Halloween may be a few months away, but Friday the 13th is right here.
Props to Jason Voorheis and our inherent ability to believe in spooky, scary things for making Friday the 13th a pseudo-holiday for the paranormal practitioners and pop culturists alike.
There are plenty of places on Long Island rumored to be haunted or prone to paranormal activity. Just for the sake of fun on this Friday the 13th, we take a look at three straight-up spooky places to see and three places with ghostly tendencies.
Kings Park Psychiatric Center
Route 25A
Kings Park
Once home to more than 9,000 mentally ill patients, the Kings Park Psychiatric Center has been closed since 1993 but is still visible from the grounds of the
Nissequogue River State Park.
In that time, the land has gone virtually untouched, aside from those who sneak into the buildings late at night to steal their copper (231 violations were issued in 2007; another 17 people were arrested; most for trespassing or larceny).
Walk around this place and you'd swear Dr. Hannibal Lecter is lurking behind a bush somewhere. The park closes at dusk.
It's freaky deaky, but we don't advise you venture onto the property because you could be ticketed for trespassing.
"The Amityville Horror" House
108 Ocean Ave.
Amityville
amityvillehorror.com
It's not so much the structure that's spooky. Rather, it's the events that occurred here that really make you cringe when you look at the house once zoned as 112 Ocean Ave., but has since been changed to help bury the past. Of course, the movies, television shows and books don't help us forget.
At approximately 3:15 a.m. on Nov. 13, 1974, Ron DeFeo put a rifle in his hands and proceeded to murder his mother, his father, his two younger brothers and his two younger sisters.
Thirteen months later, George and Kathy Lutz moved into the home with their three children. A priest was called in to bless the house but balked upon hearing a masculine voice say "Get out!" Within 21 days, the Lutz family left their possessions in the "Amityville Horror" house and moved out.
In between, some of the experiences the Lutz family described include:
• George would wake up around 3:15 every morning.
• Mary Lutz, 5, developed an imaginary friend named "Jodie" with glowing red eyes.
