Bøger af Dennis Webster

Spirits linger on the pine-covered slopes of the Adirondack Mountains that surround Old Forge. Books fly off the shelves at the Maxson House, and something--or someone--spies on the living from the attic window of the Goodsell Museum. The spirit of Mohawk Peter Waters is said to linger along the shores of First Lake, where an assassin killed him in 1833. The scent of a phantom cigar hints at the presence of the former owner of the Strand Theatre. Authors Dennis Webster and Bernadette Peck and the Ghost Seekers of Central New York take a chilling journey into the paranormal history of what may be the most haunted town in the nation.

In 1914, Poland, New York, was a picturesque slice of small-town America. But that innocence was shattered with the shocking murder of beloved schoolteacher Lida Beecher at the hands of her former student Jean Gianini. At twenty-one years old, Lida wasn t much older than her students. The son of a successful furniture dealer, Jean had all the advantages in life, but he had been labeled as different by all who encountered him. The shocking murder brought the world s best alienists to the packed Herkimer County Courthouse to try to prove that the teenager s mental development precluded his guilt. Author Dennis Webster utilizes unprecedented access to court documents to reveal details of the sensational crime never before made known to the public."

Known as Old Main, the New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica opened in 1843 as the first institution of its kind to treat madness as a medical illness, not a curse. A series of groundbreaking administrators sought to save mentally ill New Yorkers from lives of confinement in sordid conditions and create a safe haven. A sense of normalcy was established for patients through Old Main''s Asylum Band, the Opal monthly publication and other arts programs. The infamous Utica Crib was invented at the asylum, and visitors from around the world sought to tour the facility and its utopian structure. Though closed in 1978, Old Main was placed in the National Register of Historic Places, and its iconic columns still mesmerize the public today. Author Dennis Webster charts the history of the New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica.