Author’s Note: As I was editing my writings on Long Island recently I made a discovery. I’d never written about Winfield Hall. It was one of the first haunted houses I went searching for, and had wandered around it a few times. It was one of the stories that captivated me, and I’d forgotten all […]
The Legends and Myths of Sweet Hollow and Mount Misery … a Long Island mystery
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This website started from wandering the hills known as Mount Misery and of course, Sweet Hollow below. Over time my thoughts changed on the subject, and I went from believer to hard core skeptic. Something happened there, absolutely, but I’ll be damned if anyone can figure out what. Having been gone from there […]
The Legends and Myths of Sweet Hollow and Mount Misery: Part One, On Mary Hatchet and Sweet Hollow Road
It’s approaching Halloween and we have another film based on the legend of Mary Hatchet of Sweet Hollow Road and Mount Misery. Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet is a hatchet job on the legends, which we look at in detail in this look at one of Long Island’s most popular Urban Legends in the Gothic Cabinet of Curiosities and Mysteries.
The Legends and Myths of Sweet Hollow and Mount Misery: Part II, The Mothman and the Thunderbird of native American myths
Where you stand on mysteries such as the the Mount Misery Mothman comes down to belief. Are you a skeptic? Most people are, and the trend is growing with each passing year. As religion, and particularly the mysteries associated with religion fade into the past, superstition fades along with it. And yet interest in the […]
Stranger Things in the nighttime sky … In the sixties, a little boy sees a rocket in the sky over Carmi, Illinois that shouldn’t be there
It was the sixties in small town Illinois, I was a little boy, and was walking to my Granny Bert’s house. She lived a block away, I wasn’t quite halfway there, in front of the Duvall’s house. I used to walk barefoot, till one day I stepped on a dead squirrel’s skull. I still walked […]
The first Datura of the year unfolds in the Witch’s Garden, June 21
I used to order Datura every year. I loved the large white flowers which blooms for a single evening. I tended my plant carefully to make sure it survived in the hot summers here. Then I noticed a house nearby with whole bushes of Datura, year after year. By the end of the second year […]
Gladiolus bring a sword of color to the Witch’s Garden, June 21
It is believed that Roman gladiators wore wreaths of Gladiolus as protection in combat. One would hope that their fighting skills were more effective than relying on a flower to stop a sword. Gladiolus take their name from the Latin, where it in fact meant sword. It’s still known as a sword lilly in some […]
Black Hollyhock adds a gothic flair in the Witch’s Garden, June 21
Hollyhocks are one of our most ancient flower steeped in folklore. The Neanderthals were burying their dead along with Hollyhocks 50,000 years ago. In China, they were grown both ornamentally, as well as to eat. The Romans ate Hollyhocks as well, a practice which continues to this day. Fairies love Hollyhocks, hence seeing them in skirts […]
