Bannerman's Castle (Pollepel Island)

Local lore tells of ghostly lights and figures on Pollepel Island, and some tour guides say Francis Bannerman himself haunts the castle by turning over bricks and stones. The best-known story belongs to his widow, Helen: on the day in 1920 when 200 tons of shells and powder exploded, she was said to be sunning herself in a hammock when she felt a presence telling her to go inside, moments before masonry thrown by the blast landed where her head had been. These are local tellings. Bannerman's Castle is the ruins of an arsenal built in the early 1900s on the island in the Hudson River by Francis Bannerman, a dealer in military surplus, in the style of a Scottish castle. The 1920 explosion sent his business into decline, and a fire and lightning strike destroyed much of what remained in the 1960s; it is now a state-managed ruin.