Listen With The Lights On

Symbols of nature takes various forms in the myths and legends around the world. But some of them… have common themes. Today Master storyteller Jonathan Kruk joins us as we explore one of the most common ones in a tale from the Catskills in New York’s Hudson Valley.

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A moonlit garden on the grounds of Union College in Schenectady plays host to one of the oldest ghost tales in the country. Forbidden love. Blind, murderous rage. And a lost soul. We explore the tragic tale of Alice Van Der Veer in this episode of Listen with the Lights On.

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Visit any college or university campus in the world, and you’re likely to find at least one tale of a ghostly presence amid the hallowed halls. West Hall is the oldest building at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. And it’s also the most haunted.

West Hall was built in 1869, as the Troy Hospital. Operated by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, the hospital would take in anyone in need of care. In 1923 it became a Catholic high school. And in 1953, it was incorporated into the RPI campus, where it now houses the school’s arts and humanities programs.

Students and faculty have reported many ghost sightings and strange happenings there over the years. Its supernatural street cred is so robust that it’s even mentioned on West Hall’s Wikipedia page. One of its most notable ghosts is Nurse Betsy, a nun thought to have cared for patients in the late 1800s.

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In this episode, we bring you another terrifying tale from the heart of New York’s Hudson Valley. Master Storyteller Jonathan Kruk joins us again with a story of ghosts, a haunting and the horrors of indentured servitude in Colonial times.

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Mt. Greylock is the tallest natural point in Massachusetts. At 3,491 feet above sea level, it rises above the Berkshire county town of Adams, bisected by a portion of the Appalachian trail. The peak and its historic monument are constantly shrouded in mist and fog, and often beset by unpredictable weather. And the quiet summit possesses mystical qualities that have inspired great American writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. Well now, it seems, it has inspired a very famous British writer—and now plays a very pivotal role in the expanding universe of J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world.

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An urban legend is a popular story passed around that’s allegedly true, but can’t quite be confirmed. It’s the kid who ate PopRocks and drank soda and his stomach exploded. It’s the unfortunate tweeners who turned the lights out at their sleepover and called into the mirror for Bloody Mary. Or the poor sap who woke up sans kidneys in a bathtub full of ice. We’ve all heard them, and probably even told a few ourselves. They’re modern folklore. Contemporary legends. In this episode of Listen With The Lights On, we explore an urban legend in Albany, New York, with local lore expert Maeve McEneny.

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If you’ve ever taken a trip down the shores of the Hudson River, no doubt at one point you’ve witnessed its hallmark mists rising from the waters. They have a ghostly quality about them, and not surprisingly there is an abundance of lore based on apparitions witnessed within them. We bring back Master Storyteller Jonathan Kruk, who will tell us one such tale—the tale of the ghostly rower.

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Is the devil in the details? On this episode of Listen With The Lights On, we explore how to capitalize on basic human fear to compose a creepy narrative, examine scary tropes, share our favorite spooky reads and try to come up with a spine-tingling tale of our own…in two sentences or less. Novelist and writing instructor Barbara Chepaitis, author of “The Amber,” joins us.

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On the last episode of Listen with the Lights On, Maeve McEneny of the Albany County Convention & Visitors Bureau was giving us a tour of Albany’s Ten Broeck Mansion. We ended in the foyer in Part I, looking out the imposing front doors. Now we’re going upstairs, where many a psychic and ghost hunter has claimed lies the epicenter of supernatural activity in the almost 230-year-old house.

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Ten Broeck Mansion in Albany sits just north of the city’s downtown. Views from the historic home’s gardens and from its elegant windows look out over row houses, industrial buildings and US Route 787. But it wasn’t always this way. In 1789, when it was built by Abraham Ten Broeck, it was farmland as far as the eye could see, and a casual glance from the window would produce an unimpeded view of the Hudson River. There’s a lot of history here, and a lot spirit–literally. On this episode of Listen with the Lights on, we take a peek inside.

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