The Ghosts of Mill Lake

He was only fifteen when his life slipped away beneath a sheet of ice, the weight of his ice skates pulling him under the murky waters of Mill Lake. Mill Lake was the place where the guys met after school to go ice skating in winter and fishing or skinny dipping in summer on the large oval shaped pond . The name Blaise Wiscoski has long been forgotten. The small town of Ickersville grew to such a populous town it was no longer part of a township, had its own high school and two cemeteries, Way of All Saints, on the eastern side of the main avenue and Hazelworth on the downslope of Lake Boulevard. Hazelworth, unlike Way of All Saints, was the older of the two cemeteries and was located at the embankment of Mill Lake stretching northward in a kind of balloon shape.

Hazelworth Cemetery
Hazelworth Cemetery was created out of necessity. It had rolling hills, thick chestnut and hazelwood trees lining a narrow access path to gravesites. The first graves to be interred in Hazelworth were the dead who perished in the massive influenza plague of the mid 1700s. This was later followed by another epidemic of influenza in the late 1800s. Ickersville was the actual geographic location of Hazelworth, although the nearby town of Rodden loved to lay claim to it.

The Cayuga Legend
The entire region of Ickersville and Rodden were part of a native American homestead. The density of the trees near Mill Lake created visions of an era when the Cayuga spent their days hunting and fishing peacefully. But, Mill Lake was not so peaceful. Rather, Mill Lake had one of the most deceptive, forceful currents imperceptible to the naked eye. The legend passed down among the Cayuga was that one late autumn tribesmen were fishing in Mill Lake. Part of the embankment slipped away, bringing a deluge of lake water further inland. Five of the tribesmen were never found. For many years after, Mill Lake seemed sated by the sacrifice of those five lives. When settlers to the region began moving in, the Cayuga warned that Mill Lake could be an angry devil. The settlers summarily ignored the warnings.

Then, in November of 1774, several of the children of the later settlers were playing tag and throwing stones into Mill Lake. It was a cold, grey day with a strong, blade sharp wind. The rosy cheeked children hastened home as the dinner hour neared.

By evening, Daniel Warnes came down with fever. His father, Jacob, sent for the local doctor, Josiah Ames. Before the doctor arrived, Daniel began to have hallucinations and spasms. One half hour before the doctor appeared, Daniel Warnes was dead. His infant sibling came down with the same fever. Within a week, ten children and adults had died of an outbreak of virulent influenza. The survivors blamed it on the curse of Mill Lake.

Thinking the evil entity in the Lake would be satisfied, the townspeople built Hazelworth Cemetery over what had formerly been the Cayuga Indian Reservation. With a certain amount of superstition, they cleared huge chestnuts and hazelwood trees and buried their dead beneath the forest's lush canopy. Some believed the cemetery had ghosts. Often, a peculiar vaporous column would appear over one or more of the graves. Parents warned children to stay away from Mill Lake and Hazelworth.

Over the next one hundred years, Mill Lake became overcrowded with trees, wild blueberry and blackberry shrubs. The water in the lake appeared to be only knee deep. The vacuous bowl in the center of the lake lay unseen. In summer, the lake water was a thick, syrupy green. In colder weather, it had an odd sulfuric blue color. Gradually, the Mill Lake curse was forgotten and children once again began to swim, fish and skate on the lake.

It was the winter of 1884 when Thomas Graham, Jeremy Fordyce and Harold Lynwood decided to skate on Mill Lake. The minute Thomas Graham took a step onto the ice, he felt and heard the cracking sound. He managed not to get pulled away by the strong current only because Jeremy and Harold had not yet set foot on the ice. They tugged and tugged at Thomas's arms until finally he was freed, sopping wet and shivering.

"It was almost as if Mill Lake had a hold on you," Harold mused.

"No matter how hard we tugged on you, it was as if a huge monster had a tighter grip," Jeremy said.

The two boys hurried home with their friend. The following morning, Ellen Graham went upstairs to Thomas room to wake him for school. Thomas was burning up with fever. His thin body shook with tremors.

"Thomas, what on earth is wrong?" Ellen asked.

"Feel sick, Mother...awfully sick," Thomas said, weakly.

The doctor was called in. He recognize quickly it was influenza. He tried his best to save Thomas. By the afternoon, it was clear the boy would succumb. By nightfall, Ellen Graham took to her bed. George Graham came home to a household felled by illness.

When his two sons, Alfred and Patrick arrived home from school early the following day, they reported to their father influenza had spread among their school mates.

The total number who perished in the second outbreak of influenza in Ickersville was forty-two men, women and children. They were buried in Hazelworth Cemetery as the number interred grew to over one hundred and ten.

The whispers among Ickersville people was that Mill Lake once again took deadly revenge on the town. Now, no one ventured near Mill Lake. It lay idling and nearly hidden amid the trees with only the cemetery on the northern slope of its banks. The grave markers began to sink into the red, claylike soil with each rainfall until the tombstones of the Warnes family deceased were nearly sunken to the engravings.

After World War I and World War II, Hazelworth Cemetery became the site of burials of the military in family burial plots. One of those buried in Hazelworth was a survivor of the influenza outbreak of 1874, Ruben Denby, the youngest of Malachy Denby's sons. Twelve members of the Denby family were buried in a family mausoleum in Hazelworth. Ruben was the thirteenth. He was buried with full military honors. He'd served as a Lieutenant in the Army until he was caught in an ambush and shot to death. He was buried on October 30, 1914, a date most in Ickersville also forgot until the family mausoleum was looted forty years later on the same date.

All the papers carried the story of the Denby Mausoleum desecration and looting. In those days, people were often buried with valuable family heirlooms, like Eliza Denby's treasured cameo brooch handed down three generations. It like Malachy Denby's prized gold and diamond tie tack were gone. Ruben's casket was torn open, exposing is corpse. Local police investigators believed the thief or thieves were looking for Ruben's war medals. The glass and wrought iron door to the mausoleum was torn from its hinges.

Inexplicably, a more intensive search found the brooch and tie tack at the foot of the cobblestone entrance to the mausoleum.

Michael Riley, chief inspector of Ickersville police, was puzzled.

"Why break into a mausoleum with intent to rob it and then drop the valuables? No one was watching the thieves. What scared them so that they'd drop their booty and run?" he wondered.

In the dark of that October 30, night, Tom Linke and Albert Winestaff used a crowbar to break the hinges on the wrought iron door frame and to smash the glass door behind it. As they started to leave the gravesite, They thought they heard someone and started to run. Tom had the brooch and tie tack in his hand when he saw the eerie vapor in front of the Warnes grave. Both men ran blindly in the dark, fog misted night. As they ran closer and closer to Mill Lake, they lost their way. Tom Linke and Albert Winestaff struggled to free themselves from the embankment sucking them in. Lake water crept into the holes they'd dug with their feet as they fervishly tried to escape.

Their bodies were never found. Their families figured they'd gotten into trouble and hopped a freight train as all men in trouble did those days. With the news of the mausoleum robbery so fresh in the minds of Ickersville police, their families didn't dare take the chance Tom or Albert were involved. What else would explain their disappearance, they reasoned.

The robbery of the Denby mausoleum was the talk of Ickersville for several years. But, another more dastardly incident would shake the town for decades.

The day began with a weak December sun. The children in Ickersville, not knowing the past history of Mill Lake, headed with their ice skates to the one place that had a thick ice coating. With warnings from their parents not to skate alone and to stay close to the edge of the lake, Blaise Wiscoski, Daniel Billings, Johnny Ryder and Eddie Franco planned an ice hockey game on Mill Lake at ten that morning.

The boys donned heavy winter jackets, woolen caps and gloves and walked the half mile to Mill Lake. The sun by 10 AM was tucked behind leaden clouds and the scent of a first snowfall was in the air. The wind was calm and as they approached the banks of the lake, skates laced tightly, they could see the ice was solid and thick.  They felt no worry. They tossed the hockey puck back and forth in the throes of the game until the puck careened toward the center of the lake. Blaise and Daniel skated quickly toward it, their hockey sticks in hand.

Blaise heard the crack first.

"Danny, the ice! It's cracking. Get back!" Blaise said.

In a split second Blaise fell beneath the ice into the wild current below. He struggled to the surface trying to use his hockey stick to help him get back to the surface. The crack grew in circumference to about four feet. Danny leaned over to try to help Blaise as the rest of the boys ran to help. Danny grabbed Blaise's hand; but, a sudden current pulled Blaise down deep into the water. Danny fell in next. The ice continued to crack until Johnny and Eddie knew trying to save Blaise and Danny was useless. They ran for help.

By the time help arrived, the volunteer firemen and police tried desperately to find the bodies of Blaise Wiscoski and Daniel Billings. From that day on, Mill Lake was off limits to everyone.

The Wiscoski and Billings families buried their sons six months later in Hazelworth when their bodies were found washed onto the Mill Lake embankment.

The police needn't have warned the people of Ickersville about Mill Lake. There was an eerie warning in late summer and early autumn whenever a peculiar green mist formed above the center of the lake. Sometimes, it loomed as high as six feet. Other times, it wavered back and forth as if calling to some unsuspecting victim.

Twenty years later when the town tried to narrow Mill Lake by building brick retaining walls, Mill Lake took revenge. It flooded its banks destroying several nearby homes with a deluge of water.