Since 1907, when Frederic D. Hughes won a $50 prize by writing the best ghost story for the Sunday World by telling of his personal experiences with old Copcutt's shade, it has appeared on rare occasions.

What Made Hughes Move.

Hughes and his family lived in the house, they having gone there in 1908, after it had been vacant for years.  Hughes was not afraid of ghosts: neither was his wife nor other members of his household.  But they had not been in the old mansion long before the Copcutt ghost decided they must not live there.

The ghost, his face leering and vicious, would appear nightly.  Hughes wrote.  Every night as the clock struck 12 a beautiful woman, dressed in black, would flit into one of the rooms and at the same time the dumbwaiter would begin to move up and down.  No man had sufficient strength to stop this waiter, and for five minutes it would rattle and shake on its shaft.

One night an old carry all driven by the ghost of Jeremiah Linehan, a coachman and confident of Copcutt, who was as mysterious as his master in life and was his ghostly associate after death, rolled up to the mansion door.  Hughes declares that old Jeremiah, his face lined with viciousness, leered up at him and drove on.  Then the driver and vehicle disappeared in air.

Another night Copcutt came up to Hughes in the library and snarled, "The place is cursed! The place is cursed!"

The next evening Hughes and his wife were on the lawn, and on the very spot where the Kosciusko monument now stands old Copcutt seemed to rise from earth, and tottering forward, his body wriggling, he squealed: "This place is cursed; The trees will die!  No mortal man will remain in the abiding place of spirits!"

Nuns Terror Stricken.

A few days later the trees began dying and the ghost continued their operations until Hughes decided he would move.  Professor James Hyslop and Dr. Isaac K. Funk, the psychic researchers, and other men of their kind spent nights in the mansion.  They saw ghosts and they marveled.

Copcutt Mansion

When Father Dwoizak, whose church adjoins the Copcutt property, bought the place it was supposed the ghosts had given up their weird pranks.  The old mansion was made into a convent and if the nuns ever saw the ghosts they never spoke of it.

The unveiling of the statue was the principal event in Yonkers on Decoration day.  The figure of the patriot is in bronze, standing on a stone pedestal.  In his right hand Kosciusko holds a parchment and his left rested on his sword scabbard.

Monday night last the nuns saw from their windows ghostly figures flitting about the trees and around the statue.  They became terror stricken.  There was no telephone in the house and no means of communicating with the police.  Next morning it was found that the ghosts had robbed Kosciusko of his sword and carried it off.

Syracuse Herald, Syracuse, New York - Sunday, June 9, 1912

You are the light in my hand
As a wind rush might be,
Ay, so light
As the froth on the sand
Or the foam on the sea,
And as bright

When you felt the red fire
Of the forge, as it played,
Did you feel,
Too, my swordsman's desire
Run like blood on your blade
And blue steel?

Ernest Rhys, The Swordsman to His Sword  (Broadside, 1908)