by Marc Cheshire, Village Historian

Illustration by Frank H. Pierson from *Tales from Crawbucky Point*. Courtesy of the Westchester County Historical Society.

Money Island and Haunted Hollow

Some people say Money Island was the place where the infamous pirate, Captain Kidd, buried his fabled treasure. Some people say it was a huge funeral mound for Native Americans slain in a terrible battle. Some people are reluctant to even talk about the place. If you press them, they may whisper that Money Island was haunted by “certain evil influences,” and that it was a favorite retreat for “witches from all the country ’round.”

So what was Money Island?

Unfortunately, we will never know for certain, because in 1924 all 55,000 cubic yards of it was leveled for landfill at the behest of the Westchester County Park Commission.

Money Island (also known as Money Hill) was located near the entrance of today’s Croton Point Park. The name dates back to at least the mid-19th century because it was identified by name on an 1867 map—though it appears as an unlabeled feature on maps dating back to the Revolutionary War.

This photograph of Money Hill was taken circa 1899, looking north in the marsh on Croton Point, now covered by the capped garbage dump. Money Island was removed by the county in 1929.

The idea that the fabled pirate buried treasure on Croton Point is not as fanciful as it may seem because the real Captain Kidd—the privateer whose exploits were the basis for the legend—lived in New York City as early as 1691.

“He lived on Wall Street, a Turkish carpet on his parlor floor, casks of Madeira in his cellar,” wrote the New York Times journalist William J. Broad, in a 2008 article about the apparent discovery of a wreck one of Kidd’s ships. “His tall house had scrolled dormers and fluted chimneys, which ships seeking New York moorage sought out as landmarks. A family man with two daughters, he owned a pew at Trinity Church.”

In addition to this and other tales of Kidd’s treasure—told up and down the Hudson in the 18th and 19th centuries—the odd shape of Money Island, and reports that Spanish coins had been found there, contributed to the legend.

An 1854 U.S. Coast Survey map of Croton Point showing Money Island (top arrow) and Crawbucky Beach (bottom arrow). Also notable is the steep valley cut through the “neck” of Croton Point for the Hudson River Railroad (top right).

An 1894 newspaper article described Money Island as “almost the shape of an old-time sugar-loaf . . . densely covered with trees. . . . This hill, or mound, is known as Money Island, and that much-maligned sporting ‘gent’ Captain Kidd, is said to have chosen this spot as a nice . . . place in which to bury some of the countless wealth, which, as many fools have confidently believed, he scattered with a liberal hand for miles on both banks of the river. Many trusting, not to say credulous persons, have laboriously dug in this mound after that treasure, and it probably is as good a place for digging, if one is fond of that kind of exercise, as any spot in the country.”

Two years later, another newspaper article—on the “Charms of Croton Point”—revealed that “not only was it believed that the pirate buried treasure here, but also that the treasure was guarded by Satanic influence, and many were the tales told of strange adventures in support of this idea.”

These tales were recorded and illustrated by a journalist in Ossining named Frank H. Pierson. His illustrated manuscript, called Tales from Crawbucky Point, is in the collection of the Westchester County Historical Society.

As shad fishermen sat in their shanties on Crawbucky Beach, just below Croton Point, waiting for the tide to turn so they could haul their nets, they entertained each other with ghost stories and Revolutionary War tales. Pierson wrote down the stories, illustrating them with original watercolor drawings.

My research indicates that Pierson collected the stories in the late 19th century. He was born in 1856 and began working as a journalist in 1876. I’ve found two newspaper articles from 1894 and 1896 issues of the New York Tribune which have versions of Crawbucky Tales. Unfortunately, neither has a byline.

One Crawbucky Tale, “The Bewitched Mill,” is about an old woman living in Sparta who was said to be a witch. “Every piece of bad luck that happened in the community was invariably laid at the door of this particular old woman. Nor were there men wanting who would have made oath that on some dark, tempestuous night, with the wind coming down from old High Tor, across the river, in gusts strong enough to take you off your feet, they had seen her pass by, right in the very teeth of the storm, riding astride of a broom, bound for Kidd’s or Money Hill on Croton Point, there to attend a meeting of witches from all the country round, for whom the place was a favorite retreat.”

The story “Uncle Ben and the Pot of Gold” begins with a wonderful description of the shad fishermen and Crawbucky fish houses in what Pierson calls the “mid-Victorian Age.”

“The crews were composed not only of members from the immediate vicinity but with men from back in the country; from Tea Town, Spring Valley, Mount Airy and the Dug Way, some whose father and grandfathers had fished these waters before them.”

“One night Money Hill . . . came up for discussion. An old timer asserted that Capt. Kidd had buried some of his treasure there, that it was under satanic influence.” To prove his assertion, the man tells the story of Uncle Ben and the Pot of Gold.

Uncle Ben is in his boat near Money Island and goes ashore to fill his jug with water. When he returns he notices something odd in the water and when he investigates, he discovers what looks like a large iron pot, just beneath the surface. Peering inside he finds, to his astonishment and delight, that it’s filled with gold coins.

Then he remembers that “it was said that he who would secure any of Kidd’s treasure must first have a tug with Him of the Cloven Foot” so Uncle Ben decides to get help before touching the pot.

He marks the location, rows home to Sing Sing and rouses one of his sons.

“But alas!” Pierson wrote, “despite the most thorough search, neither the pot nor money was to be found.”

Another story about Money Island is that it was a huge Native American burial mound. Robert Bolton, in his History of the County of Westchester, published in 1848, wrote about the Native American stockade and graves that were once on the bluff where the model airplane field is today (and, for old timers, where the bungalow colony was once located).

Because of the proximity to the Native American graves and to Money Island, the road that went down from the bluff to the beach (still there today) was known as Haunted Hollow. Bolton wrote that “a short distance east of the fort on the south edge of Haunted Hollow is situated the Indian burying ground of Kitchawan. . . . There was formerly a . . . belief in the neighborhood that the forms of the ancient warriors still haunted the surrounding glens and woods. The apparitions have been named in consequence The Walking Sachems of Teller’s Point.”

The Walking Sachems of Teller’s Point

In his 1896 book, Myths & Legends of Our Own Land, Charles M. Skinner spun a version of the tale that suggested Van Cortlandt Manor was built over the remains of the Native American fort (it wasn’t) and that the ghost of the chief had urged Pierre Van Cortlandt to fight for the patriot cause during the Revolutionary War.

“Between the island of Manhattoes and the Catskills, the Hudson shores were plagued with spooks,” wrote Skinner. “A region especially afflicted was the confluence of the Croton and the Hudson, for the Kitchawan burying-ground was here, and the red people being disturbed by the tramping of white men over their graves, the Walking Sachems of Teller’s Point were nightly to be met on their errands of protest.”

“These Indians had built a palisade on Croton Point, and here they made their last stand against their enemies from the north. Throughout the fight, old chief Croton stood on the wall with arrows showering around him, and directed the resistance with the utmost calm. Not until every one of his men was dead and the fort was going up in flame about him did he confess defeat. Then standing amid the charring timbers, he used his last breath in calling down the curse of the Great Spirit against the foe. As the victorious enemy rushed into the enclosure to secure the scalps of the dead he fell lifeless into the fire, and their jubilant yell was lost upon his ears. Yet, he could not rest nor bear to leave his ancient home, even after death, and often his form, in musing attitude, was seen moving through the woods. When a manor was built on the ruins of his fort, he appeared to the master of it, to urge him into the Continental army, and having seen this behest obeyed and laid a solemn [vow] to keep the freedom of the land forever, he vanished, and never appeared again.”

Crotonites would dispute Skinner’s claim that the chief never appeared again. In 1933 the Ossining Citizen-Register wrote that “‘Thar’s ghosts in them thar woods.’ That is what certain residents of the Croton River section of Harmon are saying today. It is claimed that the wraith of Chief Croton . . . prowls among the evergreens along the Croton River . . . He is said to teeter along a narrow footpath on the bank and drift noiselessly up to Deep Hole at Nikko Inn.”

“Here he pauses over the spot where Indians and white people alike have drowned. It is the spot where it is said bodies never rise again. In this spooky place the ghost is reported to do most of his spectral brooding.”

Van Cortlandt Manor’s Ghost Room

The Ghost Room, from the book *Some Colonial Homesteads and Their Stories*.

The oldest house in Croton, particularly rich in history during the Colonial era, has its share of ghost stories. In 1900, author Marion Harland visited Van Cortlandt Manor, then still occupied by members of the Van Cortlandt family, for her book Some Colonial Homesteads and Their Stories. Harland wrote that “the ghost-lore of the ancient homestead is rich and authentic.”

One of the members of the family told her a story about the Ghost Room. “A young lady visiting us in September, 1863, was asked if she minded sleeping in the Ghost Room, as it was a long while since any mysterious sounds had been heard there. She was told that if she was nervous, a servant would occupy the adjoining apartment. She laughed at the query, and had no belief in or fear of apparitions. In the morning she came to the breakfast-table, pale and ill-at-ease. After breakfast, she confessed to having awakened, suddenly, feeling that someone was in the room near her bed. Presently, it took the definite shape of a woman, dressed in a brown gown, with a white handkerchief crossed over her breast. A large apron, a bunch of keys at her side, a mob cap and long ear-rings completed the figure. It remained for what seemed a long time, and twitched the bed-clothes off, disappearing as the whistle of the two o’clock train was heard.”

“As soon as we heard this story, my daughter and I exclaimed, That is the exact description of . . . an old housekeeper who lived at General Van Cortlandt’s house at Peekskill and had died some time before. Every detail was exact, although the guest had never seen or heard of her.”

Another story in Harland’s book was also recounted in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research in 1910. Accompanying articles like “A Case of Telekinesis” and “Apparition of the Dead” is this story:

“At the Van Cortlandt Manor House near Croton, N.Y., a frequently recurring incident is the approach of a carriage at night. The beat of the horses’ hoofs, the rattling of the harness and the rolling of the wheels are heard distinctly, and then drawing nearer and finally turning through the gate and hurrying up the long drive to the house. Guests inside often ask who is coming at that time of night, and being bidden ‘Go and see,’ discover that there is no visible cause for the sound that has been heard.”

Voices at Deep Hole

The Nikko Inn on the cliff above Deep Hole.

The waters of the Croton River below the old Nikko Inn are called Deep Hole because it’s said to be the deepest part of the river. An 1890 newspaper article about a boy drowning there calls it “a very curious place. The average depth of the stream is only several feet, five at most, but this hole where the boy was drowned is about 200 feet long, 75 feet wide and from 50 to 80 feet deep. It appears to be a cave of some sort, or a fissure between two rocks.”

In 1907, a Croton Journal article about the old wire factory near Fireman’s Island and High Bridge—the covered wooden bridge that once crossed the river on the cliffs at Deep Hole—speculated that those who drowned “were probably caught in the tangled wire which had been thrown into the river. At this time it is a lonely spot and is never frequented at night as there is no way to cross the river, except by rowboat, but people who have been obliged to pass the abutments, state that they have heard voices of a man and woman, but only at the hour between 12 and one midnight. The voice of the man is deep bass, and he seems to be chiding the woman, who is pleading with him. The words cannot be distinguished, but the voices can be heard distinctly. Whether the narrative be true or false, no one seems to care to investigate.”

The Harmon Playhouse Ghost

An early photograph of the Playhouse from the 1926 Wood, Harmon and Company promotional booklet *Home Owning Hearts Are Happiest* by Harmon resident E.A. Hungerford.

Although most Croton ghost stories date to the 18th and 19th centuries, the tales about the ghost haunting the Harmon Playhouse—said to be Clifford Harmon himself—appear to date to the 1940s.

Now a private home on Truesdale Drive, adjacent to the home that was the Nikko Inn, the Playhouse hosted theatrical productions from roughly 1908 into the 1930s until it was purchased by Dr. Samuel Kahn, a controversial psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who had studied with Freud.

While living in the house the Kahns became interested in psychics and invited one to visit. Accompanying her was Hans Holzer, an Austrian-American author and parapsychologist. He wrote more than 120 books on supernatural and occult subjects as well as several plays, musicals, films, and documentaries, and he hosted a television show, Ghost Hunter.

After the psychic demonstrated her abilities to the Kahns and a group of their friends and neighbors, Holzer spoke to Mrs. Kahn who said, “You know, I think we’ve got a ghost.”

“He’s a whistling ghost,” she confided, “always whistling the same song . . . a happy tune. I guess he must be a happy ghost!” Mrs. Kahn explained that although her husband had never heard the whistling, he heard strange raps in their bedroom, late at night. The previous winter they both heard loud knocking on their front door, but when they opened it there was no one there.

As Holzer questioned the Kahns about the history of the house and their experiences he became convinced that the ghost was Clifford Harmon himself, who the Kahns said—incorrectly—had been murdered by the Nazis during World War II.

A medium was later brought in to communicate with Harmon and other spirits in the house. Holzer pieced together their stories of a lost love between Harmon and a woman and jealous man who would knock on the front door.

In 1975 the house was purchased by Mike and Lucy Martineau. Mike was a talent agent, who represented groups like the Commodores and Average White Band and Lucy was a model.

They had heard the ghost stories before they bought the house, but thought the whole thing was very funny . . . until strange things started to happen.

They would come home and find all the lights in Mike’s photographic studio on; mirrors smashed into powdered glass or simply removed from the walls and placed on the floor; doors with triple latches unlocked, and other unexplainable occurrences. Several friends from England and Europe had stayed in the house one night and vowed never to stay again.

Lucy Martineau managed to track down Hans Holzer. “Holzer wore a smoking jacket,” she told the Ossining Citizen-Register in 1977, “and had an accent like Bela Lugosi.”

He agreed to hold another seance, with a medium from New Jersey, who communicated with two more ghosts. One was a woman who was waiting for her dead husband and son to come home. The other was a man named Ralph, who had been cheated in a business deal, killed one of his partners, and was hiding out from the police. Holzer convinced both ghosts to leave and the Martineaus recalled that when the ghosts left, the temperature in the room dropped by about 20 degrees.

The strange occurrences didn’t stop after the seance, but Lucy and Mike reported that they were no longer frightened their ghostly housemates.