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The Bewitched Mill of Sing Sing
The tale of the bewitched mill of Sing Sing, or the Ossining witch, comes to us down a winding path that begins at the ancient and now vanished shad fishing camp at Crawbucky Point, where local legends were told and retold around the evening campfires. But before we dive into our story of the bewitched mill, let’s take a brief detour into the shifting name of the village presently known as Ossining. 17th Century Dutch maps of the Hudson River show a settlement on the east shore occupied by a band of the Mohegan tribe known as “Sint Sinck.” In 1813 European settlers founded a village they called Sing Sing, Anglicizing…
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Hulda the Witch of Sleepy Hollow
“. . . in the days of our nation’s birth-throes he was a brave man who passed the cottage of the witch, even in the daytime. A hundred years ago the people took witches seriously.” –Chronicles of Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow Hulda, the witch of Sleepy Hollow, has pulled off quite the magical makeover over the past decade, morphing from a barely-there fictional figure into a full-fledged local legend, complete with her very own headstone at the Old Dutch Church. Originally, Hulda’s tale was a mere seven-paragraph whisper in Edgar Mayhew Bacon’s 1897 book, Chronicles of Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow, nestled comfortably in the “Myths and Legends” section. Bacon suggests…
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The Witch of West Nyack
“This neighborhood has the doubtful honor of having been the scene of the last trial for witchcraft held in New York State, possibly the last among a so-called civilized people.” -The History of Rockland County, by Frank Bertangue Green Think of witches and Salem, Massachusetts comes to mind. But Sleepy Hollow Country has its own including Hulda the Witch of Sleepy Hollow and Jane Kanniff, the alleged witch of West Nyack. In the hamlet of West Nyack, six miles from Sleepy Hollow as the raven flies, is a historic marker at the site of the last witch trial in New York State. Some versions of her story use the name…
