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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 through a winding path that begins at the ancient and now vanished shad fishing camp at Crawbucky Point, where legends were told and retold around the evening campfires. Here at Sleepy Hollow Country we first got wind of this legend when we happened upon a July 22, 1933 newspaper article in The Daily Item of Port Chester, New York. Under the headline “Ossining Tells Its Own Weird Witch Story”, the unnamed reporter described a village mildly annoyed at being upstaged by a rival village known for a Headless Horseman: “Ossining has heard so many…
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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 over the last decade performed a most difficult feat: she has transformed from a minor fictional character into a real person, complete with a headstone in a place of honor at a local church. Until very recently, the historical record of the alleged witch of Sleepy Hollow consisted entirely of seven short paragraphs in Edgar Mayhew Bacon’s 1897 book Chronicles of Tarrytown…
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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…
