Pierre Van Cortlandt

A very Merry Christmas to friends and family far and wide.

VAN CORTLANDT MANOR’S GHOST ROOM
The oldest house in Croton, particularly rich in history during the Colonial era, has its share of ghost stories. In 1900, author Marion Harland visited Van Cortlandt Manor, then still occupied by members of the Van Cortlandt family, for her book Some Colonial Homesteads and Their Stories. Harland wrote that “the ghost-lore of the ancient homestead is rich and authentic.”

One of the members of the family told her a story about the Ghost Room. “A young lady visiting us in September, 1863, was asked if she minded sleeping in the Ghost Room, as it was a long while since any mysterious sounds had been heard there. She was told that if she was nervous, a servant would occupy the adjoining apartment. She laughed at the query, and had no belief in or fear of apparitions. In the morning she came to the breakfast-table, pale and ill-at-ease. After breakfast, she confessed to having awakened, suddenly, feeling that someone was in the room near her bed. Presently, it took the definite shape of a woman, dressed in a brown gown, with a white handkerchief crossed over her breast. A large apron, a bunch of keys at her side, a mob cap and long ear-rings completed the figure. It remained for what seemed a long time, and twitched the bed-clothes off, disappearing as the whistle of the two o’clock train was heard.”

“As soon as we heard this story, my daughter and I exclaimed, That is the exact description of . . . an old housekeeper who lived at General Van Cortlandt’s house at Peekskill and had died some time before. Every detail was exact, although the guest had never seen or heard of her.”

Another story in Harland’s book was also recounted in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research in 1910. Accompanying articles like “A Case of Telekinesis” and “Apparition of the Dead” is this story:

“At the Van Cortlandt Manor House near Croton, N.Y., a frequently recurring incident is the approach of a carriage at night. The beat of the horses’ hoofs, the rattling of the harness and the rolling of the wheels are heard distinctly, and then drawing nearer and finally turning through the gate and hurrying up the long drive to the house. Guests inside often ask who is coming at that time of night, and being bidden ‘Go and see,’ discover that there is no visible cause for the sound that has been heard.”

This was originally published in the Fall 2021 issue of our quarterly newsletter, The Croton Historian. You can subscribe for $10 a year.

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The upper manor house in Peekskillwhere we stayed while the Croton manor house was being repaired after the war.

Manor house parlor

Manor house dining room and twelfth night display

Manor house kitchen

The manor house, 1905, 1907, 1912, 1975