Where Every Day Is Halloween

When you live in one of New York City's oldest farmhouses, you think about ghosts all year round.

onearth.org, Melissa Mahony, October 24, 2013

Here's what the Onderdonk House's "Victorian Room" looked like in 1936. Can

 you blame the current residents for being a little spooked by its past? (Photo: Greater

Ridgewood Historical Society)

“What’s that noise?” The cat. “There it is again! Coming from over there now!” It’s the other cat. It’s always a cat. Go back to sleep.

Sure, I was a little jumpy the first few weeks I spent living in the attic of New York City’s oldest Dutch Colonial farmhouse. It's three centuries old. It looks old. It feels old. It sounds and smells old. Since Hendrick Barents Smidt first broke ground on the place in the 1660s, this place has seen a lot of living. And consequently, a lot of dying.

Generations of early American settlers eked out a life on this plot of land on the border of Brooklyn and Queens. They fought in wars, kept slaves, farmed, and endured blizzards and droughts. They played hide-n-seek, read books, dusted, swept, and cooked food in huge hearth stoves. They got married, had babies, lost babies, got sick, prayed, and died. All under this roof and within these walls. Who once slept in the bedroom I sleep in? This question could be asked of any of my previous New York apartments. But I’ve become particularly curious about the former occupants of the Vander Ender–Onderdonk House. Who were these folks? I know some names, but what were they like? And might they, could they, would they have unfinished business with the living?

This broken doll head is on display at the
Onderdonk House. It was dug up in the
backyard during an archeological dig in
the 1970s.

When my boyfriend Keith and I applied to be caretakers of this historic landmark, I, of course, did a little Googling. Turns out, the house does have a bit of a haunted reputation with the children in the neighborhood. Previous Onderdonk caretakers have reported hearing inexplicable sounds, like heavy footseps and tinkling bells [shiver]. So naturally, I pseudo-casually mentioned this in the interview for the job. “Ghosts? No, we don’t have ghosts” was the reply. “Yeah, I didn’t really think so,” I said, laughing it off. Sort of.

Then, a few weeks after we moved in, one of the volunteers told me his friend had seen what she thought was an apparition a couple years ago. She was helping him decorate a Christmas tree in the Victorian room when she turned around and saw a man dressed all in black, standing in the corner of an adjoining room. The curator, who had been in the basement at the time, came upstairs and found his friend in the gift shop waiting for him. “Her face had gone completely pale,” he told me. Hogwash. Who’s this friend? I want proof! Still, I don’t go into the museum after sundown.

MORE IN THIS SERIES: This Really Old House

During the day, I don’t believe in ghosts. Alone at night … I’m more open-minded. Having an imagination, after all, is more fun than lacking one. So when the mood strikes, I might hesitate before walking into a dark room or avoid looking into mirrors for fear of strange reflections. I’ll even admit to double-checking to see if the expression on the face of the mannequin in the museum has changed. Just in case.

I wasn’t having a fun time the night after I saw The Conjuring. Yes, I went and saw a new horror flick about a demonically haunted Dutch Colonial farmhouse, while living in a Dutch Colonial farmhouse. Yes, I regretted it. Yes, I would do it again. But why? Why do I intentionally waste emotional energy fearing things that, as far as I can tell, don’t exist?

There must be a rational reason for craving the irrational and scaring ourselves sleepless with highly unlikely horrors. For instance, when the zombie apocalypse arrives, Keith and I will be sitting pretty in our gated home, eating vegetables and farm-fresh eggs while the rest of New York eats each other. I’ve got it all figured out (everything except how to load the antique musket hanging over the fireplace). So, could it be that we frighten ourselves to prepare ourselves? For anything?

The former occupants weren’t likely frightened by this house (of course, it was newer back then). The Dutch-style farmhouse was a familiar piece of the old world transplanted in a new one. It gave the settlers some semblance of shelter against the perils of colonial life: war, blizzards, smallpox. The threats they faced emerged mainly outside these walls, rarely from within. The same could be said of today. 

On the evening of June 3, three weeks after we moved in, a young couple living two doors down from us was murdered. Someone came into the apartment of Beatrice Morris and Franco Montoya and tied them up. Then this someone strangled and beat them to death. No one seems to know why. For a week or so, the cops put up reward posters on the block ($2,000), but we haven’t heard about any arrests. Four months later, a makeshift memorial—veladora candles and an empty tequila bottle holding dried roses—still sits on their doorstep.

That is the story that should give me nightmares. But it doesn’t. I feel sadness for these neighbors we never met and am bewildered something that terrible could happen as I watched television fewer than 100 yards away. But when something goes bump in the night, I guess I’d rather imagine it’s a ghost, all mute and misty, than another human being who has come to kill me. Maybe the neighborhood kids who tell creepy tales about the old house on the corner feel the same. 

Dutch children don’t celebrate Halloween. But on St. Martin's Day on November 11, they go house to house, singing songs and asking for goodies. I would say it’s like trick-or-treating without the horror (no vampire costumes, no threats of vandalism), but the tradition does arise out of fear, preparation for the worst, and something frightening lurking around the corner. It hails from the days when poor families would visit neighboring farmhouses asking for any surplus harvest.

Winter is what kept the Vander Ende and Onderdonk families up at night. Will we freeze? Will we starve? Will we “catch our deaths” outside? The real world can be one bad bogeyman.

Related Article:

Kryon Q&A

Question: Dear Kryon, I have experienced very negative paranormal activity. I know you said that “ghosts” exist in a different dimension than ours. But I need to understand them more. I don’t believe in evil. I think it’s only an absence of love, but why does the power of darkness seem so strong?

Also… if aliens are interested in us for our “power,” are evil spirits interested for the same reason?

Answer: Again, you ask for knowledge that requires you to think completely out of your concept of universal reality. Can you do it? Here is the test. When you step to the other side of the veil, there is no linear time. All is happening at once and does not have the structure you expect or that is logical to your 4D mind. When you come upon a “haunting,” you are actually experiencing the energy of one event in another dimension that seems to be playing in a circle in yours. What you perceive as something that happens over and over is something that only happened once. Is it real? Yes. However your perception of what is happening is very difference from the reality of those who participated in the event.

Sometimes the question is asked, “Are these former Humans stuck in a sort of limbo, repeating things over and over?” This is actually a very funny question! It is you who have the limitation. You are forever stuck with a mono-reality within an incredibly rich spectrum of time. You live in black and white time, while all around you is a spectacular colored rainbow of existence. Therefore when you peek with black and white eyes into a beautiful color hue, you only see a small piece of what is really there, and you can’t figure it out.

If indeed you run into an entity that seems to be doing something over and over, for them it is only one time. This is how NOW time looks to a linear observer. It is happening in an instant of univeral time, but to you they look “stuck.” It might promt you to ask the real question: Who is the “stuck” one?

The “haunting” is often a situation that left a residue of energy that is interdimensional. You feel it and see it and it is frightening. Sometimes it appears to have purpose. Sometimes it even appears to have a consciousness. Again, this is due to your observation! As you have consciousness, you alter the reality of the event! I told you this would be difficult to grasp. In other words, the act of you viewing the event changes what happened in your eyes. We are now back to the first question in this series, are we not, where the definition of reality has to do with those who are there to see it.

There is no such thing as an “evil sprit.” The greatest evil power of your planet can be found in the minds and intentions of the Humans who walk upon it. They can manifest darkness just like you can manifest light. This is a discussion we have had before [See Kryon Book Nine for more about this]. Therefore you continue to create your own reality.. evil and angelic.

After all… you are the only planet of free choice!

— Kryon