Ghosts and Legends of Yonkers

INTRODUCTION

Located at the southern tip of Westchester County, Yonkers is the closest city in the county to New York City and therefore serves as the gateway between New York City and the Hudson River Valley. There are five major highways connecting it to New York City and the rest of Westchester County. In addition, it has ten Metro North Railroad stations. Yonkers is approximately twenty-one square miles in size, making it one of the largest cities in the state. Founded in 1646 by Adriaen Cornelissen van der Donck, it was named for his property, Colen Donck, which was called Jonkheer’s Landt, or the land of the young lord.

Naturally, being such an old city makes it ideal for having its fair share of ghost stories and strange legends. While researching for this book, I learned of quite a few interesting stories. Sadly, there were so many that I wasn’t able to fit them all. It turns out there are many haunted locations in Yonkers.

All it takes is for one wayward spirit to hold on to his or her past life for a haunting to take place. It is unfortunate when a spirit cannot accept death and feels the need to linger in a state of virtual nonexistence. Sometimes spirits are not aware they are dead, while other times they refuse to go into the light.

As a paranormal investigator, my main goal has always been to prove the existence of ghosts. I won’t call it life after death, since it’s really no kind of life. It’s only an existence, which is very different from our own. No one can truly say what it’s like, since dead people can’t write books to tell about it. We can merely take the word of people that have had near-death experiences or learn by analyzing EVP recordings or even with help from mediums.

I first became interested in ghosts while growing up in the Bronx. I was born and raised in the Bronx. I lived in a three-family private house on Ryer Avenue until my late twenties. My parents and I were on the second floor. My aunt and cousins lived on the first floor, while my grandparents lived on the third floor. Other family members came and went throughout the many years we lived there.

When I was about six or seven years old, two of my older cousins used to tell me about a young girl who died in our house on the third floor. She had been very sick. I don’t know if they told me to scare me or just to share the information with me. Whatever the case, I became fascinated by the possibility that the ghost of this young girl could manifest to me at any moment. She never did, but whenever the door slammed shut, I would say she wanted the door closed. Of course, my bedroom had a nice draft coming from the window. The bottom line is I was never afraid of her or of any ghost afterward.

During my youth, I spent a good many years going to Yonkers. At first, it was to visit my cousins on Caryl Avenue, where I’d sometimes stay over for the weekend or for an entire week during the summer months. Aside from the time I spent with family, there was something I liked about being in Yonkers that felt different from the Bronx. The suburban life appealed to me. I liked the idea of seeing trees everywhere.

As I got older, I learned to drive. When I bought my first car, a black 1987 Chevy Cavalier, Yonkers was my first destination. I eventually began dating a girl from Yonkers, who lived right around the corner from my cousins. I started shopping along Central Park Avenue on a weekly basis with my brother, my parents, my cousins or my girlfriend at the time. My brother and I still go to Central Park Avenue each week. It’s become our bonding ritual. I also shop there often with my wife.

The extra time I spent in Yonkers gave me more reasons to experience what the city had to offer, and I came to enjoy it immensely. I loved Yonkers and Westchester County mainly for their beauty, serenity and conveniences. When I began looking for a place to move, I tried to focus my search in Yonkers or in Lower Westchester County. In the end, I told my real estate agent, Alfredo Rivera, to find me a house in Yonkers, and he did.

By the end of 2000, I bought a house on Nepperhan Avenue together with my father. It was a great place for a new start. Considering I moved near the Saw Mill River Parkway, my commuting time to Manhattan, where I worked, had not changed. It took me the same amount of time to get to work as it did when I lived in the Bronx, only this time I no longer had to drive across that dreadful Cross Bronx Expressway. Anyone who has ever driven on it knows what a nightmare it can be no matter what time of day you use it.

After moving to Yonkers, the furthest thing from my mind was to do paranormal investigations or to study the city’s history. I just wanted to live in a better neighborhood compared to where I had lived before. However, over the years, I learned of many local hauntings and ghost stories, which got me curious enough to do my own research. In doing so, I became aware of Yonkers’ history, and with everything I learned, I became increasingly fascinated.

Yonkers has an incredibly intricate history. Many locations are tied to one another through family ties and geographical location. If there is one thing that fascinates me more than local history, it’s the haunted history of a location.

The Yonkers Ghost Investigators is my paranormal team, which was founded in the fall of 2006 with the help of my cousins Christina Claudio and Elijah Levy. Ironically, both are not on the team today. When the team was formed, it consisted of family members and close friends. We only wanted to do it for fun, but I took it seriously from day one. Over the years, some team members lost interest and moved on, while some had to be removed due to other conflicting interests. We’ve also had new team members added, whom I met through other team members, via the Internet or at my job.

It’s interesting that once people know you are into the paranormal, all of a sudden they want to tell you about a ghostly experience they had in their past. It’s usually something they rarely spoke about with anyone else, but they know they can tell you because you won’t laugh at them or call them crazy. I found this to be the case at work. I heard a lot of stories from the guys at work, which I am sure they didn’t tell anyone else.

While the lineup of my team has changed throughout the years, our primary goal remains the same. We aim to seek out evidence of the paranormal, so it can be posted on our website for all to witness.

Together with my team, I have done over three hundred paranormal investigations at numerous locations in Yonkers and in other cities and states, including New Orleans, Gettysburg, Baltimore, Kings Park and Old San Juan in Puerto Rico. During that time, we’ve gathered enough tangible evidence of the paranormal to show that ghosts truly do exist. Again, our evidence is available on our website.

In this book, I included several locations in Yonkers that are either rumored to be haunted or have been proven to be haunted. I have also included a few random legends I’ve heard about that I thought were interesting. Rather than be skeptical, check out the evidence and see for yourself. Maybe you will become a believer. At least, maybe you will enjoy the book for its entertainment or historical value.

When I was asked to write this book by The History Press, I was taken aback. I couldn’t believe the publisher actually wanted me to write it. At the time, I had never written a real book in my life. I was chosen based solely on the things I wrote on my team’s website and also because I mentioned being in the process of writing two books. It was very exciting, since I own a few books published by The History Press.

Initially, it was an incredibly bad time for me. As I stated, I was already working on two other books and didn’t really have the time to add a new project. I wasn’t retired yet, so I also had my job to consider. It kept me busy most of the week, since I was doing more overtime to prepare for my upcoming retirement.

Regretfully, I asked if I could possibly put this project off for about a year. Much to my surprise, my editor agreed. It was such a relief for me. I dreaded the idea of this project going to someone else. I knew if I was to see this book in its completion written by someone else, I’d regret it for the rest of my life. Luckily, that would not be the case.

By 2014, I now had two books published and I was nearing my retirement date. I felt ready to begin this project, so I informed my contact, Whitney Landis, at The History Press and told her I was ready to begin. She was pleased and gave me the go ahead to start. While I officially began on that day, I had already started preparing notes and had done a lot of research over the previous few months. It gave me a head start, which I needed because I still had to make time to plan for my wedding in May 2014, followed by a month-long honeymoon in Puerto Rico. I did have a few weeks to spare, so I hit the books and wrote out a good portion of this book before May.

Once May arrived, I was married, and within a few days, my wife and I were off to Puerto Rico. During this time, there would be no work done on this project. In fact, I wouldn’t get back to it until sometime in mid-July, but even then I didn’t accomplish much.

It wasn’t until late August that I really got back to working on this book. I went through book after book, learning more about the early history of Yonkers. I spent a lot of money on books, which I thought would be helpful. They were, but it just meant more reading for me. It’s a good thing I like to read and write because I had to do both simultaneously, which saved me a lot of time. For about a year, I had a pile of books on my desk next to my computer. It’s nice to see that the entire pile of books has finally been put away on my bookshelves, although I barely have room for them since there are so many.

I was relieved when the book was finally completed, after over a year of reading, researching websites, going to the library or museums, conducting paranormal investigations and going over the evidence. It’s a great feeling to know you just wrote a book that will be read by others, including some whom you don’t even know.

In this book, I’ve compiled a list of alleged haunted locations and confirmed haunted locations, which I submit for your scrutiny. I’ve included evidence gathered during my investigations with my team, as well as documented information from many other witnesses. I tried not to make another history book about Yonkers but instead something a little different.

Most of the photos used either came from my own personal collection, the work of my team members, the Yonkers Historical Society, the Yonkers Public Library, the Library of Congress or from the Internet. None of these photos