WOODSTONE
MANOR
Location: Woodstone
Mansion is located in the Hudson Valley near Amelia, New York, a tiny hamlet
with a population of 1,057 three miles north of Ossining, New York on Route 134.
The home is at the end of a short drive off Woodstone Road north of town.
Description of Place:
Modernized in 1883, the Woodstone Bed and Breakfast is a former family estate
with a significant role in Amelia’s history. At one time, the Woodstones owned
much of the town and were on par with the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers as one of
the wealthiest families in New York history. They had an opulent eight-bedroom
home on the site in the 1800s, but the rebuilt structure has twelve bedrooms, a
parlor, gallery, study and a servants quarters on the west side of the house.
The interiors were influenced by German and Dutch craftsmen, the staircase to
the second floor and attic is constructed from hard oak transported from
Montreal, the decor includes both Revolutionary War-era furniture and Victorian
artifacts and the wallpaper was transported specially for the house from France.
It has six fireplaces, four bathrooms, iron-wrought windows and original gas-lit
sconces converted to electricity. The basement is still in its original state
except with a 1960s boiler and electrical system. The grounds include a rock
wall around the grounds, a lake, the old family cemetery and assorted
structures, such as an old boat house and root cellar.
Ghostly Phenomenon:
If one is ever driving along Woodstone Road running northward off the
Briarcliff-Peekskill Parkway north of Ossining, they are going through an area
filled with numerous period homes surrounded by what seems to be a heavily
wooded area interspersed with random open fields every few miles. Just as one
starts nearing the city limits and encroaches upon the bend in the road near
Yorktown, there is a chance of seeing an ethereal female presence in white
dancing through the road and vanishing into the woods on the east side of the
road. No one knows who she is, but going back to the Seventies, she has been
seen several times and described much the same way by over a hundred
motorists… tall, thin and ephemeral with long flowing dark hair and floating a
bit over the road. A driver in 1975 gave her a more detailed description:
“Standing by the road curiously
watching unseen activity in the field abroad, she stood in a seeming trance with
her head slightly leaning to the side. Her dress was like a long t-shirt with
faded colors. I couldn’t see any legs, but her skin was white, and her eyes
and her unruly wild hair dark brown to pitch black. She also wore clear glasses,
and as her apparition shifted in and out of focus, she looked like the epitome
of a 1960s hippie princess….”
No one knows who she is, or if anyone
ever knew, her name might have been lost to history. Her appearances occurred
often between 1971 to 1978, afterward becoming less sporadic. Her last sighting
was in 1985, but other figures have occasionally been seen. A figure in
Eighteenth Century attire dubbed “Hamilton” (after American statesman
Alexander Hamilton) was seen once during her spate of sightings and once again
in 1989 and 1993. Still others have seen a huge lumbering figure resembling a
bearded woodsman standing by the field and leering angrily into the cars as they
passed through the area.
It might not be just the road that is
haunted since the sightings have all occurred in close vicinity of Woodstone
Mansion near the curve. The Woodstone Family was a wealthy German family who
owned the textile mills in the area among several other businesses. They even
attained the term “robber baron” in the 1880s and 1890s, much like
Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, and they were often at odds with neighboring
families, such as the Frisbys, Clarys and Dawsons. Amidst the tales of
backstabbing and philandering in the family, it was rumored that the mansion was
haunted by deceased family members. Victoria Woodstone often had séances in the
house in the 1930s, and her brother, Thomas, said he often heard footsteps
running up and down the stairs to the cellar. (In an odd addendum, Thomas said
he often felt and sensed his mother’s presence in the house.) In 1941, his
son, Carl Woodstone, once described the figure of an 18th Century gentleman step
out from a dark bedroom, stare at him curiously and then fade away into the
darkened room.
Could this be the same figure known
later as Hamilton in the 1970s?
Once left buried in the annals of
Hudson Valley lore and legends, Woodstone Mansion attracted the attention of the
CGS when Samantha Arondekar, the new owner of the mansion, requested a private
paranormal evaluation of the structure to see if it was still legitimately
haunted. Carl Woodstone had been her maternal great-grandfather, and his sister,
Natalie, had extensively described the activity of the spirits in her diary. The
previous resident in the house was Sophia Brimble, a descendant of Thomas, and
she knew all the legends of the house, but by this time, many of the family
members had passed on, often childless. Samantha was the last known relative of
Sophia in this family line, and though born and raised in Ohio, she had lived
much of her adult life in New York City, away from the stories of the hauntings.
After inheriting the house, Samantha
and her husband, Jay Arondekar, soon found a house that had been neglected in
the last years of Sophia’s declining health, and the resulting restoration
certainly stirred the activity up once more. Called upon by Jay to debunk or
confirm the activity, CGS’s visit turned into a three day interview and
investigation.
“So, this is what you guys do? Go
around looking for ghosts in old houses.” Samantha met paranormal researcher William
Collins during a casual revisit of the estate. He had previously explored
the house for Sophia in the Early Nineties, and his return visit was a bit more
informal, basically a chance to update Samantha on his 1991 investigation.
“Yep, pretty much.”
Since reopening the house, Samantha and
Jay have reported seeing and experiencing odd occurrences that “weren’t
typical with their usual routines. In their first days in the house, Jay recalls
hitting the foul scent of decomposition in the upstairs hallway, a signal in
some cases of human remains buried on the grounds.
“There I was…” Jay describes.
“Coming from the bathroom, heading to the bedroom. Okay, the hot water
wasn’t working in the house, I’m a bit irked, and I walked into
this…cloud… I gotta call it a cloud because I had no advance warning of it.
You know how you smell just a trace, and then get hit face first at the source.
It wasn’t like that. It was just suddenly there as if someone had farted
straight into my face. It was so rancid. You know, as a chef, I’ve smelled
meat that had gone bad, but this was a million times worse…. Like bowels of
hell sewage or something.”
“Tell me about the lights…”
Collins asked.
“The electricity is a little
weird.” An attractive blonde ingénue looking
somewhat younger than her actual years, Samantha is a free-lance writer who has
submitted to “Reader’s Digest,” “The Young Girl Diaries” and
“Standard” magazines. Jay was a promising assistant chef on the rise at
“Enrique's” in Manhattan until they left the hectic New York City rat race
to go into business for themselves at Woodstone. “I would expect old lights to
flicker and go out, but they’re also flickering when they’re turned off and
unplugged, and sometimes they flare really bright for no reason and just wink
out. Sometimes they flash really bright, causing the bulb to explode….”
“We went through twelve bulbs in one
week….” Jay confessed.
Two months into the mansion
restoration, the contractors were digging up the pipe to the front fountain to
replace it when they hit human remains three feet west of it and four feet down.
Contractor Mark Dunn had to cease all work on the property until an
investigation could be done, but the next day, just before he was about to call
the authorities, the remains had mysteriously disappeared. Of the incident, he
thought it might be an old crime scene or an old cholera cemetery (the original
Woodstone House had been used as a pest house for Cholera victims in the 1830s),
but for some reason he recalls speculation they were somehow the remains of a
Viking.
“Who got that idea?” Collins asked.
“Jay’s wife…” Mark answered. He
couldn’t recall if it was a complete skeleton or not. He recalls seeing a
skull, ribcage and several bones as well as the smoldering remains of animal
skins and leather. He concludes it might have been Native American remains, but
the aged leather he saw still makes him wonder about that. After the remains
vanished and the pipe was replaced, the spot was filled back in with top soil.
In reviewing the litany of supposed ghosts haunting the property, the bearded
woodsman comes up as a candidate deserving a valid identity.
Among other activities on the property,
Jay also recalls hearing an inexplicable tap on his laptop that got his
attention. He asks, “Would ghosts know what a computer is?”
“No one who had died before 1990.”
Collins responded. “It has often been guessed that ghosts return to the
activities to which they are familiar. Has anyone died on the grounds in recent
years?”.
“Back in 2000,” Samantha continues.
“My Uncle David was a trader at Lehman Brothers, and he was often coming up
here to have parties when my aunt and uncle were on vacation in order to party
with some of the other traders. One of them was a guy named Trevor Lefcowitz,
and they were drinking and doing drugs. According to the story I heard, Trevor
got really intoxicated and disappeared sometime during the night. When David and
the others woke up the next morning, he was nowhere to be found, and it’s been
generally guessed he fell into the lake and drowned. His remains have never been
found.”
“You think Trevor’s ghost is
haunting the property.”
After a slight pause and cursory look
around the room, Samantha responds. “Yes.”
While the Hamilton, Hippie Princess,
Woodsman and ghost of Hetty Woodstone have been documented in paranormal books
describing the location, Collins listed a few others reported prior to the 80s
by Natalie Woodstone’s journals in the 1930s. Among the ghosts she knew, she
provided a possible name for the Woodsman: “Gordon.” In fact, this presence
was mentioned as far back as the previous house on the property along with the
ghost of a Native American. No one knows who Gordon was or where the name came
from, but according to Natalie, all of the Woodstone children saw him at one
time or another. Natalie also mentioned the Native American ghost passing
through the halls and often standing at the top landing of the staircase in the
first floor hall.
Most of Natalie’s writing focused on
the ghosts in the cellar. Noting that that area was much more terrifying than
any other area of the house, she mentioned that several people felt watched or
heard voices down there. While the upstairs ghosts could be brief and sometimes
interactive, she noted the cellar ghosts could be terrifying and overwhelming.
Servants didn’t like going down there, workmen couldn’t stay down there
without feeling crowded and one guest going down to get a glass of wine reported
seeing a diseased face looking back at him. Natalie identified these ghosts as
the Cholera Victims who died in the previous house on the property. The modern
Woodstone Mansion was built atop the exact same foundation, and the seances
through the 1920s and 1930s reportedly kept them from coming up the stairs.
Somewhere between 1930 and 1933,
several of the Woodstones started hearing sounds of singing in the house, but it
was Thomas Woodstone who identified her. After hearing the strange singing in
the back of the house, he noted it sounded exactly like Alberta Haynes (Natalie
incorrectly gives her name as “Hayes” in her journals.), a Jazz singer and
performer from New York City who died of a heart attack at a party a few years
before. Natalie writes that Thomas seemed especially distraught that her ghost
might be haunting the mansion, but her presence didn't really make itself known
until the 50s and 60s, well after Natalie’s last journal.
Other ghosts made themselves known
through the 60s. Amidst new sightings of Hamilton, Gordon the Woodsman, the
Indian and even Hetty Woodstone herself, Sophie Brimble was terrified by a
headless figure walking through the downstairs hall in March 1959, forcing her
to run back to her bedroom and lock herself inside. She stopped living at
Woodstone for a while, but in that period, a female hippie was killed by a bear
on the grounds by a bear looking for food. After the ghost of the Hippy Princess
started appearing, Sophia thought she was the same girl. David Woodstone even
thought his mother was often talking to her and the other ghosts in the house. In
Mike Enslin’s book, “Ten More Haunted
Mansions,” David comments: “My mom definitely thinks the house is haunted,
but since the headless guy scared her, I think they have decided not to scare
her anymore.”
Since inheriting the house, Samantha
Arondekar has discovered two more ghosts not mentioned in any of the earlier
journals or literature. One of which is Trevor Lefcowitz, the Lehman Brothers
trader who drowned on the estate in the 1990s. His presence for some reason
tends to follow her around and move things around. When objects vanish, Sam just
cries out, “Darn it, Trevor, put it back.” and the item comes back or turns
up in an unused bedroom.
Another spirit is Pete. In her first
week in the house, Sam said she heard a chirpy happy voice say, “Hello” to
her. Looking around, she couldn’t see anyone, but it has happened several
times.
“I don’t know why,” She confides.
“But he kind of acts like a representative of the other ghosts. He doesn’t
scare me or make himself known, but…” She grins like a little girl,
“He’s just glad to have me here.”
History: The
Woodstone family is known to have owned two structures on the location. The
first of the two mansions was a post Revolutionary War structure which was built
between 1753 and 1761 by Heinrich Woodstone, a member of the Woodstone (Wodestein)
family from the area of Wodestein Forest near modern Darmstadt, Germany, many of
whom were later hired as mercenaries by the British armies against the Colonial
Army in the Revolutionary War. Woodstone had the title of baron, but without any
legal basis, and despite his claims, he was not related to the German
aristocracy. He arrived in the area sometime between 1740 and 1745, seizing
parcels of land in the Hudson Valley with permission of the British upon which
he built his estate upon 400 acres of land in modern Westchester County.
Traveling back and forth between the colonies England, France and Germany, he
gained the reputation of being a robber baron in the area, building a grand
two-story mansion on his property with bricks excavated from the limestone
quarries of Upper New York, windows crafted in France and furnishings taken from
craftsmen in Germany.
After his passing, the structure was
abandoned by the family ahead of the British forces in the Revolutionary War.
Colonial forces used it as a base and army hospital until they had to abandon
it, but after the war, the structure ended up abandoned. It is known it was used
as a pest house for cholera victims in the 1832 Cholera epidemic in New England
with around 75 to 80 deaths, but the medical records of the victims was quite
lax and the number might be as high as 120. A graveyard was established on the
grounds for the deaths, which still exists a few yards from the house, now
neglected and forgotten in thick foliage, while other graves might have been
covered by the artificial lake created in the 1870s reconstruction. After the
last death, the house became considered contaminated and was burned down after
the last death.
During the Civil War, the Woodstones
departed the area and ended up owning other homes on Manhattan and on Long
Island, but eventually Heinreich’s son, Edward Wilheim Woodstone, inherited
the property and began the process of building a much larger and grander version
of the original house. His son, Elias Tabbert Woodstone finished the
construction, later joined by his wife, Henrietta (“Hetty”) Woodstone, who
had been born in the original house. She led much of the construction as Elias
upheld the family’s business dealings. Reconstruction is said to have started
in the 1870s (by the latest 1880). Elias turned out to be just as ruthless as
his ancestor to establish his fortune, employing child labor in his
father-in-law’s textile mills, but he also turned out to be quite a
philanderer. He disappeared on December 3, 1873, possibly murdered by persons
unknown, either by Hetty, a disgruntled business associate or by a jealous
suitor or husband, leaving Hetty to raise their eight children alone assisted
only by Herschel Manheim, a Dutch caretaker and manservant.
The history of the family afterward is
unclear. Hetty was a much more reserved person and instead kept herself involved
in family and household affairs, but she was also quite a socialite after her
husband passed, having parties for the local elite and especially business
savvy. Many family members had been lost in the yellow fever epidemics of 1859
and 1862. Hetty herself passed away in 1887 after a short illness (some sources
say she overdosed on laudanum), the mansion staying in the family through her
son Bernard’s descendants, eventually reaching his great-granddaughter, Sophia
Woodhouse in the 1940s. Over the years, the family fortune was quickly being
depleted, and various family members had to sell off several parcels of their
property to meet their debts, but their surviving fortunes did allow them to
keep the mansion and live there into perpetuity. The family lawyers often
encouraged her to rent the property out for weddings and gatherings to cover
living expenses, allowing for a portion of the grounds to be adapted into
campgrounds. Sophia and her husband, Emil Brimble, had only one son, David,
who died in 1989, and Emil died in 1993 from a stroke.
After her death from cancer in 2012,
the house and surrounding grounds were inherited by her only surviving relative,
Samantha, another descendant of her late brother, Barnard. At last word, they
were hoping to convert the mansion into a bed and breakfast.
Identity of Ghosts:
In the course of the investigation, Samantha Arondekar named several of the
spirits she believed was haunting Woodstone Manor. Several of these names could
be confirmed by local county census records, newspaper accounts and even obscure
folklore from the region. However, according to psychic Dawn Rochner, there was
in excess of over twenty earthbound spirits wandering the old estate, among them:
Thorfinn (c. 1000) - Possibly the oldest of the residual spirits, and also the
most controversial, the presence blamed for playing with the electricity has
been identified as Thorfinn, reportedly a Viking who died here during the Norse
exploration of the Hudson Valley While it is known Viking outposts have been
found in Newfoundland and Maine, there is no evidence they traveled as far south
as the area of the state of New York. There were several figures named “Thorfinn''
in old Norse runes from between 800 and 1000 AD, such as Thor Greybryrd,
Thorfinn Redbeard and Thorfinn Magnarson. Barely anything is known about these
figures beyond a few notable deeds, and there are no stories of any of these
figures reaching North America to connect them with Woodstone. If the Viking
presence described at Woodstone is one of them or none of them is unrevealed.
Sassapis (c. 1400) - Sassapis was
reportedly a member of the local Lenn-Lenapi Indians, whose lands once covered
the area where modern Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania meet.
Today, modern Lenape live in reservations in Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Ontario.
They were first encountered by Europeans in 1524. and interacted with Dutch
traders in the 17th Century. Several of their place names, like Manhattan, still
exist to this day. They successfully restricted the Dutch traders until the
1600s, and although several prominent members have been identified from their
known history, Sassapis remains factually unconfirmed.
Captain Isaac Cothron Higgentoot (March
13, 1738/1739 - July 20, 1777) - Despite being a part of modern history, not
much is known about Captain Higgentoot as so little has been published about
him. Assisted by Tracey McIver at the New England Historical Society in Albany
and by Rose Hastings at the Daughters of the Revolutionary War Museum in Boston,
CGS learned that Higgentoot was born in Burlington, Vermont and attended
Dartmoor College in New Hampshire. One of three children, his father was a
wealthy land-owner, but some sort of falling out compelled Isaac to sever
himself from his family and join the Continental Army. Ingratiating himself with
his officers, he advanced to the rank of captain and served as an advisor to
General John Burgoyne at Fort Ticonderoga in Vermont, at some point encountering
Alexander Hamilton, the Captain of the Continental Army at White Plains. He
eventually married Beatrice Tisdale, the sister of a fellow officer, which
turned into a loveless relationship out of convenience. When British forces
attacked and seized the fort in June 1777, Captain Higgintoot was one of the
officers to negotiate the unconditional surrender with the British, afterward
Cothron and Burgoyne’s men retreated down the east shore of the Hudson River
for New York City with several soldiers suffering from dysentery. In fact, their
regiment might have been the soldiers seizing Woodstone Manor in the 1770s. Two
weeks after the withdrawal, Higgintoot caught the disease himself and died from
complications two weeks later, getting buried with several others somewhere on
the grounds of the vicinity of Woodstone Mansion.
Cholera Victims (1832) - Although
epidemics were not uncommon in New York throughout the 18th and 19th century,
the cholera epidemics of 1832 and 1849 seemed to hit especially hard in the
Lower Hudson Valley. Cholera is a bacterial infection transmitted through the
water supply, especially through water contaminated with fecal matter, and it
typically attacks the small intestine, often becoming fatal. It caused severe
diarrhea and dehydration, sometimes called "Blue Death," because of
the grayish skin tone connected to extreme dehydration. Near Amelia, cholera
victims listed in the 100s, and the victims were housed in every available
structure. These locations were known as "pest houses," and after the
victims died, the structures were often burned down to prevent further spread of
the disease. The Woodstone property saw possibly almost two hundred fatalities;
getting burned down almost immediately after the last death. The new Woodstone
Manor was built on the foundations of the previous mansion in the 1880s, and the
cadaverous and fleeting shadows seen in the residence’s basement by the
Woodstones are believed to be the ghosts they experienced, likely exiled to the
basement by the fire, the only surviving part of the original structure..
Henrietta (“Hetty”) Woodstone
(April 1, 1845 - March 13, 1887) - Woodstone’s most prominent spirit next to
Isaac, Heddy Woodstone was the daughter of Edward and Eva Woodstone, descendants
of Heinreich Woodstone. Born at Woodstone, her education was in London with her
parents negotiating her marriage to her distant cousin, Elias Woodstone, to
bring together the different branches of the family. (This “negotiation” is
unconfirmed, but this claim has been part of the many rumors to have passed
through the family. In her own diaries, Hetty claimed to have been born in
London, meeting Elias while on vacation in France,) They had five children: three sons named Thomas, Nathaniel
and Quentin, and two daughters, Victoria and Sarah. Beyond her public persona as
the family matriarch and as a shrewd businesswoman, she was also a very gracious
public hostess, having numerous parties for visiting politicians, dignitaries
and captains-of-industries, including the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers. Thomas
Edison, Nelly Bly, President Grover Cleveland and according to one account,
Herman Mudgett (better known as serial killer H.H. Holmes). After a party in
March 1887, she excused herself to bed after describing a headache, and after
she failed to respond to breakfast the next day, her servants found her on the
floor of her bedroom, having passed away the night before. Her funeral was the
largest in Westchester County for the time, with over 725 mourners in
attendance.
Alberta Haynes (April 11, 1894 -
December 31, 1929) - Animated, spirited and lively in her life, Alberta was the
daughter of Jamaican immigrants. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, she was raised as a
teenager in Memphis, Tennessee by cook Lionel (Lemuel) Haynes, who later became
a minister at a segregated church, where she started singing. However, she
wanted to be the center of attention (a trait likely formed from having to
compete with five brothers and sisters) and started singing in jazz clubs,
quickly getting immersed in the night club culture. Her career was guided along
by August St. John (real name: Earl Boudreaux), a nightclub owner from Harlem,
New York, entrepreneur and bootlegger, who was making elicit whiskey in the
cellars of his club. St. John also became her boyfriend, but it’s reported she
had several boyfriends in her career. He booked her in several clubs he owned in
New York City in the 30s, but after several nights of hard partying and
performing, Alberta collapsed on the stairway at Woodstone while attending a
private party for Thomas Woodstone, Samantha’s great grand-uncle, who later
lost his life in World War Two. After her collapse, she was taken into the front
parlor to lie down, but by the time the local doctor arrived, she was pronounced
deceased from a heart attack. Her father and brother, Finis C. Haynes, a Memphis
lawyer, paid to have her returned and buried in Tennessee in a private ceremony.
Ironically, St. John was arrested a few weeks later by the FBI for his illicit
activities. The timing left Alberta’s fans and loved ones to speculate she was
an informer on his activities, and she was actually murdered by him, by one of
his confederates or by a jealous rival. Regardless, her harmonious voice has
been heard several times in the house, mostly through the 80s, and her
apparition often glimpsed coming down the stairs. In 2023, speculation shifted
toward Thomas Woodstone through an Alberta Haynes Fan Podcast. The details of
this speculation have yet to be revealed.
William “Crash” Cressler - (October
13, 1931 - August 19, 1958) - Not much is known about William given his past and
lifestyle. Growing up in the 40s and 50s, he was a local “greaser”
(unskilled mechanic) and motorcycle rider who ran with the “Dangers,” a
motorcycle group that trafficked Interstate 9 and Highway 94 in the area. He had
a minor criminal record for being a public nuisance and petty thief, but through
the summer of 1958, the Dangers ran afoul of the Reapers, a more hard core
motorcycle group, and the two had several skirmishes in Amelia, Brookfield,
Solitaire and other local towns. In August, the two gangs met each other on the
Woodstone grounds as their feud had intensified, and William was killed. The
details of the incident are unclear. It has both been claimed that William lost
his head due to a wire strung along the gates that was supposed to knock him off
his bike or due to a sharpened sword wielded by one of the Reapers. From the
Early 60s to the Mid-Eighties, his headless spirit was seen wandering or pacing
the grounds while surrounded by a strange fog by witnesses. Sophia Woodhouse,
who had been a young woman when William was murdered, said she saw him several
times, both with his head, and without it, on several occasions.
Susan Anthonee “Flower” Montarro -
(September 9, 1938 - July 18, 1968) - Seen as early as 1973, Susan Anthonee
Montarro (Montero) in California’s San Fernando Valley, and attended Berkeley
College in 1958. Her history has been very well documented over many of the
Woodhouse ghosts. Originally described as bookish and quiet in her youth, she
became involved in the Viet Nam protests of 1965 and ended up living in a hippie
commune near Las Vegas, Nevada by 1966. Between 1965 and 1969, she is said to
have been a part of somewhere between 50 to 60 different cults, communes and
gatherings. She was heavily into alcohol, cocaine and marijuana, and had
numerous sexual partners. Her father, Edward Montarro, was a Hollywood executive
for Universal Pictures, and spent over $250,000 trying to track her down and
bring her home. In 1970, he learned that Susan had been killed by a black bear
in the woods between the Amelia Campgrounds and Woodstone Manor. Originally
buried as a Jane Doe, Susan’s body was retrieved and buried alongside Los
Angeles’s Evergreen Cemetery, later joined by her parents. She had three
brothers, Dennis, Robert and Brandon, and two sisters, Rebecca and Ashley.
In September 2021, the Ulster County
Review published an article about Susan that named her as one of five flower
children that robbed the Hudson County Citizen’s Bank in 1968. Unable to
decide what to do with the money, she and her boyfriend, Ira Klein, stole the
money from their commune and were making their getaway when they encountered the
bear that caused Susan’s death. Ira later started the Daisy Fair Trade coffee
shop to benefit coffee workers with the money, dedicating it to Susan, who he
knew as “Daisy.” Today, the franchise owns 272 locations in the Northeast
United States.
Pete Martino (January 9, 1967 -
November 8, 1984) - A native of Amelia, Pete Martino was a local travel agent
and scoutmaster best known for his friendly and ebullient nature. He was a
married man with a daughter and ran Pinecone Troop 403. Well-liked, he was known
to be loyal and patient and a peace-maker in all confrontations except his own
marriage. His marriage with Carol Martino was sometimes abrasive and oft-times
difficult. After one fight with Carol on November 8, 1981, he was distracted
from his routine during an archery lesson on the Woodstone grounds when one of
the girls launched a careless arrow that landed in his neck. Although attempts
to save his life were forth-coming, his death was almost instantaneous. He was
survived by his daughter, Laura. In 2023, his death was almost profiled on the
low-budget syndicated program, “Dumb Deaths,” only to be replaced by a
segment on Susan Montarro.
Trevor Lefcowitz (June 15, 1969-
November 11, 2000) - Seen briefly a few times in the Early 2000s, Trevor
Lefcowitz was a descendant of Jewish refugees who arrived in New York from
Germany shortly before World War One. He attended Samuel F. Ellis High School,
where he played football and basketball, later attending Pennsylvania State
where he studied economics and business with a minor in drama. Tall and
good-looking, he had numerous girlfriends, developing a reputation for being a
lothario. Before working for Lehman, he briefly worked for Morgan Stanley; the
job shift placed him in a position to meet and associate with NYC’s biggest
celebrities, such as Matt Damon, Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Sean “Puff
Daddy” Combs. Living a life of excess, he was attending a party with friends
at Woodstone when he overdosed on drugs and jumped into the lake trying to swim;
his body wasn’t recovered until February 2023. He was afterward interred at Beth Moses Jewish Cemetery
near Farmingdale, New York preceded by a private social
ceremony at Woodstone formed by his parents and joined by close friends.
In addition to these ghosts, Rochner
also identified British and Colonial soldiers on the grounds left over from the
Revolutionary War, figures of old homesteaders, a teenage girl from the 1980s,
locals who once lived in the area, a surveyor who froze to death one winter as
well as a car crash victim from the highway among others. She estimates almost a
hundred spirits in the surrounding area, not all of whom are conscious they are
dead or aware of the others around them.
Investigations: The Collinsport
Ghost Society has done two investigations in the house; one in October 1991
for Sophia Brimble, and an informal one in May 2002, roughly seven to eight
months after Samantha Arondekar inherited the property. In the original
investigation, the team largely used scientific and psychic means to collect
data, focusing on the Hamilton, Gordon, Hippie Princess, Native American and
Cholera Ghosts, which had been best documented in written accounts. Scrutinizing
the location with cameras, EMF detectors and other gear, William Collins, Steve
Barnette and Larry Wedekind covered much of the house taking photos and trying
to entice the spirits. Among a few architectural noises and camera glitches,
they caught several EVPs in the cellar, mostly incoherent or too distorted to
decipher, but a few phrases, “Who are these people?” “Why are you here?”
“We’re over here.” and “Leave the light on.”
Apparently they really want the light
on.
Dawn’s psychic impressions of the
estate were more productive. She mentioned the sinister perceptions of the
Cellar Ghosts were much conflated, and they were mostly tragic and forlorn
because of their fates. Of the rest of the spirits, she began providing clearer
identities of several of the entities:
“Who do you feel first?”
“I sense a few figures older than the
house. One is Native American…. Lenapi… He says his name is Sasappis.”
“Did he die here? How did he know the
Woodstones?”
“He was here before them. Like maybe
1300s or 1400s, but he’s not the oldest.”
“There’s someone older?”
“Thorfinn…. You call him
“Gordon.””
Hearing Dawn claim there was the spirit
of a dead Viking on the property received blunt skepticism as there is no
evidence the Vikings ever reached as far south as the Hudson Valley in their
explorations. On the other hand, several of her more dubious claims at other
locations concerning historical figures have frequently had some merit so her
impressions were accepted at the moment to move on to other characters.
“Is Hamilton here?”
“Don’t call him that. He hates
being called that.”
“Why is that?”
“Some kind of rivalry, I think…”
True to Natalie Woodstone’s journal
entries, Dawn confirmed that Hetty Woodstone’s spirit was haunting the house
and grounds and was randomly seen by family members. For the Hippy Princess, she
discerned a name, “Flower,” but she wasn’t one of the Woodstones. Just a
tragic death on the property. She went on to add there had been more than a few
tragic deaths on the property, like that of William Cressler (by violence),
Alberta Haynes (heart attack), Pete Martino (archery accident) and Trevor
Lefcowitz (drug abuse) among others.
Unfortunately, Dawn also speculated
that Samantha might be able see the ghosts as well and might have been choosing
to conceal it. During her interviews, she was somewhat distracted, speaking with
a halting tendency and often looking around to empty areas of the room.
“Her ability might be more focused, allowing her to
see them as they looked in life.” Dawn mentioned. “I would not be surprised
if her ability allowed her to see ghosts wherever she went."
Source/Comments:
Ghosts (CBS) (2021-Recent) - Activity based on the Haw Branch Plantation in
Amelia, Virginia, the Phelps Mansion in Stratford, Connecticut, the Dickinson Mansion
in Dover, Delaware, the Baker Mansion in Altoona, Pennsylvania and the Bishop
Huntingdon Mansion in Hadley, Massachusetts.