THE LIGHTS OF OSWEGO BITTER
In the early 1800s, Revolutionary War veteran John Marshall (1755–1835) gave land for a cemetery near his house in Oswego Bitter, a hamlet ten miles east of Syracuse. From the start, the settlers reported strange lights at night in the gravestones on Bennett’s Corners Road.
The lights moved with apparent purpose—along walking lanes, around obstacles, and over streams. Some witnesses thought they might be people with lanterns. They always came from or vanished into the graveyard, though, and those who saw them up close had different stories.
A farmer’s horse knew its route between barn and tavern so well that its owner could have as many as he wanted “for the road” and trust it to lead them both home. Their course went past the burial ground at Oswego Bitter. On one such night the over-served rustic woke up at the graveyard gate, the cart parked, and the horse mesmerized by a dancing ball of light. Only when the light drew into the cemetery and blinked out could the horse be persuaded to move.
Another time two farmers spotted one of these lights and stopped their wagon to watch. The glowing sphere came right at them, drifted over the harness, passed between them over the center of the seat, then disappeared in the graveyard.
By 1952, newspapers were still referring to will-o’-the-wisps in the hilly country near Bennett’s Corners Road. The term may have comforted reporters, who likely surmised they were nothing but swamp gas, but the sightings created a buzz among the locals. No wonder. The lights in Oswego Bitter seem nothing other than the ga’hai.
By 1987, Robert Fletcher, a resident of Oswego Bitter, had been seeing these luminous balls for thirty years. Fletcher lived near Bennett’s Corners Road and had used parts of John Marshall’s original house to build his own. Most often, Fletcher said, the lights came down the hill, entered the graveyard, and disappeared. He presumed the phenomenon was natural, though he ventured no opinions on the cause. Others on the road thought the business was rooted in the ancient spirits. The area is at the margin of Cayuga and Onondaga territories, and it would have been fun to talk to the old-timers two centuries ago and find out what they made of the lights.
Since the late 1980s many who have spotted the lights heard an animal call that no local hunter could identify. The sound reminded some of the recorded cries of an alleged Bigfoot in a western state. The Big Hairy has been reported in most parts of the Empire State, and in many zones associated with mystery-light phenomena. Maybe this graveyard near Oswego Bitter is one of those places.
INDIAN HILL
New York state has several sites called Indian Hill. One at the edge of the village of Gowanda not far from the Cattaraugus Creek is getting pretty famous. The road cutting over it to the Cattaraugus Reservation has accidents with a suspicious frequency. Maybe that explains its deep legacy of supernatural folklore. Anyone bold—or silly—enough to be here on certain nights might hear eerie sounds coming from the hollows holding old graves and homesteads. Phantom forms are reported in the woods at twilight and around distant fires, seldom distinct enough to be studied. One presumes they may be simple human ghosts, possibly those of earlier inhabitants.
But mystery lights are the specialty at Indian Hill, widely reported by drivers using the road. Depending on when and where they appear, they could have many natural causes. Those who have encountered them at close range are not so sure.
One of the most elaborate reports from Indian Hill is of a distant sphere of dim light drifting through the trees that, as it nears, becomes the complete image of a wolf in a sort of glow. Thought to be some type of wizard in animal guise, witch lights like this one are regarded as very dangerous.
Maybe a great medicine person lived nearby and did a bit of nighttime wandering in a form like it. It’s possible that this apparition was seen at times of turmoil for the neighborhood, hence it could be interpreted as a protest from the collective psyche. We think it was just one more aspect of the witch lights.
Native Americans on all of western New York’s reservations think of Indian Hill as a whole zone that’s active and enchanted. A word to the wise, though: this would be a bad place for thrill seekers of any type. It is part of the Cattaraugus Reservation and hence sovereign Seneca territory. Ask permission before you start poking around.
TRAIN TRACKS AND WITCH LIGHTS
By the winter of 1887–1888 people living near the Peanut Railroad between Corfu and Indian Falls were starting to worry about strange nocturnal lights. In February 1888, the Batavia Daily News even ran a curious report titled “Supernatural Lights.” Newspaper reporter G. Ranger claimed to have seen one himself while driving north from Attica. It first appeared north of Alexander on the Central Railroad and kept up with his horse and cart almost to Batavia. From a distance, it looked “like the headlight to a locomotive,” though not as bright. Ranger got home without further incident. As he neared his house, the light drifted off and disappeared into the woods.
Years before, a local named Philander Shippy was out for an evening drive in the same general region and was ambushed by a flurry of these lights. The air was full of them as he left Batavia. They danced around his cart “like flies in the summer,” lighting on the horse, the harness, and even his hat. He snapped at them with his whip, but they easily dodged every stroke. He set his horse running to get away from them. They followed him the length of the turnpike, but they disappeared when he hit the high ground.
Ranger noted that these lights were nothing new to the area but that they were getting rarer in recent decades. He felt confident in saying that
