Witches paddle on the Hudson River in Sleepy Hallow, New York. You might have seen them before, packs of people dressed like Stevie Nicks climbing onto paddleboards and rowing out onto the water like a cast of Hogwarts extras. Witch paddles, as they’re now generally referred to, began like all great unhinged ideas, conjured on a whim.
What turned this spectacle into a full-blown spooky-season phenomenon? A few conveniently timed birthdays. Annette Ausseresses, the agreed-upon originator of the concept, had a tradition with her girlfriends of celebrating their Halloween-adjacent birthdays in witchy fashion.
So how did their little coven become a nationwide Halloween craze? Ausseresses credits two things: a local news story that went global on the wire, and a woman in Portland who caught wind of the idea and decided to stir up some trouble of her own. She saw some pictures of Ausseresses’ event and brought the concept to the Rose City in October 2017, taking to the Willamette River with just a couple of friends.
But as word spread, Portland’s sorceresses began multiplying. Then came COVID, a gloomy timestamp for even the most resilient of enchantresses. When the world finally emerged from isolation, Kauffman says the appeal of dressing like a witch or warlock and doing something gloriously ridiculous was even more powerful to resist.
Witch paddles spread even further across the country, proving that Ausseresses had unwittingly tapped into something bigger than a Halloween gag: a desperate desire to play. People are out there, they’re meeting their friends, they are smiling, they have fun.” Kauffman agrees. These days, though, Kauffman no longer leads the charge for Witches on the Willamette.
What began as a casual paddle eventually became too much of a liability to continue, she shares. Now, she keeps her witchery to private paddles with friends. Alas, no one has yet stepped forward to inherit her broomstick, leaving Portland’s once-mighty coven without a head witch.
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