• Visit
  • Events
    • CHAPEL LIGHTS
  • About
    • Visit
    • Historic Saranac Lake
    • The Museum
    • Trudeau Building >
      • Contractor Portal 2023
    • PRESS Room
    • History Matters Blog
  • Research
    • Collections
    • Oral History Project
    • Local Wiki
    • Resources
    • HISTORY MATTERS Blog
  • Projects
    • Trudeau Building
    • Architectural Preservation
    • Collections
    • The Bartok Cabin
    • Oral History Project
    • Cure Porch on Wheels
    • School Outreach
    • Special Exhibits >
      • Pandemic Perspectives
  • Support Us
  • Contact
  • Museum Store
HISTORIC SARANAC LAKE
  • Visit
  • Events
    • CHAPEL LIGHTS
  • About
    • Visit
    • Historic Saranac Lake
    • The Museum
    • Trudeau Building >
      • Contractor Portal 2023
    • PRESS Room
    • History Matters Blog
  • Research
    • Collections
    • Oral History Project
    • Local Wiki
    • Resources
    • HISTORY MATTERS Blog
  • Projects
    • Trudeau Building
    • Architectural Preservation
    • Collections
    • The Bartok Cabin
    • Oral History Project
    • Cure Porch on Wheels
    • School Outreach
    • Special Exhibits >
      • Pandemic Perspectives
  • Support Us
  • Contact
  • Museum Store

History Matters: Humble SPirits

10/20/2020

1 Comment

 
By Amy Catania
Picture
168 Charles Street, Historic Saranac Lake wiki website.
October is a good month for a ghost story. So here is the tale of a humble spirit who for years haunted a cure cottage up on Charles Street.

I heard this story from Eileen Black, who has lived in the house for many years and raised her family there. A ghost visited their home several times a year for decades. He would show up at the back walkway, walking towards the house, glancing in the windows. Well-dressed, in an elegant, old fashioned coat and fedora, he looked a bit like Fred Astaire, so the family named him, “Fred.” Eileen, her husband, and children all got used to Fred sightings. He would appear and then be gone, before they could get a good look at him. Guests at the house would see him too. They were never afraid of him; he felt like a friend.

Fred’s visits went on for years until the time when the family decided to do a major renovation to the back area of the house. One day, when the construction was just about finished, Eileen looked out the back window to see Fred walking down the path, away from the house. He glanced over his shoulder, and he was gone. It was the only time they had ever seen him walking away, and it was the last time they would see him.

That is the whole story. It’s pretty short and not very scary, but it is a first-hand account from a family who lived in the company of a ghost. At 168 Charles Street, some part of the past lived side-by-side with the present.

We tend to believe that apparitions grow out of violent occurrences, and that they are people with unfinished business. I looked up Eileen’s house on our wiki site, and discovered that the first owner of the house, Arthur Strough, died in a tragic car accident. Arthur and his friend Joseph LaBeau died in April 1922 on Bloomingdale Road near the Trudeau Sanatorium. The vehicle went off the road, and Arthur burned to death under the car.

Perhaps Arthur’s painful and untimely death helps to explain the haunting of Charles Street. Yet here in this town where death was no stranger, you would think we would have more stories of hauntings. Any one of our old cure cottages could be haunted by people who died early deaths, but it seems they are mostly quiet.

Phantoms may be uncommon, but if you pay attention to the past, it will come alive. At the museum, our exhibit on the fresh air cure features personal stories of several TB patients. Their faces hang in the room on semi-transparent banners. One of our exhibit ghosts is Gloria Hazard. She came to Saranac Lake as a teenager, in search of a cure for TB. In an effort to save her from aggressive TB infection, her doctors resorted to thoracoplasty, a drastic operation where ribs were removed to permanently collapse the diseased lung. Gloria died of surgical complications on July 4, 1948, when she was only nineteen.
Picture
Gloria Hazard exhibit panel at the Saranac Laboratory Museum.
Until her death, from her bed at Trudeau, Gloria wrote letters home almost daily. Her niece visited the Saranac Laboratory Museum several years ago and shared the letters with us. When we listen to Gloria’s story, we learn lessons about sorrow, perseverance, and love. We might briefly grasp the reality that our time on earth is miraculous and fleeting.

We invite Gloria to haunt our museum as a simple act of human decency, to pay witness to a life that came before us. As we work to expand the museum into the Trudeau building, we are making room for more ghosts. Visitors will listen to stories of TB patients like Gloria, wilderness guides, shopkeepers, great camp builders, and Native Americans who made their homes here for thousands of years.

Here in Saranac Lake, we love our phantoms and the old buildings they call home. Some towns might have chosen to tear down the Trudeau house and put up a CVS. But instead, we are bringing the place back and finding our way forward together, by looking into the shadows and listening to our ghosts.
Picture
Gloria Hazard curing in Saranac Lake, courtesy of Jeanne Hazard OsborneĀ .
Listen to our museum “ghosts” on our website. Scroll down to track #7 to hear actress Donna Moschek read Gloria Hazard’s letter.
1 Comment
Mato Ray
3/28/2022 08:50:01 am


I'm just too happy that everything is in place for me now. I would gladly recommend the use of spell to any one going through marriage problems and want to put an end to it by emailing Dr Emu through emutemple@gmail.com and that was where I got the help to restore my marriage. Whatsapp +2347012841542
Https://web.facebook.com/Emu-Temple-104891335203341

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    About us

    Stay up to date on all the news and happenings from Historic Saranac Lake at the Saranac Laboratory Museum!

    Archives

    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019

    Categories

    All
    12 Days Of SL Mas
    Bartók
    Black History
    Collections
    Cure Porch On Wheels
    Events
    Exhibits
    Friday Link
    Grants
    History
    History Matters Column
    Image Of The Week
    Letters From The Porch
    Museum Monday
    Nurses
    Oral History
    School Programs
    Staff
    Talking Points
    TB Patients
    Trudeau Building
    Tuberculosis Thursday
    Visitors
    Wednesday Mini Tours
    Winter Carnival
    Women's History Month

    RSS Feed

Historic Saranac Lake at the Saranac Laboratory Museum
​89 Church Street, Suite 2, Saranac Lake, New York 12983
​(518) 891-4606 - mail@historicsaranaclake.org ​
Join our mailing list

Historic Saranac Lake is funded in part by:
  • the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature;
  • a Humanities New York SHARP Grant with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the federal American Rescue Plan Act;
  • an Essex County Arts Council Cultural Assistance Program Grant supported by the Essex County Board of Supervisors.
Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this website do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Picture
Picture
Picture
​© 2023 Historic Saranac Lake. All Rights Reserved. Historic photographs from Historic Saranac Lake Collection, unless otherwise noted. Copy and reuse restrictions apply. ​
  • Visit
  • Events
    • CHAPEL LIGHTS
  • About
    • Visit
    • Historic Saranac Lake
    • The Museum
    • Trudeau Building >
      • Contractor Portal 2023
    • PRESS Room
    • History Matters Blog
  • Research
    • Collections
    • Oral History Project
    • Local Wiki
    • Resources
    • HISTORY MATTERS Blog
  • Projects
    • Trudeau Building
    • Architectural Preservation
    • Collections
    • The Bartok Cabin
    • Oral History Project
    • Cure Porch on Wheels
    • School Outreach
    • Special Exhibits >
      • Pandemic Perspectives
  • Support Us
  • Contact
  • Museum Store