Ep. 20 - The Departed Dames of Long Island

Long Island is the largest and longest island in the contiguous United States. The island stretches from New York Harbor to Montauk Point, which has become popular in conspiracy circles for something called the Montauk Project. These were a series of secret government projects conducted at Camp Hero at Montauk, Long Island. Did these experiments ever really happen? In the world of Stranger Things they did, but in ours, that is for you to decide. What has happened on Long Island, is death and in the case of these departed dames, it seems to have led to some hauntings.

The largest freshwater lake on Long Island is Lake Ronkonkoma. The mysterious waters of this lake have spawned legends and some tall tales that even include a claim that piranhas rove the dark depths of this bottomless lake. Is it really bottomless? Are you willing to take a deep dive to find out? There are those that swear the water has a magical healing power and the Algonquin People would travel from miles around to come to this place that they considered sacred. Vision quests would be conducted on the shores of Ronkonkoma. In reality, the lake was formed by the receding of glaciers, which made it a kettle lake that is thought to be 60 feet deep.

The most powerful legend connected to Lake Ronkonkoma involves a Native American princess who has become the Lady of the Lake. The tale is one we have all become familiar with: a young native woman falls deeply in love with the wrong man and her father's disapproval leads to suicide. But that is only one version. There is another version that is more sinister and has led to a terrifying and dangerous haunting that makes the waters of this lake a dangerous place to swim.

The lake is said to have been named for Princess Ronkonkoma, but the Algonquin word actually means “the boundary fishing place.” The name came from the fact that the area was a boundary for the Nissequogue, Setauket, Secatogue, and Unkechaug Native American tribal lands. Her father was chief of the Setauket tribe in the mid-1600s. The English had started to settle on Long Island and one day she met Hugh Birdsall, an English woodcutter. When her father found out about the couples love, he forbade them from seeing each other. They did not give up easily and for seven years, they would write letters to each other, scratched out on bark and sent across the lake to each other. The legend claims that the father had the settler killed, but historical records indicate that Hugh Birdsall eventually returned to England. Another version has the princess betrothed to a member of her tribe, but that a jealous settler who desired to have her, jumped upon her betrothed as he hunted in the woods and killed him. In both cases, the princess kills herself, either stabbing herself in the chest in a boat in the middle of the lake or tying rocks to her ankles and drowning herself.

Another piece of lore has nothing to do with heartbreak and suicide. There is a story that because this was a sacred place, a young maiden was sacrificed at the lake. The part that is kept in every story is that there is a Lady of the Lake who returns every year to capture a hapless male and drag him into the depths with her. And it would be easy to just brush this all off as fanciful storytelling, except that there is a ring of truth to the Lady of the Lake. Not only has her apparition been seen on and near Lake Ronkonkoma, but for decades,at least one man would drown every year in the lake. Dr. David S. Igneri was the head lifeguard at Lake Ronkonkoma for 32 summers. In his time as lifeguard, he remembers there being at least 30 drownings and every one of the victims was male. The show Weird U.S. aired on the History Channel in 2005 and featured Dr. Igneri's claims about the drownings. He also explained the total blackness of the lake and how it hampers rescues. Go any deeper then ten feet below the surface and visibility is gone. Strange lights and whirlpools are witnessed at the lake and even stanger are the claims that people are seen ice skating on the lake in period clothing...when the lake is not even frozen.

The Long Island Paranormal Investigators caught this EVP on the shores of the lake. I'll play it as is and then follow it with the EVP at a higher volume. Could this have been the Lady of the Lake.

Another haunted location on Long Island with a murderous backstory is the Normandie Inn on the corner of Smithtown and Lakeland. The Inn was built in the 1920s by a Czech baron, in a medieval, gothic style. He used it as a residence for many years and then sold it to someone who decided to turn it into a hotel. After some refurbishing, it opened as Hotel Chateau La Boheme. The hotel was a popular place. Even Rudolph Valentino spent a night in the largest room on the top floor. As prohibition took hold in New York, the hotel quickly became a speakeasy and more than likely a brothel. One of the girls who worked at the hotel was named Maria. She was strangled in one of the back bedrooms on the upper floor. It was a very brutal death. The hotel was bought by Lillian and Anthony Davis and they ran it until 1960. There were several other owners, one of which turned the hotel into a French restaurant called the Normandie Inn in the 1990s. The restaurant closed and the building sat abandoned until 2004. At that time, Nick Campitiello and his wife Rosalba bought and renovated the hotel for their interior design business. They gutted the interior, save for a couple of life-size wooden hand-carved statues of medieval warriors that had been part of the decor in the dining room. Unfortunately, they were stolen later in a break-in. They were valued at $25,000. 

I don't really know what happened with that business or how long it occupied the building, but for years the building was abandoned again with For Sale signs hung in the windows. A 2022 article claims that a Jersey Mike's was moving into the location at the end of 2022, but upon further review, it looks like the building was razed in May of 2022. Rumors of haunting activity had plagued the building for years. Maria seems to have remained in the afterlife. People have claimed throughout the years that they have heard Maria walking in the hallways when no one is there and that she knocks on the doors of guests. Nick Campitiello admitted that he experienced a few head-scratching events. The former owner told him that the long-silent room service bells once began ringing without explanation. On another occasion, he was shampooing the carpets and footprints appeared on the freshly cleaned carpet of a room that had been locked. Cold spots have been felt in various areas and the disembodied whisperings of a young woman have been heard. We wonder if the spirits will haunt whatever is rebuilt in this spot.

The Reid Ice Cream Factory opened in Blue Point, Long Island in 1926. It's true beginnings date back to 1879 when a man named Augustus Floyd Smith built a production facility and began making commercial ice cream. He had a unique design that allowed horses to be rigged up to the vats so that they could turn the ingredients and make the ice cream. He would supply the local hotels with the frosty treat. His son later took over the facility and sold it in 1926 to The Reid's Ice Cream Corp. They refurbished the factory and reopened with the claim that they could produce 1,000,000 gallons of ice cream a year. They did just that, and became the largest distributor of ice cream in the state of New York. The Borden Food Corp. bought the factory in the early 1930s and continued production until 1969, when they closed the doors for good.

When you hear that an old ice cream factory is haunted, you probably assume there was some kind of accident and an employee died. But this is not the case. We have the spirit of our third dearly departed dame here. Irene Brandt was a 20 year-old bank teller and go-go dancer. Her body was found in September of 1966 in a dank laundry sump on the property of the former ice cream factory. She had been named by the FBI as a suspect in a $21,000 Long Island bank embezzlement case. They had issued a federal arrest warrant two days after she had disappeared from her job at the North Merrick branch of the Hempstead Bank. Irene had told co-workers she was going out for lunch and hadn't been seen since. The $21,000 was found missing from her cash drawer. Irene's body was found with her hands and feet bound and an iron bar attached to her to weigh her down in the 75-foot-wide sump filled with laundry wastes. She had suffered severe head trauma and her throat was slit.

Police had no initial suspects in the murder, but they questioned many of the acquaintances she made while dancing in two Long Island clubs. One man who was questioned was James Watson who had been named on the warrant along with Irene. A two-and-a-half year murder inquiry was conducted and after that racketeer Julius F. Klein and his former bodyguard, William Reuther, were charged with the murder. They were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. So how did a Long Island crime boss get into contact with Irene Brandt? It wasn't her go-go dancing. Irene's sister was married to Klein's bodyguard. In my research, I stumbled across a 2015 newspaper article that was about Klein. He was selling some property, "Once slated for a mixed-use development, the site located on the 1500 block of Main Road is being sold by Jamesport Development, a partnership headed by Julius Klein. A twice-convicted felon, Klein, who turns 87 later this month, was paroled in 1994 after serving nearly 26 years in prison of a life sentence for the 1966 murder of Irene Brandt, a 20-year-old North Merrick bank teller and part-time exotic dancer, according to published reports. Before the murder conviction, Klein had been imprisoned for embezzling $40,000 from a construction firm where he was a vice president."

For years, people passing the factory would claim to see the apparition of a woman on the property. The disembodied crying and screaming of a woman was also heard. One man claimed that he was walking by the factory at night when he saw a young woman. As she came close to him, her eyes grew wide and he saw that she had no eyeballs, just hollow eye sockets. Her head tilted in an odd way as well. Soon, it had tilted so much to the left, that it nearly fell off. She then just disappeared before his eyes. Mysterious fires also plagued the factory.

The factory sat abandoned for 30 years, with no one attempting to do anything with the property. The facility was finally demolished in 2003, but not before there were issues keeping a demolition crew on the job. Many crew members walked off the job because doors would fly open and slam close and several times an employee would get locked in a room. An entirely new crew had to be brought in because the other refused to return. The property finally sold for $1.2 million in 2006. Homes have now been built on the land. One wonders if these unaware home owners have had anything rumbling around in their home. Does Irene's spirit now roam the halls of their homes?

Murder and Long Island came onto my radar many years ago when I heard about the discovery of a serial killer dumping ground there. The Long Island serial killer has never been identified and so far it is believed that this killer has murdered at least 10 sex workers and possibly as many as eighteen. These murders took place over 20 years and the dumping ground was found on the South Shore of Long Island, New York. Four of the victims were dubbed "The Gilgo Four" and were found near Gilgo Beach in December 2010. Six more bodies were found 2011 in Suffolk and Nassau counties. The killer found the sex workers through Craigslist ads. The identified victims are Jessica Taylor, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, Amber Lynn Costello and Maureen Brainard-Barnes. There have been no ghost stories connected to this sacred place, although the Fire Island Lighthouse just down the road is said to harbor spirits. I sometimes wonder if a Spirit Box session in a place like this might give some answers.

Do the spirits of the other murdered women we shared still remain on these properties where they met their ultimate demise? Are these locations haunted? That is for you to decide!