This set of soundwalks is the first in a series of visits to haunted sites, considered both in light of their histories in urban legend and as mundane, ordinary places. Think of it as found footage horror, but where nothing horrific, or even out of the ordinary, needs to happen. We have some more in mind and invite you to submit yours.
The first featured location, “Mount Misery,” is a frequent entry in lists of New York’s most haunted sites. It also features prominently in John Keel’s Mothman Prophecies (1975), where it is described as “the highest point on Long Island,” a haunted and “heavily wooded hill” that became a hotspot of paranormal activity. Claims about this area range widely, from legends about cursed land sales and haunted hospitals to UFO sightings, red-eyed cryptids, and haunted houses, woods, and intersections.
But, as I found upon arrival, there is no place actually called “Mount Misery,” and certainly no hill with that name. References to such a place are usually pointing to a roughly triangular patch of what is now West Hills County Park. This hot zone is flanked by Mount Misery Road to the southwest and Sweet Hollow Road to the southeast, and capped to the northeast by Jayne’s Hill, which is indeed the highest point on Long Island. Most writers seem to be using the more suggestive name “Mount Misery” either for that hill, or for the whole general area. (For a deep dive on the region’s history and its misrepresentations in paranormal literature see Atteberry.)
These recordings comprise two soundwalks and three recordings taken in the car. The walks are presented without processing, as natural soundwalks in the method described by Hildegard Westerkamp. The drives, on the other hand, have some unnatural effects processing. Westerkamp suggests that “When going for a walk is replaced by going for a drive […] our contact with nature becomes purely visual,” seen through the windshield. But the experience of the road while driving is also ubiquitous in urban legends and in reports of hauntings and paranormal encounters. Taken together, these two types of field recording—natural walks and uncanny drives—convey those very different components of Mount Misery, the haunted woods and the haunted roads.
The first track is a walk up the modest, wooded incline to the peak of Jayne’s Hill, with the sounds of doves; dry leaves and gravel underfoot; insects; distant aircraft; and a pause at the summit, which is the purported site of many UFO experiences but is currently more noteworthy for the large boulder that bears a plaque with Walt Whitman’s “Paumanok” lines from Leaves of Grass.
Track 2 is the drive from Jayne’s Hill to Mount Misery Road and up that road as far as it is driveable, stopping at the edge of the woods at a spot with trail access.
Track 3 is a longer soundwalk through the woods adjacent to Mount Misery Road. These are the sounds of getting briefly lost in the woods, from dirt and gravel paths near the road out into deeper underbrush and cracking twigs; and with light traffic noise increasingly overtaken by waves of insect noise, then returning to the sounds of passing cars as I found my way back to Mount Misery Road.
Track 4 is a drive on Sweet Hollow Road, under what is supposed to be a haunted overpass beneath the Northern Parkway. Local legends allege this to have been the site of various macabre events, and some versions add a version of the “ghost propulsion” motif also found, for example, at many of the sites dubbed “Gravity Hill”— that if you put your car in neutral, it will continue forward, pushed or pulled through the overpass by the ghosts that haunt this stretch of road.
Track 5 is my departure from the area, from a parking lot just north of the haunted overpass back down to Old Country Road. This is a route that also features in Mount Misery’s stories. In Mothman Prophecies, John Keel’s informant and men-in-black contactee “Jane” was checking out the commotion in the opposite end of the West Hills with her boyfriend when they witnessed a paralyzing flash of light from the sky; “The next thing they knew, they were driving along Old Country Road at the base of Mount Misery.”
References and further reading:
“Jayne’s Hill” at Atlas Obscura, https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/jaynes-hill-new-york
Todd Atteberry, “The Legends and Myths of Sweet Hollow Road and Mount Misery,” https://www.gothichorrorstories.com/the-legends-and-myths-of-sweet-hollow-road-and-mount-misery/
Sue Gleiter, “‘Ghost Kids’ at Central Pa.’s Gravity Hill Roll Cars Uphill: Optical Illusion or Eerie Legend?” https://www.pennlive.com/life/2022/10/ghost-kids-at-central-pas-gravity-hill-roll-cars-uphill-optical-illusion-or-eerie-legend.html
John Keel, The Mothman Prophecies
John Leita and Laura Leita, Long Island Oddities: Curious Locales, Unusual Occurrences and Unlikely Urban Adventures
Hildegard Westerkamp, “Soundwalking” https://www.hildegardwesterkamp.ca/writings/writingsby/?post_id=13&title=soundwalking
The Gothic Listening Project 