Who doesn’t love a good ghost story at Halloween? For this one, we go all the way back to November 1901, when people swore they were seeing an apparition on the road between Woodcliff and Hillsdale.
“The people at Woodcliff… are excited over a story that a ghost has been seen indulging in various pranks on the highways at night,” reported the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on Nov. 19, 1901.
Two men, Caesar and Alfred Snyder, claimed to have been among those who saw the wraith.
“Caesar…describes the ghost as a white object which first appears to be about the size of a cat, but as it approaches nearer develops into the size of a well-grown man. Snyder says he first saw the object gliding along near the Reed place and he watched it until it disappeared over a fence. He is satisfied that it was not a cat,” the report continued.
A Nov. 20, 1901 piece from the New York Tribune adds some further detail.
“George Ellen, while returning from a visit to his sweetheart last night, says he was accosted by the ghost and that it followed him,” reported the Tribune. “Other people have reported seeing the ghost, and, as there are no young people in the neighborhood of its haunts, the victims say they have not been joked. The more serious of the neighbors say the ghost is that of ‘Abe’ Van Allen, an honest old farmer, whose body was found about a year ago in the field where the apparition appears.”
Abraham Van Allen, who died in 1899, lived on present-day Broadway near the Woodcliff–Hillsdale border.
The sightings alarmed some of the local residents enough that they stayed indoors.
Constable Bert Rawson believed that a practical joker was at work.
“Rawson, with some of his companions, have decided to arm themselves with shotguns and watch nightly. Should they meet the ghost, they will first command a halt, and if this is not heeded they will blaze away at it with their shotguns,” the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported.
Just three days later, the ghost mystery at Woodcliff and Hillsdale was solved. A search party did indeed keep watch for several nights on the road between the two towns—but it’s a good thing they didn’t shoot.
The specter turned out to be an old man who was an employee of the Hillsdale House, a hotel located opposite the train station (and pictured below).
The man, who had a long white beard and typically sported white overalls and a white cap, would take a shortcut through the woods on the way between Woodcliff and Hillsdale. In doing so, he passed behind a board fence. From the opposite side of the fence (the point of view of the Snyder brothers and others), only the man’s cap and whiskers were visible gliding over the top of the fence. Thus, the witnesses had concluded that they had seen a ghost cat, which then—upon passing by the fence—shockingly transformed into a full-grown man.
