ca. 1680
Mount Misery
Melville, New York
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In the woods off Chichester Road in Melville, New York, if you look hard enough, you’ll find a cemetery with about a dozen graves. There you’ll find the final resting place of one Eliphalet Chichester, a noted revolutionary during this country’s war for independence against the British. Eliphalet was born in 1737 in Huntington, and like his father before him, was known as “the Elder.” Eliphalet became so incensed at having to purchase a bond to marry his sweetheart, Mary Pine, a spinster, that his anger turned to open rebellion against the crown of England. A few feet from Eliphalet lies Asa Chichester, reportedly the last of a line of innkeepers to run the inn which stands just through the woods, and that once carried his family’s name.
The first tavern stood on the site now occupied by the building once known as the Peace and Plenty Inn since 1660, when the town board of Huntington elected Thomas Brush to open an inn there. It stood on what was once the Old Post Road, which crossed the more heavily travelled road which led to Huntington. Inns were essential in the day when what is now a couple hour drive might have taken days. The inn wasn’t a place for drunkenness, but rather a place for refreshments, a change of horses and a community meeting house.
About 1680 the license and site fell into the hands of the Chichester family after the original structure burned, and they built a new one, a one and a half story cottage with two rooms and a bedroom in the attic crawl space. For the next hundred years or so the family kept adding on, resulting in a long, rambling structure, which sits today surrounded by woodland, looking out on what was once the road that brought traffic to the hillside.
It is said that Asa, and perhaps other family members don’t actually rest in the cemetery, but perhaps still make their nightly journey up the small staircase to that loft. A former owner reported that their dog refused to go up those stairs, and once a blue light was seen going up.
Many notable persons, both locally and of world-wide fame stopped at the Peace and Plenty. Teddy Roosevelt used to ride horseback along with family and friends from his house near Oyster Bay for lunch. Walt Whitman, who was born just down the road would stop in when he was a newspaper man in the area.
But times change, and when Jericho Turnpike started going into Huntington, traffic in the area fell off, business slumped, and Asa was forced to shut its doors. Though here there is some confusion in the historical record. If Asa closed down the inn, and died in 1841, how could Teddy Roosevelt, who wasn’t even born until 1858 have been a patron? Reports say that following the closing of the inn, it was in the family till 1915, when it became a boarding house, before eventually becoming once more a private residence. Even the Whitman story casts doubts on just when or if Asa closed the shop. Whitman didn’t return to Long Island until 1836, so unless Asa died just after retiring from innkeeping, it would be hard for Walt to have been a patron.
And perhaps that’s why Asa sticks around, for it seems that perhaps the oft told story that Asa closed the family business isn’t completely accurate, and he seeks to clear his reputation. There is little doubt that some presence hangs about the place. Items of furniture goes missing without a trace, as well as other behavior associated with poltergeists. Mysterious footprints have been seen, footsteps heard, and the house has had quite a bit of trouble keeping an owner since it fell from the Chichester family’s hands.
In any event, it can be assumed that if all the reported ghosts of Mount Misery and Sweet Hollow get together for a pint, it’s at the Peace and Plenty Inn, and Asa is pulling the tap.
True ghost stories, folklore & mysteries 