LEGEND WEEKEND
Knowing it would be hard to top the extravagance of last year’s Headless Horseman horror fest, this season’s Halloween excursion took us by train about a half-hour north to Tarrytown on the Hudson river, a stone’s throw from Sleepy Hollow and location of our destination, the Legend Weekend Nights at the historic Phillipsburg Manor.
We had about two hours of free time on arrival (our tickets had an actual admittance time—8pm) so we wandered from the train station through the largely Dominican downtown community until nightfall, when a commotion of cops and some inquiries led us over to a charming historic neighborhood where the post Halloween Parade party was taking up the entire Main Street. These people seriously get into the scene, and most of the town was decorated and festooned in with ghosts and witch motifs, even the church which I found especially pagan and charming.
This soiree was mostly a family affair with legion of costumed youth dancing to the encouragement of a rather strange kind of MC on a flatbed truck, leading the crowd through a slick, carefully choreographed routine of oddball moves suspiciously similar to a Jazzercise class. Feeling the lack of offspring and fellowship that arises when parents gather en masse, we got some coffee and headed to the Manor.
There was a feeling right off the bat, that though the production on this was going to be rather good (Hitachi was sponsoring after all), like most things we’d seen already (with all the young kids around), it was going to be fairly tame, mostly atmospheric and veering away from the usual gore-filled blood baths. And so a calming lit path took us around a huge pond with its rowboat of ghosts, to a small stage next to a bonfire. For almost an hour a very fine costumed storyteller began our evening, entertaining us with a carefully rendered version of that Washington Irving favorite that runs like blood through this part of the country.
Not so chilled, we afterwards walked the grounds past barns filled with ghostly dancers in period costumes, folk singers, witches conjuring up spells, and a ghostly, lit field where the Headless Horseman was making rather tired rounds much like a animal on display. The entire place was perfectly illuminated and actors wandered about in white pancake as ghostly spirits or portraying fabled characters like Rip Van Winkle, encouraging photo opportunities. It’s amusing to see how people become so careful around these costumed agents, as if they really were the dead, speaking of them in hushed tones and afraid of their approach, scaring themselves because it feels perfectly good to do so. It was a chilly, impeccably clear evening; the moon was waning and while things were not particularly scary, a simple, deeply soothing feeling of the supernatural settled abided over these eerie, comforting tableaus.
A long wooden bridge led us away and out, back onto the street and a walk to the train station, where costumed revelers filled the cars for all night revelry in Manhattan of an entirely different, though more frightening fashion.
We had about two hours of free time on arrival (our tickets had an actual admittance time—8pm) so we wandered from the train station through the largely Dominican downtown community until nightfall, when a commotion of cops and some inquiries led us over to a charming historic neighborhood where the post Halloween Parade party was taking up the entire Main Street. These people seriously get into the scene, and most of the town was decorated and festooned in with ghosts and witch motifs, even the church which I found especially pagan and charming.
This soiree was mostly a family affair with legion of costumed youth dancing to the encouragement of a rather strange kind of MC on a flatbed truck, leading the crowd through a slick, carefully choreographed routine of oddball moves suspiciously similar to a Jazzercise class. Feeling the lack of offspring and fellowship that arises when parents gather en masse, we got some coffee and headed to the Manor.
There was a feeling right off the bat, that though the production on this was going to be rather good (Hitachi was sponsoring after all), like most things we’d seen already (with all the young kids around), it was going to be fairly tame, mostly atmospheric and veering away from the usual gore-filled blood baths. And so a calming lit path took us around a huge pond with its rowboat of ghosts, to a small stage next to a bonfire. For almost an hour a very fine costumed storyteller began our evening, entertaining us with a carefully rendered version of that Washington Irving favorite that runs like blood through this part of the country.
Not so chilled, we afterwards walked the grounds past barns filled with ghostly dancers in period costumes, folk singers, witches conjuring up spells, and a ghostly, lit field where the Headless Horseman was making rather tired rounds much like a animal on display. The entire place was perfectly illuminated and actors wandered about in white pancake as ghostly spirits or portraying fabled characters like Rip Van Winkle, encouraging photo opportunities. It’s amusing to see how people become so careful around these costumed agents, as if they really were the dead, speaking of them in hushed tones and afraid of their approach, scaring themselves because it feels perfectly good to do so. It was a chilly, impeccably clear evening; the moon was waning and while things were not particularly scary, a simple, deeply soothing feeling of the supernatural settled abided over these eerie, comforting tableaus.
A long wooden bridge led us away and out, back onto the street and a walk to the train station, where costumed revelers filled the cars for all night revelry in Manhattan of an entirely different, though more frightening fashion.
![](<a href="http://www.adfreeblog.org/" target="_blank"> <img src="http://www.adfreeblog.org/adfreebutton.jpg"></a>)
1 comment:
Your report here seems to ignore the pure amazing-ness of that photo of you and Rip VanWinkle. That's fine. You can not post it but I KNOW it exists and it makes me smile just thinking about it.
Post a Comment