Legends 5: Long Island Ghosts

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Welcome to Lore Legends, a subset of lore episodes that explore the strange tales we whisper in the dark, even if they can't always be proven by the history books.

So, if you're ready, let's begin.

Deep in the woods of Huntington, Long Island, is a place that, at first, seems peaceful.

The poet Walt Whitman, who was born just down the road, used to wander among the trees, no doubt gathering inspiration for his Odes to the Natural World.

And walking among its leaf-covered trails, hearing the sharp chitter of a downy woodpecker overhead, you might get the sense that this is a place of reflection and solitude.

But beneath its tranquility and beauty is a dark history, one that is built on a foundation of loss, the loss of home, loss of innocence, and loss of life.

It's known as Mount Misery, a name it has earned thanks to the tragic stories that dot its trails like thousands of autumn leaves.

But to get to the truth about Mount Misery, one must navigate a forest of myths and legends, careful not to trip over the tales with roots so thick and deep you can find yourself swallowed up by them.

Some of these stories seem too far-fetched to believe, while others sound just plausible enough to be true.

But no matter how you look at it, there's something about Mount Misery that just doesn't sit right.

It's in the way the wind howls through the trees as the sun retreats behind the horizon, like it knows what's coming.

Mount Misery is called that for a lot of reasons.

So let's grab a flashlight and find out why.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore Legends.

Despite its ambitious moniker, there is no specific peak actually known as Mount Misery in the area.

Its highest point, Jane's Hill, is only 400 feet tall.

Mount Misery actually got its name because local farmers found it difficult to maneuver their wagons over the harsh terrain and steep hills.

Well, steep for Long Island at least.

Although some claim that it was named Mount Misery after the first home built there burned to the ground.

Several times, in fact.

The area has been the subject of numerous tales, some taller than others, but each one adds something new to Mount Misery's reputation, making this molehill feel a lot more like a mountain that everyone thinks it is.

Unsubstantiated rumors say that the local native tribes there considered the area cursed or taboo or the home of the mythical mythical thunderbird, although this seems to be a misunderstanding of native geography and myth by white residents.

But most of the stories center, unsurprisingly, around death.

Whispers wind through its wooded landscape much like two of its thoroughfares, Mount Misery Road and Sweet Hollow Road.

They're only a mile apart, but they never intersect.

These roads have collected many of Mount Misery's legends along their bends and curbs, scaring unsuspecting motorists, especially at night.

That's the power of storytelling.

It manifests in all kinds of fears and worries within us, even when logic tells us that there's nothing to be afraid of.

For example, one legend claims that an old asylum used to exist in the narrow spot between Mount Misery Road and Sweet Hollow Road before it burned down.

Since then, ghosts of former patients have been seen running from the ruins.

Another version claims that it was a schoolhouse, not an asylum, and that the schoolmaster simply snapped one day, murdering his students one by one.

The schoolhouse was then burned to the ground by grieving townspeople, and the teacher was hanged for his crimes.

They buried his body where the schoolhouse used to be as a reminder of what happened.

The only problem is that there is no intersection where the two roads meet, nor is there proof that a schoolhouse or asylum had ever existed on Mount Misery.

Although there used to be a military hospital in nearby Deer Park that was closed down, possibly lending to the creation of these macabre myths.

Still, lack of proof or geographical logic hasn't stopped people from coming to Mount Misery in search of the paranormal.

A medium once claimed, this land is under very hard spiritual pressures.

It is dominated by wrong brothers, wrong spirits.

Sprinkled among the dark fables are true stories of death and tragedy.

There was a carbon monoxide suicide in 1946, followed by the discovery of a murdered girl who was dumped there there in 1976.

One person also took their own life with a shotgun on Mount Misery in 2000.

And although none of those incidents appear to be related to the supernatural, it's hard not to believe that the location had some kind of influence on them.

Throughout the years, numerous reports have come out regarding strange sightings and happenings in the woods of Long Island.

People have detected the odor of blood and burned flesh from out of nowhere.

Invisible animals have been heard growling from among the trees.

And in an even eerier turn of events, visitors have also noticed a sudden absence of all sound.

And the legends extend beyond the woods as well.

It's said that if you stop your car underneath a certain bridge on Sweet Hollow Road, a mysterious force will push your vehicle uphill.

This force could be the spirit of a woman who died in a head-on collision there, or another woman who was struck and killed by a car while she was changing her tire on the side of the road.

And because legends often have to take on many different flavors, a different version of the story claims that it's actually a group of spectral schoolchildren whose bus skidded off the bridge in icy conditions a long, long time ago.

In fact, this bridge has become something of a landmark in and of itself.

Two teenage boys allegedly made a suicide pact and hanged themselves from it in the 1970s.

It's believed that if you honk or flash your headlights three times as you approach the bridge, you'll see their bodies dangling from above.

And no haunted road would be complete without legends of an eccentric stranger who lives alone in the surrounding woods.

Someone not to be trifled with, lest you want to lose your head.

Rumor has it that there is an old man on Mount Misery who wears a checkered shirt, carrying an axe and a basket with him wherever he goes.

If you ask him what's inside the basket, he'll happily pull back the lid and let you peer inside at the pile of severed heads he collects.

He purportedly lives in a little cabin somewhere in the area all by himself.

Well, him and his collection of heads.

Many of these stories and legends, it turns out, were first reported in 1969 by a Long Island radio host named Jay Perrow.

She had described Mount Misery as one of the highest and seemingly foreboding promontories on the island with a history of murder, secret Indian rites, Revolutionary War skirmishes, hangings, and destruction.

Perrow's name might be familiar to both cryptid fans and avid readers alike.

She appeared in John Keel's popular 1975 book, The Mothman Prophecies.

He called Perrot a dark-haired, dark-eyed young lady with a soft, haunting voice, which sounds like the perfect person to tell these kinds of stories, perhaps in the middle of the woods, on a clear, moonlit night.

Long before axe-wielding loners roamed the Long Island woodlands, there was Mary.

Mary lived during the American Revolution, and her grave is said to reside on or around Mount Misery.

Some say it's in the small Melville Cemetery off of Sweet Hollow Road, while others claim it's deep in the woods, near the ruins of an abandoned house alleged to have belonged to her once upon a time.

Mary's grave has been described as minimal in appearance with only her name and birthdate etched in the stone.

There's no date of death, and if you do stumble across it and shine your flashlight on it, they say Mary's face may appear.

Others who have visited her grave have found that their cars no longer start and photographs of the stone come out blank when they've been developed.

One legend claims that if you relieve yourself on her gravestone, you may witness a vision of a girl wearing a white dress on the way home, a startling sight that has caused car accidents before.

And Mary is not known for being fond of kids.

She's been said to kill any children who venture to her burial site at night.

But why would anyone want to desecrate her grave?

And what might have caused her animosity towards children?

According to one story, it's because of the crime Mary was accused of when she was alive.

Local legend claims that she murdered her husband and her two children in cold blood, presumably with a hatchet.

The incident earned her the nickname Hatchet Mary, or Mary Hatchet, depending on how the story is told.

After this horrible act, her home was consumed by the earth on which it stood, with only the chimney left behind.

And now her soul can never rest in peace.

Of course, as time passed, Mary's story has changed and evolved with each retelling.

Some say she was actually a witch who would kidnap and kill the local children.

She was then caught and burned at the stake by the townspeople.

Her ashes were then buried in a potter's field.

Another version of the story states that Mary wasn't burned, but hanged instead, and the day after her execution, she was seen walking around town with a noose around her neck as though the previous day events had never happened.

Mary's legend is a cauldron swirling with different ingredients inside.

Among the rumors of witchcraft and unprovoked homicide is also a tale of possession.

In yet another variation of her story, Mary was actually a wealthy landowner's daughter who didn't have any friends.

She lived far from town, so her father built her a clubhouse made of stone where she could play with the animals on the property, as they were the closest thing to friends that she had.

Until one day, when Mary became possessed.

Now, depending on who you talk to, they might say that Mary's father beat her inside that clubhouse because he blamed her for killing her mother during childbirth.

Regardless of how the story is told though, one detail always comes through.

Mary started mutilating her animal friends on the stone table in the clubhouse.

When she had finished killing these defenseless creatures that had once trusted her, she picked up an axe and did the same thing to her father and her brother.

Soon after her father's associates grew concerned, they decided to trek over to the house to see what was going on.

It was there that they came upon a gruesome sight.

Mary, sleeping in a bed beside her father, both of them covered in blood, his cleaved flesh torn open by the blows of her axe.

Mary was taken by the townspeople and hanged from a tree, a tree that still stands to this day, despite it having been dead for some time, and the branch from which she was hanged still bears the mark of the rope they used.

As for the clubhouse, its ruins are said to be somewhere in Stony Brook, near where she is buried, and on her gravesite, a statue of an angel has been erected.

Some people have observed it crying under the belief that it's really Mary shedding tears for all the other girls that she was unable to protect.

Mary's life, whichever version of it you wish to believe, was one filled with horror and sadness.

The poor woman never stood a chance of leading a happy, fulfilling life.

And now, her spirit haunts Long Island, seeking a friend, seeking justice, and seeking closure.

Just a bit north of Mount Misery is a museum.

But it wasn't always that.

When it was first built in 1738, the modest white building stood as a home with two rooms on each floor and a chimney in the center.

It's known as Raynham Hall and it sits on Main Street in the town of Oyster Bay.

The home was purchased in 1740 by Samuel Townsend, who began adding rooms to accommodate his large family.

After all, he and his wife had eight children to house and about 20 enslaved people on the property as well.

Back then, it was simply called the homestead, and historians believe that it had been a major hotbed of revolutionary activity in the years leading up to the war.

Although, despite much of the Northeast's hatred of Great Britain, Oyster Bay was aligned with the British cause.

But not the Townsends.

They even struck out after the British won the Battle of Long Island in 1776, taking over the area as the war waged on.

For six months in 1778 and 1779, British soldiers commandeered the Townsend's home, forcing the family to keep them fed and housed despite their support for independence.

But one Townsend used the situation to his advantage.

Samuel's son, Robert, joined George Washington's Culper spy ring in 1779, unbeknownst to the rest of the family.

He would report back to General Washington on what the British were up to, thanks to his unique connections.

But of all the Townsends, it was Samuel's daughter Sarah, or Sally as she was known, whose life would truly be changed by the British occupation.

She was only 19 years old when enemy soldiers took over her home, and yet despite their political differences, one of those soldiers, 30-something Lieutenant Colonel John Graves Simcoe, fell in love with her.

On February 14th of 1779, Simcoe gave her a poem that teemed with emotion and ardor for the young woman.

He poured his heart into his words, holding nothing back.

They didn't know it at the time, but John's letter would become the first documented Valentine ever exchanged in the United States.

It explored one person's difficulty in navigating the feelings they had developed towards someone else who was meant to be their enemy.

And although we don't know if Sarah gave him a card of her own or shared even a fraction of the love that he had for her, she did keep his poem for the rest of her life.

It was discovered among her personal effects after her death at the age of 82.

Sarah never married.

She spent her life at Raynham Hall.

John, on the other hand, was eventually deployed to Canada where he met and married another young woman.

And he didn't just begin the act of exchanging Valentines in America.

He also founded the city of Toronto.

Today, it's believed that Sarah's spirit continues to haunt Raynham Hall, which has since been turned into a museum.

Some speculate that she really did love Lieutenant Colonel John Simcoe, but for whatever reason could could not be with him.

And so she remains at the site where she first met her lost love.

Her presence is often felt in her old bedroom on the second floor, which is always unusually cold.

She's also been sensed in the children's room because she never became a mother.

Downstairs in the dining room is a female mannequin that has been known to move on its own.

And those who have tried taking photographs inside the house have discovered orbs of light all over the final images.

But Sarah isn't the only ghost who has made a permanent home at Raynham Hall.

At night, when everyone else is in bed and the house is still, the nursery will suddenly become bathed in light from an overhead bulb.

A young boy, perhaps a child who died of an illness decades or centuries ago, has turned it back on because of his fear of the dark.

Visitors have also smelled apple pies baking in the kitchen while nobody is there.

as though some long-gone person was still doing their job.

New hires at the museum often smell the phantom pies when they start and are simply told that one of the Townsends is welcoming them onto staff.

Of course, Raynham Hall also had a number of enslaved people living on the property while the Townsends lived there.

Their spirits have been seen and felt throughout the museum by staff and visitors alike.

Ghost sightings are a common occurrence at the museum.

In 1999, one guest was walking past a staircase when they heard footsteps and rustling petticoats nearby.

They looked around for the sound of the commotion, only to see part of a female's figure wearing a Victorian dress just standing there.

It glided by, past the guest and off toward the rear of the house.

Nobody knows who she was.

Others have witnessed British soldiers drifting throughout the grounds, one of whom is presumed to be the spirit of Major John Andre.

It seems that Andre had been staying at the house along with the Townsend family.

Allegedly, while he was conspiring to deliver West Point to the British along with Benedict Arnold, Sarah Townsend overheard his plans.

As the story goes, she got word of the plot over to General Washington's headquarters.

Although newer research pours water on that story, this message, and several others, may have actually been delivered by a 17-year-old enslaved woman named Liss, who was also a member of the Culper Spyring.

Raynham Hall is rich with history.

and ghosts apparently, dating all the way back to the Revolutionary War.

But its heritage actually extends further back.

Before Samuel Townsend built the homestead in Oyster Bay, his family lived in Norfolk, England, in a home called Raynam Hall.

As it turns out, that was the same Raynham Hall where the infamous photograph of the brown lady ghost would eventually be taken in 1936.

The Townsends, it seems, could never escape the spirit world, no matter where they went.

Axe murderers and witches aren't the only things roaming the woods of Mount Misery.

Police officers also patrol the area, looking to either ward off thrill-seeking ghost hunters or to protect the public from untold evils lurking among the trees.

It really depends on who you talk to.

And of course, some conspiracy-minded locals also think that the cops are there to guard a secret government facility tucked away in the depths of the hillside.

But according to legend, if you see swirling lights in your rearview mirror on Sweet Hollow Road, you might get more than just a ticket.

The story begins when a police officer signals an innocent driver to pull over on the side of the road.

As the driver gathers their credentials, the officer questions them, then lets them leave.

No ticket, no hassle.

Relieved, the driver checks his mirror as the officer walks away.

only to see that the back of that officer's head has a massive hole in it, presumably inflicted by a shotgun blast.

Those who have witnessed this gruesome sight have allegedly seen the ghost of a police officer who was killed long ago on Sweet Hollow Road.

And the lack of evidence or police records proving this ever actually happened doesn't change people's opinions.

After all, they saw what they saw, and what they saw was the haunted ghost of a police officer hunting endlessly for his killer.

Mount Misery certainly has enough creepy legends to back up that name.

I hope you enjoyed our tour through those ominous woods and the many tales that snake through its shadows.

But we're not done just yet.

Now I've got one more legend to share with you from this dark location.

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Long Island may have its fair share of ghostly residents, but they don't always confine themselves to the island proper.

Just off the coast is the popular summer destination, Fire Island.

Fire Island has long been a vacation spot when the weather heats up each year.

In fact, the island boasts few permanent residents, and even fewer of them are living.

In 1826, the fire island gained its first lighthouse.

The local preservation society described it as a 70-foot-high, cream-colored, octagonal pyramid made of Connecticut River blue splitstone.

And that sounds pretty tall, but it became clear after it was completed that it wasn't going to be enough to effectively guide ships in the night.

On July 19th of 1850, a gale lashed the coastline, sending an Italian ship called the Elizabeth crashing into a sandbar.

Everyone survived the collision, but no one on shore made any attempt to rescue the people on board.

As a result, the waves eventually split the ship apart.

Many crew and passengers died, including the writer Margaret Fuller, her husband, and their two-year-old son.

Her body, sadly, was never recovered from the wreckage.

Henry David Thoreau traveled to Fire Island in an attempt to locate her remains, as well as an unpublished manuscript on the political situation in Italy that she had been carrying.

Neither, it seems, were found.

As for the lighthouse, it was eventually removed except for the ring of bricks along the bottom.

Seven years later, Congress approved $40,000 in funds to have a new tower built, one that would incorporate the remnants of the original lighthouse and be more than twice as tall.

Construction soon began and the lighthouse keeper Benjamin Smith moved into a nearby shack on the dunes along with his wife and daughter.

But Smith was distraught.

He complained to administrators that the shack wouldn't be enough to keep his family warm during the harsh island winters.

And yet, nobody listened.

Smith's daughter had already been suffering from a serious lung condition.

He knew what was at stake if his concerns were not taken seriously.

And just as he'd expected, the drafty shack led to the poor girl getting sick.

He sent for a doctor.

It's been said that Smith would climb to the top of the lighthouse each day and watch in vain for the doctor's boat to come into view.

It was three days before someone arrived, by which time Smith's Smith's daughter had already died.

The grief that followed drove the lighthouse keeper and his wife apart.

She left for the mainland to bury their daughter and never returned.

Smith, on the other hand, couldn't deal with the loss of both his little girl and her mother.

Legend states that he hanged himself right there in the lighthouse.

The new lighthouse began working on November 1st of 1858, and it ran continuously for a number of years.

It was briefly decommissioned during the 20th century, but once again became operational in 1986.

Those who visit Fire Island Lighthouse won't just get a clear view of the Atlantic Ocean, stretching for miles to the horizon.

They'll also meet the man who kept things running.

Those who have spent time there have reported hearing footsteps race up the stairs, much like Benjamin Smith would do as he waited for the doctor's ship to appear.

Often, those footsteps are followed by moaning from the top of the lighthouse.

Some say it's the sounds of the keeper shouting for help, while others claim they are the mournful wails of a father who has just lost his child.

And every once in a while, Smith himself makes an appearance on his perch, watching and waiting for help that sadly never arrives.

This episode of Lore Legends was produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with writing by Harry Marks and research by Cassandra De Alba.

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