The house is haunted.
About 10 years ago our place was surrounded by some 40 acres of woods. A miracle in small town suburbia, just 20 miles
from New York City. Then a developer, a Mr. Levine, a shyster by
all accounts got permission to build on land which we knew was wet lands
property. There was a pond out there
just beyond our woods. I used to take my
young son out there to catch tadpoles.
The land was a peat bog.
On fire ever since we were kids. The smoke could be see most days
drifting over the highway beyond. We
were under extreme caution by our parents never to walk in there. They said, and rightly so, that we could
break through what looked like solid ground and end up in a burning hot
pit. Even firemen didn't go in there
unless the brush caught on fire. They
just waited year upon year for the underground fire to burn itself out. The place came to be known as Burning Hollow.
When the EPA came to take plug samples they look them from
the edge of the peat bog. Of course they
came up clean. Somebody greased
somebody's hands. The parcel was worth
many millions of dollars. Our Mr. Levine
got permission to build on 8-10 acres.
We had had our land surveyed and somehow the line was misjudged by Mr.
Levine. And a house went up on a 1600'
lot in a AA rated zone where houses should have been on no less than 2400 foot
lots.
The New House went up.
We checked and rechecked our line.
The town upheld Mr. Levine's maps.
Soon the monstrosity went up, tall enough to block the sunrise on that
side. The house was painted charcoal
black looking like a slag heap of my youth in Pennsylvania.
There was quickly a buyer for the house. The realtor told her client that our back
acre was a park, common land. Common
land! I called the realtor and told her
that common land didn't exist in Ridgedale.
It's something they have in parts of England. Everyone makes excuses to us for their lies. Our
lives were busy. A kid in college, both
of us working day jobs, and nights fixing up our own house. Not a lot of extra
money to hire a lawyer.
A man moved in The New House for which he paid 2 million
dollars. He married a typical type. She
was a woman who found herself a stock broker, and was attempting with voice
lessons to lose her Bayonne accent.
Hair, nails, skins worked on each week.
Dressed just so.
They had a couple of kids.
She decided she wanted a pool in the back yard of the house which was
much too close to our line as it was.
She was insistent. She made
threats against poor Jeffrey Bodner who had the bad judgment to marry her. Jeffrey had trees cut down over our
line. One, a pink Dogwood given to me by
my students when my son was born. A 20 year old tree. I called the police. Jeffrey's surveyor came out and we heard the
buzz of his metal detector right where we told him the pin was under a pile of
stones at the corner of our property. We
heard him swear and say, "I'm screwed.
I have to tell my employer that
you are right and he's wrong."
The pool went in. And the iron
fence sits today not six inches from our line.
Not code!
The pool dug it rained for a week without stopping. The ground around the new pool turned to a
mud pit. The new pool filled with
silt. The wife said if she couldn't swim
in the pool by the 4th of July she would leave.
She got her swim. A couple of
years. She and her friends swam and
sunbathed naked- the kids farmed out to camps somewhere. Then the shouting began.
The woman showed up at a neighbor's place in a silk kimono
one night. Banged on the door saying she
needed help. She had bruises all over
her face. She had them call the
police. She moved out with the kids,
Jeffrey sold the house.
Couple number two. A
prominent doctor. Wife and three
kids. A boy, a girl and another boy, the
youngest. They bought a summer place on
a small lake just over the border in New York.
They were enjoying their boat on the lake when a drunk drove his boat of
a side cove and hit their boat broadside.
Everyone in the water, hurt, but OK.
Except for the wife. She had been
decapitated in the accident. The kids
saw it all.
The little girls cried day and night for her mommy. The
youngest told us that his mom was coming home for Christmas. A series of nannies came and went. Most had stories to tell of harassment, and
other ill treatment. The kids would
become emotionally attached to one and she would be gone with no
explanation. The house was sold to
couple number three.
A nice Chinese couple.
Quiet, hardworking. They owned a
cleaning establishment in the area. They
sold the house in less than a year. We
figured the walls of The New House were taking.
Couple number three are in there now. A second marriage for both. Her two kids and two boys they had together. The shouting began two or three years
ago. We chalked it up to PMS, hers. The children shouted. The teenage girls
stormed out of the house. Windows open
all summer, we heard the uproar. There
was weeping.
A couple of months ago we saw about four policemen in our
back field. My husband went out to see
what was going on. There had been a home
invasion. The couple they said each were
having affairs and had gone out for the night with their respective lovers leaving
a 12 year old daughter to babysit the younger kids. She woke when a stranger put his hand on her
leg in the dark. She screamed; the man
ran; she called 911. The police said in
addition to their investigation of the break in their might be a case for
DYFUS.
Last night, the weather turned mild, the windows were open
to more terrible screaming. Words, threats. They went inside and we could still hear the
melee continuing. The boys were outside
beating the bushes with their hockey sticks, no doubt in frustration, fear,
loathing. They will have caught the
infection.
There are demons in that house. It is said a girl fell into a burning peat
pit over there. Indians cut peat for
their fires centuries ago. Who knows
what strange spirits walk? Who knows
what a place absorbs? There needs to be
an exorcism over there. The New House is haunted.
