NYC's Haunted Hotels

Hotel Chelsea from Wikipedia Commons
The sun's out, the top's down, the wind's blowing in our hair, and we're cruising catty-corner across Ohio, Pennsylvania and the Empire State. We're heading for the Big Apple.

H&H is ready to gawk. We're hot to see Ellis Island, to find out if any of our forebears are haunting the portal to the Promised Land. But first, we need a place to crash.

The old Brittany Hotel on East Tenth Street looks like a fine place to park our bags. Built in 1929, it's right by the spook-laden Washington Square Park and has all the amenities we're looking for in a rent-a-room. It's penthouse was once a speakeasy, and its guests included Walter Winchell, Jerry Garcia, and Al Pacino.

What? It's a New York University dorm now? Will my 1971 Pitt ID get me a spot to flop? OK, OK, quit pushin', I'm going.

Just as well, we suppose. Old hotel regulars and the dorm residents have reported hearing mysterious music, bodiless footsteps, and the sense of being watched. The basement is supposed to be an especially eerie maze, and the penthouse is said to host a noisy, never-ending ghost gala. Party on, phantom dudes!

One roomie even reported being transported at warp speed by a house spook through the Brittany electrical system in a dream and deposited in his room's smoke detector - which woke him up when it went off. So that's how they get around!

Well, we'll just get a room in the stately Grosvenor Hotel on Fifth Avenue, opened in 1925. Dang! NYU bought up this grand old dame in 1964, made it a dorm and named it Rubin Hall. Where's a man to lay his head? Do we have to enroll at NYU to get a bed in the City that never sleeps?

Hmmm...on second thought, we might not get a good night's rest there, either. It seems the shades of former Grosvenor boarders have taken up in one of the dorm's rooms. According to rumors among Rubin students and staff, an older couple, who were the last two people to leave the building after the University bought it, have returned to reclaim their familiar former digs in the afterlife.

In another case, after learning from a Rubin RA that her room, #903, was haunted, a NYU student used her Ouija board to contact the ghost. During their chat, she discovered that the spook's name was Al and believes he was a bootlegger in the 1930s. Now that they're on a first-name basis, he doesn't lock her in the bathroom anymore. Spirits are such comedians!

One alleged ghostie there has been debunked, though. Samuel Clemens (you may know him as Mark Twain), who according to local lore does haunt the halls of the old Breevort apartments (the "Death House") down the street, doesn't hang out in the Grosvenor. He was supposed to have lived there, but since he died 15 years before it was built...

Maybe the Hotel des Artistes on 67th Street in Central Park West will have a vacancy. Oooops, just looked at the rates...H&H will be moving on. But first, a stop in its cafe for a cold one before we continue our search.

There we hear about the bar's famous spook. The help is mum, but the regulars tell of a cloudlike apparition that reaches out and touches the paying customers as it goes by. No one is really sure who the downstairs drinking hole shadow is, but the list of suspects is pretty impressive - Marcel Duchamp, Isadora Duncan, and Fiorella LaGuardia are just a few of the names under the scope.

Off we trudge to Manhattan, and the artsy Algonquin Hotel. It opened for business in 1902 and was an instant drawing card for the literary set. Across the street from the Ziegfield Folly foxes, it was also close at hand to famed eateries like Delmonico's and crowd magnets Times Square and the Great White Way.

It drew all kinds of big-time literati and actors, but its most famous crew was the acid-tongued wits of the Round Table (aka, the "Vicious Circle"), who met for lunch every day and after the shows at the Algonquin during the 1920s. Among them were Dorothy Parker, Harpo Marx, Heywood Broun, George Kaufman and Edna Ferber, part of a cast of dozens eager to puncture whatever show biz balloon that happened to float by.

Besides injuring the pride of countless performers, they continue to scare the pants off of innocent hotel guests. Some of the visitors claimed to have seen the ghosts of the Round Table's members lurking around the hotel halls and bar, the Oak Room, where patrons have reportedly channeled some of their famous quips. Ah, the power of spectral suggestion.

The historic Algonquin was renovated in 2004, and the updates seemed to have displeased the hotel's resident spirits. Eerie noises emanated from a 13th floor room on the night the work was completed (a hotel with a 13th floor? It deserves to be haunted!) At 3 AM, a picture of Dorothy Parker fell off the wall and shattered. Maybe her shade was a bit tipsy at that hour.

The resident cat, Matilda, is apparently well-acquainted with the sarcastic spooks.

"The cat seems to know things the rest of us don't know," Barbara McGurn, hotel historian, told Fox News in 2005. "She could be looking at people she sees whom we can't. I think she tries to make peace among the various ghosts of characters who stayed here and lived here and partied here."

The Algonquin ghost tale is so much a part of the hotel's history that every New Year's Eve, at the stroke of midnight, the kitchen staff marches around the building banging pots and pans in an effort to chase the building's apparitions to a quieter locale. It hasn't worked, so far.

As is our wont, we stopped for a beverage before inquiring about a room. The room was nice, the crowd friendly, and the bar tab for a C.C. and soda was $15. We continued on our search. We wonder if NYC has any hostels?

Hey, there's another joint. We'll try our luck here, at the Hotel Chelsea on West 23rd Street. It was built in 1883 as an early co-op, and it sports a guest list of cutting edge artists a mile long.

In fact, Leonard Cohen penned a song about it, "Chelsea Hotel," and Andy Warhol was inspired by its muse when he filmed "Chelsea Girl." There are at least 50 references to the Hotel Chelsea in films, songs, and books, according to Wikipedia.

As Janis Joplin said: "A lot of funky things happen at the Chelsea." Maybe she was alluding to actress Sarah Bernhardt, who used to sleep in a coffin when she lived there. But most of the funkiness can be attributed to its cast of artists who checked in, but never checked out of their NYC home. It's said that half of its rooms host a spectral presence.

John Ritchie, better known as Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols, may or may not have knifed his lady in Room #100 of the hotel in 1978, but he's stayed on. It's said that you can share a ride with him occasionally on the building elevator, even though he died of a heroin OD in 1979.

Welsh poet Dylan Thomas spent his final days on the planet in an alcoholic daze. He died in the hotel after drinking himself into a stupor at the nearby White Horse Tavern and being carried back to the crib by his bar room buds. Local lore claims that his soused specter haunts both spots now.

The spooks of writers Eugene O'Neill and Thomas Wolfe have also been reported as loitering in the Algonquin. Its bar, the Star Lounge, has troubles with its electrical system, noises clattering from its back room, and lights that flicker on and off that it blames on the paranormal. And, according to a visiting psychic, it has it's own spook, an unhappy older lady that left life but couldn't bear to part with her lounge lizard friends partying downstairs.

Maybe we'll pass on this place, too. Looks like we'll spend the night curled up in the back seat of the ol' clunker. We don't think there are any spooks there, except maybe for the ghost of a Primanti Brother's sandwich.

The Ellis Island expedition? Nary a spirit to be found. Just the residual phenomena of children's laughter and crying, voices, and footsteps are all that's reported from those hallowed halls. It seems like everyone was in such a hurry to get on with their new life that they all moved on, body and soul.

Too bad. I really would have liked to have one more chat with grandpap Rocco.

Mahoning Valley's Haunted University

Sweeney Center

We bid a fond adieu to the Pen and head northwest, to the home of Sylvester the Jester and Lady Miss Kier - yep, on to Youngstown, Ohio.

Our next stop is Youngstown State University, home of the Penguins - and the paranormal (as if a 7' penguin mascot isn't scary enough!).

The Wick Mansion was built in 1906 by Col. George Dennick Wick, president of Youngstown Steel, and his wife, Mollie. It sits at the intersection of Wick Avenue and Route 422.

The wealthy couple didn't have long to enjoy their new digs. In 1912, the Wicks booked a cabin aboard the Titanic. Mollie was saved after the unsinkable liner sank; the Colonel went down with the ship.

Mollie returned to her Youngstown mansion, never to remarry. After she joined George in the afterlife, the house was sold to the Wellers. In the 1980's, YSU bought the property and turned it into dorms known as the Wick House.

Weird stuff happened there, as witnessed by the students. The front door would open itself, blinds would roll up the window panes, and the lights would flash on and off. The staff even unplugged the lights, but they still burned bright. People experienced an uneasy, eerie feeling in the old Mansion, especially at night. And no wonder.

Rumors were that Mollie was still in the building. One resident accused her of stealing her socks - we suppose even spooks get cold feet - and several students reported seeing an etheral female haunting the lobby.

Once, YSU workers saw a face staring at them from the second floor window, where Mollie and one of her daughters had passed away.

The university closed the dorm several years ago, and it's now the home of YSU's Disability Services. But the spooky shenanigans with the lights and blinds can still be spotted by the residents of the next-door Weller House at night. Mollie must be afraid of the dark.

We soldier on to the Kilcawley House, a residence attached to the University's hub, the mid-campus Kilcawley Center.

Strange voices, gurgling and raspy, have reportedly been heard in the back stairwell of the K-House. This is the same stairwell where, according to university lore, a janitor met his fate years ago. Some say he died from a tumble down the stairs, while others say he hung himself.

His shade has been reportedly seen roaming the sixth floor, where students also say they hear unexplained scratching noises and the sound of the wind whistling through the hall.

That story sent us scampering to the nearest church. Well, actually, it's not a church now, but it was when it was built in 1908. The holy house eventually became Dana Hall, and currently the building goes by the name of the Sweeney Welcoming Center, YSU's recruiting and admissions office.

If you're new to the school - and why else would you be in Sweeney Hall? - try to stay out of the basement. It's urban legend is that a reverend committed suicide there, and for his eternal purgatory, his sad spirit is ordained to forever roam the place of his self-inflicted doom.

From the serenity of an old chapel, we're off to the livelier pad of the Sigma Tau Gamma fraternity on Broadway Avenue. There's more going on there than just the usual keggers and mixers.

The house is a rental, and it's been a halfway house and later a home to other Greek organizations during its time. And according to some of the brothers, the old residents of its past have never left.

There have been reports of footsteps when no one is around, things being dragged around in an empty cellar, and mumbling voices in the stairway to the basement. The front door has opened, but nobody's there. People have experienced stereos turning on by themselves and cupboards opening on their own volition.

One brother even claimed that the spook of a young girl watched him from the kitchen doorway and then disappeared.

Psychics have visited the place, and sensed trouble in the basement. One said there was a malignant spirit that resided in a side room, and could feel that a violent act took place in the cellar, involving a couple of girls. Both are places where the Sig Taus have felt uneasiness.

Some of the brothers believe the place is haunted. Other say that they've never heard or seen anything out of the ordinary in the admittedly creaky and creepy old house. Who to believe?

(These tales were reported in a series of articles over the years by the YSU student newspaper "The Jambar." H&H thanks them for keeping the lore of the University alive.)

West Virginia Penitentiary

West Virginia Penitentiary from Wikipedia Commons
Now we follow the setting sun to the West Virginia panhandle, where our next stop is the infamous West Virginia State Penitentiary at Moundsville.

Construction of the old West Virginia State Penitentiary was started in 1866, just three years after West Virginia seceded from Virginia. The state legislature chose Moundsville for the prison because it was only 12 miles south of Wheeling, the capital at that time.

The builders used Joliet prison as their model. WVSP was an imposing Gothic stone structure, with turrets and battlements, like a castle. But unlike a castle, which was built to keep intruders out, this one was meant to keep people in.

It was enclosed by a stone wall 5 feet thick at the bottom, 2-1/2 feet thick at the top, and with a foundation that was buried 5 feet below the surface. The wall was six feet thick.

The first building constructed at the penitentiary was called the Wagon Gate. One hundred and fifty inmates lived there while they built their own prison. In 1876, the West Virginia Penitentiary officially opened for full operation, with 251 inmates. It would grow to a population of 2,000 in the fifties.

Prisoners at the Pen were used as next-to-free labor. They toiled in a blacksmith shop, stone cutting shop, a bakery, a farm, wagon works, broom & whip factory, and a coal mine. The prison paid for itself.

The majority of inmates were minor crooks, serving sentences of one to ten years. The prisoners were allowed to spend a lot of time outside their cells during the day and locked up in their 5'x7' cells at night.

Just to make sure they didn't get any ideas during their free time, they were reminded of the price of disobedience every time they sat down in the dining room. There the "Prison Pet" sat - a fully-loaded Gatling gun aimed at the prisoners.

Don't get the idea that being sent to the West Virginia Pen was soft time. For most of the years of its existence, Moundsville held a spot on the Department of Justice's top ten most violent correctional facilities list. Killed or be killed was the mentality of many of its lifers - and guards.

The big-time hoods were housed in North Hall, the maximum security area, and had to spend twenty-two hours a day locked in their cells. They were allowed two hours a day in the exercise yard.

In 1929 the prison was expanded to almost double it's size. Inmates were forced to again help construct their own jailhouse. The expansion was needed because the prison was so crowded that three people were crammed to a cell. It was finished in 1959.

Ninety-four men were executed in the Pen. Eighty-five were hanged from 1899-1949, and the other nine were electrocuted in later years. The original electric chair, "Old Sparky," is still on display.

It was built by Paul Glenn, an inmate of the facility. The hangings were viewed by a public bleacher section on Eighth Street until 1931, when the rope decapitated its victim.

In 1982, a judge ruled that the prison violated the Eighth Amendment, prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment. The West Virginia Supreme Court reinforced the ruling when it said that Penitentiary's 5 x 7 cells were cruel and unusual in 1986.

That's the same year the prison had its famous riot, one of many, when several guards were held hostage and three inmates murdered by other prisoners. The Pen's captives got a new cafeteria for their feral efforts.

The Pen officially closed in 1995, when the state was unwilling to update the old hoosegaw to the jurist's satisfaction and the last prisoner was transferred.

The lease for the Pen is now held by the Moundsville Economic Development Council. They conduct daily tours of the prison, and host a "Dungeon of Horrors" haunted house attraction throughout October. It also shares space with a law training facility.

The West Virginia Penitentiary still has it's share of long-timers roaming the grounds. They're the spooks who never left its dank confines.

Four Cherokees, sentenced to life at the Pen, are buried on its grounds. And according to popular legend, they're not alone. The prison buildings are said to be built on an old Native American burial ground.

Some believe that disturbing the ancient dead, coupled with its violent past, is why the Pen is haunted. No one has ever been able to confirm the lore, but Moundsville itself is named for the Indian burial mounds in the area.

An area well known for spooky occurrences is the revolving-door entrance gate known as the Wheel House that was used to intake arriving inmates. According to reports, the circular cage still turns periodically by itself, giving the impression that the spirits of criminals are still arriving at the prison.

One of the better-known phantom inmates believed to still stalk the halls of West Virginia Penitentiary is J.D. Wall. During his stay, it is said that he was liked by all and used by both the guards and inmates alike to trade information.

The story goes that some new prisoners saw Wall speaking with the warden one day and assumed that he was a snitch. Three inmates cornered him in the basement of the administration building and savagely attacked him with shivs, leaving his body headless and chopped beyond recognition.

To this day, people report seeing his spirit wandering around the basement, sometimes with and sometimes without his head.

The ghost of a true snitch has also been reported. He lived in the basement where he took care of the boiler system and the pipes. He was stabbed repeatedly while going to the bathroom during the 1986 riots. Geez, it's bad enough to be stuck in the cellar for eternity, but to be trapped in the loo?

One of the Pen's paranormal hot spots is the Sugar Shack. The Sugar Shack is a basement room that was used as a rec area. When the weather was bad, the prisoners were sent into the Sugar Shack rather than the usual outdoor exercise yards.

The prisoners were on their own there, with a guard that periodically checked in on them. No one was ever reported killed in the room, but fights often broke out, and prisoner sex and rapes were common (hence the name Sugar Shack). Today, visitors claim to hear footsteps, screams and cries, and some even report being physically assaulted by an invisible entity.

The North Wagon Gate also has its share of eerie experiences. The building was used in the early days for hangings. One of the ghosts believed to haunt this area is Arvil Paul Adkins, who was dropped from the second floor trap door not once, but twice (when he survived the first hanging, the guards carried him back up the steps and hung him again). Visitors also report feeling a sinister presence or the feeling of being watched.

On Death Row, tourists have complained of feeling moisture splashing on their bodies. They may not be happy to learn that the prisoners used to while away the time spitting and urinating on the guards. After all, what did they have to lose?

The Hole, used for solitary confinement, is also notorious, with visitors feeling overwhelmed with anxiety or fear caused by an unseen presence. People have spotted a featureless Shadow Man that roams the cafeteria, the psychiatric ward, and the basement.

An inmate named Roberts supposedly haunts his cell block and the room where he met his death. It was reported that his body was buried behind a wall. The North Hall is supposed to be crackling with negative psychic energy from its hard core prisoners. It was so bad there that it was called the Alamo, and the guards had to wear helmets and flak jackets.

In fact, the whole place is spooked out. Reports vary from residual hauntings to the sounds of phantom footsteps, voices, screams, and slamming doors when no one else is around.

It's a favorite spot for paranormal TV producers. MTV's Fear shot its first episode there in 2000. The Sci Fi Channel's Ghost Hunters also visited the location in 2006. The network liked the place so much it came back to film an episode of Proof Positive. ABC Family’s Scariest Places On Earth featured the Pen that same year. Its tale was also aired on Anderson Cooper's 360 on CNN.

And you'll almost certainly trip over paranormal investigators if you ever visit the joint. It's on the A-List of every spook hunter's itinerary.

The eternal inmates are more famous in death than they ever were in life.

Black Aggie

Black Aggie from Snopes.com
We have happy feet again - it's time to rev up the ol' gas guzzler for our Halloween road trip. H&H thinks that a stop in Pikesville, Maryland, is in order to brush up on the lore of an old friend, Black Aggie.

Black Aggie is the name of a statue that once marked the grave of General Felix Agnus, who was buried at Druid Ridge Cemetery in 1925.

The statue itself is an unauthorized replica of Augustus St. Gaudens' monument, popularly called "Grief". It's located at the Adams Memorial in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C., and was recast on the sly by Edward L. A. Pausch. The figure is of a seated woman wrapped in a shroud.

St. Gaudens was a noted American sculptor of the late 1800’s. "Grief" would become one of his most famed works, said to be named by none other than Mark Twain. It took him four years to create, and was the memorial for Marian Adams, who committed suicide. It marked her final resting place, along with hubby Henry.

Oddly, the Washington original has no spooky tales associated with it, despite the suicidal and probably mad Marian. But the pirated copy made by Pausch became one of Baltimore's most enduring urban legends.

General Felix Agnus purchased the Pausch version of the sculpture in 1905. He was a much decorated, and wounded (it was said that he had so many lead balls in him that he rattled when he walked), Civil War vet, starting out as a private and ending up a brigadier general.

He built a family memorial in Pikesville's Druid Ridge Cemetery, with the "Grief" clone as its centerpiece. As soon as the granite pedestal was laid, he had his mom's remains transferred from his French birthplace to the new family plot.

The general's wife, Annie, died in 1922 and Angus joined her in eternal repose three years later at the age of 86. They were laid to rest at the feet of "Black Aggie." Then the fun began.

It was said that the statue's eyes glowed red at the stroke of midnight. People claimed that the spirits of the dead rose from their graves to gather around her on moonless nights, and that living persons who returned her gaze were struck blind. Sitting in her cold lap was a death sentence.

If you spoke Black Aggie's name three times at midnight in front of a dark mirror, an evil angel appeared to escort you to hell. Other variations of the theme claim that Aggie herself showed up behind you, and some say with a knife to plunge into your back repeatedly.

Pregnant women who passed through her shadow would suffer miscarriages. The grass wouldn't grow wherever Aggie's shadow touched the ground. She came to life and strolled the grounds in the darkness.

Another story tells of a guy that used Aggie's hand as an ashtray. He was found dead soon thereafter. Aggie doesn't take to disrespect very well.

It's even said that any virgin placed in the outstretched arms of Black Aggie will lose her virginity in 24 hours. Now that's a paranormal phenomena we never heard of before.

But it took a frat rat to launch her into headline haunting news. Supposedly, local fraternity pledges had to sit on Aggie's lap all night as part of their "hell week" initiation. (Geez. At Pitt, the worst we had to do was run back to the house from Schenley Pond in our skivvies).

One bit of lore claims that she once came to life and crushed a hapless freshman in her bronze hands, in front of the eyes of two of his fellow fraternity brothers.

Another tale of Greek hazing gone astray claimed that one night, at the stroke of midnight, the cemetery watchman heard a scream. When he reached Black Aggie, he found a young man lying dead at the foot of the statue. He had died of fright.

It gets stranger. One morning in 1962, it was discovered that one of Aggie's arms had been cut off. The missing limb was later found in the trunk of a sheet metal worker's car, along with a saw. Open and shut case, right? Wrong. He had a defense.

He told the judge that Black Aggie had cut off her own arm while in the throes of depression and had given it to him. Many people believed the tradesman's tale, but not the person that counted - the judge. The tin-knocker was hauled off to jail.

Allow us to digress a minute. Aggie's name is assumed to be taken from her wards, the Agnus family. But another legend tells of a turn of the century nurse named Aggie. She was popular, but her patients had a way of unexpectedly dying off under her care.

The locals thought she was hastening their trip to the River Jordan, and lynched the assumed angel of death. But ooops, they were soon proven wrong, sadly after the fact. The story ends that the monument was built for her as atonement, which is obviously wrong.

But did her vengeful spirit adopt the statue? It would sure explain the eerie goings-on surrounding the bronze sculpture. OK, back to our regularly scheduled post.

In addition to Aggie’s arm being hacked off, graffiti was scrawled on the statue, the granite base and its outer wall, while trash heaped up everywhere from the midnight thrill seekers. Groundskeepers did everything they could to control the vandalism, including planting thorny shrubs around Aggie, but they were overwhelmed.

The Agnus family, upset by the desecration, donated Aggie to the Smithsonian in 1967. It sat for years in storage at the National Museum of American Art (later the Smithsonian American Art Museum), where an authorized recasting of the original Adams Memorial statue is now exhibited. Heaven forbid the Smithsonian deal in fake artwork!

The Smithsonian refused to even admit it had the ersatz sculpture, but it's location was finally run down by an enterprising young reporter, Shara Terjung, rescuing it from oblivion in an outdoor storage lot.

After being rediscovered, Black Aggie was moved to an I Street courtyard behind the Dolly Madison House on Lafayette Square in Washington, DC, where she's quietly enjoying her tranquil new home.

If you want to see her, enter the courtyard during the day, through the entryway off the street. Walk straight back, look to the right, and Black Aggie will be there, waiting for you in the middle of the flowers, looking as serene as can be. You might even tuck a coin in her hand, a good luck tradition from the Druid Ridge days.

Just don't sit in her lap.

Katy's Church

Photo of Katy's Church by Eric on Blackstar Blog - Scooter Trips.

The popular mid-state legend goes that an unmarried pregnant girl, Katy Vandine, ostracized by the community, hung herself on a tree outside the Emmanuel Lutheran Church graveyard in Muncy Hills, Columbia County, near Bloomsburg.

Other darker varitions on the theme claim that father of her child was a married man worried about his own hide, and so accused her of witchcraft. The church members accepted his self-serving word and hung her from a tree in the cemetery. What, there wasn't any stake to burn her on in Muncy Hills?

It's said that if you stand on her grave, which is right beside the tree she hung herself on, and knock on the tree that her ghost, dressed in shimmering white, will walk down the hill towards you. According to local lore, this sighting only occurs the night of a harvest moon. It's also said that you can hear her crying from inside the church, or hear her call your name.

There's an alternate tale. It says she was waiting to marry a soldier, but he was killed before they could wed. Distraught, she hung herself in her wedding dress. She's supposedly been seen in church and walking the road between her house and the cemetery.

Some reports say that her noose can be see hanging from the tree overlooking the cemetery. There are even stories of blood gushing from the windows of the small hilltop church.

Other tales allege that her tombstone is located just outside the consecrated grounds of the cemetery, while others say it's in the graveyard proper, but her marker faces the opposite direction of all the others. This, at least, can be debunked, as her grave is in the boneyard and pointed the same way as the others.

Another legend says that there's a bottomless pit covered by a boulder on the grounds. If you can move the rock a smidge and toss a stone down the hole, you'll never hear it land.

Of course, some people believe the tale was just a by-product of the 2002 mystery book "Katie's Church" by L.A. Flick, which recounts - or maybe invents - the legend of Katy. On the other hand, we have a reader that says the legend predates the novel, and others that support him.

BaltimoreMan wrote:

I am originally from a couple of miles from Katy's. The tale has been around for a long time. I couldn't guess the original source, but definitely not a 2002 book.

Another reader added:

"I also live near Katy's church. I am 36 and have heard the tales since I was a young child."

So we can cross Ms. Flick off the list off rumor-mongers.

May Shetler, granddaughter of Katy several times removed, denies the tales on her web site:

"Catherine Vandine attended services there until her passing at 87 years old. Since its closing in 1969, the urban legends surrounding Katys Church have given birth to increased incidences of vandalism, tales of hauntings, and even a horror novel. But, as with most legends, these tales are simply not based on fact. The only haunting comes from the young people in search of an adventure who are being fined for trespassing and destruction of private property."

Sadly, this is another spot that vandals have ransacked. The church, which by some tales is also haunted, isn't used for regular services anymore, just weddings and other special events, and goofs feel free to break in and spray graffiti on the walls and floor.

The cemetery has been desecrated, despite being fenced, gated and watched over by the locals, the caretaker, and the State Police. Those folk that use the graveyard as a party spot should be much more ashamed than poor Katy.