By Tammy Pierce of DIPstick Magazine
www.DIPstickMag.com
t.pierce@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
1983 I was dating a guy who lived just outside the village limits of
Maybrook, NY in a house known as Lido Mansion. My first encounter with
this old house came one evening when we were on the phone talking and I
heard a succession of bangs that accelerated in speed and volume. I
asked him what was going on. He said the cabinet doors in the kitchen
had all opened and were closing on their own.
Having been in his house I knew where the phone was located and knew he
couldn’t have made his way around the large kitchen to reach all of the
cabinets. It also would have been impossible for him to close the
cabinet doors with such ferocity and speed. Not only was it physically
impossible for him to accomplish this but also he could never have
manipulated the depth of sound. By this I mean, I could hear the banging
of the closet doors and could hear the sound getting closer to him as it
progressed. Sounding near to tears he asked if he could come over and I
of course said yes. He made it from his house to mine on the outskirts
of Walden in record time.
My next encounter with this house came on an Autumn evening of the same
year. We were hanging out with some friends and were outside making
plans to modify a Barracuda our friend had just bought when my boyfriend
asked me to go up to his room and get his jacket. His room was on the
2nd floor of this 3-story house and had a sitting room as well as a
bedroom. When you entered you came into the sitting room and to the left
was the bedroom, a doorway separated them.
I grabbed his jacket that was lying over the back of a sitting chair on
the far side of the room when I suddenly felt very cold. I thought
perhaps a window was open and turned to find the source when I saw a
rather petite blond woman in the doorway beckoning me to come to her.
She was dressed in a rather revealing crimson gown that one would expect
to find in the 1800’s. It seemed like she was standing in a glowing
****tal for lack of a better term and the ****tal glowed an amber color.
On first glance she seemed very real. That’s to say, she appeared to be
as solid as I was, well, until I looked down. Her definition waned in
increasing increments from her waist down so that when I looked at where
her feet should be, there was just a faintly reddish mist. I also
noticed that it seemed that she couldn’t cross the threshold from the
bedroom to the sitting room.
The door leading back to the hallway was right next to where she was.
When the door was opened it abutted the doorframe to the bedroom. Scared
doesn’t even come close to describing how I felt but I knew I wasn’t
staying in there another second more so I ran headlong across the
sitting room and through the doorway to the hall. As I ran past I heard
a plaintive whisper filled with what can only be described as anguish.
All it said was, “Please.”
I charged down the steps, into the kitchen, out the back door and
straight into my boyfriend’s arms. He grabbed me by the shoulders held
me away from him and said “YOU SAW HER!!” His voice was a mixture of
disbelief, joy and relief. I started to shake and through tears asked
him how he could send me up there alone if he knew there was a ghost. He
said that he thought he was losing his mind and if I saw what he saw
then it wasn’t just him, that there really was someone in there. It
seems he had told other members of his family and they laughed at him,
telling him he needed to grow up and promptly dismissed him. Which was
surprising to me since they had all had unexplainable experiences in the
house as well.
Our friends who were there that night chided him for sending me up
there without warning. When I asked if any of them had seen it they all
somewhat sheepishly admitted that once he told them about the ghost they
wouldn’t go up there. One friend in particular said that he rarely would
even come into the yard. He lived across the street and his family’s
house sat on a hill so he had a perfect view of Lido Mansion. He went on
to describe how he had seen lights going on and off, had heard laughter
like there was a big party as well as what he described as shadowy
figures over by where the in ground pool had been. That was enough
reason, as he said, for him to stay on his own side of the road. In all
honesty, I only ever saw this particular person at the house one other
time in the years I was with my boyfriend. Actually, most of our friends
avoided coming there.
In 1984 I ended up moving in with him and his family. We had a set of
rooms on the 3rd floor above the kitchen. As you came up the steps, to
the left was a living room, to the right was the bedroom and straight
ahead was the bathroom that connected to the set of rooms on the other
half of the floor occupied by his Brother and his children.
It’s difficult to describe the scale of this house. It had 11 bedrooms
the size of most peoples living rooms, a large eat in kitchen that could
easily accommodate a formal dining table with ample room to walk around
without disturbing anyone, a walk in pantry the size of most peoples
kitchens, a storage room for pots & pans that was the size of most
peoples bathrooms, a full sized formal bar with a dance area, 4
bathrooms, a parlor as it would have been called that was so large it
had 2 full sized stone fireplaces in it, an entry way & reception area
with a grand sweeping staircase, a room the size of the pots & pans
storage room that no-one was ever quite sure why it was put there, a
service ****ch at the back that could easily hold 2 stacks of cord wood
as well as a massive screened in sun ****ch. On the grounds was a 6 car
garage that had 2 bays converted into horse stalls, a paddock, an in
ground swimming pool, a smallish size building that housed chickens,
geese & ducks and of course a nice large yard.
We took the rooms on the 3rd floor for 2 reasons. His Sister wanted to
move into his room with her daughter as it was easier for a 3 year old
to only have to traverse one flight of steps and my boyfriend told me
that when he would sleep in his bed she would bother him. The ‘she’ he
was referring to was the ghost. I asked him what he meant by ‘bother
him’ and he said he would wake feeling like someone was touching him and
in general trying to seduce him. That he just couldn’t sleep in that
room any more. I agreed that I was in no great rush to ever go in there
again and I hadn’t been since the night I had my encounter. I asked why
he never told me about this before and he said he didn’t think anyone
would believe him so he simply kept it to himself and slept on the couch
in his sitting room but that he welcomed the chance to move upstairs.
Unfortunately, the move did not prove to be a resolution to disturbing
nights.
He and I brought the bed up to our room and were setting up the frame
when we heard something coming from under the eaves. In old style houses
with a severe degree of pitch to the roof, there is storage space of
sorts behind the wall. The walls are usually very short and afford
mostly a crawl space. We thought a squirrel had managed to get into the
house and so he opened the door to see if he could find what was making
the noise. When he opened it we saw a black cloud like shape and the
smell that emanated made us both gag and our eyes water. He literally
kicked the door closed, grabbed me, half dragging me by the wrist and
half leading me down to the kitchen. It all happened so fast that we
weren’t sure that we had seen what we thought we had. It took us a bit
to calm down and when we could finally talk we affirmed that we had seen
and smelled the same thing as the other. Together we boosted the others
confidence and we decided that putting something in front of the access
door would solve the problem. This was a psychological reassurance of
course designed to make ourselves feel better as anything spiritual
under there that chose to come out wouldn’t in any way be hindered by a
foot locker. It did however work to make us feel better and allow us to
be able to sleep in there. It wasn’t the last time we heard sounds but
it was the first, last and only time we opened that door to look for the
source.
A couple of weeks after we were living on the 3rd floor, I woke one
night to music. It sounded like it was coming from our living room
across the hall. I woke my boyfriend and asked if he heard music. He did
and as he got out of bed to go wring his Brothers neck, as that’s who we
were sure was in there, he muttered some things on what he planned to do
to him and questioned his parentage. When he opened the bedroom door all
sounds ceased. Still very much angry at having been woken up he went to
his Brothers room to confront him but found the room still, dark and
empty. Not convinced it wasn’t him, he went to look out the window and
found that his Brothers car wasn’t there and he wasn’t home. Less angry
and a lot more nervous he returned to bed and explained that he doesn’t
know who or more accurately what was in there but its quiet now, he
said, so lets go back to sleep. That wasn’t the last time we woke to
music coming from that room, we just got used to it and stopped
investigating to find its source. Personally I found it almost amusing
not frightening at all and on occasion would say out loud, “Hey, y’all
want to keep it down in there, some of us are still alive and have to go
to work in a few hours.” That was about the only amusing thing about
that house.
A couple of months or so after his Sister moved into his old room
everyone started to notice drastic changes in her. She was a prim &
proper person, almost puritanical and a great Mom who was very devoted
to her Daughter. Her mode of dress was very conservative. In the Summer
she wore shorts that came to her knees with oversized T-****rts and
wouldn’t even consider wearing a tank top. She went from this style to
wearing things that the “How To Wash” tag was bigger than what it
covered, she was hanging out in bars, leaving her Daughter with anyone
who would keep her and in general leading a very promiscuous lifestyle.
She went from a person who had never even gotten a parking ticket to
getting stopped for DWI and on another occasion totaling her car while
driving drunk. When questioned on her behavior her response was, “I’m 28
and I deserve to have fun while I’m young.” I suggested to my Boyfriends
Mom that I thought maybe she should switch rooms with their Brother.
When asked why, I suggested that maybe the ghost in there that had
bothered my Boyfriend when he slept was somehow affecting her. I was
promptly dismissed and told she’s just going through a phase and it was
normal to want to cut lose a little after having your husband leave you
for another woman. That she just needed to get some self esteem back and
it would pass soon enough and I would understand these things better
when I was older. Well, I’m almost 42 and I can’t say that I understand
any better now than I did then and still believe in my heart that the
ghost was affecting her. I heard much later that when she moved to
California she had become her ‘old self’ again.
There are a couple of other things that happened to us before we
finally had enough and moved to an apartment of our own. One night while
my Boyfriend was at work on the overnight ****ft, I was in bed and swore
I heard a party going on downstairs. I got out of bed and headed down
the back steps that led to the kitchen to see what was going on. When I
came into the kitchen I could hear laughter, music, the sounds of
dinnerware & stemware clinking, in general, a party and it seemed to be
coming from the bar.
I crossed the kitchen and as I turned to the right I saw light coming
from under the door. As soon as I touched the knob to turn it, the light
vanished and took all sound with it. It almost felt like being in a
momentary vacuum. Then I could hear the normal night sounds of crickets,
the refrigerator running and the floor boards beneath my feet creaking
as I backed up towards the kitchen. I turned and ran full tilt up the
stairs back to my room. I woke my Boyfriends parents & Brothers as I was
not in the least bit concerned with how noisy I was getting up the
stairs back to what I felt was relative safety. I was called back down
stairs and very reluctantly went. I was asked what happened and I said I
heard noise and came down. I was cut off there as in turn his Mom &
older Brother told me what I had heard, seen and how it abruptly stopped.
I was dumbfounded to say the least. My reply was, “But you guys were
upstairs, how did you know what happened?” His Dad said they figured it
out when they heard me scream, something I hadn’t realized had happened
until I was told, and then go as he put it, ‘hauling ass back upstairs.’
His Dad said that he personally thinks we’re all nuts but his Mom &
Brother attested to having the same thing happen to them on many
occasions.
The final straw came for me one Winter night. We had run low on fuel
and couldn’t get a delivery until the next day so we were sent to get
kerosene to light the heaters. When we returned we were told the
****table heaters were in the basement to go get them. When my Boyfriend
opened the basement door, the 3 dogs in the kitchen instantly stood up,
faced the door, were growling low in their throats with the hair on the
backs of their necks standing up. As I started to descend the stairs I
felt something I can only describe as darkness. The hairs on my arms
stood up, I felt an almost prickly tingly sensation over my body and my
eyes were tearing. I wasn’t crying but my eyes were tearing up. I had
been living in fear in that house for months but what I felt when I
began to go down those stairs scared me more than anything that had come
before. I flat refused to go down into the basement with him and said
everyone can freeze for all I care I am NOT going down there and no one
can make me. He didn’t push, he simply went and brought the heaters up
one at a time to the service ****ch and I filled them. That following
week we found an apartment and moved out.
It was many years before I went back to that house and to be very
honest with you, I went back because I had heard that it had been burned
down. The things that I saw while living there are not spectacularly
outstanding in comparison with the experiences other people have had
with the paranormal but they were enough to scare me enough to never
want to be there again. When I returned after it burned down I think
part of me wanted to make sure that it was really gone, and it was.
I recently drove there again to take some pictures with my cell phone
to show Tony T$ & Sebastian and found that the hull that had been left
after the fire has long since been razed and the foundation backfilled.
It looks like someone is planning on building something there, as there
are some fresh construction materials where the garage once stood. I
don’t know if its memories resurfacing for me and radiating out or if it
is still active, but my Son was with me and got very uneasy being there.
He asked me what this place was and could we please leave. The sun was
****ning and it was actually a very nice day out yet my Son felt cold and
very ill at ease. I think it will be a good many years before I return
to Otter Road and Lido Mansion again.
Just as a side note, my ex Boyfriends parents researched the history of
the house when they lived there and found that in its life, it had on
numerous occasions been a resort, a brothel and a private home. If
anyone decides to go visit I would love to hear of any impressions or
feelings they glean from being there.
Tammy Pierce of DIPstick Magazine
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