Leys collect supernatural folklore, especially where they cross. While leys were rediscovered and popularized in England, an island dense with both antiquarians and cross-cultural sacred sites, they can be found worldwide. Native American societies in the Andes, the Chacoan (Four Corners) region, Mexico, and the Mississippian/Ohio Valley were known to have established these dead-straight sightlines across impressive distances. Some were dramatic and visible pathways like the Hopewell Highway in Ohio and the Four Corners’ region’s Chaco Meridian.
Surely leys existed in ancient New York state. We know of no authoritative study of our potential leys, and I don’t see how a comprehensive one could be done, since so many of the ancient monuments are gone and their exact locations are unknown.
Few of these haunted roads are true leys; they aren’t all straight, for one thing. Still, many short stretches may be leys—or corpse paths. The haunted sections themselves may be stretches of ancient trails. We mention here a few of the power trails we know that have Native American roots—as if anything in New York state doesn’t.
DELAWARE AVENUE
(Buffalo, Erie County)
The turn of the twentieth century was likely Buffalo’s peak. One of its grandest streets was called Millionaires’ Row. For a short stretch, Delaware Avenue was one of the truest leys we know of in New York state. It connected an apparent earthwork at the core of Joseph Ellicott’s old city plan with the powerful natural fountain at Gates Circle before plunging into today’s Forest Lawn Cemetery and several ancient burial mounds. All three of these sites were legitimate power points to the Native Americans of the area, defining Delaware Avenue as a ley. It also has plenty of churches and current or former graveyards.
American Freemasons and landscape planners tend to be sensitive to Native American site traditions. The work at Delaware’s south end—by Ellicott—and that of Frederick Law Olmsted a few miles north certainly commemorate this configuration.
Delaware, a Native American ley, is one of Buffalo’s most haunted avenues. We venture to say that if you did five-minute interviews up and down the street between Niagara Square and Delaware Park, you would collect psychic reports from half the buildings. So far the only named Native spook we hear of is Red Jacket at Forest Lawn Cemetery. The idea of a ley in a modern city might seem strange, but, as Hamlet says, as a stranger give it welcome.
BLACK NOSE SPRINGS ROAD
(The Tuscarora Reservation, Niagara County)
Urban legend has an explanation for the juju on short, cutoff Black Nose Springs Road: the massacre of a family whose bodies were thrown into a nearby pond. As if reminders of their murderers’ guilt, their light, pale, wretched faces kept appearing just under the surface, even decades after the event. If so, their influence radiates. Living witnesses driving on the road at night report scary faces in their mirrors and sounds on the outside of the car as if something alongside it is either keeping pace and tapping a message or hitching an unseemly ride.
These massacres keep coming up in the folklore of hauntings, seldom with any background. If there’s truth to the theme in this case, the event likely happened as some offshoot of the War of 1812. Both sides in that war had Native American allies, and this reservation along the underbelly of Lake Ontario was ravaged by attacks out of Fort Niagara made by British-allied Mohawk and Great Lakes nations. The ghostly backdrop could also have been a lash back by the U.S.-allied Tuscarora upon white Loyalist agents.
THE FORBIDDEN TRAIL
(Allegany, Cattaraugus, and Chautauqua Counties)
East–west Iroquois trails were paths of peace and commerce. They ran between the New York Iroquois nations. North–south trails were ones of war; invaders usually came from Pennsylvania or Lake Ontario. That way they could hit one Iroquois nation without having to fight through the territory of others.
The ominously named Forbidden Trail is a tweener, a gnarly diagonal flowing from the core of the state to the Allegany region. Sometimes called the Andaste Trail after some Iroquoian enemies, this was a military shortcut, a warpath that Iroquois warriors used to respond to emergencies to the southwest.
The Forbidden Trail connects old paths at Tioga Point with ones at Olean. It flanks creeks and rivers—the Genesee, the Allegheny—and coils through a lot of Southern Tier villages, generally as their main street. Towns likely to be on it include Alfred, Almond, Angelica, Canisteo, Corning, Elkland, Hornell, and Painted Post. Other than that, its exact course is a matter of debate. This figures. It was meant to be a secret: You stray, you pay.
We can hardly summarize the psychic and paranormal folklore that comes from the region of this trail. Visions were reported along it in historic times, including prophetic images on the moon. Otherwise, let your imagination run free: Bigfoot, UFOs, ancient mystery ruins, as well as haunted buildings along it in every village it bisects. It’s hard to imagine what this trail would have been like at night in the old days.
13 CURVES
(West Syracuse, New York, Onondaga County)
Winding and narrow, 13 Curves is a stretch of Cedarvale Road southwest of Syracuse. It’s creepy for natural reasons. It has no shoulder, and trees crowd the asphalt as though reaching for motorists. The effect is squared at night. Every accident adds to its reputation. At the middle, there’s even a dead man’s curve.
The traditional ghost of 13 Curves is an archetype, what I call the woman in white. Most New York state villages have a handful of them. There is even a folkloric motif, a 1940s car crash on a wedding night, behind the one reported at 13 Curves. The place has become a Halloween hotspot. Thrill seekers report ghost faces in the car mirrors. Others drive right through a faint form on the road and sense a chill permeating
