Copyright New York Post
LIE traffic isn’t the scariest thing on Long Island. There are a good 70 spooky properties, grounds, and trails that the Long Island Paranormal Investigators frequent in Nassau and Suffolk County, but one spot on the North Shore takes Casper’s cake — Mount Misery in Melville. “If you get a full moon on the fall equinox, it’s like the gates of hell open up here. You’re guaranteed to get something,” Mike Cardinuto, founder of the LIPI, told The Post. “This is probably one of the most haunted places here on Long Island.” The vast hiking and horseback riding trail area in West Hills county park off Sweet Hollow Road — which was voted one of the nation’s scariest streets for its dark, ominous woods — has such an alleged connection to the paranormal that LIPI has divided it into sections for field research that’s been ongoing for 15 years. “Over by site two, we captured a voice that came through our walkie-talkies a while back. It said, ‘they’re here. Help me out. Please. Let me out,” according to Cardinuto, who felt strange temperature and pressure changes in the area. The 30 volunteer ghostbusters claim to have seen shadow figures and black masses, signs of a demonic presence in the form of strange “rotten egg” and sulfur-like smells, plus a strange green aura. Their devices have suddenly malfunctioned out of the blue there, they claimed. “We’ve captured some weird stuff,” said Cardinuto — and they aren’t the only ones. Regular hiker and nearby resident Stacey Broggy said the trail makes her pair of male and female dogs act unusually erratic and terrified. “One day, out of nowhere, she just started freaking out in this one location where we walk…She’s done it several times,” said Broggy, who herself saw an unusual “white flash” in the area. “Then, when he did it [after], we thought, ‘all right, something’s wrong’ … It is always in the same location,” Broggy added after a walk with the pups at sundown. Several outlandish and uncorroborated urban legends have filled the lore of Mount Misery, which is ironically named not for its terror but for its challenging terrain, which made farming and travel a living nightmare. It’s also often a rite of passage for high schoolers to leave their cars in neutral under the Northern State Parkway overpass at Sweet Hollow Road. They do so under the guise that the spirits of kids who perished in a school bus crash over the parkway’s guardrail will push them forward. Cardinuto said the sophomoric stunt is ripped off from a genuine 1938 tragedy outside of Salt Lake City, where a bus carrying 24 children crashed after being stuck on railroad tracks. Mount Misery doesn’t need any red herrings, as there’s enough of the unexplained to last a lifetime — or longer. The banshee boss claimed that once his name was constantly called through an AM radio sweeper, which LIPI uses in hopes of a spirit speaking through the open airwaves. “I said, ‘Alright, here I am. What do you need from me?” he recalled. “It said ‘to die.'” Who ya gonna call? Halloween may be the perceived Super Bowl for paranormal enthusiasts, but Cardinuto, whose group also does house calls, says the unusual “happens all year round” in these parts. An LIPI trip to the 19th-century-built Rogers Mansion in Southampton became ominous when a lightbulb allegedly shattered suddenly right after a member said, “‘If you want us to leave, give us a loud noise.'” Members have also claimed to have experienced the stalking presence of black masses at Sagtikos Manor in Bay Shore, where George Washington once stayed, and other creepy sounds at Katie’s bar of boos in Smithtown and the defunct Kings Park Psychiatric Center. The spirits aren’t always angry, however, and sometimes it just takes the right question to get them chatty, explained Cardinuto. He is still floored by a winter 2025 interaction that The Post witnessed during a spirit stakeout at Nathaniel Rodgers House in Bridgehampton. The dinnertime inquiry of “Are you trying to tell us something? Are you hungry too?” prompted a vivid answer through the AM radio sweeper, which had picked up only inaudible static the whole night. It suddenly landed — and stayed — on a station where a voice was heard saying “great question.” “We all freaked out…That was really cool,” the local ghostbuster said.
