We hope you were among the people who enjoyed a haunted hamlet on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 29 and 30.
Raynham Hall Museum was open on Saturday with their paranormal events. Theresa Skvarla said, “We did pretty well considering the weather. We had about 50 visitors.”
“I was just dressed as a mourner and a volunteer that day,” said Nicole Menchise, who is their collections manager. There was a coffin set up in one of the rooms.
Theresa said on Sunday, “We had about 70 people visiting as they looped around. Kids and mainly families mostly, but adults as it got later.”
On Sunday, the Oyster Bay Historical Society; the Oyster Bay Railroad Museum; Raynham Hall Museum; and Sweet Tomato all had Halloween events going on. A horse and wagon took people around from one location to another.
The Oyster Bay Historical Society had activities for the kids: a treasure hunt in their colonial garden to find bones to finish a skeleton; a pitch and toss of ghosts; finger painting in the library; and ghost stories by Elizabeth Roosevelt in the parlor.
Jacqueline Blocklyn, dressed as a witch, was serving “hand soup”: an ice hand floated in a fog covered soup. Millicent Pittis was a wonderful witch with long gray tendrils dripping down.
It was a great day for ghosts and goblins. At Raynham Hall the spirit investigators listened to their tape recorders and heard ghostly children playing hide and seek in the room below the slave quarters on the top floor.
The Oyster Bay Railroad Museum featured a ghostly Engine #35 ready for a spooky trip, as well as President John Specce dressed as a skeleton, welcoming visitors.
At Sweet Tomato, where soups are king, Kerriann Flanagan Brosky was signing and selling copies of her book Ghosts of Long Island – and Raynham Hall Museum is reported on in the book.
Halloween is alive and well in Oyster Bay!
– DFK
