Welcome to Seneca Lake Mysteries, the podcast
where we explore the unusual, strange, and unexplained
on New York's largest Finger Lake. Thanks so
much for listening, and I'm not sure how many
of you have heard the announcement about an upcoming
study of Seneca Lake and the Seneca Lake drums,
but I did, and I'm pretty intrigued and excited.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the
story, the Seneca Lake drums, or Seneca Lake
guns, are... unexplained booming sounds coming
from within Seneca Lake that have been heard
for centuries. The lake drums have been written
about, discussed, and researched and pondered
by writers and journalists and scientists for
almost as long as people have been hearing them.
They're described as sounding like distant thunder,
gunshots, or drums. And some historians say that
stories Of the drums date back to the Owasco
people who lived near Seneca Lake but left the
area around the year 1220 due to drought before
the Seneca people lived around the lake. Now,
similar sounds have been heard around the world.
In Bangladesh, India, along the Ganges River,
they call the sounds the beresol guns. In Japan,
they're called minari, which means sounds of
the sea. People in Belgium and Netherlands call
them Mistpofers. In Italy, they're called Brontidi.
And in France, the sounds are referred to as
Balm de Mer. And in the United States, not only
on Seneca Lake, but in other places as well,
they're commonly referred to as Seneca Guns.
Different explanations have been offered for
the lake drums, but the most widely accepted
is that the sounds are caused by natural gas
bubbles leaking through. fissures in the bottom
of the lake and rising to the surface creating
a booming sound and people who believe that theory
claim that reports of lake drums stopped when
natural gas extraction and salt mining began
near seneca lake and but although the number
of reports did drop off in the early 20th century
people never stopped hearing the drums people
still still hear them today Then a few years
ago, researchers began an effort to complete
the most comprehensive and detailed mapping of
the bottom of Seneca Lake ever done. And the
results were published last March. I really didn't
expect to see what I saw in those images when
I looked at them. In the southern one -third
of the lake, there are dozens of circular and
oval holes in the bottom of the lake. a lot of
different depth maps of Seneca in the past, but
none of them look like this. So it's really very
interesting to me, and I'm curious to know more
about how these holes were formed, how common
they are. Are there other lakes with these kind
of holes? I got a lot of questions. So it was
announced last week that researchers from Cornell
University and SUNY College of Environmental
Science and Forestry received a grant of around
$12 ,000 to study. these newly discovered holes
in the bottom of the lake and to determine if
methane, gas, or other chemicals are being released
from these holes, which would explain the Seneca
drums phenomenon. So I can't wait to see what
they find and see if they can finally solve the
unsolvable mystery. So I'm going to post a link
to the... bathymetric mapping results from the
DEC, as well as an edited version of the map
of the lake bottom. I'm going to put those in
the description. So keep in mind the study results
from the DEC are really huge files that can be
difficult to manage and view on the average PC.
So you probably want to look at the image I edited
and reduced to a more manageable size. So with
that said, this is the first installment. about
the iconic Seneca Army Depot, the land where
it's located, the people who once lived there,
and the depot's founding, and its extraordinary
globally influential history, its ties to the
Manhattan Project, and the massive nuclear arsenal
that was once stored in the secretive Q area.
Then we'll leave the depot, cross Route 96A,
and get into some tales of the Sampson Naval
Training Center. including the truly odd story
of an appearance by Adolf Hitler's nephew. And
finally, inspired by the newly announced study
of the lake drums, we'll go through some of the
old stories of underwater tunnels at the bottom
of Seneca Lake, which were rumored to be connected
to the Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, and a small
lake down in Elmira. So yeah, if you enjoy the
show, please subscribe wherever you get your
podcasts and get over to SenecaLakeMysteries
.com and sign up for the mailing list. I've got
some really cool new things to announce soon
about the whole Seneca Lake Mysteries project
and stuff I'll be doing in addition to the podcast.
And I'm really excited about it. So subscribe
to the mailing list and you'll be the first to
know everything coming up in the next few weeks.
So thanks again for listening and let's get into
it. The Seneca Army Depot, which operated from
1941 until its official closure in 1995, was
not only an important and central part of the
lives of the people who lived in the communities
around the installation, but it also played an
outsized role in all American military actions
for those five -plus decades, including World
War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War. the
invasions of Panama and Grenada, and the First
Gulf War. The story of the Seneca Lake Depot
is unusual, often strange, and occasionally unexplained.
So let's dive into the history of the facility
beginning more than a century and a half before
it was built. Prior to the American Revolutionary
War, Kandaya was reportedly one of the oldest
villages. in the Iroquois Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
Located not far from the eastern shore, about
12 miles south of the northern tip of Seneca
Lake, there were between 20 and 30 longhouses
in Kendiah, each longhouse housing roughly eight
Seneca Nation families. And nearby, there was
an orchard of about 80 fruit trees, primarily
apple trees, but also... with a handful of peach
trees as well, along with a few small fields
of corn. The Sullivan Campaign of 1779 was a
military offensive initiated by General George
Washington to stop the Haudenosaunee nations
from siding with the British. However, Sullivan
and his men weren't just interested in fighting
the native people. They also destroyed homes,
crops, food supplies. devastating the populations
of the Haudenosaunee in a horrific and brutal
way. Sullivan's forces arrived at Kandiah on
September 3rd, 1779, but most of the residents
had already fled. So the soldiers destroyed the
longhouses, they burned the cornfields, and either
cut down or girdled the fruit trees. And girdling
a tree means you tear off all the bark on the
lower part of the trunk, which eventually kills
the entire tree. And the Seneca people would
never return to Kandaya. Then in 1823, the land
was purchased by Gerard Van Vliet and remained
in the Van Vliet family for several generations.
While the Van Vliet family uncovered numerous
Indian artifacts while plowing the land, Gerard
made a promise to the Seneca people at the time
that their burial grounds would never be disturbed,
and the family kept that promise. And today,
the old Van Vliet Family Cemetery remains inside
the boundary of Sampson State Park, along with
the burial grounds of the Seneca people. Then
in 1941, the U .S. War Department and President
Franklin Roosevelt believed that the U .S. was
about to get drawn into World War II and made
a decision to build four army depots roughly
in the four corners of the United States in New
York State, Alabama, California, and Oregon.
Not only were these weapons at these armories
to be used in overseas battlefields, they were
also stored in the event of an enemy attack on
the United States. So the army found the perfect
location in New York on roughly 11 ,000 acres
of farmland between Seneca and Cayuga Lakes.
Now there were two reasons why the army found
this location to be perfect. At least two reasons
that they gave. One, there were... railroad lines
going up and down both sides of the site, which
was ideal not only for transporting supplies
to build the depot, but also shipping and receiving
ammunition and other materials. The second reason
they gave was the shale bedrock, which is just
a few inches underneath the topsoil in some places.
And they found that that was ideal because in
the event of an explosion, the layers of shale
would break and absorb the impact rather than
possibly creating a chain reaction to the other
nearby storage igloos that held ammunition as
well. So once the decision was made to build
the new depot on this land, an immediate effort
to remove the roughly 130 families from their
homes on this land began. Residents received
letters in the mail telling them that the government
would be buying their land and they would need
to move out immediately, anywhere from three
days to three weeks to move their entire lives
off of the land. Many of them were young families
who suddenly had to gather whatever they could,
load it onto wagons or other vehicles and find
somewhere else to live. Their crops, their gardens,
their homes. were all left behind. A few lucky
people were able to have their houses physically
moved, but most of the people had to leave behind
their homes and everything. The government did
offer payouts for the land, but those payouts
were much lower than what the actual value of
the homes in the land were. But if the residents
turned down the offer for the payout, The government
would just condemn the homes and push the families
out anyway. Ultimately, about 160 parcels of
land owned by roughly 130 different families
were deeded to the U .S. government. And during
that time period, the U .S. government and the
media offered a narrative of proud patriotic
Americans who happily gave up their homes for
the war effort. While this may have been the
case with a small number of the displaced residents,
there were also many stories of people whose
lives were never the same, who never trusted
the government again, who went through incredible
stress and pain and difficulty and trauma during
that time. But thankfully, in more recent years,
a more authentic and balanced story of the dispossessed
families of the Seneca Army Depot is being told.
And also, it is hard to overlook the parallels
between these families and the residents of Kandaya
who were forced from their homes 162 years prior.
And coincidentally, Kandaya was located not far
from the southern end of the Army Depot. Now,
the U .S. Army needed this area that would contain
the depot. to be completely flattened for security
reasons. And once all the people had moved out,
the effort to completely clear and flatten the
entire depot property began. So bulldozers ran
railroad ties on steel cables between them and
ripped through homes, churches, and anything
else that was in their way. They burned down
barns. As soon as the residents had left, they
burned the crops. Everything was leveled until
nothing was left standing in a 17 square mile
area where families had lived just weeks before.
A 24 mile fence was built around the entire property
and the $8 million project to build the Seneca
Army Depot began. And just to note, $8 million
in 1941. is the equivalent of $174 million in
2025. So this was a massive effort. And right
away, a few thousand workers were hired at first
to build the depot, with the majority of them
from larger cities like Syracuse, Rochester,
and Buffalo, but also from nearby smaller cities
like Geneva and Seneca Falls. However, at some
point they realized they needed more workers.
to complete the project on time. So they hired
more until eventually there was a total of around
8 ,600 new workers on site. Now, this massive
influx of people into this rural area was incredibly
disruptive. All the area hotels were booked.
Workers had to sleep in vehicles. Tent cities
popped up around the area and even residents
were renting out rooms in their homes for the
workers. Pretty soon, very serious issues with
sanitation and the lack of housing led the feds
to come in and build a trailer park for workers
at the county fairgrounds in Waterloo. So the
Seneca Army Depot required 500 solid concrete
structures. called igloos to be built. Now, each
one of these ammunition igloos were 15 feet tall,
20 feet wide, and 60 to 80 feet deep inside.
The concrete floor was roughly 18 inches thick,
but the concrete at the top of the structure
was thinner so that the force of any potential
explosion would go up instead of out to the side
where it could possibly cause explosions. other
igloos. And the 500 igloos were completed in
just three months, with the final igloo being
done on November 15, 1941. Three weeks later,
Pearl Harbor was attacked and the U .S. entered
World War II. For the next three years and nine
months, the Seneca Army Depot stored, manufactured,
and shipped a large percentage of the weapons,
along with other supplies, vehicles, etc. that
were used in the war effort. The depot was basically
also a self -sufficient small city with its own
police and fire departments, post office, and
rail stations. It also became a live ammunition
training area after the Sampson Naval Training
Center opened less than a year later. Sampson
was built in 270 days on a 66 -acre parcel between
the east shore of the lake and the depot. By
the end of World War II, over 411 ,000 recruits
had been trained at Sampson, with between 4 ,000
and 5 ,000 naval personnel also working on the
base at that time. And Sampson was closed due
to the end of the war. After a few years of being
used as a college for 15 ,000 GI Bill students,
It was then used by the U .S. Department of Agriculture
to store wheat and beans. Then in November 1950,
with the start of the Korean War, the facility
was taken over by the Air Force and became the
Sampson Air Force Base. And by 1956, over 300
,000 Air Force recruits had been trained there.
Meanwhile, in February of 1955, 1 ,120 acres
at the Seneca Army Depot was designated for a
new facility that would be built to store quote
-unquote special weapons. This area was called
the Q Area, and it had the highest level of security
designation available. And by July of 1956, several
new buildings plus 64 brand -new specialized
storage igloos were built. Three barbed wire
and chain link fences surrounded the queue area.
The middle fence was electrified with 4 ,800
volts, which is more than double the electricity
of an electric chair. So anyone who touched that
fence, it would result in immediate death. Of
course, numerous military police officers would
shoot to kill orders. Guarded the entire perimeter
of the queue area 24 -7, along with state -of
-the -art camera surveillance, even back in the
50s and 60s, when camera surveillance was extraordinarily
rare. Now, to backtrack just a little bit, back
in the 1940s, around 2 ,000 barrels that were
marked Manhattan were delivered to and stored
in igloos EO -181 through EO -811. at the southern
end of the depot. It was later learned that those
barrels contained uranium pitchblende, which
was used in the Manhattan Project that created
the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. When the Q area opened, it became
the largest single storage area for nuclear weapons,
parts, and materials in the entire country. And
if the story of the Seneca Army Depot isn't strange
enough for you, in 1949, a military officer at
the depot spotted two white -tailed deer on the
grounds of the facility. But these weren't ordinary
deer. They had all -white fur, and thus began
the era of the Seneca white deer, a story we
will be exploring a lot more in a future episode
or episodes. But before we move on, there's one
more story from the Samson Naval Training Base
that sounds so offbeat you might think it's a
weird, dark joke. But it isn't, and here it is.
In 1944, a new recruit arrived at Samson, and
that recruit was the nephew of Adolf Hitler.
William Patrick Hitler, whose father was the
half -brother of Adolf, was born in 1911 and
raised in Liverpool, England. After William had
reconnected with his father around age 18, his
father had abandoned the family when he was very
young. So he reconnected with his father around
age 18 and he traveled to Germany and met, for
the first time, his uncle Adolf, who gave him
an autographed photo. And then William returned
to England in 1931. and ended up publishing several
unflattering articles about his uncle Adolf.
And this enraged his uncle, who demanded that
the articles be retracted, and even threatened
suicide if William ever published another article
with personal information about him again. Now,
eventually, William's relationship with Adolf
Hitler became public. And he was fired from his
job and shamed in his home country of England.
He later tried to return to Germany, but Adolf
Hitler publicly denied that they were related.
So William began gathering evidence to prove
that he was Adolf's nephew with the plan to blackmail
Adolf Hitler into allowing William back into
the country. And in 1933, William again went
to Germany. And this time he confronted his uncle
with the proof that he had found. And his uncle
Adolf ended up giving him some money and helping
him find work. But after a few years, William
was fired again. And after he had a meeting with
his uncle Adolf, and in this meeting, his crazed
uncle was cracking a bullwhip and was completely
enraged. And William said, OK, enough is enough.
He returned to England. And now he was determined
to fight in World War II in the war effort against
his uncle. But the British Armed Forces rejected
him due to his last name. So in 1939, William
moved to the United States and began writing
to President Roosevelt begging to be allowed
in the U .S. Armed Forces. And it took a few
years, but eventually... President Roosevelt
relented and William Patrick Hitler was sworn
into the U .S. Navy on March 6, 1944 in New York
City before he departed for basic training at
Samson Naval Training Center. Now, William Hitler
served three years in the U .S. Navy as a pharmacist's
mate before he was discharged in 1947 and awarded
a Purple Heart. for an injury he apparently suffered
during his service. After leaving the military,
William unsurprisingly changed his last name
to Stuart Houston. He married and ran a blood
analysis laboratory on Long Island in Patchogue,
New York. William had four children, and strangely,
he gave each of them the middle name of Adolph.
So last week it was announced that researchers
from Cornell University and the SUNY College
of Environmental Science and Forestry received
a grant to study the recently discovered holes
in the bottom of Seneca Lake and to determine
if methane or other chemicals released from those
holes could explain the Seneca drums phenomenon.
So I thought it was an opportune time to... Look
at those longtime rumors of underwater tunnels
in the lake, where those tunnels may lead, and
if those tunnels were tied to the Seneca drums.
So 1908 was a big year for claims of tunnels
connecting not only to the Atlantic Ocean, but
also the Pacific. So in 1908, local residents
had already believed for years that Seneca Lake's
waters had moved in conjunction with the tides
of the ocean, and that there were parts of Seneca
where no bottom had been found. So in April of
1908, a lone fisherman, unnamed in a news report,
was rowing across the lake just north of Beloy
around 9 p .m., a time when the lake drum sounds
were commonly reported, especially in that area
of the lake. And the man not only said he heard
the lake guns, But then there was a violent eruption
on lake surface. The man leaned over and he decided
he would taste the water. So he tasted a sample
of the water and said that it had a strong, distinct
taste of salt. And then he spotted a piece of
wood bobbing in the waves and reached down, retrieved
the piece of wood and realized it was the bow
gunwale, which is the front upper edge of a large
whaling boat. And inscribed on that piece of
wood were the words, John P. Sullivan, Gloucester,
Mass. And after investigating later on, it was
revealed that there was a whaling boat from Gloucester
with the same name that had wrecked off of Cape
Hatteras on the Atlantic Ocean just over a year
prior in the winter of 1906 -1907. And then...
A few months later, in June of 1908, E .C. Havens,
who was a local pharmacist and Watkins Village
trustee, began telling people the story, publicly
sharing the story about a highly unusual marine
species that had been caught near Hector Falls.
The witness was identified as a Mr. Hausner,
and he provided... E .C. Havens with a detailed
description of this strange fish that had been
caught. He said it had the general shape of a
trout or perch but with a hooked lower jaw that
fit into a groove or a cavity in the upper jaw.
The fish's teeth were pointed backward and its
head and back were a gold brown bronze color
that gradually shaded into a lighter color. It
had a white belly and a white tail and an iridescent
stripe that ran along the body and small, oddly
colored spots on the entire back. So he had a
very detailed description. It was around 18 inches
long and weighed about two and a half pounds.
And local scholars concluded that the fish was
a type of shark normally found in the Pacific
Ocean near California and the Mediterranean Sea,
known as... a starry smoothhound, a skate -toothed
shark, or a ray -toothed dog. And the species
name was Mutellus henulus. And now the witnesses
concluded that because this species of shark
had never been previously found in any freshwater
and couldn't have been born in the lake, the
only explanation was that the shark had arrived.
to Seneca Lake via an underground passage with
an opening that they believed existed just north
of Valois where the lake guns were most commonly
reported. Now, there's no further information
about what happened to the Raytooth Dog or Skate
Tooth Shark or Starry Smooth Hound or whatever
you want to call it. But still, now, there were
two stories. One telling of a tunnel to the Atlantic
Ocean. telling of a tunnel to the Pacific Ocean.
And now we have a third story from a few years
later in 1953. And the story actually begins
in Elmira, New York, which is about 20 miles
south of Seneca Lake. So in 1953, an Elmira city
councilor named Walter Wichtowski was looking
into different ways to address the city's need
for... increased amounts of drinking water. So
he wrote a letter to the city water board with
a proposal suggesting that they build a 20 -mile
pipeline to carry water from Seneca Lake to Elmira.
He received a response from the city water board
stating that not only would such a project cost
a staggering $7 million, which is about $83 million
in 2025, that it would also create unspecified,
quote, political and international complications,
end quote. So this was clearly something the
city water board wasn't going to approve, but
Walter Wichtowski wasn't going to give up so
easily. So the next week, Walter recommended
that the city request a survey of Eldridge Lake
to discover. whether there was any truth to the
legend of an underground connection to Seneca
Lake. Wichtowski cited numerous stories from
local residents pointing out that if the connection
was already there, drinking water could be pulled
from Seneca Lake without the need to construct
a pipeline. And what was Eldridge Lake? Eldridge
Lake is a small 11 -acre glacial lake. in the
city of Elmira. In 1857, a Dr. Edwin Eldridge
purchased the lake and the surrounding 200 acres
around it. And after he performed extensive landscaping,
he installed Victorian statues, he made the lake
larger, he built a turtle and frog pond, he constructed
a casino with a restaurant, an ice cream parlor.
And finally, in 1870, he opened Eldridge Park
to the public. Sadly, Dr. Eldridge died about
six years later in 1876, and his family members
took care of the park before they sold it to
the city of Elmira in 1899. And later attractions
included boat rides, carousels, and even bear
pits, because bear fights were a popular... spectator
activity of the time and it's exactly what it
sounds like pits with bears and them fighting
according to locals as mentioned eldridge lake
was also connected to seneca lake via underground
tunnels so there were stories of people and animals
who disappeared in eldridge lake only to have
their corpses surface in seneca lake sometimes
those corpses were covered with strange unexplained
bite marks. Another story from around 1903 said
that two boats had an accident on Seneca Lake
with debris from both of those boats later showing
up in Eldridge Lake. And then there was a sawmill
that would treat its logs by floating them in
Eldridge Lake. But then they started having numerous
logs simply disappearing from Eldridge and...
appearing in Seneca Lake. So the Elmira City
Council agreed to the request to have Cornell
University send experts to determine if the underground
tunnel between Eldridge Lake and Seneca Lake
actually existed. So they did the survey and
they determined that, unsurprisingly, the tunnel
did not exist. And not only that, but Eldridge
Lake was not bottomless. Its deepest point. was
39 feet. Well, that's it for this time around.
I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks so much for listening,
and if you have any thoughts on any of the topics
in this episode, please let me know. And remember
to like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts,
and get over to SenecaLakeMysteries .com and
subscribe to the email list so you don't miss
anything. A new podcast comes out every month
on the 7s. I'll talk to you then.