Cooperstown Ghostlore

When I first began researching the topic of ghosts in Cooperstown, I didn't expect to find very much. I was merely hoping to find enough material to use as a script for a haunted walking tour, much like the ghost tours offered in Gettysburg (Pennsylvania), Salem (Massachusetts), Savannah (Georgia), and Williamsburg (Virginia). To my delight, I uncovered so much more, from old legends that had been passed down over the years to newer stories of hauntings and hobgoblins. I became rather surprised to learn that Otsego County (where Cooperstown resides as the county seat) ranks among the top ten counties in all of New York State in producing ghostlore. I discovered so many ghost stories that the next undertaking became an obvious one-starting a ghost tour.

Naturally, we tend to ask ourselves why Cooperstown is such fertile ground for stories of ghosts, ghouls, and the undead? The town is known, first and foremost, as the mythical birthplace of baseball, which houses the series of cherished buildings known as the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. On the surface, baseball and ghosts would seem to have little to do with one another. There is also the age of the town. Founded in 1785 by the famed Judge William Cooper (father of author James Fenimore Cooper), the village is an old one, certainly, but nowhere near the age of Gettysburg, Salem, Savannah, or Williamsburg, or any one of a number of American villages and towns that date back to colonial times. And then there is the size of Cooperstown. With a full-year population of about only 2,500 residents, Cooperstown seems like too small a village to harbor more than a few legitimate ghost stories.

Some other mitigating factors may be at play, however. In addition to housing the Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown features several other historic museums, including the Farmers' Museum and The Fenimore Art Museum. With so much attention and reverence paid to America's cultural history, perhaps it's only natural that ghosts would gravitate to Cooperstown. In regards to the relatively youthful age of the town, which is Cooperstown's history is nonetheless rich with prominent citizens, notable family feuds, scandals of various sorts, and even a curse that has been placed on one of the area's most beautifully significant architectural structures. Then there is the population base, which is small during the winter months, but swells by thousands during the summer months when tourists invade to visit the museums and various historic sites. Isn't it possible that some of the visitors to Cooperstown bring with them a few of there own ghosts, which then decide to remain and take up stakes within village? And finally, there is the geography of Cooperstown, where the center of the village sits just to the west of the Susquehanna River. According to researchers of spirits and the paranormal, ghosts cannot traverse over running bodies of water. If that is indeed the case, then perhaps any number of Cooperstown's ghosts are trapped within the confines of the village, unable to make the eastward move because of the Susquehanna and perhaps unwilling to move west because of other uncertainties. If the theory of water holds true, it might provide a logical explanation for the large quantity of ghosts believed to be residing on Cooperstown's River Street, which runs parallel to the mighty Susquehanna.

These, of course, are just theories and other forms of possible explanation. As with all ghost stories, they are alleged rather than definite in nature. Yet, if one pays attention to the extensive written and oral histories of ghostlore in Cooperstown, and the convincing words of those who currently reside within the village and its outskirts, one might have trouble escaping the following conclusion. There is something going on here, something beyond the staples of baseball and tourism, something beyond the realm of the tangible and practical. Is that something the presence of ghosts? As always, that is something for you to decide.

Bruce Markusen