THE SKELETAL HORSEMEN

THE SKELETAL HORSEMEN

Halloween Month continues! Call this story Gothic Horror if you like or call it American Gothic Horror. It’s been around a very long time in various forms. In the first decade of the 1800’s the area between Goshen, NY and Long Island was being subjected to a periodic reign of terror.

That reign of terror was unleashed once a year in the dead of winter. At the stroke of Midnight on January 22nd skeletal figures with the rags of Colonial- era clothing clinging to their frames would ride the countryside atop skeletal horses and would smash in windows with their swords, drive off horses and cattle or frighten the poor beasts to death and would strike down anyone foolish enough to try to oppose their actions.  

The ghastly raiding would come to a stop at sunrise but the moment the sun went down that night the mayhem would resume until the clock again struck twelve. The horsemen numbered six with the largest of the company riding out in front leading his unliving comrades into action.

The macabre horsemen had slain every man or woman who caught a glimpse of them up close … until 1809. On that January 22nd they were seen by young Nathaniel Larraby, a Long Island merchant in his twenties, whose curiousity had gotten the better of him.

Larraby had mounted the rooftop of the store his family had owned and operated ever since his grandfather had accumulated a respectable amount of money as a Privateer in the Revolutionary War. As he had the past few January 22nd’s Nathaniel maintained a lookout from this perch hoping to catch a glimpse of the supernatural marauders through his grandfather’s marine telescope.

On the designated date in 1809 Nathaniel had at last spied the six undead riders down below. The five skeletal forms bringing up the rear were virtually dwarfed by the hulking skeleton in the lead. The skull alone on that figure seemed as large as that of the boney horse he rode.

Nathaniel was lucky to escape with his life, since the figures had spotted him and, to his horror, suddenly appeared on the rooftops adjacent to his own! The riders would surely have cut him down if not for the fact that the first rays of sunrise had struck at that moment, causing the deadly horsemen to vanish.    

Shaken but uncowed by his experience Larraby spent every spare moment he had trying to determine who the supernatural figures he had encountered had been in life. Most people in towns or in the farmlands preferred not to discuss the annual horror, seeming to think ignoring it would make it go away.

Nathaniel persevered, however, and while making inquiries in Goshen his description of the huge leader of the skeletal force had triggered memories among the citizens. The five subordinate horsemen had been Tories who sided with England during the Revolution and the hulking leader of the troupe must have been none other than Claudius Smith.

Smith and his fellows had been terrors from 1775 to 1779. They fought for the King and gloried in terrorizing their rebel neighbors, burning their homes, stealing their goods, driving off their livestock and molesting their women.

At long last the sizable reward on the heads of Smith and his men yielded results. They were captured in Long Island and returned to Goshen for trial. Found guilty they had all been hanged … on January 22nd, 1779.

Inquiring further, Larraby learned where the six brigands had been buried – in the jailyard near where the Goshen Courthouse now stood. In the dead of night Nathaniel and two brave souls recruited from among the citizenry ventured into the jailyard and, after one night of fruitless searching, on the second night they located the six unmarked graves.

Claudius Smith’s was the easiest to detect, since it was so much larger than the graves of his followers. Deducing that Smith’s air of menace was the root of the problem Nathaniel and his allies dug til they found his remains.

The grinning skeleton shook Larraby with the memory of his last encounter with it atop the roof. The determined young man detached the skull from the rest of the skeleton and, using brick and mortar, sealed it in the wall above the courthouse door.

No longer was the area troubled by skeletal monsters on January 22nd or any other time of the year. Claudius Smith’s skull was determined to still be sealed in the brick wall above the courthouse door during construction work in 1842 and, perhaps wisely, was left there and not reunited with the rest of his body.    

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