Excerpts from chapters in the book...

Ghostly Legends at Execution Rocks Lighthouse

Officer Phillips unlocked the huge steel door of the lighthouse keeper’s dwelling. We all stood behind him silently, not knowing what lay on the other side. The door made a loud sound as he pulled it opened, letting light into the room. I peered over his shoulder. Huge pieces of peeling paint and asbestos clung haphazardly to the crumbling walls and ceilings. Windows were boarded up, railings and rungs were missing on various parts of the staircase leading to the second floor. Dust, debris, bird droppings and unrecognizable substances littered the old wood floors. The stench from the birds was worse than outside, but still, something beckoned us to come in.

Deepwells Farm’s Amazing Past

“I thought to myself, this is baloney. I can’t be seeing this. I knew he wasn’t a real person because of the way he was dressed. He was wearing period clothing…he had on black pants, a white shirt with some fancy thing like an ascot and he had on a black smoking jacket, like a leisure jacket.” “He was an older gentleman with salt and pepper hair. When you’re in a building by yourself, that’s not what you want to see. My attitude was, if you don’t bother me, I won’t bother you. Let me just clean and get out of here. This is what I was thinking to myself. I wasn’t about to talk to him. I walked out of the room and I could still see him. He walked into the next room, and then he moved toward the front door. Luckily I was going out the back.” “I went outside and got the solution, and then I waited. I waited for him to leave. This isn’t a lot of baloney, I’m telling you. I saw it. It wasn’t a cloud, it wasn’t a shadow. It was as clear as if someone was standing there, and believe me I don’t have a vivid imagination.”

Communicating with the Spirit World; The Story of Richard Schoeller

“…being a funeral director, is unbelievably intense. I would try to keep in mind whenever I prepared a body, that something sacred was happening. But when I started to see people in the funeral home attending their own wake…that was disconcerting.” “I remember sitting in a hearse going to the cemetery…the hearse driver and me…and the woman whose body was in the casket was now sitting in between me and the driver. This was a completely new experience. I thought, ‘Oh, my God…I’m losing my mind’ and she said to me, ‘No you’re not.’ After I opened up to my mediumship and I was starting to learn with my ministers, I was also seeing things in ways that I had never seen before, but only validated what I believed to be true.”



An Old-Fashioned Spooky House

It was a chilly, overcast February day when Joe and I drove past both old and new estates in Huntington Bay, searching for the place once known as the Rhinelander Cottage and Grounds. The winds were picking up and whitecaps were forming in Huntington Harbor. As we pulled in the drive, there it stood: a classic haunted house, complete with dark clouds around it. The tall trees swayed and whipped at its eaves. Our eyes stinging from the cold, we quickly gathered our equipment and followed a path of stairs leading to a screened porch. Once on the porch, we rang the bell of the large door before us, and waited. A petite woman with jet black hair and an exquisite accent opened the door. “Welcome to Rhinelander house,” she said as she moved aside and led us into a dark and massive dining room. The house was almost as cold as the porch.

 

A Mischievous Ghost in Cold Spring Harbor

“I had never heard of the ghosts there before the things started happening here,” said Therese. “The space I was in had been the General Store and the other half was where the store owners had lived. There’s a main section of the store, and an archway that led into a back room. Well, that was really the spot…the back room, on the left, right after you went through the arch. It was a slat wall and I had glass shelves attached to it. I displayed pillows and things on it. I’d come in in the morning, and they would be on the floor: every…single…piece,” she said emphatically. “That was weird.” Therese continued, “But the most unusual thing that happened also took place in the back room. I had pictures hanging on another wall in there. Underneath on the floor was a cedar chest with more pillows in it. One morning I came in, and every picture was off the wall. And it wasn’t like they fell off; they were face up like this,” Therese took one off the wall to demonstrate. “They were lined up in a row, face up.”