Sagtikos Manor is a place of Suffolk County history, and sometimes history includes hauntings.
This Halloween season was kicked off with the release of The Conjuring: Last Rites. The movie tells the story of renowned paranormal investigators Edward and Lorraine Warren, focusing on the unexplained demonic possession of a house in West Pittston, Pennsylvania.
However, you do not have to see the film to explore the unknown or what happens in that final jaunt into the abyss. That random cold spot, the feeling that you are not alone in a room, and maybe the shadow you saw out of the corner of your eye could be part of paranormal activity. Home to some of the oldest landmarks in New York State, the South Shore has had multiple unexplained events witnessed by many naysayers who became believers.
“There is a big disconnect from reality; Hollywood will be Hollywood versus what really happens. These stories [The Conjuring: Last Rites] might have stemmed from something that actually occurred, but Hollywood puts its own spin on it, and at least 80% of it is exaggerated,” stated paranormal investigator Michael Cardinuto. “The process is very scientific; we fill out a field report after every investigation, whether we caught something or not, that details the equipment and the reads captured. I do not like the term ‘haunted,’ because my definition differs from yours and that of the next person. We compile data and go to a location 40 times, broken up throughout the year, and after 40 times, we identify the patterns and average out the data to determine the level of activity.”
Cardinuto and Robert Levine’s organization, Long Island Paranormal Investigators, originally started in 2003 from a bet to explore Building 93 of the abandoned Kings Park Psychiatric Center. Since then, the organization has evolved to utilize equipment that includes digital EMF meters/sensors, electrostatic meters, energy loss meters, thermal imaging cameras, peak meter thermometers, and various Geiger counters, among others.
Combined with the instruments and documented field reports, Cardinuto and Levine will research the history of the site through various public records and historic newspapers.
“There are many types of paranormal activity, such as residual haunting, which is like a tape player playing over and over again, repeating an event. No intelligent communication between you and the activity; it is burned into time within a specific area. An intelligent haunting would involve communication and interaction. The majority of the time, we are dealing with intelligent hauntings,” Cardinuto explained.
Near the top of the list of the most haunted landmarks along the South Shore is Sagtikos Manor in Bay Shore. The oldest section of the manor, constructed in 1697, holds a turbulent 328-year history. Over the centuries, the manor has been at the center of slavery, early colonial conflicts between Native Americans, skirmishes during the American Revolutionary War, the British occupation of New York, Independence, the Gilded Age, the Roaring ‘20s, and post-World War development. In the back of the manor is the multi-generational family cemetery of the Gardiner-Thompson families, who shared numerous marriages for 200 years. Near their final resting place is a handful of unmarked burial plots consisting of former enslaved people.
The center of local folklore, the manor has its fair share of haunted stories. The most shared story is of a Native American woman who saved two English colonists from a storm in the bay and was killed by the wrath of that same storm. Intensifying the folktale is a plaque on a wooden plank near the graveyard that reads, “Unknown Native American woman, buried here.”
Paranormal activity reported by visitors includes shadowy figures sighted at the cemetery, a Native American woman spirit who walks the grounds, unexplained sounds/voices, and mists around the graveyard. There has been evidence to corroborate these accounts of paranormal activity, Cardinuto explained.
“We have investigated the grounds of Sagtikos Manor for many years, and we caught some cool evidence there in the past. Everything from audio evidence, such as when we ask questions and get responses, which we could not hear at the time but heard during the playback. We had a bunch of equipment hits go off for no reason. I saw my first shadow person there in the garden, moving quickly.”
Exploring other sites, such as Timber Point Country Club Manor in Great River, Long Island Paranormal Investigators yielded inconclusive results. Sagtikos Manor remains the site of the most documented activity.
Regardless of whether one is a skeptic or a true believer, some events and occurrences are unexplainable, even through modern-day science.
