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The Cropsey Maniac: The Forgotten Origins

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Featured Horror Mystery and Lore

It’s not difficult to find sources about the Cropsey Maniac—that is if you’re looking for what has overwhelmingly taken the place of the original urban legend. Finding an article that doesn’t devolve into a true crime tell-all about Andre Rand and the serial kidnappings and assumed murders of disabled children from Staten Island is difficult, if not outright impossible. In fact, we’ve even addressed the true crime events here, but only in juxtaposition to the original, forgotten origins of the Cropsey Maniac urban legend.

The Origin of Cropsey

In 1977 the New York Folklore Society published an article that detailed some of the varied accounts of the Cropsey legend, from a survey of eleven New York City informants which Breslerman conducted in the fall of 1966 (Haring 16). What Breslerman found in his survey was, was that while all of the accounts varied on specific details, all of the significant plot events went relatively unchanged.

Watch Puzzle Box Horror’s Cropsey Urban Legend Video

As a time-honored tradition of summer camps in New York and some surrounding regions, children would attend bonfires to hear the story of the Cropsey Maniac. Once a well-respected member of the community, the accidental death of a loved one sparks a homicidal madness in him and drives him to stalk and kill children who stray off the grounds of the camp. Below is one of the accounts in full, from Peter Sherman, who was identified as a former camper and counselor at Camp Lakota on Masten Lake in Wurtsboro, New York.

George Cropsey was a judge. He had a wife and two children, all of whom he loved very much. He owned a small summer cottage along the shores of Masten Lake. His wife and children would go there for the summer months, and he would come up to visit with them on the weekends… One night two campers snuck away from the camp’s secluded evening activity and went down to the lake to roast some marshmallows. The fire they built went out of control and there was a big fire on the lake. George Cropsey’s family was burnt to death. When Cropsey read the report in the newspaper, it is said he became completely white and disappeared from his home. Two weeks later one of the campers from Lakota was found near the lake chopped to death wtih an ax. There was talk of closing the camp for the remained of the summer but they didn’t.

The camp owners insisted upon constant supervision of the campers, there were state troopers posted in the area, and each counselor slept with either a knife, an ax, or a rifle. One night at about three in the morning, one of the counselors was awakened by the screams of one of his campers. He put a flashlight in the direction of the screams and saw his camper bleeding to death, and, standing over him, a man with chalk-white hair, red, bloodshot eyes, and swinging a long, bloody ax. When the maniac saw the light, he ran from the bunk, but the counselor chopped at his leg with the hatchet he was armed with. The man got away but left a trail of blood into the woods. The state troopers were called, and followed the trail into the woods. They called to Cropsey to surrender, but all they heard was crazed laughter. They determined his position, and when he would not give himself up, they built a circle of fire around him. When the fire had subsided, they searched the woods for his remains but could find nothing. The police closed the file on Georg Cropsey, assuming him to be dead…

It is said that on the evening of the anniversary of the death of Judge Cropsey’s family, you can see the shadow of a man limping along the shores of Masten Lake.

(Haring 15-16)

Significant variations of the Cropsey Legend

Summer camps weren’t the only locations where these stories were told. Boy Scout circles, summer jobs, middle schools, high schools, and even universities were hot spots for spooky storytelling. Regardless of where the informant heard the story, their version was always localized to their respective camp or school.

Cropsey urban legend map of incidents
Mapped Locations from stories collected by Lee Haring and Mark Breslerman

Whether George Cropsey was the owner of a hardware store, a member of the city council, a county judge, or a retired businessman, he always seemed to be one of the best-liked men in town. In each story, he has a wife and at least one child who suffers an accidental death. Of course, it’s a tragedy and Mrs. Cropsey suffers immense sorrow—in most if not all cases, she dies from her grief not too long after her child.

In some instances, Cropsey’s wife and child(ren) die together in a fire or some other inexplicable accident. George Cropsey goes silently mad, disappears and that’s when campers start to go missing or turn up dead. When the police got involved, they would sometimes involve local residents organized into search parties. They would comb forests and even drag the nearest lake in an attempt to locate the missing children.

The terror continues as more campers and counselors go missing, or camp dorms go up in flames—Cropsey takes his revenge upon the innocent souls he deemed responsible for the misfortune that befell his family. The authorities realize that it is George Cropsey perpetrating all of these heinous acts against the youth and a manhunt begins.

In most stories, Cropsey is somehow cornered—whether by a fire in the forest, by bullet holes penetrating the boat he’s escaping in, or by chance of him plunging to his death off of a cliff. It is believed that he died, although there was no indisputable evidence, or body found to conclude that he was, in fact, dead. In every story, after his supposed death there is still a lingering suspicion that he is still out there, waiting to continue his murderous rampage. Overall the endings of each of the versions Breslerman acquired, the motif of the death of children as punishment remains the same.

This background story shows campers that an average person, who would usually be trusted in a city setting, may not be trusted in unfamiliar places. This shows the uncertainty of what might lurk in nature and serves as a warning away from the unknown.

(Vale 3)

Cropsey Pop Culture Parallels

When The Burning came out in 1981 it wasn’t particularly well received—especially not in comparison to the other slashers of the time, but it has since become something of a cult classic. Never mind the period-appropriate stunts, special effects, and over-the-top acting, this movie was loosely based on the original New York urban legend.

The film follows Cropsey, the abusive alcoholic caretaker of Camp Blackfoot; the counselors decide that pranking him will be the sweetest revenge. When their plan goes more terribly than they could have possibly expected, it ends with Cropsey being engulfed in flame, recovering in the burn unit of the hospital, and Camp Blackfoot being shut down.

The ill-fated prank spurs the beginning of a hunt for revenge, years later, against the counselors and campers of the local Camp Stonewater. Like other slashers of the time, the killings primarily surround the horniest of teenagers, leaving everyone else as victims of circumstance and convenience. Not precisely a blow-for-blow telling of the original legend, but it ultimately pays homage to it in ways that count.

Where the Cropsey Urban Legend Meets Reality: An Evolution to a Chilling True Crime Story

Cultures around the world have practiced the tradition of oral storytelling, mainly as fables and folklore for younger generations to learn an important lesson. This tradition would relate chilling tales to children about what could happen if they didn’t listen to their elders.

The community of Staten Island was no different in the mid to late twentieth century. When they would tell the story of the Cropsey maniac it was meant to warn them about the hidden dangers of the world and a feeble attempt to keep teenagers from misbehaving.

After all, Staten Island may have turned into a suburban community, but it was originally established as a dumping ground—not only for local garbage, but was also rumored to be a hot spot for mob body dumps.

My search for source material on this legend was originally quite thin; I was searching for the legend, the myth, and the fiction. My misfortune was that I consistently hit the same wall—with stories about the “real” Cropsey, which is what Staten Island locals dubbed Andre Rand, a convicted kidnapper, and suspected serial killer.

For the kids in our neighborhood, Cropsey was an escaped mental patient who lived in the tunnels beneath the old, abandoned Willowbrook mental institution. Who would come out late at night and snatch children off the streets.

Joshua Zeman, Cropsey (2009)

The origin story of Cropsey is often confused with the real-life tragedy that befell the Staten Island community in that surrounded the Willowbrook State School grounds. It’s not surprising that the story of Cropsey was linked to a devastating series kidnappings and subsequent killings. Afterall, there were striking similarities between the spooky story told over a summer camp bonfire and the man who later embodied the legend.

… as teenagers we assumed Cropsey was just an urban legend. A cautionary tale used to keep us out of those buildings and to stop us from doing all those things that teenagers like to do, but all that changed the summer little Jennifer disappeared. That was the summer all the kids from Staten Island discovered that their urban legend was real.

Joshua Zeman, Cropsey (2009)
Andre Rand being led from the courthouse.
Photo courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival
Andre Rand serial killer face image
Photo courtesy of Staten Island Advance

Andre Rand became the boogeyman of Staten Island, but he allegedly started out as an employee of Willowbrook State School. In some instances, he’s said to have been an orderly and in others a lowly janitor—these two accounts don’t seem to line up at all and we found no sources to cite in this instance.

After his brief two years of employment at the Willowbrook State School, Rand didn’t leave the area, instead, he set up his own private shantytown and remained on the grounds of the school. Rand was allegedly seen with several of the victims before their disappearances which ultimately made him a suspect.

One of the girls was found buried in a shallow grave between 150-200 yards from where Rand’s campsite was located. There was a trial, but Rand was only able to be convicted on one charge of first-degree kidnapping, but the jury was unable to convict him of the murder charge, despite his proximity to her grave. Rand, who is currently serving two 25-years to life sentences will be eligible for parole in 2037.

Did you know all of this about the Cropsey Maniac? If not, what did you know about the legend? Where were you when you heard it and what age were you? Let us know in the comments below!

Sources

Cropsey. Directed by Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio. Breaking Glass Pictures, 2009.
Haring, Lee and Mark Breslerman. The Cropsey Maniac. New York Folklore 3. 1977 Pp 15-27.
The Burning. Directed by Tony Maylam, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1981.Vale, Meredith. The Cropsey Maniac. Artifacts Journal 11. 2014 Pp 1-5.

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The Gothic Literary Pioneer: Edgar Allan Poe

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Featured Horror Books

Without question, one of the most important and influential American writers of the 19th century, Edgar Allan Poe was the first author to attempt to make a real professional living out of writing. Most of Poe’s work was inspired by the events that happened around him and to him throughout his life. During his career, he was a pioneer of the science fiction genre due to his fascination with the sciences available during his time and it can be seen that he often wrote stories that spoke about new inventions. With stories such as The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Poe has also been credited with inventing the modern detective story, using concepts such as deductive reasoning–this inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the famous Sherlock Holmes.

Despite all of his talents within different genres of writing and the fact that his modern reputation is based primarily on his horror stories and lyrical poetry, he made his living as a literary critic and theoretician–one of America’s greatest.

Short Stories

Poe can be considered the master of the macabre, as he famously transformed the genre of the short horror story with his psychologically deep and insightful tales that the genre had never seen before. His classic stories helped to re-imagine the genre, where The Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Black Cat, and The Masque of the Red Death which revealed the depths of his masterful story-weaving talents. While The Black Cat isn’t Poe’s most popular short story, it definitely reveals in a shorter form the dark and psychological terrors of Poe’s mind–the words that poured out of this author’s soul spoke of deep pain and misery that one can only credit to the gothic form.

The Black Cat (1845)

The Black Cat

For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not–and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events. In their consequences, these events have terrified — have tortured — have destroyed me. [Read More…]

Other Notable Short Stories

Poetry

Even if Poe had never written a single story, his poetry would have been enough to secure his legacy in literary history, as nearly every single one of them is considered a poetic masterpiece. A brief introduction to some of his works of poetry would most notably include The Raven, Annabel Lee, To Helen, and Ulalume. Below we have included one of our favorite poems by this famous dead author, which can be considered one of the all-time favorites and most notable of all of his poems, The Raven.

The Raven (1849)

The Raven Illustration

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore–
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door–
“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door–
Only this and nothing more.”
[Read More…]

Other Notable Poetry

Why Should You Read Edgar Allan Poe?

To be clear, this selection of the work of Edgar Allan Poe is woefully lacking, but these are a great selection out of his incredibly large body of work. We urge you to read as much of it as possible and if you’re already a studied fan of Poe, let us know what your favorite story or poem is below!

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The Gruesome History of the State Hospital in Salem, OR

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Featured Haunted Places Horror Mystery and Lore

Built in the 1800s, the Oregon State Hospital has a reportedly insidious past that went on for years. Once an insane asylum, it is said that terrible malpractice occurred within its walls and that it had a secret tunnel that connected the buildings which shrouded these terrible experiments that were rumored to have been conducted on its patients. Today, part of the hospital has been preserved as a museum, and even now visitors to the hospital claim to have experienced paranormal activity, where they feel as if they are being watched, while on the premises.

The History of the Oregon State Hospital

Located in Salem, Oregon many of the original parts of the State Hospital still remain in use, while other parts are closed off due to severe disrepair. A new wing was constructed in 2011 where most of the patient care takes place now—the grounds look fairly inviting from the outside, there is unfortunately very little indication of the kind of horrors that took place within. When the facility was originally built, it was intended to serve all patients, but it soon became overcrowded and due to this, it became a more specialized facility that served the criminally insane and the mentally handicapped. Visitors are free to tour the campus as well as the interior of the hospital, where they learn that an estimated two-thirds of the population was found to be both mentally insane and found guilty of a crime.

Although these days, the original hospital and asylum are no longer taking patients, the Oregon State Hospital is still in business—but now mostly as a museum, perhaps as a monument to the way we used to treat those who had mental turmoil or abnormal conditions. Taking a tour of the hospital provides those interested with a fairly accurate perspective at the people who were once housed there, as well as the insanity that they actually endured at the hands of doctors who did not have their patients’ best interests at heart. The hospital was built in 1883 and for only having existed for almost a century and a half, the building has a lot of stories to tell. Like any old-fashioned asylum, patients fell victim to things that would never be acceptable by today’s medical practice standards. Over the years that these terrible experiments, abuse, and torture felt at the hands of both staff and fellow patients, it’s estimated that hundreds if not thousands of patients died within the asylum—it’s not incredibly surprising that it has the reputation of housing so many tortured souls.

If you take a tour of the facilities, you’ll find the museum is certain to educate people on the terrifying experiences that patients lived through in their time within the hospital. Exhibits fill the halls that were once filled with patients and the location was made popular when it was used as the filming location for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Surprisingly it functions still as the state’s sole psychiatric hospital. Within the exhibits, visitors can see the entire overview of how procedures for treating mentally ill patients has changed over the years, from its opening in the late 1800s to the present day. Even though the rooms were all remodeled, there lingers an intensely creepy presence throughout the museum.

The Unfortunate Incident of 1942

Can of Cremated Patient Remains
David Maisel, Library of Dust 103-566

One of the more ghastly stories that haunt the walls of this old facility happened in 1942, when forty-seven people were killed and hundreds more were struck incredibly ill after they were served their daily breakfast.

The Real Story…

Nearly eighty years ago now, on November 18, 1942, a terrifying scene unfolded at the Oregon State Hospital; what began like any other day ended in tragedy and confusion. After being served an enticing breakfast of scrambled eggs, patients began to die left and right—they presented with illness by vomiting blood and writhing on the floor in agony. Some patients died in minutes, others succumbed to this mysterious terror hours later, the death toll ended at forty-seven lives having been lost. In the official report, 263 patients fell ill, but the newspapers that ran the story reported that over four hundred patients had contracted this unknown illness.

At first, there was a fear of sabotage—Governor Charles A. Sprague called it a mass murder, where today it would be called a terrorist attack during a time where the country was already in the midst of World War II. With the fear of sabotage on the West Coast, there was a suspicion that the food supply had been compromised, as it was considered a vulnerable target. The eggs that had been served at the state hospital came from the federal surplus commodities that were distributed by the U.S. government and were part of a shipment that had been divided between the state institutions, schools, as well as other programs in Oregon. Governor Sprague immediately ordered that all institutions stop using the eggs which had come packed frozen in 30 lb. tin cans—the federal government followed suit and issued a similar order.

An investigation was immediately launched and officials from the Army, American Medical Association, and Food and Drug Administration were quickly dispatched to the state hospital campus in Salem. Considering the patient occupancy of the hospital was estimated to have been around 2,700 at the time—which is more than five times the amount that it treats today—it was exactly the reaction that we would hope to see. First-hand accounts remain what can be found in newspaper archives and a report submitted to the Journal of the American Medical Association from two of the doctors who worked at the state hospital, and one who worked at the Oregon State Police crime lab in Portland.

One of the doctors to first respond was Dr. William L. Lidbeck, a pathologist who lived in one of the cottages on-site. What he found was a horror show—patients were experiencing abdominal cramping, and severe nausea, which turned into them vomiting blood, having seizures, struggling to breathe, and even some experiencing paralysis. Lidbeck had deduced that they had ingested a virulent poison and believed those who died the quickest had eaten the most of the poisoned eggs, whereas others would have had their death prolonged for hours. The night ended with a full morgue, chapel, and a hallway lined with bodies.

It is said that the death toll would have been worse if not for one heroic staff member, Nurse Allie Wassel, who took one bite of the eggs after the trays were brought to her ward. She immediately noticed the taste wasn’t right, so she refused to serve them to any of her patients. She became ill, but survived and was credited with saving many lives. Those who weren’t lucky enough to be in her ward put their spoons down after complaining that the eggs tasted too salty, or soapy and they began to immediately experience symptoms.

The investigation into the incident was of the utmost importance was conducted swiftly—autopsies were done on six patients, and samples of the poisoned eggs were taken from their stomach contents as well as the patients’ plates. These samples were fed to rats who succumbed within minutes and within twenty-two hours it the poison was identified as sodium fluoride, but it was also only found in the eggs cooked at the Oregon State Hospital. Commonly used as an insecticide for rats and cockroaches, it is a white substance that acts quickly, but could be easily mistaken for flour, baking powder, or powdered milk—even ingesting a small amount could be fatal. The thing they didn’t know, was whether it was intentionally fed to the patients, or if it had been a horrible accident.

According to the reports, the hospital’s assistant cook confessed and told the officials that he had sent a patient to the basement storeroom for powdered milk and the patient mistakenly brought back roach poison and it had been mixed in with the scrambled eggs. Patients in asylums were regularly used to help in the kitchen and around the hospital, as a part of a work-experience opportunity to help them with self-esteem, feeling productive, as well as earning a small wage. Procedures now have changed so vastly that an incident like the one that occurred at the Oregon State Hospital could no longer happen.

The patient who had retrieved the poison instead of the powdered milk? Twenty-seven-year-old George Nosen, who had admitted himself to the hospital as a paranoid schizophrenic. Nosen had been assigned to kitchen detail—washing dishes, cleaning floors, preparing for lines of other patients—and the kitchen was seriously understaffed. That mealtime had been incredibly busy, so Abraham McKillop the assistant cook had sent Nosen to fetch the powdered milk—a violation of the rules established at the hospital in 1908—and Nosen apparently wandered into the wrong storeroom, which tragically opened with the same key he had been given for the food storeroom. The storeroom with the poisons and the storeroom with the food were only eleven feet apart—and it was ruled to have been a tragic accident. While terrible, it did bring about some necessary changes to the way the hospital conducted its safety practices, as well as the labeling, is done by the Food and Drug Administration.

The Tortured Souls That Haunt the Ground

What remains within the walls of the Oregon State Hospital, including the intimidating and creepy underground tunnels, has created an environment where those who have investigated have felt an overwhelming sense of evil. The brave souls who willingly explore the tunnels and other areas of this haunted asylum are undeterred by the stories about patients allegedly being transported in the tunnels below the facility, or the evidence that suggests they were used for immoral, unethical, and barbaric medical experiments; this all took place so deep underground that their screams could not be heard. Phantom footsteps, doors opening and closing on their own, screams, and cries from former patients can all be experienced at the Oregon State Hospital.

A lot of the unrest that can be found here can also probably be attributed to the controversy of the hospital staff having lost over 1,500 cans of patients’ cremated remains.

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The True Abilities of a Poltergeist

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Horror Mystery and Lore

The Mysterious History of the Poltergeist

Poltergeist reaching for the clown doll
Artwork by Mary Farnstrom

Poltergeists are often connected with ghosts, and while it’s true that ghosts can be poltergeists, poltergeists are not always ghosts. Categorized by their noisy nature, their ability to move objects, as well as various other physical disturbances. The term poltergeist comes from the German language, poltern, “to knock,” and geist, “spirit,” and in England the poltergeist is often synonymous with the boggart. These mischievous and often malevolent spirits date back to ancient Rome, as well as medieval Germany, China, Wales, and they continue to be reported from elsewhere in the world to this day. These impish spirits have not changed much over the year in how they present, except for taking into account the evolution of technology. In ancient reports, the reports showed that would throw rocks, dirt, and other objects, cause loud noises, knocking, strange lights, and unexplainable shrieks, as well as physical and sexual assaults that would leave their victims shaken. Modern reports have included lightbulbs spinning in their sockets and telephones repeatedly dialing the same number.

Physical assaults—scratching, spitting, biting, pinching, punching and sexual molestation—usually only appear in a small number of cases, but they are still consistently prevalent among cases over the years. Overall, the activity doesn’t just peter out, it stops as suddenly as it starts, but the length of time the victims are affected varies so widely that the end is never predictable. Whether the victim ends up suffering for a few hours, a few months, or a few years, it is never a permanent affliction. One intriguing aspect of poltergeist infestations is the fact that the activity is usually centralized around a single individual, or “agent”.

Researching the Poltergeist Phenomenon

The phenomenon of poltergeists has been researched in-depth at a scientific level since the late 1970s by parapsychologists and they have come up with several theories as possible explanations. Alan Gauld and A.D. Cornell, English researchers of the time collected the data from 500 separate instances of poltergeists dating back from the 1800s. Among the characteristics that these cases had in common, about two-thirds of all cases included small objects moving from their original location.  Over half of the cases showed that the poltergeists were most active at night, and many individual incidents lasted longer than a year. Some other disturbing coincidences were that quite a few cases were focused around females under the age of twenty.

Before the 19th century, poltergeist activity was blamed primarily on the paranormal—spirits, witches, demons, and most often the Devil. At the turn of the century, however, a large spiritualism movement began, where mediums would routinely allow themselves to become temporarily possessed as a conduit to those who have passed. There were several researchers who began to investigate the idea of unconscious psychokinesis, alluding to the idea that the individual that the activity centralized around, was, in fact, the cause of it all. This isn’t to say that they were being accused of faking the activity, but more likely causing it without their own knowledge and although this theory began to be explored in the 1930s, it is still considered fairly controversial in nature. It’s important to take into consideration that the majority of these reports were recorded between 1840 and 1920 before the phenomenon came under the scrutiny of modern scientific research.

Poltergeists in History and Modern Culture

The Amityville Haunting

Ron DeFeo Jr., the infamous murderer of Amityville still lives and he continues to serve his six 25-year life sentences in the New York Correctional Facility; his initial story consisted of him claiming to hear voices that were convincing him to kill his entire family, but then his story changed, multiple times since. While DeFeo now claims that he didn’t murder his entire family, the details have gotten so fuzzy over the years that it’s still incredibly difficult to tell if this was an actual case of possession—which later resulted in poltergeist activity for the Lutz family—or if the entire thing was a hoax propagated by the Lutz family. It’s widely theorized by skeptics that the Lutz family intended to cash-in on the mass murder committed by DeFeo, due to a problematic financial and legal condition so they could take advantage of the publicity. It makes sense to take the view of the skeptic, it’s never a good idea to accept anything on blind faith, but much of the evidence and first-hand accounts disagree with the skeptic’s point of view.

Why do we believe them? Well, even though it’s been proven that lie detector tests are not infallible, George and Kathy Lutz weren’t trained to pass them, yet they did so to prove their innocence and ended up passing. There are also claims that George Lutz had a history of dabbling in the occult, we’re not so sure where we fall on this matter—this could mean that either Lutz was incredibly familiar with the symptoms of a poltergeist haunting, or it means that he was more open psychologically to the idea and the poltergeist took hold. The entire family apparently experienced foreign odors, cold spots in certain areas of the house, and reported a slime that would randomly ooze out of the walls and keyholes. One tidbit that could be an embellishment, was the allegation that George Lutz would wake up at 3:15 AM every morning, which was when Ron DeFeo Jr. was said to have committed the murders.

Aside from observers from outside of the Lutz family, there was the priest that was called in to bless the home, who reported having heard a voice scream to, “get out!” Due to his own personal experience, he advised the family to never sleep in that room again. The paranormal activity within the house only increased from there, with a garage door opening and closing, as well as a knife being knocked down in the kitchen by invisible forces. This all escalated even further to every member of the family except for George, who observed the phenomenon, levitating off of their respective beds. Daniel Lutz, one of the sons continues to have nightmares about this house even to this day.

The Truth Behind Amityville?

The following video addresses both skeptics and believers when it comes to the Amityville haunting, so why not hear both sides?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvXU11Kyj5E
Amityville Horror The True Story

The Ash Manor Haunting

Poltergeist as an apparition on the bed
Photography by Jrwooley6

Investigated in 1936, Dr. Nandor Fodor became incredibly popular for his controversial poltergeist theory about the Ash Manor Ghost. The actual case reports that shortly after moving into the old house, the owner, Mr. Keel and his wife began to encounter a strange apparition dressed in an Elizabethan era smock—as well as hear strange loud knocking—upon trying to confront this intruder, Mr. and Mrs. Keel found that trying to touch the apparition that their hands would go right through it. Fearing the worst for his family, Keel hired a medium, as well as various psychic investigators. This resulted in the medium suggesting that all of these happenings were the result of strained family life, a tell-tale sign of poltergeist activity. The final result of Dr. Fodor was that people, “who put themselves in an unguarded psychological position,” are likely to be more vulnerable to hauntings and poltergeist attacks.

The Enfield Haunting

In the book, This House is Haunted (2011), the account of the Enfield Haunting is given in full, which also inspired The Conjuring 2 (2016), part of the great paranormal franchise that follows the investigations of Ed and Lorraine Warren throughout the years. The Enfield case is possibly one of the most famous poltergeist hauntings ever recorded. Originating late August of 1977, in the suburb of North London, the house in Enfield was inhabited by a single mother and her four children; the initial report was of the two middle children experiencing their beds shaking violently, and shuffling sounds when the children were in their shared room. At that point, the mother Peggy, was not entirely convinced that it was actually happening.

Peggy and her two middle children were all witness to when sudden furniture movements and loud knocking with no origin began, at which time Peggy sought the help of her neighbors. Once her neighbors witnessed the knocking but had no explanation for it, the police were called in. The police were even hard-pressed to find an explanation behind the knocking and furniture movement that they ended up witnessing upon responding to the call. The Enfield case eventually subsided for a time, before being reignited a short while later lasting for a few years in total.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHPYriXhNW8
The Enfield Haunting – A Real Life Haunting (2016)

Films that feature poltergeists

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