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The Devil’s Footprints
Sleepy Hollow Country is steeped in folklore, but few tales are as peculiar as the story of the devil’s footprints in the village of Croton-on-Hudson. We stumbled across this geological phenomenon while sifting through newspaper archives for information on the Black Horse Tavern, a notorious Revolutionary War era public house on the bank of the Croton River. Below the headline “The Devil’s Footprints” ran the lede “Mysterious footprints in the solid rock on the east and west banks of the Hudson at Croton have puzzled the scientists, who believe them to have been made by a primeval man before the Stone Age.” We thought we had a pretty good handle…
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Those Wild and Crazy Tarrytown Squirrels
Here in the pages of Sleepy Hollow Country we live and breathe the odd and unexplained. Today we tender a few offbeat stories on rather unusual behavior by a bunch of Tarrytown squirrels. Before we start it is only fair to point out our little furry friends aren’t the only critters to exhibit outlandish behavior in these parts. Goats, chickens, and even mosquitoes have had their moments. A student of literature, however, may recall a line from “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” that suggests it is the human residents of the hollow who have a propensity to see marvelous visions: “They are given to all kinds of marvelous beliefs; are…
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UFOs Invade Tarrytown!
” . . . stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country . . .” –The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving The 1947 purported crash of an alien spacecraft in Roswell, New Mexico launched a national UFO frenzy. The Hudson Valley, no stranger to the marvelous and unexplained, quickly became a hot spot for unexplained flying craft. The hamlet of Pine Bush, about 60 miles north of Sleepy Hollow, seems to hold a special attraction for alien craft, with reported sightings from the 1950s through the present. While we aren’t breaking out the tinfoil hats just yet, we heartily…
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Revenge of the Exploding Mosquitoes!
“Tarrytown, N. Y.—Mosquitoes in Cortlandt street, North Tarrytown have become gasoline drunkards and are terrorizing the town.” Nyack Evening Star, November 23, 1911 Imagine if you will, a flying menace. A tiny insect of prolific numbers, small enough to slip into any house, stealthy enough to land on your person without being noticed. Imagine the mayhem if that abundant pest were the common mosquito and it developed a taste for gasoline, turning itself into a flying Molotov cocktail. On October 15, 1911, James Brady of Cortlandt Street became the first victim of the North Tarrytown plague of exploding mosquitoes. News articles are mixed on the source of the gasoline, with…
