Reports of Wearry ghosts appear

By CHARLIE BUTERBAUGH

NARROWSBURG, NY — In the annals of Tusten history rests the tale of the Wearry brothers, two men whose bodies were discovered on January 21, 1967 when a curious postman, Herbert Ropke, searched their property on Beaver Brook Road.

The brothers had not retrieved mail from their box for three days, and when Ropke peered through the front window, he saw Clarence Wearry lying on the floor.

Prompted by Ropke’s call, state police rushed to the Wearry residence and found Floyd Wearry, 76, lying inside a two-story chicken house on the brothers’ property. Then, they found Clarence, 62, lying dead inside the brothers’ home.

Led by state police senior investigator Salvatore Indelicato, police found several hundred dozen spoiled eggs in pails and wire baskets as well as empty cans of food piled in a corner. Indelicato said the brothers had been dead at least three days.

Times-Herald Record reporter Charlie Crist described the men as recluses living in poverty. When he talked to then Tusten Supervisor Carl W. Behling, however, he found that the men’s estimated fortune reached a half million dollars and that they maintained their wealth through substantial money lending.

Crist noticed chickens roosting in trees and some that had been eating ungathered eggs and the dead bodies of the flock.

Reportedly, the cattle were removed from a barn when investigators noticed they were standing knee-deep in their own refuse.

Police set up investigative headquarters in the nearby home of William Berger, who lives to tell the story of the day Indelicato asked him to identify the body of Floyd Wearry.

“I don’t know to this day if they found out how the brothers died. Some said they were poisoned by food in contaminated cans,” Berger said.

“I identified Floyd, who had some blood on his head, and when I saw Clarence lying on the floor, I noticed that chickens had pecked away at his face.”

He occasionally visited the brothers and found them affable, though he said they rarely bathed. But contrary stories used to circulate among the boys at the Ten Mile River Scout Camp.

Scouts used to walk along Beaver Brook Road between the Brooklyn camp and the scout headquarters, and when they passed the Wearry brothers’ house, Clarence and Floyd would sit on their front porch with shotguns and yell to frighten the boys, who reportedly took pleasure in scaring the flocks of chickens on the farm.

John and Marian Dowd, present owners of the Wearry house, hosted a campfire for boy scouts this past summer where a scoutmaster narrated reports of recent sightings of the Wearry brothers’ ghosts near the front of the house.

Dowd maintains he has yet to see any ghosts, though he said the house gets very eerie at night.

Clarence and Floyd Wearry are buried in the cemetery at the old Baptist church on Route 97.