Classic Mysteries by Shawn Casteel & Timothy Green Beckley

The MIB and Black Dogs of Mount Mystery

Classic Mysteries

The MIB and Black Dogs of Mount Misery

by Sean Casteel

Note: Mount Misery is located on Long Island, New York.

According to a newspaper called The New Island Ear, the area has been notorious for strange events for over one hundred years.

“Many different tales,” reporter Christopher Twarowski writes, “of horror and spirits dwell around this place, from a hospital that burned down in the 1800s to a group of kids hanging themselves under an overpass near there, to ghostly apparitions of ‘The Lady In White,’ named Mary, who was hit and killed by a car on the road. The most believable concerns the escaped mental patient who used his prosthetic hook to kill high school kids who were using the area as a lover’s lane.

“I drove the length of the road,” Twarowski adds, “but I didn’t see anything but million-dollar homes. Definitely spooky.”

But there are other witnesses in the Mount Misery area who have seen more than opulent houses. How does a Man-In-Black strike your fancy?

“One of the most well-documented reports,” says a website called “Long Island Oddities,” “came from a woman living near the peak of Mount Misery. She had four gentlemen come to her door in the rain. They had walked up a muddy hill, but their shoes were spotless. They had strong, high cheekbones and seemed to be of Indian heritage. They spoke politely but claimed that her property was theirs and that they would get it back.”

The writer goes on to make reference to legendary paranormal investigator John Keel’s book The Mothman Prophecies.

“According to John Keel’s book,” he continues, “MIBs are not always male. There was another account back in 1967 where a woman claiming to be a reporter from a Long Island newspaper came by the home of a Mount Misery family to do an interview. She asked a lot of personal questions about the family and then left. Upon further investigation, that newspaper had no such employee.

“There have been other reports of Mount Misery natives seeing strangers in black suits wandering around,” he goes on, “though I have been unable to gain any more specific info. Many of these events took place many years ago, during UFO sighting flaps.”

One online writer, calling herself “Nikki aka WitchLight” has written about strange happenings in Mount Misery by way of nearby Sweet Hollow Road.

“The road has been surrounded by stories for generations,” she writes. “There are tales of ‘The Black Dog of Misery,’ whose name might be a hint at the closely located Mount Misery. It is said to appear as a black Labrador retriever type dog. It is evil, according to stories I’ve been told, but rare. To see the dog is a harbinger of impending death. There are even tales of a phantom car that drives down the road at breakneck speeds, careening off the edge of the road into a flat, marshy section of land. When people get out to investigate, they find nothing, even though they thought they witnessed the whole thing.”

And if you feel like taking a touristy trek into the unknown, Nikki provides some driving directions.

“The more I asked about Sweet Hollow,” Nikki continues, “the more stories I got. It’s rare to find a native Islander who has never heard of some story pertaining to the road. It can be found off of Jericho Turnpike in Huntington. It also runs past the Northern State Parkway, Old County Road, Walt Whitman Road, and runs into Pinelawn Road at Route 110. Therefore, it should be easy to find from almost any major roadway on the Island. Watch your rearview mirror carefully, and keep telling yourself that the man you see walking along the shoulder is real, or at least just your mind playing tricks on you.”

Reprinted with permission from Our Alien Planet: This Eerie Earth, by Sean Casteel, with Timothy Green Beckley. Inner Light/Global Communications, 2005. ISBN: 1-892062-88-7.

Editor’s Note: I first got interested in Mount Misery because of John Keel’s writings on the subject. Then I was in touch with a couple of New York paranormal investigators who were going there and even having weird experiences. I recall a story about a mysterious dark human figure of an apparition. Sounded pretty frightening. Myself and a high school buddy of mine drove down there from Maine (where I used to live) back in April 1972. Got there late one night and left, as I recall, around noon the next day. I was disappointed…nobody seemed to know anything…nothing strange happened….until we were leaving. An abandoned car, that had been on the side of a gravel road, was suddenly (a bright sunny day) in the middle of the road. We had to get out and both of us move it. Later, while visiting Bob Goerman out in Pennsylvania, he pointed out in a magazine article that described the events of Mount Misery how one of it’s mysteries was the unexplained relocations of abandoned cars at this site!!

Afterwards I got to thinking. Nobody knew who we were and what we were doing there. We knew no one there. We simply dropped in quite uninvited. But yet one of the anomalies attributed to this place happened to me and my friend David.

Coincidence?

--Brent Raynes