Well of Horrors: The Headless Ghost of Henri Le Clerc and the Haunted History of Old Fort Niagara

  Old Fort Niagara sits at the mouth of the Niagara River on the shores of Lake Ontario.  It is located on the U.S.-Canadian border within the confines of Youngstown, New York.

It is built on land that for centuries had been used by the Seneca Tribe as the site of a seasonal hunting and fishing camp.  The French were the first westerners to make contact with the native Seneca people in the area during the middle of the 17th century and they erected the first wooden fortification where Old Fort Niagara now stands back in 1679.  It is said that this wooden fortification, which was named Fort Conti, either through accident or arson burnt to the ground within a year of its construction killing all members of the garrison stationed inside.

Thus began the long and cursed history of Old Fort Niagara.

Within the decade, in 1687, the French erected the more formidable and permanent Fort Denonville on the site and began a deliberate campaign of subjugation against the Seneca people.

In 1726, after brutally conducting a nearly forty years long war against the Seneca Tribe, the French Army constructed an enormous and imposing stone and masonry fortification protected by batteries of artillery and even a moat called the “French Castle” which still stands guard over the shores of Lake Ontario to this very day.

Fort Niagara played an important strategic role during the French and Indian War, sitting as it did astride vital shipping and trade routes that led into the North American interior, and it finally fell to British forces after a long and bloody siege lasting 19 days in 1759.

During the siege, as hand to hand combat swirled throughout the grounds of the fort, a wayward spark ignited the fort’s powder magazine causing a massive explosion that killed upwards of 200 men in an instant.

In 1796 after the American War of Independence Fort Niagara was turned over by the British to American forces, and Old Fort Niagara, along with the “French Castle” that had been built so long ago, remained in active military service with the United States Army until 1934.

Fort Niagara during the French and Indian War

Old Fort Niagara has been the site of military engagements during the French and Indian War, the American Revolution and the War of 1812.  It served as a training ground for new recruits during both the American Civil War in the 1860’s and the Spanish-American War in 1898.

In the 1930’s the Fort with the “French Castle” as its centerpiece became a living history museum, but in 1944 during World War Two Old Fort Niagara was pressed into service once again as an internment camp for German POWs.

Despite Fort Niagara’s centuries of illustrious service to the United States, today the fort is best remembered as the site of a headless spectre which haunts the “French Castle” each night searching the grounds vainly for his severed head.

German POWs heading to Fort Niagara 1944

During the mid 18th century the French Castle played host to many wine fueled drunken parties conducted by French officers.  The French to fill their parties with female accompaniment often brought the most desirable Native American Seneca maidens with them to their parties.

At one such party a young French Officer named Henri Le Clerc escorted a Seneca maiden named Onita, with whom he was madly in love, to the French Castle.

Le Clerc arrived at the party with Onita late at night when festivities were already in full swing and the stone walls of the French Castle reverberated loudly with drunken laughter.

As the story goes, in the days leading up to the party, there had been an ongoing feud for the affections of the strikingly beautiful Onita between Le Clerc and another high ranking superior Officer named Jean Claude de Rochefort.

When Le Clerc arrived at the party with Onita, the highly intoxicated de Rochefort purposefully sat down next to Onita and Le Clerc and made it a point to ask the maiden for every dance, infuriating the sensitive and love struck Le Clerc.

As the night wore on, de Rochefort’s advances towards Onita caused Le Clerc to become enraged at his superior’s behavior.

The two soldiers became embroiled in a fierce argument in front of everyone right in the middle of the loud party.  

“I demand you stop at once!” Le Clerc shouted.  “You have disrespected my honor as a man and as a soldier!”

“You are hardly a soldier and even less of a man!” de Rochefort screamed back at Le Clerc, his face flushed red with wine and anger.

The merry dancers fell silent as the shouts of the two men echoed off the cavernous stone walls inside the French Castle.

The French Castle

The two men challenged one another to a duel of honor with drawn swords right that very instant and within moments the pair was fighting one another with sabers in the hallways and on the twisting stairwells of the French Castle.

As he backed up from his opponent’s advance on one of the curving stone stairwells, Le Clerc slipped and fell and was knocked unconscious after hitting the back of his head against the stone floor. 

 Now normally, in a duel among gentlemen at the time it would have been customary for de Rochefort to allow his opponent to get back on his feet and regain his balance before continuing the duel, or even to end the duel altogether once Le Clerc became unable to defend himself.  But fueled either by alcohol or an overwhelming hatred for his adversary, when Le Clerc fell, de Rochefort stabbed him through the heart as he lay helpless and unconscious on the stone floor.

However, once de Rochefort realized the gravity of what he had done by killing one of his fellow French Officers in a duel over an Indian maiden while he was helpless on the ground, he panicked and began to hack at the body and cut Le Clerc’s lifeless corpse into pieces.

Jean Claude de Rochefort’s plan, it seemed, was to throw the pieces of Le Clerc’s body into Lake Ontario and cover up what he had done.  Jean Claude figured that if he was able to dispose of Le Clerc’s body he would be able to report back to everyone at the party that the two men had been descended upon by hostile members of the Seneca tribe after they had gone outside to continue their argument, as revenge for consorting with native maidens, and that Le Clerc had been carried away into captivity.

First, Jean Claude picked up the severed head of Henri Le Clerc and threw it into Lake Ontario.  He then returned to the French Castle to finish his grisly work, but he panicked once again when he heard footsteps coming down the stairwell and realized that the party was breaking up.  Hastily, Jean Claude de Rochefort took the remaining pieces of Henri Le Clerc’s dismembered corpse and threw them down the stone well located underground in the cellar of the French Castle.

It seems as if that everyone was so drunk once the party ended, and the hour was so late, that no one bothered to question de Rochefort about what had transpired between the two men, and in fact, on the night of the party no one seemed to even notice or care that Henri Le Clerc was missing.

It was only the next morning that a search party was eventually launched to find the whereabouts of Henri Le Clerc.

Only Onita insisted that Le Clerc had been murdered by de Rochefort but no one was going to believe the word of a Seneca maiden.

Months passed and Onita fell into a deep depression.  She stopped attending all parties and didn’t go anywhere near the site of Old Fort Niagara.

Eventually, another French Officer named Jacques, who was tasked with finding the whereabouts of Henri Le Clerc did listen to Onita’s story about what she believed happened on the night of the duel between Le Clerc and de Rochefort.  By this time, though most people who had been at the party that night realized de Rochefort most probably had killed Le Clerc, de Rochefort had already been reassigned to another post, and besides, most had been too drunk to remember anything at all in detail from the night in question.

To investigate further (or perhaps to try and seduce the young maiden himself) one night to keep away from prying eyes, Jacques had Onita escort him back to the French Castle around midnight so she could show him the spot where she believed Le Clerc had been murdered.

As the clock struck midnight Jacques and Onita reported that they saw a hand reach over the edge of the stone well and then the headless body of a man dressed in the uniform of a French soldier pull himself up completely out of the well and stand right before the both of them.

The Well of Horrors within the French Castle

Onita and Jacques ran from the French Castle and the headless spectre in terror and told the garrison what they had seen in the morning.

Soon, many soldiers were reporting that at the stroke of midnight exactly, the headless spirit of Henri Le Clerc would rise from the stone well of the French Castle, and stalk the grounds of Fort Niagara in search of his severed head.

Of course, it would be very easy to dismiss this whole tale out of hand as simply a piece of quaint, macabre folklore based on nothing more than mere hearsay.  After all, there really is no concrete proof that two French army officers by the names of de Rochefort and Le Clerc even existed in the years between 1726 and roughly 1750, let alone proof that these two men were ever stationed at Fort Niagara together!  Perhaps, the whole story is nothing more than a good old 18th century ghost story that has simply withstood the test of time.

But it is interesting to note that when the British took over Fort Niagara during the French and Indian War in 1759, after occupying the grounds for several years, British commanders had the well filled with stones and covered over after many of their own soldiers had reported seeing the ghost of a headless French solder rising up out of the well, dripping wet, in the middle of the night.

Years later in the late twentieth century, after Old Fort Niagara had become a living history museum, members of the United States Park Service restored the old well, now known by many as the “Well of Horrors” back to its original condition.

As recently as 2011, after a rash of sightings of the headless ghost of Old Fort Niagara were reported by groups of school children who had been touring the grounds of the French Castle on a class trip, the widely popular show Ghost Hunters launched an investigation where countless numbers of eyewitnesses were interviewed and many strange and anomalous occurrences at Old Fort Niagara were reported for the first time on national television.

Although no images of the headless ghost of Henri Le Clerc rising from the Well of Horrors have ever been recorded, for almost three centuries, American, British and French soldiers, German prisoners of war, school children, historians, park employees and local tourists alike have all reported seeing the headless, dripping wet body of Henri Le Clerc dressed in full uniform  rise up from the stone well and vainly search the grounds of Old Fort Niagara looking for his severed head.

It appears as if it might be three more centuries, or even longer, before the Well of Horrors finally gives up its secrets...if it ever does at all...