The Ghost House of Oyster Bay
by Rebecca
(New York)
As a child there was an abandoned house next to my middle school which still gives my nightmares. Oyster Bay, Long Island has a long history of hauntings and apparently this house had made its mark on the residents and its story was known to all of the locals.
First off, the house was originally an estate. The owner of the estate, in an enraged episode locked his wife and 3 children (including a baby) in the master suite on the second floor and they all burned to death.
The property was abandoned for a few years until an investor bought the property and turned it into a development. The original estate home on was turned into a recreational center for residents. Within 1 month of its opening 3 children drowned in the swimming pool and a worker died mysteriously.
The property was again abandoned and that is when the occurrences took place that I can vouch for. At the time I was completely unconvinced of the existence of ghosts. Upon entering the house I had no fear whatsoever. We played around and explored and nothing happened.
The second time I went, me and two of my friends were playing near the furnace area joking around. I was dared to go down into the boiler room. Of course I was completely unafraid and trotted down the stairs making my voice echo loudly with ghost sounds, when all of a sudden the lights went out and the door slammed shut.
Me and my friends (who were pleading with me from the top of the stairs not to go down) all got locked in and were frantic when we heard foot steps coming up from the boiler room. Just as quickly as it happened, the lights went back on and the door unlocked.
The third time I went with a herd of middle schoolers who all had their own tale of horror in this house. We wanted to get to the bottom of it and claim it as our after school hang out. Needless to say we got more than we bargained for that day. We waged a war and the house won.
What happened that day we will all remember. There was a girl that we still never figured out if she was there or not. How it started was one girl got scared and walked down a spiral staircase and said she was going home. We all told her that that was not the way out, but she went anyway.
We all went down a cement ramp right next to the staircase that should have lead us to the bottom where she was, but there was only a hole and a partial staircase when we got there and it was not like that prior. We all raced back up to see if the girl was okay and then there was no staircase at all.
We all decided to continue through the house holding hands. We convinced ourselves (at the time) that there was no staircase and the girl had left and was just trying to scare us. The next day the girl said that she had never come with us and that we were all crazy.
We continued down the ramp and into a hall full of stench and darkness. We started up the hall and were half way through it before one of the guys realized that he had a lighter. He turned it on and there was blood everywhere. Someone or something had drawn pictures of animals all over the walls with blood. At the end of the hall there were stacks of black plastic bags full of dead animals.
Just when we realized what everything was the cold came.
It raced through the hall from behind the bags of blood and chased us to the pool area. For 5 seconds the entire pool area looked brand new and there was a child floating face down in it. We all saw the same thing. At this point we tried to bust through the boarded up windows in the pool area but couldn't get the wood to budge.
We ran all around trying to get out but nothing was the same as it was when we entered. Exits turned into different rooms. Hallways became longer with different turns and twists. The entire time we were running around there was something chasing us.
We climbed a staircase leading us to the upstairs (we hoped). We knew the upstairs wasn't boarded up and we figured we could call for help on the roof. We had to walk across planks that were above a young girl’s bedroom. You could see it was dusty but it looked lived in. My friend climbed onto the roof and we all started screaming out the window to get the neighbors attention. We were successful and the woman called the cops.
The police showed up fairly quick. Once we saw the cops pulling up reality hit us. We were trespassing! The guys all took off and were caught on the way down the stairs. My best girlfriend and I were just making it back over the planks to arrive at the top of the stairs when the cop told us to follow them down.
Once we were outside we told the police what had happened. They didn't believe a word we said and insisted we show them the hall of blood. We must have gone through that house with the police three times and nothing was the same. There was no ramp leading to a lower level. There was still no spiral staircase. There weren’t as many hallways, but one cop did catch a glimpse of the changing house. He questioned the other cop saying, "wasn't there just a hallway here?"
We went by the pool area and explained how we tried to break the wood to get out. The cop just laughed showing us that we could have just pulled it up easily. However, that was not the case when we were in there. The wood felt like steel and there was no light shinning through the old battered, flimsy, easily breakable wood that was there as we were explaining the story to the cops. Also, there were no planks for us to even walk across upstairs. The floor was solid and there was no child’s room beneath it.
Needless to say we never returned to the house which was left untouched until I left for college. Today the house has been slightly re-done and people are actually living in it. I have been tempted to knock on the door just to get a glimpse, but can't even get close without having every hair on my body stand on end. I still feel like the house is alive and remembers me when I get too close.
