An Astoria Ghost Story

When the Mrs. and I first moved to Astoria, we found ourselves at the border. Not far from Woodside and across Northern Boulevard from Sunnyside, the section was once known as “The German Settlement” during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Specifically we found ourselves living in one of the four unit row houses found on 44th street nearby 34th Avenue. Anxious to meet the new neighbors, we set about talking to literally every stranger we could.

One of my little ice breakers is the usually innocuous question, “Have you ever seen a ghost?”.

More than one of the new neighbors answered in the affirmative, and they then told me about an apparition that they called “the White Lady.”

A bedroom community, the neighborhood is an an odd mix of “lifers” (neighborhood stalwarts who were born, and will die, in the same house they live in today) and “city people” (new residents, like myself, who can only claim a single decade of occupancy). Croatians, Italians, Bangla, and Brazilians seem to form the largest ethnic groups, but there is someone from everywhere living within a few blocks of the apartment. There’s lots of kids, dogs, and easy conversations. Most of the building stock is vintage to the 1920’s, but there are a few fantastically old structures still standing.

Characteristic of older buildings built on marshy soil, which is typical of western Queens, audible manifestations attributed to “settling” are commonly experienced on the block. Floor joists groan, walls bulge under decades of plastering, and a staccato of steel whistles accompanies the arrival of steam into century old radiators. Often awake at those times of night which might be described as the hour of the wolf, I will admit that I often sensed odd silences and felt “watched” from the vacant shadows while living here, but I drink way too much coffee.

One neighbor, a sensitive “lifer,” when confronted with my query “Have you ever seen a ghost?” related that there was an apparition which was well known amongst the generations of children that had grown up here, and that the phantom was commonly called “The White Lady.”

He continued on, saying that his mother, himself and his tenants had experienced her.

The following text is used with permission, and comes from that haunted individual…

My mother’s story is this:

When my brother and I were very small, around 2 and 5 or 3 and 6 respectively, we both had high fevers and were sleeping in my mother’s bed. My mother said she heard someone walk down our hallway, and she assumed it was my father, as he worked late into the night.  She then says she smelled very sweet perfume, and felt someone sit down on the edge of the bed (she was sitting with us, watching over us).

She never saw anybody, but rather felt a presence.  She said she knew it was the presence of a ‘lady’—with the resonance of the word being someone higher in society, graceful and composed. The presence let it be known to her–how I dont know– that she was there for a good reason; that she was there because she was worried about my brother and I, and would watch over us and protect us.  My mother added that she thought the ‘lady’ was the wife of the person who owned the land way before our house was built, but I’m not sure if that was heresay she might have picked up on in future years.

My tenant’s  story:

My tenant stopped and asked me one day in front of the house. He asked me if we had a ghost living there, and before I told him, I asked him what he meant.  He said he dreamt about a ‘lady’. I asked him to describe her, and he said her hair was done up in an old fashioned bun, she was older, her hair was white, and she wore a dress that was cinched around the neck, the way they wore in earlier years.

He also said that he had once peered outside the backyard window, and saw someone looking up at him intently. He said that it was a spirit guide.

The old building we lived in was in a constant state of flux, with tenants moving in and out on yearly leases. The apartment unit directly below us was vacant for just a few days when a young businesswoman and her future husband rented it.

Affable, the fellow is a man of science, and licensed to operate as a Doctor. Down to earth, head on his shoulders, likes to jog. Not a wild eyed or suggestible type of fellow, if you know what I mean.

After a few days living in the apartment, he approached me one morning in the hall, and confided that he was quite worried.

The following text is used with permission, and comes from him…

My ghostly experience,  front bedroom 1st floor.

Well, it was the first night staying in that apartment. I spent the day helping my girlfriend move the rest of her stuff in. And put a large mirror up at the foot of the bed facing north (toward Broadway).

So anyway, somehow I awoke between 2 and 3am (at least I feel like I was awake), and saw a kind of a dark shadowy figure move/walk from one side of the room toward the foot of the bed staring at me. Seemed like an older women or a deadly looking middle-aged women with long hair past shoulders staring me down as she crept toward the foot of the bed. She lowered down slowly as if she was going to go under the bed but went out of sight at my feet. Almost instantly I felt my feet tingle and begin to shake like I was shivering and then both legs entirely.

I tried to kick my legs to make it stop but it only made it worse as my legs were basically shaking out of control and woosh it went up my trunk to my neck and my whole body was shaking and my head flexed backward hard into the pillow. I called out for my girlfriend, but my face muscles were very tight – “help… help… me…” which felt like I was wide awake- I know I was.

I began to also feel a pull toward the bottom the bed and toward the wall that the mirror was on. And as soon as it felt like it was going to throw my body off the bed or across the room or through into the mirror, whoosh it left down through my body and out my feet and was standing at the foot of the bed staring at me smiling/kind of laughing at me, and turned toward the mirror and walked through.

That’s it, I was wide awake for 2 hours trying to contemplate if that really happened or what. Nothing like that has ever happend before or since.

The only other thing that happened was a couple of weeks later- a glass picure frame seemed to jump off the wall and shattered on the ground in the middle of the night at 3 or 4 am. The same day I put a 2nd mirror up in that bedroom.

Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve told this story. After discussing it and publishing a post on this and other Astorian spectral phenomena at newtownpentacle.com, an email arrived from none other than Bob Singleton over at the Greater Astoria Historical Society.

This is where things started to get fairly interesting here in the German Settlement, as Mr. Singleton takes us back to 1705.

Here is Mr. Singleton’s message – used with permission-

I know of no story from that area’s history that would relate to this. It was marshy pasture and undeveloped until about 100 years ago. Northern Blvd. was basically a causeway built through a swamp. The Sunnyside Yards was the head of a millpond dammed at Queens Plaza.

No stories with the Gosman etc. families that owned it, and TNT Auto is the only location of something historic: the old Sunnyside Hotel that gave Sunnyside its name.

However, at 43-44 and 31st Ave-Newtown Road is the approx. location of the infamous Hallet Family massacre where two slaves killed both parents and all their kids in the first capital crime of Queens (ca. 1705 or so). Slaughtered them as they wanted their farm. Both slaves (She was Black and He was Indian) were subject to horrible executions (burning at the stake, I believe) in Flushing.

The area of Newtown Road (original wagon road to their grandfather Hallet farm made about 1652) was always considered haunted in the 19th century. I can personally attest to feeling uneasy as I walked along it at night, particularly the area where the apartment building with courtyard to the south of the street around 45th St.

Wonder if the ‘White Woman’ was the wife who fled and tried to run thorugh the swamp to the nearest homes which would have been along Middleberg Ave on the other side of today’s Sunnyside Yards. Your location would have been the approx. place of the millpond that might have stopped her or been imperfectly frozen.

Since discussing this publicly, I’ve been contacted by several former residents of the neighborhood. Some have claimed that they suffered spectral torments of the sort that only Hollywood could dream up, and described the need for the intervention of the clergy to exorcise their home. Also, oddly enough, the back yards in this section are plagued by the constant presence of dozens of feral cats.

These days, I make it a point of meeting the new “city people” who move into that first Astoria apartment of ours. Eventually, after some sort of relationship has formed – usually something revolving around the antics of my dog Zuzu – I’ll ask them the question.

Have you ever seen a ghost?

Happy Halloween.

Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman lives in Astoria and blogs at Newtown Pentacle.