The 13 Curves: Catherine Heln, the Witch of Onondaga Hill

My fascination with ghosts, witches, zombies and of all things macabre may stem from the fact that my birthday is so close to Halloween. One year our school brought in a local historian to regale the class with a few local ghost stories a week before my 15th birthday. One of the historian’s stories was about a young ghost-bride that allegedly haunts a stretch of road just outside Syracuse, New York that is known as, “The 13 Curves”. This stretch of road is an actual place in Onondaga County and has had reports of actual ghost sightings for decades. The story goes that seventy years ago a young couple just married on Friday the 13th were driving their horse and buggy down Cedarvale Rd. heading to their wedding reception when for some unknown reason they had a fatal accident that cost the lives of both the bride and the groom. Since that accident on Halloween people have reported seeing a bride dressed all in white walking along the shoulder of the road, looking for her groom. Over the years there have been other stories of phantom lights, a spectral horse and carriage, and other unexplainable phenomenon that appear and mysteriously disappear along the road, especially during Halloween. This was my first time hearing the story of the ghost-bride, yet there was an undeniable feeling of familiarity to this tale. That night I had a nightmare that I was walking on a cobbled stretch of road and there were lots of trees on either side of the road that looked like they were dead or dying. Most of the leaves had fallen off the trees and lay scattered on the ground in a beautiful array of fall colors. Aside from the color of the leaves I was surrounded by fog and an impenetrable darkness with a life of its own. Even the sky was completely void of color; there was no moon, no stars, no clouds, nothing but an empty sea of darkness. Emotionally unmoved by my surroundings I continued walking along the eerie road as if prodded by an unseen force.

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