Julius Forstmann was a titan of the global wool industry. He owned mills in New Jersey, a five-story mansion on Madison Avenue, and a 300-foot yacht with a crew of fifty sailors. He also had a 2,300-acre vacation compound in the Catskills. When he died, his sons sold it for $25,000 to the YMCA. The estate included a castle-like mansion called The Castle.
In 1957, the YMCA converted the property into a summer camp. Without much information about the Forstmann family, the estate became a breeding ground for the imagination. For the next fifty years, countless liberal arts majors who worked as camp counselors made up macabre stories about the family to entertain (and frighten) young campers.
In 1982, when I arrived as a ten-year-old, I was captivated by the thrilling immersive experience of The Castle Tour. I went on to guide these tours as a counselor, embellishing wildly. While details fluctuated, recurring themes were gruesome, ridiculous, and nothing like the facts.
My version of the tour began in the great room, under the towering oil painting of old man Forstmann. He appears furious and unnaturally large; his eyes follow you around the room. I “explain” how in real life, Forstmann was far larger, requiring a custom crane from the second-floor balcony to hoist him onto his gigantic war horse, Killer, a big-for-his-breed Clydesdale. Killer didn’t last long; the first time the man-crane was used, Forstmann’s tremendous weight killed Killer, splitting the horse’s torso open, with entrails and blood pouring down the grassy slope with Forstmann sledding on a kishke slurry, shrieking all the way to the bottom. I point out the persisting horse stain visible through this parlor room window.
“Let’s head upstairs. This is the site of another horse-related incident. When Princess (Forstmann’s youngest daughter) attempted to bring her pony, Killer II, upstairs, it kicked out this enormous mirror. A maid cleaned up the mess and arranged for the glass to be replaced, but threatened to tell on Princess. To avoid punishment, Princess murdered the maid in her sleep with an electric ham knife and hid the body. Let’s tiptoe to this odd miniature door… closer… closer…”
This is everyone’s favorite part of The Castle Tour: the moment when that little door kicks open and a bloody, electric knife-wielding zombie maid springs out screeching. When everyone has finished freaking-out, we replace the maid costume and knife into a box in the small closet for the next time.
The tour turns to Forstmann's legendary hunting mishaps. He blamed the local deer for his terrible aim and instructed his gamekeeper to hold deer down while he shot both at point-blank range. When this failed to appease his insatiable thirst for cruelty, his butler directed Forstmann to a special window in his study and hired yet another gamekeeper. At the window, Forstmann pressed this button on the wall, which activated the electrified birdbath you can see outside. Forstmann giggled maniacally for hours as birds fell twitching onto the grass.
At the end of my tour, I would take groups outside to observe what is clearly a manmade hill on which The Castle is built. I would again “explain” how the massive work of landscaping is the grim conclusion to the tale of a family of poor Dutch homesteaders who refused to sell to Forstmann’s attorneys. As punishment, they were locked in their farmhouse for a month while the crew slowly buried them alive in it with millions of tons of subway landfill trucked up from New York City, “Listen carefully, you can still hear echoes of the family’s cries…”
When I was little, these stories helped me appreciate my own family. At sleep-away camp, I realized they were just like those farmers, absurdly stubborn, trapped under a metaphorical hill. At camp, I could laugh about it. Camp was all about laughing and gaining a fresh perspective. Perspective born from humor was the treasure we carried home. It still serves me.
Last autumn, on my way to Ithaca, I arranged a stopover visit to fulfill a childhood dream: to sleep in the infamous haunted tower bedroom during the dreaded October half-moon.
According to legend, on this night at one minute before midnight, moonlight forms a lattice prism in the nine windows of the room, opening a portal to another dimension through which one can freely communicate with the ghost of Julius Forstmann.
Frost Valley would allow me to spend a night in the room as long as I stopped referring to it as “the dreaded haunted room” and made it clear in my story (this one) that the legends were all fiction.
Frost Valley has been trying to correct the mythology surrounding The Castle. This started a few years back when the nine-year-old great-great-granddaughter of old man Forstmann attended camp for the first time and went on a Castle Tour. She got the usual treatment with the buried homesteaders, deadly birdbath, electric ham knife, and so on. After she got home and told her parents about it all, her father (the oldest living direct descendant of Julius Forstmann) was livid and called the camp director to give him a piece of his mind.
Turns out, we had it all wrong. Forstmann was kind. His daughter was too. She murdered zero maids. Old man Forstmann shot zero gamekeepers. The family members were good to people; they didn’t even call it The Castle. They called it Contentment Corner. They loved deer and birds alike, and to cap it off, this generous German family sold the whole valley and its buildings for less than the cost of a mid-range Volkswagen. The problem was us. We were the mean ones, making gross assumptions about this ultra-rich family. Shame on us.
The half-moon was October 23. I still wanted to se it for myself. I drove up to camp on a beautiful, warm autumn morning. I dropped my stuff off at (the unhaunted) Room 24 and headed out into the sunshine. The foliage made a golden carpet. I hiked into stunning forested hills and found temple-sized boulders covered in bright green moss. I found stillness and silence on the second summit of Double Top Mountain. The sky was blue, and sunlight came through the trees in bright patches. I took a nap on a golden carpet of leaves and woke up like I was in a Washington Irving story. I hiked down the mountain in the gathering dusk, filled with a sense of calm and renewal.
When I got back to The Castle, I set up in Forstmann’s study, sat behind his desk, and wrote the previous paragraphs. I was in a good mood and lost track of time.
It was a Tuesday. I hadn’t fully appreciated yet that no one else was staying in The Castle. Suddenly, it seemed way too quiet, oppressively quiet. I stood up from the mahogany desk, peered into the darkness outside the window, but only saw my reflection. I held my breath and jumped when the floor creaked under me. I felt my grip on reality slipping. Then a frightening scenario entered my mind.
Over my years working at this camp, I’ve generously supplied pranks, practical jokes, and several elaborate hoaxes. There’s a respectable list of executives, former directors, Village Chiefs, and maintenance staff who would be in their rights getting a good one over on me. A week earlier, I’d announced my haunted sleepover plans on social media. This would have given any number of people ample time to plot revenge. Certainly, if roles were switched, if one of them was up here, I would be hiding on the balcony in an extra-large gabardine suit stuffed with newspaper, waiting for the stroke of midnight to make my entrance.
Surely, someone else had thought of this. I should go check. I didn’t get far. Entering the gloomy main hall felt like wading into cold water. I took five steps into the darkness and then turned back to the study. My phone’s flashlight came on for long enough to tell me the battery was low. Then it died.
I’ve seen enough horror movies to know what happens next. I knew that if I didn’t get all the lights on, I’d be a goner, and to get the lights on, to find the tiny decorative light switches, I’d need my phone to work. The charger was up in the tower. I’d have to get there in the dark. I told the deer head and the trout on the wall about my plan. They said I was crazy to be talking to them and told me to stay in the study until sunrise. I argued. What did they know? They never left the study.
I took a deep breath and sprinted up the dark stairs loudly humming, shoving my way past the first axe murderers, poltergeists, wolves, vampires, zombie ponies, etc.
When I reached the tower, I tripped over my low bed, screamed, saw stars, and little else. It was dark. I could feel blood dripping down my shin. My heart was pounding loud enough that I couldn’t hear. I cursed, caught my breath, rolled up my pant leg, and cowered behind the bed while my phone charged and my blood clotted.
The next hour involved a stealthy room-to-room battle. There were a few close calls and additional injuries inflicted by inanimate objects, but by 11:30, every light, lamp, and chandelier in The Castle was on, and remained on all night.
A minute before midnight, as scheduled, the moon shone in the arched windows, and a mystical portal opened. Wool-clad goblins danced and sang. Dante appeared with Virgil, narrating otherworldly trivia. I couldn’t have cared less. I was exhausted. I fell asleep mid-portal.
At 2 a.m. a new noise woke me. It seemed to be coming from the roof above the small round room at the top of the tower. I hadn’t turned the light on up there. I got out of bed and paused at the bottom of the narrow stairwell. The moonlight showed nothing. I could just make out the light switch at the top of the stairs. The noise came again, a cackling-ratcheting-creaking buzzing. I climbed the cliché steps, steep and creaking. I submitted to whatever new terrors awaited. I reached the top step after an eternity and flipped on the light, but there was nothing. I sat for fifteen minutes on the bench, then went back down.
The moment I got in bed, I heard the noise again and ran back up. The glass of the overhead light fixture was amplifying the sound of a dying fly trapped inside. I tried sleeping in another room, but that room had a bigger, louder trapped fly. I went back to my original bed. I lay there with my eyes open, listening to buzzing noises with every light on.
I don’t remember the sun rising, but it did. I woke to the comforting sounds of voices downstairs. They got closer. The door to my room opened. Seven senior citizens sauntered in.
It was a Castle Tour led by a young woman. They milled around my bed, inspected the walls, and ignored me as if I was part of the room. I considered the possibility that I had died, that I was now a ghost. Then the tour guide glared at me, “Do you realize that EVERY light in The Castle is on?”
No one laughed. I had wasted electricity and caused light pollution at an environmental education center.
The group examined the tall windows, tested the furniture, and the guide narrated, “This room, the highest bedroom in The Castle was reserved for the head butler and his wife.” To me, she whispered, “Breakfast was an hour ago.”
I love my old camp. These moments make this place great. It didn’t matter that I paid $259, ran around like a lunatic, didn’t get much sleep, or that presently I had a half dozen strangers in my room.
I just said, “I’m sorry about leaving the lights on.”
The guide ignored me, turned back to the group, “Let’s head downstairs so our guest can get back to sleep.”
A silver-haired man pointed at the large bureau in the hall and asked if it was original. Closing the door, the guide answered, “Yes, that one is original.”
FAKE NEWS. The castle is definitely haunted. 😂
Exactly!