WINFIELD MANOR
Location: Winfield Manor was possibly located somewhere near Tottenville at the south tip of Staten Island, 16 1/2 miles from Manhattan and across the Arthur Kill River from the New Jersey border.
Description of Place: Skip Midler doesn't recall much about Winfield Manor much less where it was exactly. He recalls it mainly as a huge intimidating two story building, built like a castle with several bedrooms and a large foyer. Several attempts to relocate it has met with less successful results. Chances are it has been demolished, or it actually existed somewhere else.
Ghostly Manifestations: A frightened woman living in her ancestral manor hears sounds at night. She knows they are just the normal sounds of a house responding to the wind and cold air off the nearby river at night. The structure groans, and the sides are affected by wood beams expanding from the air. The noises create creaking noises like an invisible guest moving down the hall. A crystal chandelier stirs. Sounds of other unseen tenants like mice in the walls and squirrels crossing the roof make other noises, but there is one noise that does not belong with the others. The attractive young beauty realizes she has seen too many horror movies in her life. She hears the gasping breath of another person in her bedroom; her canopy bed groans as if someone has climbed in bed with her. Her scream echoes through the house and soon every light on the second floor is on.
Darcy Winfield was a struggling young singer working as an actress when her father gave her the keys to the family home on Staten Island. What he forgot to tell her was that his father and family had departed because they were both bothered by the ghost in the house. Since 1933, the apparition of Marie Winfield has traveled through the house, unlocking doors, looking out windows, emptying closets, gasping in the night and generally making herself known.
Darcy Winfield now lives in Nashville, Tennessee, working behind the scenes of the music business for talent like Hannah Montana, Taylor Swift, Clint Black, Bo Bice and Kellie Pickler. During a cursory investigation of Ryman Auditorium and the Old Nashville Penitentiary, Steve Barnette and Andrea Welch of the CGS chanced to hear about her New York experiences. A bit hesitant at first, she eventually opened up to tell a few stories over lunch off Nashville's Music Row.
"My family used to have money." She begins. "We were descendants of an obscure New England patriot, once owned several acres of land, had connections to in high society and all that, but over the years, things changed. The Civil War hit the family bad, and we sold a lot of property. During Prohibition, my great-uncle was into running beer under the noses of the police, but they got him for income tax evasion, much like they got Capone.
"Around the 1930s, his daughter Marie allegedly died in an accident that was covered up by the family. The general story is that she was racing down the staircase in a long dress and stumbled to her death, but I've also heard she was pushed by her boyfriend after a fight and still yet, another version claims she just vanished and her death made up to cover up the fact she ran off with a lover. Whatever the truth, it's her ghost that is supposed to be in the house."
Without much details, Darcy can repeat stories nearly verbatim that she has heard from other relatives over the years. Marie's ghost was often blamed for noises in the house, such as footsteps, and for rattling the doorknobs of bedrooms. She's rarely been seen, usually appearing as a radiantly attractive young lady from another time. One relative stumbling around the attic for a light source saw her standing and vanishing back into a wall. A distant aunt washing the inside windows saw her reflection and turned back to look upon her, but she turned and vanished down the staircase to the second floor. A cousin describes something crawling into his bed, the same bed that Darcy would try to sleep in one fateful night. A niece recalls waking in the middle of the night to watch the dresses in her closet flying out on to the floor. Marcy's own father told her to stay out of and not use the bedroom looking over the garden. The window in that room never stays closed. According to legend, a relative staying in that room in 1967 felt herself being choked by a person she could not see. When she broke free and tore downstairs, she had slender red finger marks over her neck and shoulders.
Marie tends to be a rather innocuous ghost, but she also has a fearful side. Darcy recalls feelings of dread from the house as if she was constantly being watched. She'd also sometimes feel her body was not her own. She'd move from one part of the house to another without any memory of the distance between. Once, she'd look into a mirror and just start screaming because she could not recognize herself. Feeling she could not live alone by herself without experiencing things, she invited several friends to stay with her a night, but even with company, the old edifice did not feel right. After one difficult night, Darcy and her friends left the house for the last time because someone going through the downstairs was slamming doors and having a fit throwing things as if having a temper tantrum.
History: Winfield Manor was supposedly built in 1843 over the remains of a plantation house dating back to 1799. Part of the property may have included a forgotten slave cemetery. The mansion was home for eight generations of Winfields with Darcy Winfield as the last known relative to actually live there.
Identity of Ghosts: Marie Winfield (1907-1933)
Investigations: Phillip "Skip" Midler and Harold Van Couver of the Beardsley Office of Occult Occurrences (BOOO) was once centered in the Beardsley neighborhood of Albany, New York as a sideline to their law offices. For their short existence, they were one of the first serious attempts for a public paranormal investigation service before New York Paranormal opened in Manhattan in 1984. Winfield Manor was one of their first public cases, having been hired by Darcy Winfield to investigate the activity. In the course of their investigation there, they taped and filmed much inconclusive evidence ranging from anomalous sounds, floating orbs and odd juxtapositions of light. Personal testimonies not confirmed by physical evidence consisted of images of a female apparition that wandered through the location, seemingly trying to keep ahead of their investigation. Van Couver tried to get a picture of her on several occasions, but the female phantom remained elusive. Midler also has memories of voices he heard in the house, possibly suggestive of various surviving personalities or trapped place memories of another time. His files on the location, as well their few other cases, were taken over by New York Paranormal after they closed their paranormal office.
Source/Comments: Scared Silly (Episode: Pilot) Phenomenon loosely based on the Octagon in Washington, D.C., Monroe House in Brentwood, California, Heceta Head Lighthouse in Florence, Oregon, Winfield Hall in Glen Cove, New York, DeGeldern House in New York city and Skene Manor in Whitehall, New York.
Scared Silly was a failed thirty-minute comedy pilot created by Aaron Spelling and Douglas S. Cramer. It aired September 12, 1982 on ABC, and it starred Jeff Altman and Donovan Scott as Midler and Van Couver. If the series had been developed, it would have continued into their misadventures into the paranormal.
Lisa Hartman (now Lisa Hartman-Black) of the series Tabitha and Knots Landing played Darcy Winfield (as well as Marie!).
Hannah Montana from the Disney Channel Hannah Montana TV-Series (2007-2009).