The legend of Spook Rock

The ghosts in Claverack seemed much older, almost as if they had been there forever. Just past the Marilyn house there was a street by the Claverack Creek called Spook Rock Road. Spook Rock was one of Dad’s favorite spots to swim. One day when we were swimming he told us the legend of Spook Rock. Sometimes our words and actions, the stories of our lives, reverberate through the canyons of time. Once in a while, when the wind is just right, we recognize our own echoes.

There once was a beautiful Indian princess who fell in love with a boy without her father’s blessing. The two young lovers decided to flee the safety of their tribe to marry. In their flight, the two youths paused to rest on a boulder in the creek. By breaking Indian tradition and religious laws they greatly angered the tribe’s gods, who upon seeing them at the rock caused a great flood. The angry waters carried the lovers to their death. The boulder and the spirits of the lovers came to rest along the banks of the stream near Spook Rock. The young maiden’s spirit supposedly haunts the spot that has become Claverack’s most precious swimming hole. Supposedly, at certain times of the year, a low moaning sound may be heard in the wind as it sweeps across the river from the Catskills. The spirit of the dead maiden remains to this day in constant search of her lost lover.