Ep. 47 - The Murder of Grace Brown

Big Moose Lake is at the head of the Moose River in upstate New York. The lake is remote and beautiful and would probably remain rather obscure if not for the murder of Grace Brown that happened there in 1906. The perpetrator was her lover, Chester Gillette, and now over 110 years later, her spirit still seems to be at unrest probably due to the circumstances of her demise. People who have stayed at the various hotels, Big Moose Inn, Glenmore Inn and Covewood Lodge, claim to see the ghostly figure of a forlorn woman that is believed to be the spirit of Grace Brown. Here is her tragic story.

The Big Moose Lake area was settled during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Settlers cam in on the railroad with dreams of conquering the Adirondack wilderness. Camps were established by trappers and hunters and these eventually became hotels. The beauty of the area enticed the rich and famous to build summer homes here, which would eventually become lodges. These homes were built in an unusual style that featured vertically positioned half-log construction, known as the palisade architectural style. This is the setting for the 1925 novel by Theodore Dreiser, "An American Tragedy" that was made into the movie "A Place in the Sun" starring Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters and Montgomery Clift. The story was inspired by the true life event that left Grace Brown dead.

Grace Brown was born on March 20th in 1886 in Otselic, New York. She was the daughter of a successful Chenango County farmer, but at 16 she struck out on her own to find work and she found it at the Gillette Skirt Company. The owner's nephew, Chester Gillette, spotted Grace as she was working. She was a very pretty girl, but quite naive. He was a supervisor at the factory and although it was against the policies for fraternization, Chester and Grace were soon dating and eventually sleeping with each other. For Chester, it was just fun, but Grace had fallen in love. The two were together for over a year when Grace discovered that she was pregnant in 1906. As is the case for so many girls finding themselves pregnant out of wedlock, Grace thought that Chester would marry her. She started writing him letters pushing him to do the right thing. Chester, of course, came from a rich family and his goal was to marry a socialite. Grace was just a play thing to him. He had no intention of marrying Grace.

Eventually, Grace figured out that Chester was not going to marry her and so she changed tactics and started threatening him with revealing to his family that he had gotten her knocked up. Chester was desperate and kept pushing Grace off, feigning that he might marry her. He invited Grace to join him on a trip to the Adirondack Mountains and the way he worded it made Grace believe that they were going to get married there and then stay on for a honeymoon. On July 11, 1906, the couple checked into Glenmore Hotel, using the names Carl Graham of Albany and Grace Brown of Otselic. Chester suggested that they take a romantic row trip out on the lake, so he rented a rowboat from a man named Robert Morrison. Morrison expected the boat to be returned to him by dinnertime, but the couple did not return. He was worried and organized a search party. The searchers found the rowboat capsized and a short distance away, they found Grace floating on the water. The only thing found of Chester was his hat. After Grace's body was examined, it was determined that she was the victim of foul play when the coroner discovered head injuries on Grace.

The police went looking for Chester and found him holed up at a hotel two days later. He tried to pretend that he did not know Grace. He said that he was not Carl Graham and had never signed himself under such a name. Maybe he shouldn't have used the same first letters as his real name. When that didn't work, he said that when he told Grace he would not marry her, she threw herself into the water in despair and drowned. With the changing stories, the police arrested him and charged him with the murder. (Excerpts shared from Washington State Universities archives on Grace's letters.)

He was tried and convicted of first degree murder using an oar to beat Grace to death. His sentence was death and he did meet that end on March 30, 1908 in the electric chair at Auburn Prison.

Apparently, this was not enough justice for Grace because her spirit has been haunting the Big Moose Lake area ever since. There have been sightings of her at multiple places. At Glenmore Hotel, her ghost has been seen outside and also heard running throughout the building. Carl Muller became the owner of the Glenmore Hotel in 1971. He had heard about the murder, but not about hauntings. Soon, he and his wife started to hear footsteps all over the hotel and in a lakeside cabin. They would never find anybody around, so they were perplexed as to where the footsteps were coming from. They heard heavy footsteps outside as well, but there were no footprints in the snow. The Mullers sold the Glenmore Hotel to a couple named Ray and Barb in 1986. Ray and Barb didn't know about the ghost either, but they soon met here. They were sitting in the bar eating when they saw a woman outside in Victorian clothes. Two other men that were inside, ran outside to try and trap her. As if they could trap a ghost. When they got outside, she was gone without any footprints in the snow. Barb has had clothing removed from her bed, after she had put it there while she showered and sometimes when she came back it would be replaced by other clothes that she owned. Their son’s girlfriend stayed overnight one time and was awakened when she felt someone was sitting on the edge of her bed. She couldn't see anyone sitting there, but she could see that the bed was pushed down under some kind of weight.

At Covewood Lodge, Grace Brown’s ghost has been seen coming up out of the lake. People claim that it is a white, misty apparition. The face of the ghost has been identified as Grace’s through old newspaper photographs. Lynda Lee Machen and Bridget McMahon Carles were sitting by the lake when they saw the spirit and felt an immense sadness. Lynda described it as, “I was walking down toward the lake with my flashlight and the light was getting dimmer and dimmer. By the time I got to the edge of the lake and the rocks, my flashlight wasn’t working. So I had to turn around and go back… I was awestruck, and not only was I certain that I was looking at a ghost, but I had a very strong feeling of sadness. She was very sad.” In the summer of 1988, employee Rhonda Bousselot was approaching the main building and describes what happened as, “I walked into the staff lodge, straight up the stairs with my hand out, reaching for the string, which is how to turn on the light. As I approached the top of the stairs and just before I was ready to turn on and really just didn't move. I didn't have an overwhelming feeling of fright, but something definitely or someone was there, and it just kind of took my breath away.” Other employees were outside and experienced something unexplained as well. There were three of them and they all claimed to see the full-bodied apparition of Grace. They also each had a very weird feeling.

Grace was an innocent and naive girl who fell in love with the wrong guy. No one knows for sure if she really was pregnant or was using the story to get Chester to stop chasing other girls around and marry her, but she certainly did not deserve to die in such a brutal way. Is it because of this that Grace's spirit is still wandering around? Is she haunting the Big Moose Lake area? That is for you to decide!