Sunset Scream

Brick Church Cemetery, Spring Valley, NY

There is a local story about a 15-year-old girl who was abducted early in the twentieth century, and murdered behind the church just at sunset. Ever since then, people have claimed that if you stand behind the church as the sun is setting, you can still hear her scream, but only if you have a 15-year-old girl with you. Fact, or legend?

This is what one resident experienced:

"We had almost forgotten why we were there. Suddenly, just at the moment that the sun set, there was the loud and terrifying scream of a young girl. It gave me goose bumps and made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. We stood in stunned silence for a second, looking at one another to see if it could have been one of our group playing a joke. It was clear that the scream could not have come from any of us, and this was definitely no joke. We all ran for our lives and I was surprised that nobody was trampled in the panic. We piled into the car and sped away as fast as we could..."


Can the death scream of a 15-year-old girl still be heard behind this church?

One of the most frightening and inexplicable occurrences we’ve encountered was in a deserted town off Lundy’s Road, just north of Napanoch, New York.

Excerpt from Ghost Investigator-Volume 1: Hauntings of the Hudson Valley

…When Bob and I first went to find the ghost town one winter’s night, the only information I had was that there was at least one haunted house way back in the woods. We turned onto Lundy’s Road and the cluster of modern houses there did not prepare us for what lay ahead. A short distance in, thick woods came right up to the road’s edge and the van’s headlights only managed to cut a narrow tunnel in the darkness.

After about a quarter of a mile we were sure the town had to be just up ahead. Half a mile in we wondered if we had the right road. We drove further and further into the heavily wooded blackness and finally the headlights caught the edges of a stone wall. Stopping the van, we saw that there was a beautiful 18th century-style stone house facing away from the road. We got out and stood in the enshrouding darkness and silence, feeling very much like we were firmly in the middle of nowhere.

That feeling was enhanced by the fact that with all the bags of equipment we brought, we had forgotten to bring a single flashlight! Fortunately, we had the infrared camera and the night vision scope, which has a high-powered infrared light. Letting our equipment see for us, we walked along the two sides of the house facing the road. High grass and uneven ground kept us from going around to the front of the house. (Normally, I would have attempted it, but while a twisted ankle is one thing, a twisted camcorder is not acceptable.)

We took quite a few pictures with the 35mm cameras and a conventional flash, and in the brief bursts of light we could see that every door and window was securely boarded up. It was clear that they didn’t want anyone to get in. Too bad they didn’t think about something that might want to come out.

After about ten minutes, we decided there wasn’t much else to see, and as absolutely nothing seemed out of the ordinary, we started packing up to leave. I was quite disappointed that after all the hype, nothing happened. This was the first time I used my new infrared camcorder and not a single drop of spirit energy had appeared. No lights, no sounds, no nothing.

My stubbornness kicked in and I decided that I was going to take the camcorder and go into the grass and weeds after all. Maybe the ghosts were all in the front of the house? I continued taping in Night shot as I started along the side of the house, and just happened to aim the camcorder towards the boarded up door I had previously photographed. I stopped dead in my tracks.

I was not looking at a closed door any more. Suddenly, I was looking straight into the house through an open doorway! The infrared pierced the darkness and revealed the rooms on the interior of the house. For a moment, it almost felt like the old house was beckoning me to come inside and I actually took a few steps forward. As I was being drawn toward the house, I realized that a minute earlier that open door was closed. It was very quiet there, there was no wind, and neither of us had heard the door open. Something was not right.

"Bob?" I called out. "Wasn’t this door closed?"

He replied that as far as he knew the entire house was nailed shut.

I taped for another few seconds and started to back away. Pulling out my 35mm camera, I took another picture. Then I thought it was time to leave.

When we got home, I immediately connected the camcorder to the television so we could view the interior of the house and try to solve the mystery of the opening door. The footage of the exterior of the house came out fine, but when the tape came to the section where I was looking into the inside of the house, there was nothing there. It was as if the camera stopped recording. There is blank tape, and then suddenly the recording began again once I came back to the van. My crucial camcorder evidence was nonexistent, I would have to wait for the 35mm film to be developed.

A couple of days passed before I went to pick up the pictures. As I stood in the store, I immediately flipped through the photos and came across the one I took when we first arrived. The door was solid and closed tight. Then I pulled out the last photo I took. Forgetting where I was, I expressed my shock out loud in words I normally do not use in public.

There was the open doorway, but even more bizarre was that only part of the door was open, and part of the board above the transom was missing!

In the days since our visit, I tried to make sense of what I had seen, that somehow a breeze we hadn’t felt or perhaps a squatter we didn’t see had managed to silently open that door while we were standing there. Now, however, as I looked at the pictures of the partially missing door and the piece above it, I had no explanation… 

 

The photo of the closed door taken soon after we arrived.
Note that the door and portion above the transom are solid wood and securely closed.

 

The last photo I took showing the inside of the house through the open doorway.
Note that only part of the wood door is open, as is part of the area above the transom. It is not as if the door was just opened, it is simply gone!