The Lady of Lake Ronkonkoma

There is a lake in the center of Long Island which is rumored to be haunted by a vengeful Indian maiden.

Ronkonkoma was the name of an Indian princess who fell in love with a white settler named Hugh Birdsall who lived near the lake. Upon their meeting, the princess and the settler immediately fell in love, but their union was forbidden by her father. Every night, they would sneak out to send messages of love to one another on peeled bits of tree bark. Ronkonkoma would paddle her canoe out to the middle of the lake, where she would then float a message the rest of the way to her lover waiting on the opposite shore. This continued for years, until one day the princess was unable to deal with this arrangement and snapped. She sent a final farewell note to her lover. He received it on the shore and minutes later, the canoe washed up in front of him as well. Inside it was the princess’s body––she had committed suicide in the middle of the lake. He too committed suicide out of anguish over the death of his one true love.

Since that day Ronkonkoma has haunted the lake, becoming known to many as the Lady of the Lake. Angered because she wasn’t allowed to love in life, she now drags one man into the lake each year. People say that at least one person has drowned each year in Lake Ronkonkoma for the past 200 years, the large majority of them male. Many others have reported being drawn by some unseen force out to the center of the lake, as if something was trying to drag them in. These souls have been able to resist the pull of the Lady of the Lake, and have been lucky enough to live to report the existence of this strange phenomenon.

Haunted Lake of Francestown

Just outside of Francestown in New Hampshire, there is a pond that has come to be known as “Haunted Lake.” They had reason to give it this nomenclature.

Way back in the pond's history, there was a fire along its shores that burned everything, leaving it looking very eerie and odd. European settlers and Native People all noted its odd appearance.  

In the 1700s, a surveyor was employed to map out the area and wrote in his journal, “Soon after darkness set in, there commenced groanings and shrieks as of a human being in distress, and these continued, most plaintive and affecting, till nearly morning.”

In the late 1700s, a man was building a mill near the pond and found the bones of a “very large man.”

In the 1800s, four males drowned in the lake.
– A boy named Jacob Langdell, aged 15, drowned about 1810. Found with lilies clasped in hand. [author’s note: the lilies part is pretty odd, don’t you think?]
– A boy named Samuel Allen, drowned about 1816
– Ichabod Gay, drowned June 20, 1824, noticed states: “In Francestown, drowned, in Haunted Pond, Mr. Ichabod Gray, aged 55, deranged.”
– Nathaniel Aiken, drowned about 1830

Eventually, the pond was named for the Scoby family, but locals still referred to as the Haunted Lake.

The Curse of Acascosa Lake

Locals say if you go swimming in Acascosa Lake, you will feel hands pulling you down into the deep waters. People tend to avoid going there after dark. Local legends vary in some ways but they agree on one thing; the lake is cursed.

Acascoa Lake floods often. The local native tribes long ago used to believe that the flooding was a sign of anger from the Great Father. When the lake swelled, they would gather all of their prettiest young maidens and choose amongst them one who would be sacrificed to the lake to appease the gods. It was a great honor to be chosen. They were decked out in the finest of clothes and were told that they were saving their people and bringing honor to their families.

However during one of the floods a girl was chosen by the name of Háhnoma who was not willing to give her life away. She was betrothed to the chief’s son of a neighboring tribe. Their wedding was to fall just a few days after the sacrifice. Panicked she sent word to her lover of her impending doom, imploring him to come and rescue her, even if it meant incurring the anger of her own people.

Something happened to delay the messenger and her betrothed arrived too late, finding her drowned body floating by the shore, decked out beautifully with flowers in her hands. So upset was he by this that he threw himself into the waters and sunk down holding his dead bride-to-be until his own lungs filled with water and he succumbed to the deep cold lake. The tragedy put an end to the sacrifices on the lake but their story still continues.

Legend has it that the ghosts of both Háhnoma and her love still burn with anger and seek to have revenge upon those who enter the lake, taking advantage of Háhnoma’s sacrifice to appease the flowing of the lake. On days when the lake is low and still people have actually drowned in water that they could stand up in.
In 1972, teenager Emilio Gonzalez was seen standing in the lake with water up to his waist. When his mother looked again a moment later, he was nowhere to be found. A search was conducted and eventually his body was dredged from the bottom.

In 1986 a 40 year old career lifeguard and strong swimmer disappeared without a trace. His glasses were found near the shore but his body has never turned up.

People have reported feeling a tug when swimming. Others describe it as a pair of hands pulling them down by their legs.  One couple swears they saw a woman’s face in the water’s rippling reflection. No matter what, the lake has earned uite a reputation and people go swimming with care.

Mount Misery Road got its name not from the eerie legends surrounding it but actually from it's terrain itself. In the early days of Long Island it did not make good farmland and became more of a crossroads between farming communities. Because of its hilly nature and the difficulty wagons had of passing through it, it began to be called Mount Misery. Sweet Hollow Road is also linked with the Mount Misery legends and is only a few blocks over from it in the same region. The legends mingle somewhat so most people combine the two.

There are many legends concerning this area. Some of the most common are the traveler stories. These are people seen or experiences encountered no the road. Some say there is a woman in white who haunts the area and you will see her walking on the side of the road, but if you stop or turn around she will not be there. She also likes jumping in front of cars. This may actually be linked to an old hospital in the area that burned down with this patient inside. Another story says that if you park under this small bridge you may see kids hanging from it, an echo of a past suicide. There have also been reportings of a phantom cop who stops drivers along the road. Everything sounds OK until you see that the back of his head is missing. Others say if you park under the Northern State overpass and put your car in neutral, it will be pushed back up hill. There is also supposedly a horseback riding camp nearby and one of the female campers was supposedly molested by the counselors but her father would not believe her and in angst she killed them all and then hung herself from this same bridge.

If you are traveling down Mill Creek Road in northern Maine, you just might encounter a spectral hitchhiker. A lady in white is said to roam the roadside searching for a ride.

Back in the 1800’s an outbreak of cholera hit the small rural community. Winter is harsh in Maine and more so, so far north in the woods. The village was nearly isolated due to the snowfall. Times became even more desperate when their only doctor succumbed to the disease. Anne Clark was the mother if a four year old girl, Emma. She had lost her husband just weeks before her daughter became ill. Desperate, she decided to hike the ten miles in the snow and blinding cold with her daughter to try to get down to the closest main road. Back then it was a small dirt road connecting two towns, but still heavily traveled.

She took her daughter in her arms, wrapped herself up in her hooded winter cloak and set out, but she was walking straight into a blizzard.  During the white out she may have lost her way, but legends say she was only a hundred feet from the road when she fell, succumbing to hypothermia. They both died almost upon the roadside not even knowing how close they were to help. Ever since then on snowy nights drivers report seeing a woman covered in snow lurching into the road with a bundle in her arms. It has even been known to cause accidents as drivers swerve on icy roads.  One brave driver stopped, thinking to help someone in distress. The woman came alongside him, begging for a doctor for her daughter. When he looked into the bundle in her arms he saw a long dead and frozen child and took off at high speed. On another occasion, a driver got a flat and was approached as he was fixing his tire. So moved by her pleading cries he offered to let her sit in the car until it was fixed. But a few moments later when he looked in to check on her, the lady was gone, yet snow covered his back seat!

Clinton Road is located in West Milford, Passaic County, New Jersey. It runs in a generally north-south direction, beginning at Route 23 near Newfoundland and running roughly 10 miles (16 km) to its northern terminus at Upper Greenwood Lake.
The road and the land around it have gained notoriety over the years as an area rife with many legends of paranormal occurrences such as sightings of ghosts, strange creatures and gatherings of witches, Satanists and the Ku Klux Klan.

At one of the bridges over Clinton Brook (Dead Man's Curve) near the reservoir, if you put a quarter in the middle of the road where the yellow line is, at midnight it will supposedly be promptly returned by the ghost of a boy who drowned while swimming below or had fallen in while sitting on the edge of the bridge. In some tellings an apparition is seen; in others the ghost pushes the teller into the water if he or she looks over the side of the bridge in order to save him from being run over as he was in life. There are accounts of phantom vehicles: pickup trucks or even floating headlights not attached to any vehicle that supposedly appear from nowhere in the middle of the night and chase drivers to the end of the road, then disappear.
Some visitors to the area report also seeing people dressed weirdly at odd hours who simply stare at those who see them and do not speak. Sometimes these people disappear or are apparently not seen by those present.

I encountered my first ghost when I was about five. I was just going to sleep in my room. At the time I had a bunk bed but the top was used for toy storage. I sa a woman enter the room. Because of the top bunk blocking me I could not see her face but she was wearing some sort of calico print dress. The skirt was poofed out a little as if it was a hoop skirt. And she had a navy blue shawl over her shoulders. Her entire body was glowing a deep shade of blue.

She walked form the door to my bed, stopping at the edge. Bending down she grasped the covers and pulled them over me. I remember not really being frightened, though that in itself is strange. If it happened to me now I would be scared out of my socks! I only remember thinking; “That’s not mommy!” As soon as the strange lady had done with tucking me in, she turned away and walked out the door. I leapt up and followed after, but when I get to the door she was gone.

My family was the first to live in the house so to this day this is unsolved. We have had tons of other paranormal experiences there. I have never seen her again but that experienced was the first to introduce me to a world unseen.

We’ve lived in a haunted house since I was very little. One of the incidents which sticks out most to me was one I did not actually even witness, yet it gave me the chills. I am six years older than my sister. When we were scared at night because of things happening in the house, my sister would come into my bedroom. I would play some Enya or something soothing to get us to fall asleep.
At the time my room was upstairs in what was probably the second most active room in the house. I had previously seen unexplainable green and yellow lights from behind the slatted closet doors and had hear some weird noises by the far side where the bureau and mirror were.

One night, my sister crept into bed with me and I lit candles and put on my Enya for us. When I woke up around 5AM, she was gone. Being a weekend I found that weird and I went downstairs to see what happened.  I found my sister curled up in a fetal position on the couch. I asked her what happened and what she told me sent a shiver down my spine. She said, “A monster was coming out of the mirror and I got scared!”.

And my next thought was, she left me there, sleeping and defenseless while something paranormal was going on. Thanks sis, I thought. But after hearing that, I never felt quite safe to sleep up there again combined with everything else I had experienced. I moved my room six months later.

We had just moved into our new apartment in Deer Park. It was the first time we were living together and just out of college. It was honestly maybe a bit ratty, a small one bedroom in the heart of an industrial town. But we loved it. My wife made all sorts of little cheap crafts and things to make the place look nice.

I think it was about two weeks after we moved that I began to notice something odd. Sometimes late at night, I would hear the clock of our answering machine go on. But no one had actually called. At first I wrote it off. No messages were left and I assumed I was imagining it. But then my girlfriend told me she had heard a woman’s voice in the apartment when she was alone.

Besides that, we found things in the wrong places. I would put my keys down on the nightstand and they would be found in the freezer the next morning. We thought we were losing our minds. But that all changed one day at dinner. All of a sudden the machine came on right in the same room, and a woman’s voice said “John? Where are you John?” I grabbed for the phone, but all I got was a dial tone. My name is Mark, but it still sent a shiver down my spine.

Later that week we did a little web searching and found out that our apartment stands on what used to be a farm back in the 1800’s. The farm owner? John Caldwell. He was survived by his wife who hung herself. Suddenly it all made sense. We talked it over and decided to wait out our lease and find a new place. Since then we’ve never turned back.