Tour Highlights the Ghosts of the Capitol ALBANY, NEW YORK (WXXI) - If the state's looming budget deficit isn't scary enough, this October at the New York's State Capitol, visitors can take a tour that showcases the ghost stories and legends in the Gothic style building.

The building, with it's dark, sweeping staircases carved with gargoyles, and narrow twisting corridors, is the perfect setting for a ghost tale.

Guide Stuart Lehman, dressed in period clothing of over 100 years ago, complete with a bowler hat, explains to the dozen or so people on the Ghost Tour that the Capitol was built in the last decades of the 19th century.

Most houses of government favor the classical style and look more like Greek or Roman temples, but the builders of the Capitol opted for Gothic, Romanesque, and Renaissance architecture, and the effect is something like a medieval cathedral or European castle.

"And of course, as we know, those European castles are just filled with ghosts, so it's natural that this building would seem to be haunted", Lehman tells visitors.

There have been several tragic deaths in the building, which has been at least partially occupied since the 1880's, and over the years people have said they've seen things, felt things, and heard things. Strange lights have appeared around the Assembly Chamber, some rooms have cold spots, where the temperature suddenly drops, and others have reported hearing the clanking of keys and footsteps in an empty hall.

Our guide leads us to a back hallway on the fourth floor, near the Senate chamber, that played an important role in the great fire of March 29th, 1911.
On that night, the elderly night watchman, Samuel Abbot, a civil war veteran, was making his rounds, when a fire erupted in the Assembly Chamber and quickly spread to the vast library on the third and fourth floors of the Capitol. When the devastating blaze was over, no one could find Abbot. His body was later discovered in the rubble in the narrow hallway. And Stuart Lehman says, people still hear him today, attempting to make his rounds.

"You might hear a watchman's keys jangling, you might see the doorknobs being tried," Lehman said. "And over the years a number of state employees have also reported seeing an apparition of a man looking like Samuel Abbot in his night watchman's uniform."

Lehman says he can't say verify whether the accounts are true or not, or whether the witnesses let their imaginations run away with them.

"That's something we all have to decide for ourselves," Lehman tells those on the tour.

Lehman, when he's not guiding the Capitol ghost tours, is an historical researcher and interpreter in other New York historic sites. He describes himself as an "agnostic" on the existence of ghosts, and says he tries to walk a fine line when he gives the tours, not wanting to offend the true believers, or to cause skeptics to roll their eyes.

He says he's never seen anything that could be considered paranormal at the Capitol, but many
visitors on the tour have had their own experiences. Snapshots have revealed strange orb shaped lights and swirls of what look like miasmic vapors. Lehman says a fellow tour guide, now retired, saw a gray figure lurking at the edge of the ground floor of an Italianate style, four story courtyard that surrounds the staircase to the Senate chamber. In 1890, a depressed fruit stand vendor jumped from the third floor balustrade and plunged 80 feet to his death at that very spot.

For most, though, the tours offer a fun way of learning about the history of the Capitol. Nancy, a state employee, was on the tour with her co- workers as a present for her birthday.

"Almost as scary as real life", she said with a laugh, and admitted that yes, she does believe in ghosts.

The tour is so popular that it's nearly booked solid through the end of the month. But Lehman says, there's always next year. The ghosts aren't going anywhere.



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