and sentenced to be hanged in chains (gibbetted) on the plains north of Hempstead. Writings by a nineteenth century author recorded that after the hanging there was heard the creaking of the iron cage as it swung “to and fro” in the wind, and that it would often alarm the night traveler.

In 1935, a skeleton buried and bound tightly in an iron cage was found by a youngster playing in a sandpile north of Hempstead. Recent research has determined that the remains were that of Pvt. Robert Silby, a trooper of the British 17th Regiment of Light Dragoons stationed in Hempstead, Long Island.