Ghosts of Rockland County: Collected Stories

Introduction

It’s hard to believe everything that’s happened since the original Ghosts of Rockland County first appeared in 1998. Back then I was afraid I was wasting my time writing a book about local ghosts, and I thought it would be the first and the last. Fortunately, I was very wrong.

When the first printing sold out in two weeks I knew that ghosts were here to stay. Now, eight years and eight more ghost books later, I can look back on many wild adventures in some very haunted locations. I’ve also been fortunate enough to do several television shows, lots of radio programs, and more articles and interviews than I can remember. And my Halloween season lecture schedule is just insane. Not that I’m complaining!

Through all of my travels, my favorite places to investigate are still in Rockland County, NY. For years, people have been asking for another Ghosts of Rockland County. Even though I combined that original book with the three Haunted Hudson Valley books (which also predominantly contained Rockland stories), into Ghost Investigator Volume 1, the requests for an all Rockland book continued.

So here it is, the Ghosts of Rockland County Collected Stories—all Rockland, and nothing but Rockland. Enjoy, and if you know of any other good local hauntings let me know—there’s always room for one more ghost…

Linda Zimmermann

August 30, 2006

The Angry Poltergeist

The term poltergeist is a composite of two German words, which literally mean create a disturbance and ghost. While you might consider any disembodied spirit of the dead roaming around your house to be a disturbance, some ghosts are clearly far more disturbing than others. Cold spots, shadowy forms and wailing cries in the dead of night are definitely unnerving, but the ghosts associated with these experiences are generally benign and pose no immediate threat to the living. Poltergeists are another story. Their behavior runs the gamut from annoyingly mischievous to frighteningly dangerous. For example, what would you do if unseen hands started throwing heavy objects at your head? What if your particular haunting involved a poltergeist, a very angry poltergeist?

In the boom years after World War II, Rockland County, New York saw a spurt in growth as many veterans and their families looked for a peaceful alternative to the hustle and bustle of New York City. Famous people from the world of the arts and entertainment also chose to make the sleepy little county their home. One such man was Danton Walker, a columnist, who upon moving to his 18th century home on Quaker Lane in Mt. Ivy unfortunately found no peace and little sleep.

The first disturbance Mr. Walker encountered was someone loudly and persistently banging the heavy knocker on his front door. Every time he went to investigate, he would find no one there. Assuming it was a prankster, he thought to foil the miscreant by installing a screen door in front of the wooden door. After the screen door was in place, he locked it securely, making it impossible to reach the knocker. Walker was confident he had put up the perfect barrier against the mischievous hands. In fact, it was the perfect barrier against human hands, but whatever continued banging the knocker that night as if there was no screen door was obviously not human.

Then even more bizarre things began happening. Mr. Walker was a collector of early pewter pieces, which fit in very nicely with the colonial architecture. Apparently, however, not everyone appreciated the pewter, as one night a piece came off the shelf by itself. This is not to say it slipped off the shelf and fell straight down, it was literally thrown across the room and landed against the far wall. No living soul had been anywhere near the shelf at the time.

Pewter pitchers and sauceboats then regularly left the shelves and traveled around the room, self-propelled. One particularly expensive pitcher that took flight had been in flawless condition when Walker purchased it. When he picked it up to return it to its shelf, he noticed five indentations. These indentations matched exactly with the pattern of human fingertips, as if someone had gripped the pitcher with inhuman strength. Chances are, it was inhuman.

As disturbing as these events were, Walker tried to cope with the unpleasant situation until one evening when he was having a party. Once again, a heavy piece of pewter left its resting place on its own, and the unseen hands violently hurled the piece at one of Walker’s guests, narrowly missing her head. That was the last straw—the poltergeist had crossed the line from being simply aggravating to being dangerous. Walker decided to take action before anyone was seriously hurt.

Walker contacted Hans Holzer, world famous ghost hunter and author of dozens of books about hauntings (many of which this author used to read under the covers with a flashlight!). Holzer agreed to visit the house and bring along a female psychic medium with whom he had often worked. They arranged a séance and Danton Walker prepared himself to confront the spirit that had been tormenting him. However, torment took on a new meaning when the sad story of the angry poltergeist came to light.

During the séance, the psychic claimed to have contacted the spirit of a Polish mercenary who had been paid to fight for the British during the Revolutionary War. The mercenary was in the Mt. Ivy area when either British troops mistakenly thought he was fighting for the Americans, or had some other grudge against the Polish soldier. In any event, the British took off after him, and he started to run for his life. The mercenary came upon the house on Quaker Lane, banged on the door, and when no one answered, forced his way inside and tried to hide. The British troops found him and brutally beat him. He was left for dead, but the mercenary was not to be so fortunate as to die quickly.

When he regained consciousness, he found that his leg had been shattered and his skull severely fractured. Unable to move, he suffered the torment of excruciating pain throughout his body. Days of agony passed, and no one came to help. There wasn’t even a pitcher of water within reach to quench his terrible thirst. Finally, mercifully, he died several days later.

In the weeks and months following the séance, the pewter remained on the shelves and the nightly banging on the door ceased. Did the tortured spirit of the mercenary finally find release by having the truth of his terrible ordeal become known? Or did he merely lose interest in harassing Danton Walker? Perhaps the poltergeist is still in the house, waiting to vent his anger upon another unsuspecting owner…

2 AM Wake-up Call

When one thinks of scary things, high ranch houses usually don’t make the list (unless you are a connoisseur of architecture) and they aren’t considered to be prime haunting territory. In the ghostly realm, hauntings are popularly associated with shadowy Victorian homes, or old, overgrown colonials with centuries of history. However, this is a misconception. Hauntings can occur anywhere, at any time, in just about any way imaginable—and that includes brand new houses in the suburbs.

The hundreds of raised ranches that sprung up across the Rockland landscape in the last generation generally do not draw one’s attention, due to their uniformity and sheer number. However, there is at least one of these homes in the county that makes you sit up and take notice, especially at 2 o’clock in the morning.

When the Guinness family moved into their new home in Spring Valley in the 1970s, they thought the most frightening things they would have to deal with were the mortgage payments and taxes. Their high ranch was on a quiet cul-de-sac in a relatively new development, so they did not anticipate any problems with the house, and the neighbors all seemed friendly. Once the chaos and confusion of the move had settled down, it seemed as if they would simply get on with the routine life of a suburban family. What they could not have planned for interfering with their lives was something that was quite dead.

One night when the family was sleeping peacefully, the Guinnesses and their children were suddenly awakened at precisely 2am. They were startled, as if something terrible had just happened. However, they were surprised to find that there were no sirens or loud sounds, no flashing lights from a police car or ambulance, and no sharp odors of smoke in the air. In fact, there was nothing out of the ordinary except they were all awake in the dead of night. The house was dark and quiet, and not even a dog could be heard barking in the neighborhood. There was simply no external reason for the entire family to have been roused from their beds at the same time.

The family members did sense something, however, but it was most definitely internal. It was fear; a fear that something, or someone, was in the house. Mr. Guinness jumped out of bed and started down the hall to check on the children’s safety, but he had not gone more than a few steps when an icy gust of wind blew past him, or more accurately, through him. Shaking it off, he proceeded to check on the children and found that they were scared, but unhurt. A check of the rest of the house uncovered no intruders, and all the doors and windows were safely secured.

The following night they all awoke with a start again, exactly at 2am. Again, there was a deathly cold blast that swept down the hall. There were no sounds, no lights, only fear. Within days of these inexplicable and unnerving wake-up calls, appliances, radios and televisions started turning on by themselves when no one was in the room. These bizarre occurrences persisted until one night Mr. Guinness shouted out, I don’t care who you are, or what you are doing here, just stop frightening my children!

Did the outburst have any effect? Things did quiet down enough for the family to manage to live with it for several years, but the unwelcome visitor still made its presence known on a regular basis. The Guinness family finally moved out of the high ranch on that deceptively quiet cul-de-sac, and they were happy to not take everything from the place with them.

There are rumors in the neighborhood about the land upon which the development was built, rumors that something terrible had happened on the spot of the haunted high ranch. The Ku Klux Klan had been active in the area for several decades, holding rallies and burning crosses to intimidate undesirables. Some of the rumors say that one night the Klan went too far and murdered at least one innocent victim on the land that eventually became the site of the new housing development. As so often happens in such cases, nothing has been proven, but to the Guinness family, they had all the terrifying proof they needed.

Do blenders and televisions still turn themselves on in that innocent looking high ranch in Spring Valley? Does the icy presence still rush down the hall every night at 2am? The Guinness family didn’t wait around to find out, but you can’t blame them, they have a lot of sleep to catch up on.

A Chilling Tragedy

There is a stately mansion in Tomkins Cove that was lovingly restored to its original 1850s splendor. Today if you were to walk its serene grounds and see the sunlight sparkling on the river below, it would be difficult to imagine the house as anything but a place of light, warmth and happiness. To the current owners it is such a place and, in fact, generations have led contented lives there. Yet, there may also be something discontented there, something cold and dark trapped by tragic events within the towering walls.

When new owners moved into the magnificent mansion in the early 1990s, the interior was in desperate need of renovation. Ornate plaster ceilings and finely carved wood doorframes needed to be rescued from beneath a century’s worth of old paint. The decorative ceiling on the third floor was in danger of collapsing, and in order to save it, scaffolding had to be erected and the entire ceiling had to be raised seven inches so that new supports could replace the rotted beams. Restoration was an enormous task that required many men and careful attention to detail. The progress was closely watched, perhaps by more eyes than they anticipated.

The first sign of anything unusual came soon after the Wilson family had moved in. They were living in a few rooms on the ground floor while the workmen filled the air with plaster dust and the sound of power tools throughout the rest of the house. One night after the workmen had all gone home, and bad weather had prevented Mr. Wilson from making it home, Mrs. Wilson was left all alone. Stretching out on the couch, which was her temporary bed, she was just dozing off when somebody yanked the blankets off of her. They did not simply slide to the floor, they were clearly pulled away. She retrieved the blankets and a short time later it happened again. In fact, the strange game of pulling off the blankets continued throughout the night.

In the days that followed, one of the workmen came up to Mrs. Wilson and told her that in one of the third floor bedrooms he experienced an icy cold spot. He believed that what he had felt was the presence of a ghost. Soon after, a different construction worker who had just arrived and had heard nothing of the strange events also reported to Mrs. Wilson that there were unnatural cold spots in that same third floor bedroom, and he firmly believed the room was haunted.

Another day as she stood in the foyer she heard the loud, pounding footsteps of a man running down the long flights of stairs leading from the third floor. It was an installer from the telephone company who had been working in that cold bedroom. He never broke stride as he shouted to Mrs. Wilson, That room is haunted, you know! He continued out the open front door and never returned.

On many occasions, objects that had been left in one room would be found the next day in another part of the house, even when no one else was at home. There was nothing evil or sinister about these events, but it was clear that something was trying to make its presence known. While the Wilson’s did not feel threatened or frightened by anything that had happened, their sentiments were not always shared by guests.

One day Mrs. Wilson was showing a visitor the progress of renovations on the third floor. No one else was in the house and the two were standing at the top of the stairs, right next to the mysterious bedroom. Suddenly, there was a loud knocking sound. It came from the wall of the entrance to the room, just a few feet away. There was no one else to be seen, no visible hand that could be knocking on that wall. Completely terrified, the man literally ran down the staircase and out of the house. (Perhaps they should have installed a swinging front door?)

Many members of the Wilson family have spent peaceful nights in the house, with no hint of anything paranormal going on. Then there was the night that Mrs. Wilson’s daughter and son-in-law slept in one of the second floor bedrooms. They slept through the night without the slightest sound to disturb them. When the daughter awoke, however, she found that the almost five-foot-high solid walnut dresser had been pushed across the floor and was up against the closed bedroom door. Waking up her husband, she asked why in heaven he had barricaded the door with the dresser, and how did he do it without waking her?

One can only imagine the expression on his face as he alternately looked at the displaced dresser and his wife, searching for any sign that this was a joke. She was serious, and so was he. He swore that he had not moved the dresser. Other times when this daughter has come to visit, she has claimed to hear the doors on the second floor opening and slamming shut again, when no living souls were on that floor. A family friend who house-sits on occasion has also reported strange occurrences when no one else is present, like the television in the library turning itself on and off.

Other reports of bizarre activity have made their way to the ears of the Wilsons. One dramatic incident in particular occurred decades ago when the house was being used as a restaurant. At the end of one of the first floor side halls, there was a heavy pay phone mounted on the wall. As a waitress was walking down the hall,