The Lumber Was Cursed
The State Theatre stands at 105 W. State Street in Ithaca. When the foundation for the building that would be incorporated into the theater was excavated in 1916, the workmen made a gruesome discovery. A complete skeleton and two human skulls were found, remnants of the bloody past on Cayuga Street.
All or at least most of the hauntings began with one building - the Columbia Inn. The inn was built by Luther Gere, a master carpenter, in 1815 at the corner of State and Cayuga Streets. Over the years it became a popular gathering place for people living there. In 1831, a local shoemaker named Guy Clark, a reputed abusive drunk, and his 44 year-old wife Fanny came into the Columbia Inn for a few drinks. During the coarse of the night Guy produced an ax and killed Fanny with it, leaving five children motherless. It was a crime for which he gave no reason. The heinous act won him the fame of being the first man to be convicted and executed for murder in Western New York. Clark was hanged for his crime on February 2, 1832 on the grounds of what would be the Falls Creek School. Clark was buried on the spot while his body was still warm. Soon it was discovered that his body was gone from the grave, It was presumed that it was dug up and sold to a local doctor or medical school for the study of anatomy.
As a result of this senseless, violent crime that happened in the Columbia Inn people stopped going there. It wasn’t long before William Brundage, the owner at the time, realized that his inn was never going to recover from the bad publicity. He had it dismantled and the lumber sold for new construction. Part of the lumber, a large portion of it, was used to build Carson’s Tavern. The rest was used to construct two small houses across town.
Carson’s Tavern was built across State Street from where the Columbia Inn had been. On July 18, 1841 John Jones and John Graham, two locals, enjoyed a few drinks together in the tavern. There is no doubt that they were more than a little drunk when they left at the end of the evening. Only one of the men made it home that night. Soon after leaving Carson’s Tavern Graham murdered Jones, mutilated his body, and threw it in Enfield Gorge. Graham was hanged for robbery of Jones and his murder. People began to believe that the lumber from the Columbia Inn was cursed with pure evil and avoided walking past it all together, some crossing the street before they reached it and others changed their route completely, taking a different street even if it took them out of their way. Needless to say no one was sad to see it go up in flames and reduced to ashes in 1845 when a fire started in the stables at the Franklin House, destroyed an entire city block.
Most of the hauntings in the area are attributed to the curse of the Columbia Inn; however there in one event in Ithaca’s past that may shed some light on the rest…(excerpt from Ghosts and Hauntings of the Finger Lakes).
