The haunting
In my younger, more foolish days, I fancied myself something of a ghost hunter.
Not that I ever actually saw a ghost, mind you, but it didn't stop me from piling the girls into the car to illegally trespass on property rumored to be haunted. If I remember correctly, there was also the occasion break-and-enter.
Two particular destinations were visited frequently by my fellow ghost-hunters and I -- the dilapidated mansion on Schoolhouse Rd., where it was rumored a young man had killed his entire family and then himself, and Barkersville, a tiny town in Saratoga County with no shortage of strange encounters and an abandoned asylum.
They say the Saratoga Homestead Asylum is haunted. It's also close to Julie's family's house on the lake, where we spent many summer weekends. And no weekend on the lake was complete without a trip to Barkersville.
Once, as we drove away from the asylum, Heather #1 started screaming her head off, claiming she'd seen a child in an upstairs window. Once, we drove up on Halloween night, parked the car and made our way in, only to be chased away by someone in a white cloak carrying a scythe. Why would we drive up to an abandoned, haunted insane asylum on Halloween night, you ask? Oh, because someone's mother told us a bunch of teenagers had gone up there one Halloween night and disappeared back in the 70s, only to be later found murdered. Also, when I worked at Channel 6 news up there, they dug up a guy who had been missing for 25 years in Barkersville. A friend in college told me that her family lived in the town for one month before they hightailed it out of there.
I've done the occasional Google search on Barkersville and the Saratoga Homestead Asylum, and found both listed on sites devoted to haunted places. Today, Heather #1 sent me this link, which contains this passage:
New Blood Entertainment will be releasing the film "The Expedition" sometime in 2006. The film is based on the real life disappearance of a Canadian documentary filmmaker that entered the building on October 31, 2004 and was never seen again. The film itself has both actual footage and re-enactment footage sequences to explain in detail what occurred on this supernatural expedition.
No listing on IMDB, and no news story on the missing filmmaker that I've found yet. If this is true, though? Whoa.
Is it sick that I totally want to drive up there when I go home for Easter next month?
