Old Culbertson Mansion

The **Old Culbertson Mansion** was an old derelict French Renaissance-style mansion that once stood at the northwest corner of the Winchester Turnpike and Haverstraw Road north of Ashford Falls, New York. Although once very opulent in its time, the structure served as the local high school for several years, lasting from September 1893 to October 15, 1953.

Over the years, the history of the mansion has been almost entirely forgotten, left abandoned on an elevated property surrounded by trees on the northern route from town. It was built by the Culbertsons, an English-German family, who had made their wealth in the horse-less carriage industry. They arrived in Ashford Falls from Cleveland, Ohio in or around 1840 and possessed enough wealth that they could build their home from sections of the ancestral estate in England. Sometimes considered one of the founding families of town, they were very involved in the local government and were friends of the Hood and Crutcher Families. They also dabbled in real estate and the transportation industry, helping get the first railroad in the area in 1870, but the yellow fever epidemic almost decimated the family in 1890. Losing his wife and two children, Herman Culbertson, the last owner of the house. liquidated much of the family holdings in the area before moving back to Ohio, splitting the family fortune among his sons and selling the house to Samuel Riddle, a local businessman. One of his sons was the grandfather of local school teacher Jessica Witherspoon.

Empty for a few years, Riddle lost money trying to restore the mansion and recouped his lost by either selling or donating the property to the city in 1893. Converted into a high school, it is known Carter Hedison, Dr. Albert Waverly, Jerrold Waverly and Dr. Alan Fairwood attended here among others. Architect Arthur Birckhead was intensely interested in restoring it to its prime and made bids to buy the property as the city looked for nearby property to build a new high school. According to rumors, the chance to build the school on the adjacent property owned by the Hedison Family was held up by Carter Hedison trying to sell the land for more than it was worth. However, Carter's almost legendary corruption actually didn't start till years later. Lincoln Hedison, Carter's father, who owned the property next door, was caught in legal red tape as the land wasn't actually zoned as part of the city at the time it was planned to hold a school, making it difficult for the mansion to be considered city property. As the legal issues were being adjusted, however, a series of storms hit the area hard, and a rogue lightning bolt burned the decaying structure to the ground. Birckhead was able to save several of the structure's most iconic characteristics, but, in the end, the new Ashford Falls High School was built exactly on the same original grounds. The land the city was trying to acquire later became the home of Hedison Pharmaceuticals.

Even after the mansion was replaced, its reputation lasted for several more years. Vernon Dickey, whose father had worked for the Culbertsons as their groundskeeper, was the custodian for the new school and tried passing on ghost stories about the Culbertson family that failed to catch on. He was also responsible for telling Melissa Strickland and Russell Coleman, students from the 1980s, that the original Culbertson basement was intact under the school foundation. Claiming that the family had left behind tunnels underneath to other town structures after the Civil War, he seems to have been the source of several of the hazing rituals created by the students. Melissa in particular had a coffin placed in an unused and barely accessible basement room to terrify Rachel Hedison and Gabe Jameson used to send under-classmen to be terrified by his friends. Len Snedeker used to explore the basement to avoid gym class.

In 2001, Tricia Creekmore and Lisa Creekmore got trapped in the school basement looking for Megan Bates, Tricia's daughter. To get out, they stumbled through a passageway hidden behind an armoire and ended up in a sequence of elaborate corridors and rooms filled with cobwebs and furniture that came up in through the Ashford Arms Hotel several blocks away. Although, this seemingly confirmed Dickey's tales on the Culbertson's, no one has ever followed up or stumbled upon the tunnels since.