Once among the world's most celebrated gardens, this beautiful but long-neglected park was allegedly a hotspot for satanic cults in 1970's New York. In their heyday during the 1920's and 1930's, the Untermyer Gardens were a horticultural wonder, and civic leader Samuel Untermyer's personal pride and joy.
With 150 acres of land, stunning views of the Hudson river and seemingly endless funds and ambition, Untermyer employed an army of gardeners for his estate. The grounds boasted an array of elaborately constructed fountains and temples, 2,000 year old columns specially imported from Italy, 60 functioning greenhouses and the world's only living sundial. Once a week Untermyer would open his gardens to the public, attracting visitors from around the world who were eager to explore the masterfully executed grounds.
When Untermyer passed away in 1940 he intended to leave his gardens to the Nation, the State of New York or at least the City of Yonkers, but all three were so daunted by the enormous cost of upkeep that the land was initially refused. Yonkers eventually accepted a smaller portion of the estate containing the core gardens, but finance remained an issue and the park was left to a slow ruin.
After several decades of neglect, the 1970's attracted Untermyer park a far more sinister group of visitors. Satanic groups allegedly used the wooded and overgrown grounds for moonlit gatherings, dark rites and animal sacrifice. Disturbing police reports from the late 1970's document the finding of mutilated and skinned dogs in the aqueduct south of the park, and employees working the graveyard shift at nearby St. John's hospital tell tales of torch flames and strange chanting coming from the woods. Infamous "Son of Sam" murderer David Berkowitz himself claims to have been a member of a satanic group that used Untermyer park for its ritualistic gatherings; theories abound as to such a group's possible influence and role in Berkowitz's serial killing spree.
The park's dark reputation is well known in the area; satanic graffiti scribblings mar formerly grand structures and there is a distinctly forlorn feel to the emptiness of the grounds. A recent push has been made to restore Untermyer's once beloved gardens, which have been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1974, but financial limitations remain crippling and much of the park is in an advanced state of disrepair. Even so, a sense of the park's former glory lingers and there is an undeniable beauty remaining in Untermyer's disintegrating grandeur.