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THE HAUNTED HOUSE.
FROM THE MSS. OF THE LATE DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER.
Formerly, almost every place had a house of this kind. If a house
was seated on some melancholy place, or built in some old romantic
manner, or if any particular accident had happened in it, such as
murder, sudden death, or the like, to be sure that house had a mark
set upon it, and was afterwards esteemed the habitation of a
ghost.
--BOURNE'S _Antiquities_.
In the neighbourhood of the ancient city of the Manhattoes, there
stood, not very many years since, an old mansion, which, when I was a
boy, went by the name of the Haunted House. It was one of the very few
remains of the architecture of the early Dutch settlers, and must have
been a house of some consequence at the time when it was built. It
consisted of a centre and two wings, the gable-ends of which were
shaped like stairs. It was built partly of wood, and partly of small
Dutch bricks, such as the worthy colonists brought with them from
Holland, before they discovered that bricks could be manufactured
elsewhere. The house stood remote from the road, in the centre of a
large field, with an avenue of old locust[13] trees leading up to it,
several of which had been shivered by lightning, and two or three
blown down.
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