The Willows: A Haunted Journey
Saturday, November 30, 2024
Join us for a little bit of haunting as the winter settles in, and the season of ghost stories is in full tilt before the light begins to return in December. The barrier between natural and supernatural dissolves in this theatrical conjuring of Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows recited in candlelight by Victoria Finney, adapted and directed by Alex Harvey.
Three ways to play:
- A Haunted Evening: Come for the evening for a cocktail hour, a river-inspired chef’s dinner and performance of The Willows
- A Supernatural Saturday: Come for the day and evening: an afternoon of exploring writing and reading the eerie magic of supernatural , dinner and performance
- The Full Haunting: The afternoon’s explorations, dinner, performance, an overnight stay, breakfast and a chance to share your eerie journaling on Sunday morning.
Please join us! Space is limited, so advanced reservations are required.
Reserve Now!A Supernatural Saturday
- 1 to 4 PM: Join writer and director (and Spillian League of Reveler’s founding member!) Alex Harvey for a spirited exploration of the roots of supernatural story-telling. The bar will open at 1 PM if you need some liquid inspiration, and we’ll have some Spillian-made snacks on hand for noshing in the afternoon.
A Haunted Evening
An intimate family style chef’s feast around our extraordinary mahogany dining table, inspired by the flavors and rhythms of the willow-clad river. We will have both carnivore and vegetarian menu choices, just let us know which would prefer when you buy your tickets.
Chef Christian’s River Feast Menu
Salad (V)
Spinach, Roasted Red Beets, Navel Orange Segments, Candied Pecans & Citrus Vinaigrette
Carnivore Entrée
Pan Fried Local Beaverkill Trout With Cranberry Chutney
Roasted Broccolini with Housemade Preserved Meyer Lemon
Thyme Roasted Butternut Squash, Tartarian Cherry Quinoa and Brown Rice Medley
Vegivore Entrée (V)
Leek Risotto Stuffed Roasted Baby Eggplant, Romesco Sauce and Balsamic Reduction Drizzle
Roasted Broccolini with Housemade Preserved Meyer Lemon
Thyme Roasted Butternut Squash, Tartarian Cherry Quinoa and Brown Rice Medley
Dessert (V)
“Maple Leaf’ Ginger Spice Cakes, with House-Made Maple Ice Cream
and Blueberry Coolis “River Pebbles”
The Schedule
- 5 PM: Cocktail hour featuring the Catskills Trout Tale: a celebration of Catskill waters with local vodka and maple syrup, and mint; and the The Willow Mist: smoky house-made root beer & willow bitters and local bourbon.
- 6 PM: A river dinner feast from Spillian’s chef Christian Van Etten around our grand table, featuring both veggie and meat lovers choices, featuring local Beaverkill trout.
traditional and vegan haggis along with his creative takes on the evocative flavors of - 7:30 PM: A candlelight performance of The Willows.
- Afterwards: sharing ghost stories around the Spillian fireplace.
Pricing
Advance reservations required.
A Haunted Evening: $80 per person
Join us for the cocktail hour, supper, and performance. Cocktails begin at 5 PM, dinner at 6 PM, and performance at 7:30 PM. Includes dinner, light munchies, and the evening’s entertainment. Cash bar, tax and gratuities not included.
A Supernatural Saturday: $95 per person
Join us for day and evening! The afternoon begins at 1 PM. Includes afternoon reading and writing explorations, light munchies, dinner, and the evening’s entertainment. Cash bar, tax and gratuities not included.
The Full Haunting: $395 per couple
Make it a getaway! The Full Haunting includes all of Saturday’s offerings plus an overnight stay with a breakfast featuring our house-made bagels and turnovers on Sunday morning, and a chance to share your writings over the weekend after breakfast. Cash bar, tax, and gratuities not included. Click here to learn more about our splendid guest rooms! Check in at noon on Saturday, check out at 11 AM on Sunday.
About The Willows
Summon to mind those moments when nature turns on you. Can you recall the feeling? That threat in your surroundings that predates your most distant ancestors? Where every creek and crack in the natural world that cradles you gradually and begins to grow more ominous? That unutterable sense that mother nature doesn’t care about you – and maybe you are just her next meal!
Join celebrated British actress and voiceover artist Victoria Finney for her candle-lit atmospheric reading of Algernon Blackwood’s 1909 supernatural psychedelic horror story, The Willows. A sensory immersion, this storytelling performance saturates audience members in an eerie odyssey to otherworldly realms guided only by the simple elements of sound, light and spoken word. The piece is adapted and directed by Alex Harvey.
Born in 1869, Algernon Blackwood was the first pioneer of Supernatural Fiction and is renowned for his masterful atmospheric settings in his paranormal tales, which submerge readers in the experience of the story itself. A member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn—a secret society devoted to the study of the occult and esoteric knowledge—Blackwood had an outsized and often underappreciated influence on the horror genre. The Willows creates a narrative bridge that connects gothic horror of the 19th century to psychological horror of the modern age. Blackwood’s ability to evoke dread from natural settings and his use of the unseen to generate fear lays the groundwork for modern horror’s exploration of existential dread. Blackwood was a major influence on H.P. Lovecraft, who praised The Willows as “the finest supernatural tale in English literature.”
Set on a flooding sandbar in the Danube as it crosses from Austria into Hungary, the narrative of The Willows lures us into the disorienting inward journey of two campers on a summer canoe trip. Amidst the ceaseless and whispering dance of miles and miles of willow bushes along the river’s ancient banks, these two adventurers are ensnared by forces that they dont understand. They are pulled, as if by the hands of unseen specters, into a realm where reality warps and the fabric of the known world frays into the inexplicable. Further and further they fall into the grasp of wild nature’s whim and closer to the edge of sanity. In its crescendo, this odyssey leaves a haunting reminder of the fragile barrier that separates our mundane existence from the unfathomable mysteries that lie beyond.
About Victoria Finney
Victoria Finney performed all over the UK & Europe for many years with theatre companies including The English Shakespeare Company and Shared Experience, appearing in several TV drama series and as a storyteller and Radio Rep actor for the BBC. Eventually Vicky moved to New York with her family. Here she has been part of the Lake Lucille Chekhov project, including the film “I am a Seagull”, and has performed at The Lincoln Center and off Broadway. She co-founded Off The Page Arts-In-Education company, taking experiential residencies into public schools all over the city. She co-adapted/directed All American Boys (now published and available from Playscripts) and has also co-adapted White Rose by Kip Wilson supported by The New Victory Theatre, NYC and The Alliance Theatre, Atlanta. She is currently featured as the narrator and storyteller on two popular children’s podcasts and plays a bunch of instruments and sings with Brooklyn based band, The Retro Fits.
About Alex Harvey
Alex Harvey is a filmmaker, editor, producer, writer, theater director, musician, end-of-life doula and currently the Arts Programmer at Race Brook Lodge in Sheffield, MA. Alex created, produced, and directed the feature narrative film, Walden: Life in the Woods starring Academy Award nominee Demián Bichir. The film played at a variety of domestic and international festivals including Whistler Film Festival, Oaxaca Film Festival, Denver International Film Festival, River Run International Film Festival, NCTE Houston, FilmFort Idaho. Walden: Life in the Woods was picked up by Virgil Films and released on all Amazon Prime in October of 2019. Alex’s pandemic themed sci-fi feature, space//space premiered in 2023 at the famed Anthology Film Archives in New York City. Alex also wrote and directed The Unsilent Picture, a black and white silent film starring the world famous clown, Bill Irwin. The Unsilent Picture screened in an immersive spiegel tent accompanied by a live orchestral score and live foley sound performance as a centerpiece of the Horseman’s Hollow Festival in both 2018 and 2019. Alex was a co-director and producer for I Am A Seagull, the documentary-narrative hybrid film made by the art collective Lake Lucille Chekhov Project. I Am A Seagull is the first feature film to have played at the Public Theatre’s Under the Radar Festival in New York. It has subsequently toured to the Spoleto Festival in Italy and The Noorderzon Festival in the Netherlands and the Kontakt Festival in Poland. In 2014, Harvey was apprentice director under master director Allen Coulter on the fourth season of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. He has created various video art projects including one short film immersion called SONNET23 which was presented in 2015 at the Festival Cine Futuro in Salvador, Brazil. He has also created content for Action Group Network, producing multi-lingual ICE preparedness shorts for imperiled immigrant communities throughout the tri-state area. He is currently editing a Ukraine war doc with acclaimed director Noaz Desche. He lives in Great Barrington, Massachusetts with his wife and two kids.
