Haunted or not, Dead Man's Hollow a fascinating spot

Up a winding dirt trail, over a wooden bridge and past a set of ancient-looking steps dug into a hillside in Dead Man's Hollow sit the remains of a little stone wall on the banks of a clear, cold creek.

"Right there," said Steve Bosnyak, 36, of Lincoln Borough -- pointing across the small stream to the 2-foot-high wall. "That's all that's left. That's where my uncle lived. They had a house there until 1953."

Nearly 60 years later, the house is long gone.

But who knows• Perhaps the spirit of "Uncle John" Bendzuch, who died in 2009 at 89 years old, still haunts this appropriately named swath of land on the banks of the Youghiogheny River -- as legend has it.

"I can't imagine a better place for his ghost to haunt," said Bosnyak, a volunteer with the Allegheny Land Trust, which owns the 440-acre conservation area. "To me, it's so peaceful here. Being in here is like therapy."

It could be for others as well.

Bosnyak and officials with the Allegheny Land Trust hope to attract more visitors to the "haunted" hollow by celebrating its grisly past.

"It's spooky, it's interesting, it's a very unique place, and it has a very interesting history," said Emilie Cooper, stewardship coordinator with the Allegheny Land Trust. "Everybody loves to get outside, and if you can get outside and have a Halloween spook in a place called Dead Man's Hollow, that's the best."

The legends of Dead Man's Hollow are detailed at Bosnyak's website, dead-mans-hollow.com , which describes mysterious hangings, bodies washing ashore from the Yough near the hollow's entry and the story of a shopkeeper who was gunned down while charging a hill toward a gang of thieves suspected of robbing his store.

Bosnyak started the site last year, encouraged by a friend who loved to hear his stories -- retold versions of Uncle John's tales.

"My uncle worked 40 years for U.S. Steel, he served in World War II -- he had an interesting life -- but all he ever wanted to talk about was Dead Man's Hollow," Bosnyak said.

It's easy to see why.

Ruins of a 19th-century pipe factory greet visitors when they enter the hollow. Blackened bricks used in furnaces rise out of the ground, and cracked terra-cotta pipes are strewn throughout the valley, looking not like litter, but a naturally occurring oddity in a mysterious land.

Bosnyak, who visits the hollow on a daily basis to care for the trail, loves the serenity here. Even on a busy weekday, traffic noises from the Boston Bridge nearby can't penetrate the quiet woodlands.

"You can really get lost back here," he said, pausing along Dead Man's Trail.

His website draws 100 to 200 visitors a day, but that number should grow, Bosnyak said, considering new efforts to market Dead Man's Hollow.

On April 16, Elite Runners and Walkers in Robinson will hold the inaugural Dead Man's Hollow race, with 5-kilometer and half-marathon runs. Organizer Kevin Smith said the lore of Dead Man's Hollow should make it a popular event.

"I'm going to bet there will be a lot of (personal records)," Smith said. "Everybody runs faster when a ghost is chasing them."

Allegheny Land Trust recently purchased another piece of land with a haunted history: the Irwin Run Conservation Area in Pine Township, just outside of North Park.

Also known as "Blue Myst Road" for the eerie fog that often settles over the area, Irwin Run is fabled to be the home of witches, an angry group of reclusive midgets, a cemetery where the headstones lean toward each other so the dead can kiss, and floating orbs of blue light that visitors can never get close enough to identify.

Or, as Roy Kraynyk, executive director of the Allegheny Land Trust, puts it: "It's also a great place to walk your dog."

The land trust does not seek out haunted lands, Cooper said, but officials don't mind if spirits come as part of the package.

"The ghosts are probably conservationists themselves because they've chosen a beautiful place to live," Cooper said. "If they want to hide up in that Dead Man's Hollow, that's fine.

"We are providing something to the public. If we can offer recreation, a place of serenity and quiet, where you can listen to birds and other wildlife -- yeah, that's what the Allegheny Land Trust does."

Still, the question remains: Is Dead Man's Hollow really haunted?

Cooper sidesteps the question, saying she had not visited enough to make an educated guess.

"That's a question for locals," she said.

Bosnyak, too, was hesitant to answer.

"Look, I've heard all the stories," he said. "People will hike up in here and insist they heard some noise, or saw something move, or that something else happened."

One hiker recently speculated to Bosnyak that he might have seen Bigfoot in the hollow. Bosnyak rolled his eyes at the suggestion.

Another hiker sent him an e-mail claiming that he had been attacked by spirits but fended them off. Bosnyak was leery of that tale, too, when the e-mailer added that after the harrowing attack, he "continued exploring the ruins."

"I'm not going to say yes or no," Bosnyak said. "At times, things do happen in the hollow. But I don't go around thinking that I'm going to see the ghost of the hollow. If I do, maybe that'll change my opinion."

Until that day, Bosnyak will enjoy simply walking the hollow's two miles of trails, exploring the ruins, marveling at the huge Sycamore trunks and enjoying the solitude.

And if the bizarre lore helps to draw more visitors to an area where his uncle lived for decades, Bosnyak said, he doesn't care what people believe.

"I just want to make this a place everybody can enjoy," he said.