Berks the Bizarre: Big hauntings alleged in little valley
The high-end homes of Castlewood are perched on Dengler Hill, high over Rose Valley Creek, not far from where five people perished in a tragic Mount Penn Gravity Railroad accident in the summer of 1890. The car carrying the ill-fated passengers finally tumbled from the tracks on the ominously named Cemetery Curve, one of the tight curves that led past Aulenbach's Cemetery and back to the Gravity's terminal.
About 1,000 Hessian prisoners endured the winter nearby in crude huts after they were taken prisoner at the Battle of Trenton in 1775 and were remanded to a POW camp in the lonely valley. According to a report in the journal The Pennsylvania-German, there were as many prisoners (about 1,300) as there were residents over the hill in the town of Reading. Several of those German mercenaries interned there, died there.
