Moment in Oddity - Black Heron Hunting Trick
Who remembers playing "Peek-a-Boo" as a child? Would it surprise any listeners to think that birds enjoy or benefit from this game as well? Let us introduce you to the black heron. There are many different ways that birds can secure the diet they require. Whether it is seed, insect or other prey. If you happen to have enjoyed the game of peek-a-boo at any time, you may hold something in common with this avian. The black heron uses it's wings like an umbrella or sunshade. For anyone who has enjoyed the BBCs Talking Animals, you may remember the game of "Nighttime-Daytime". This was an example of the black heron who uses their wings to create an umbrella type canopy to lure any prey into the shade of their wings or to simply conceal their identity prior to pouncing on their meal. This strategy is used by many egrets and herons. Animals are amazing and the thought that some utilize a game similar to humans' "peek-a-boo" to thrive, certainly is odd.
This Month in History - Elvis Presley Appears on Ed Sullivan Show
In the month of September, on the 9th, in 1956, Elvis Presley made his first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Some may know that the Ed Sullivan show had banned any appearances by Elvis due to The King's perceived obscenity by the establishment. However, after The Steve Allen Show beat out the ratings of Ed Sullivan's Show on July 1, 1956 due to Elvis Presley's guest spot, Mr. Sullivan quickly changed his tune. Colonel Parker knew he had the advantage over Sullivan and negotiated the highest fee ever paid by the show to any act at that stage in time. In an unusual twist, Elvis did not actually step on to Ed Sullivan's stage for this first performance. Instead he was filmed in Hollywood due to being in the middle of filming his first movie, "Love Me Tender" in Los Angeles. His first song was, "Don't Be Cruel" and continued on for four songs in total. Elvis performed two additional times on The Ed Sullivan Show for that contracted series. Although many people remember hearing that Elvis was only shot from the torso and above to try and censor The King's gyrations, it wasn't until his third time on the show that "Elvis the Pelvis", as he was dubbed, was intentionally filmed from the waist up.
The Thousand Islands (Suggested by: Amy Johnson)
The name of Thousand Island dressing was inspired by an archipelago of 1,864 islands that are in both Canada and the United States. Legends surrounding the creation of the dressing are interesting, but even more intriguing are the stories of hauntings connected to the islands. These islands are dotted with villages, forts and castles making them the perfect setting for ghost stories and legends. Join us as we look at the history and hauntings of some of these locations in the 1000 Islands!
Before Europeans started building homes on the islands, they were called Manitouana by the indigenous people, which means "Garden of the Great Spirit." The Ojibwa People and Iroquois Confederacy lived on several of the islands. The Thousand Islands became a hot vacation destination starting during the Gilded Age and that continues today. This group of islands can be found along the St. Lawrence River stretching from Lake Ontario to lake Champlain. Its easy to see their connection to the Gilded Age in the castles that pop up around on various islands. The rich made this area their retreat, but before that the islands played host to war. There were many skirmishes here between the British and America during the War of 1812. Leftover remnants of that war can be seen in the ruins of forts and historical sites like the State Battlefield Historic Site and Fort Wellington. And there are several museums dedicated to the maritime history of the area. In order for an island to be included as a 1000 Island, it has to have one square foot of land above water year round and support at least two living trees.
A little fun fact for those of you who like to wander down conspiracy and secret societies rabbit holes is that the group Skull and Bones owns one of the 1000 Islands, Deer Island. They have a 40-acre retreat there, but it is not well kept and several buildings on the island are in ruins. Some of the waters around the islands are very treacherous. Leek Island Channel is one of those places with currents so strong, that ice rarely forms during even the coldest days of winter. The A.E. Vickery was a schooner that struck a shoal on August 15, 1889 and sank near the Rock Island Lighthouse. The Rock Island Lighthouse was once watched over by William Johnston who was called "The Pirate of the Thousand Islands." Before becoming keeper in 1853, he got caught up in attacking a British mail steamer in 1838. He set the steamer on fire and ran it aground on Peel Island. Johnston was declared an outlaw by the U.S. government and captured and put on a trial. He eventually received a pardon and then went on to be a keeper at the lighthouse, serving for eight years. The lighthouse was changed and moved three times because it wasn't as visible as it needed to be, hence why the A.E. Vickery sunk.
A river pilot, Henry Webber Jr., had just boarded the boat and apparently wasn't very good at his job. The Captain was so angry when his ship hit the shoal that he grabbed a gun and pointed it at Webber and fired, the bullet ricocheting. The Captain and four crewmen managed to get to shore aboard a yawl boat. Various parts of the schooner have been retrieved over the years and have been placed in various museums. Another of the wrecks occurred in October of 1912 and this was the SS Keystorm. This was a cargo steamer with a load of coal and it was traveling in fog when it struck a shoal. The ship sank over five hours. The wooden sidewheel steamer The Islander, caught fire while at dock at Alexandria Bay in 1909 and sank quickly. The America was a steel drill barge that sank after an explosion in 1932. The King Horn schooner ran aground in 1897. So the islands have seen their share of shipwrecks.
Another schooner that ran into some trouble, we aren't sure the name of, but legend claims that the crew came down with cholera and the schooner parked itself off Ghost Island. The crew disembarked and most of them died and were buried on the island. The island is said be haunted now because of that incident. The explosion of The America is actually blamed on the phantoms of the island since it was moored near the island. Another barge that was carrying cattle is said to have disappeared near the island. Another sunken barge happened near Ghost Island in 1926. People believed the island was cursed for sure. Despite the shipwrecks, boating among the islands has always been popular and Walt Whitman describes this wonderfully in "A Song of Joys" in his book of poetry Leaves of Grass, "O boating on the rivers, The voyage down the St. Lawrence, the superb scenery, the steamers, The ships sailing, the Thousand Islands, the occasional timber-raft and the raftsmen with long-reaching sweep-oars, The little huts on the rafts, and the stream of smoke when they cook supper at evening."
Ghost Island isn't the only reputed haunted hot spot here. We found several other locations that harbor spirits.
Sackets Harbor Battlefield State Historic Site
Sackets Harbor got its start in 1801 and was named for the man who founded it, Augustus Sackett. This was a busy port in the 1000 Islands and that is probably what made it attractive to the Marines, Army and Navy as they all chose this as headquarters during the War of 1812. This base would focus on protecting the Northern Harbor. The Sacket Harbor Battlefield was a place where hundreds of men lost their lives. The Battle of Sackets Harbor took place on May 29th, 1813. The British had the early upper hand in the battle, causing the militia to abandon their weapons and retreat, but the Americans regrouped and repelled the British. There was a major issue that happened during the battle though that would lead to consequences later. Some British cannon fire hit the shipyards and an officer there assumed that the fort had fallen since the British were now targeting the shipyard. He decided it would be better to destroy a ship that was currently under construction and a bunch of supplies. The ship was able to be salvaged later, but the supplies were a lost cause. The first US steamboat to be built for the Great Lakes, the Ontario, was constructed in the shipyard here in 1817. The battlefield was cleared and leveled and turned into farmland and then later was turned into the state historic park. People who visit claim that like most battlefields, this one is haunted. People see strange lights out here at night and see shadow figures. The sounds of gunfire and cannons are heard. The Northern New York Shadow Chasers investigated here in 2008 and caught EVP with several responses to questions they asked.
Madison Barracks
The Madison Barracks housed the soldiers during the War of 1812 and was built in 1813 out of native limestone. The barracks were named for President James Madison who actually did visit the fort that bore his name. President U.S. Grant served here as a young 2nd lieutenant and today his barracks are marked with a plaque in his honor. Because of the military presence here, this was the third most populace area of New York, right behind Albany and New York City in 1814. The barracks remained active and were used through to the end of World War II. And a couple of fun facts about this island is that chloroform was invented here and the "Father of American Mixology," bartender Jerry Thomas, was born here in 1830. Today, the barracks have been transformed into the Creekside Apartments and there is also an inn, restaurant and marina here. The historic district is home to many buildings dating back to the 19th century. Several spirits of American soldiers have been seen as though they are standing guard over the building. People who live there and neighbors that live nearby, claim to see a man holding a lantern standing on a balcony late at night. The residual sounds of a battle are heard like cannons and muskets firing and sometimes the screams of men chill the ears of anyone who hears them.
The Isle of Pines is a small island off the shore of Fishers Landing on the St. Lawrence River between Clayton and Alexandria Bay. The island is just big enough for a large three-story main house and a large two-story boathouse. Rose Claudia summers here with her family, that includes daughter Danielle and son Anthony, because her grandfather, Nicolas R. Cobisello bought the island in the early 1940s. Nicolas had been working in the area, building roads to the Thousand Islands Bridge across Wellesley Island. The island already had the structures on it and the main house is clearly Victorian in design with a large mansard roof. When he moved onto the island, he lived in the boathouse and invited a priesthood to come live in the main house. There were pieces of furniture and decorative items in the house that the priests were offended by because they featured nudes, so they took those items out the back door and burned them. Needless to say, Nicholas was not pleased and he kicked the priests out.
Norm Wagner who is a Clayton historian says that music has been heard coming from the ballroom, which no longer hosts music and dances. He said, "There were reports that people were hearing ballroom style music, it’s
not coming from Foxy’s Restaurant (which is just a short distance away),
it’s just unexplained music."
Danielle Parody, Rose's daughter, greeted the Ghost Hunters when they arrived in 2009 and she took them on a tour of the place. The Claudias had won a contest hosted by the Ghost Hunters, which afforded them the opportunity to have their property investigated. The crew invited musician Meat Loaf to join them for the investigation. Danielle took the crew to the kid's room in the boathouse first and told them that she saw an apparition in that room of a little girl standing at the foot of the bed and she watched the ghost run through the wall. She said the girl was glowing. The boathouse has a ballroom where social gatherings were hosted. There is a bedroom off the ballroom where guests have seen apparitions by the bed and another bedroom where people have felt both hot and cold spots. In an upper area overlooking the ballroom, the band used to play and people hear various musical instruments up there like a spoon banging on a pot. Anthony told the Ghost Hunters that he was coming out of the shower in the boathouse when he heard clanging up in that attic area and it startled him really bad and then he got angry. So he marched up to the attic with fists raised and said he wasn't going to take this, this is his house and he wasn't afraid. He then watched as a small section of 2 x 4 picked itself up and flew across the railing and popped him on the top of the head. He was so scared, he hopped into a boat and drove over to the mainland and slept on the dock.
The main house has its haunts too. People hear disembodied footsteps, see shadow figures, hear unexplained noises and watch as the lights flicker. A niece and nephew who were staying at the house told their mom that they had been playing with a dead priest in the living room. Up on the third floor a man heard a woman ask, "Can you help me?" There was nobody on that floor with him. Anthony saw a woman looking down from a window on the third floor, again, when nobody was up there.
Amy Bruni said of the investigation, “It was probably one of the most memorable hunts I have been on. I didn’t think it was a scary place though.” Amy and the guys had fun giving Steve Gonsalves grief about spiders as they found quite a few during the investigation. And we mean, a lot! Amy and Kris investigated in the boathouse first. They heard footsteps like someone walking on the deck, but after trying to recreate the sound, they realized it had to be coming from inside. Kris and Amy saw a shadow in the corner of the ceiling at the same time.
Grant and Jason investigated in a room on the third floor first and
immediately got spikes on the EMF detector. All the batteries in their
cameras and flashlights went dead in here as well. Jason wanted to test
the EMF, so he said he was going to count to three and he wanted the
spirit to light up the EMF when he got to three and that is exactly what
happened. The EMF indicated that there were both male and female
spirits in the room. Meat Loaf was sitting on the bed in this room and he felt something unseen sit down on the bed behind him. They moved out into the hall and Meat Loaf felt drawn to a room and when he entered, he felt the hair on his arm stick up. He used an EMF to communicate. The first question was to figure out if this was the spirit seen looking out the window and it not only indicated it was not, but that it was a man. They asked for the spirit to move something and there was a loud audible bang. They asked for it to do it again and they heard another bang. They traced the sound to a door and they believe it was being moved to bang the doorknob on the wall. It seemed like the spirit was saying it was a priest. The crew all felt like the place was definitely haunted.
Boldt Castle on Heart Island
There are six structures on Heart Island in Alexandria Bay: Boldt Castle, the Power House, the Alster Tower, the Hennery, the Arch, and a stone Gazebo. The castle is named for the man who had it built, George Boldt. George Boldt was born in Prussia in 1851 and immigrated to America in 1864. He would become a self-made millionaire and influential hotelier by starting at the bottom. He worked in a kitchen in New York before being asked to manage the dining room at The Philadelphia Club, an exclusive gentlemen's club in Philadelphia. He bought his first hotel in Philadelphia in 1881 and soon bought the competing hotel on the opposite corner. He eventually tore that hotel down and built the largest hotel in the city, the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, in 1904. That still stands today as the Hyatt. Then he met up with the Astor cousins in New York, William Waldorf and John Jacob, who each owned adjoining hotels, the Waldorf Hotel and Astoria Hotel. Boldt leased the Astoria and eventually merged the two hotels under his management as the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, which became famous for its Waldorf Salad. The Empire State Building now stands where the hotel had once been.
This is where one of the legends about 1000 Island dressing comes in. The dressing is made from a variety of ingredients depending on who is making it and generally includes mayonnaise, olive oil, lemon juice, ketchup, vinegar, pickles and cream. In this version, Boldt and a chef are credited with creating the dressing from ingredients that the Waldorf-Astoria's kitchen had on hand, when Boldt realized he had forgotten to order dressing for the salad. He instructed the hotel's maitre d', Oscar Tcshirky, to put it on the menu. The dressing was named for the 1000 Island region as this had a special place in Boldt's heart. However, the chef didn't include the recipe in a book he wrote during that time period and so some people wonder if this is true. Another legend claims that a woman named Sophia LaLonde was getting creative in her kitchen and whipped up the dressing for her husband's shore dinner. He was a fishing guide and introduced it to actress May Irwin who asked for the recipe and the dressing became famous. Sophia's name comes up again as an innkeeper of the Herald Hotel in Clayton, New York and that it was here that she introduced Sophia's Sauce. Another story claims that the original recipe had a base of French dressing and appears in the 1965 edition of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook. There are so many stories that sociologist and professor Michael Bell worked with his graduate students to determine the true origin and found that it really depended on the region, which story was told. There was no written historical record to follow. So it seems that there are as many origins of 1000 Island dressing as there are varieties.
Louise Kehrer was born in Philadephia, Pennsylvania in 1862 and she came from a prosperous family. Her father was the steward of the Philadelphia Club and he was the one who hired George Boldt. Boldt was 26 at the time and Louise was 14 and love soon blossomed between the two. The two were married in June of 1877 and they went on to have two children, George Charles, Jr. and Louise Clover. Boldt loved Louise deeply and she adored him. The two were inseparable and Louise helped George in the hotel business, guiding him to adding cut flowers and candles on tables. She helped with decorating the Waldorf-Astoria as well. The family took a vacation in 1895 through the 1000 Islands and Louise fell in love with Hart Island. Boldt bought the island for her and quickly started working on plans to build her a dream house. She was his princess and he was going to make her a castle. Construction didn't start until 1900, but George hired 300 construction workers, so that it would get done quickly. The castle was nearly complete after four years and tragedy struck.
Louise had been becoming increasingly frail. As the years of building continued, Louise's light faded and in January 1904, Louise passed away. George was completely bereft and immediately ordered construction to cease on the castle. He never stepped foot on Hart Island again and ironically, this heartbreaking story led to the island's spelling to be changed to Heart. The 60,000 square foot castle with 120 rooms sat unfinished. Boldt died in 1916 and the castle sat abandoned for 73 years. Then the Thousand Islands Bridge Authority bought the property and restored the building that had been left to the elements. Boldt Castle is today a popular destination for visitors and wedding receptions. The ballroom is one of the most elaborate spaces in the castle, adorned with state of the art crowned molding and designed with dramatic lighting. The Billiards Room has carved wood walls and fireplace mantle. All the family suites have a closet, bathroom and private entry to the second floor balcony. The Grand Hall has a stained glass dome, the floors are covered in Italian Carrara marble and the ceiling is molded plaster with unique designs. A grand staircase leads to the second floor, branching into two sides. The library was probably going to be Mr. Boldt's favorite spot as his office was always filled with books. The details in this room are amazing. The fireplace mantle is made from American chestnut and carvings in that tell the story of Hansel and Gretel. There is a boy on one side, a girl on the other and in the center above the fireplace is a woman with a "witch-like" nose. The mahogany wainscoting in the room features carvings of a genie’s lamp, a pirate ship and an image of Boldt Castle.
It's not surprising that Boldt Castle is said to be haunted. Louise never got to enjoy her castle, so why wouldn't she visit in the afterlife? And George missed his beloved. Brides, guests, tourists and employees all claim to have seen Louise and these sightings started all the way back in the early 1900s. A lady in white is seen walking near the water by the boathouse. The lights in the castle turn on by themselves and disembodied footsteps are heard. The apparition of George has been seen in the walking the corridors of his massive castle. Perhaps he wants to make sure that the continued restorations go according to his plan.
Amy Johnson who suggested this location shared, "After my mother died, my sister and another person visiting my parents' home in the Thousand Islands both saw my mother, near their beds. When I slept in her room, I had her and my father's ashes on a table in the room, I told my mother I was happy to be there with her, but to please not show herself, as I wasn't sure I could handle it! I guess I'm a bit wimpy!"
The 1000 Islands are a beautiful grouping of islands with lots of fun an adventures to be had there. So much history is here as well. Is some of that history haunted? That is for you to decide!
Clayton Island Tours offers glass-bottom boat tours through the islands that sound really cool: https://claytonislandtours.com/boat-tours/rock-island-lighthouse-cruise/
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