The namesake of "America's scariest street," Buckout Road, the Dutch Buckhout family, has its American origins in Tarrytown, NY.

On May 26, 1779, during the Revolutionary War, a band of Loyalist marauders led by Nathaniel Underhill committed Tarrytown's first two murders. Underhill hacked one-armed Patriot Isaac Maartlings to pieces. His alleged lover, Polly Katrina Buckhout, fled the scene and hid in a nearby house, wearing a man's hat as a disguise. Moments later, a gunshot mortally wounded her when she stood near a window, said to be mistaken for an enemy soldier.

On New Year's Day 1870, Isaac Van Wart Buckhout, named after a relative who apprehended British spy Major John Andre during the Revolutionary War, committed a heinous double murder. He thought his wife, a Tarrytown woman named Anna Louisa Coupe Buckhout, was having a romantic affair with their neighbor, Alfred Rendall.

Isaac invited Alfred and his adult son Charles to their Sleepy Hollow house, poured each a glass of cider, and excused himself to the bedroom. He returned with a shotgun. Isaac fatally shot Alfred at close range, killing him instantly. He quickly fired a shot at Charles Rendall, severely injuring him and causing him to lose an eye. Isaac then bolted into the kitchen, where he used the gun to savagely beat his wife to death.

After being jailed in White Plains, Isaac VW Buckhout went to trial multiple times before being convicted of the murders and hanged to death, the last man executed in White Plains. The book fully details and examines a lot of controversy and numerous conspiracy theories surrounding the brutal incident and subsequent trials.

Named after General George Washington, Tarrytown author Washington Irving had a deep interest in local history and the Revolutionary War. In his iconic story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," he introduces the world to America's earliest ghostly phantom, The Headless Horseman.

Although "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is a fictional story, many of its locations and characters are based on real places, events, and people from the area. Nightmarish Neighborhood #4 retraces Irving's journey, discovers the real-life Tarrytown / Sleepy Hollow locations referenced in the story, and untangles the probable identities of the real-life people behind Irving's beloved and feared characters, including The Headless Horseman!

"Buttermilk Hill" is the name of a rugged and desolate mountain about two miles away from Swan Lake in Tarrytown. Its namesake is derived from a story of women hiding cows on its treacherous slope during the American Revolution to avoid capture by roaming Cowboys the steep hill is home to Raven Rock and its numerous ghostly urban legends, including the spirit of a woman near a deep ravine, said to have frozen to death in a snowstorm.

Beyond multiple ghostly tales, Buttermilk Hill has been the site of several murders dating back to the mysterious killing of a man whose corpse was thrown down a well in the 1850s. It's also the site of horrific deaths, including the 1935 discovery of a dead man hanging from a tree. With a sinister history, it's perhaps surprising what the Buttermilk Hill has become.

Catch a glimpse into the life of the eccentric hermit Johann Stolting, who locals often saw walking through Tarrytown during the 1880s in homemade clothing without shoes before returning to his homemade abode in the woods where he slept in a wooden coffin.

Plus, discover the identity of the mysterious Silent Pete, who captured the curiosity of North Tarrytown residents during the 1930s. Sporting a stubby gray beard, shaggy hair covered with a dirty brown slouch hat, and black trousers with soleless shoes, Silent Pete walked daily between Yonkers and Tarrytown for years, captivating the imaginations of everyone without saying a word.

The fascination with Silent Pete reached such a level in the 1930s that newspapers even printed some locals' theories about the mysterious man, including that a former lover scorned him, his brother cheated out of an inheritance, and that he secretly lived in a cave at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

Over a century ago, seven mysterious and gruesome murders in the neighborhood rocked the local community. We revisit the seven slayings which occurred between 1875 and 1905, and all remain unsolved.

Westchester County, a pivotal location in the Underground Railroad, was a beacon of hope for enslaved African Americans seeking freedom from the South to the North and Canada. Despite its illegality, numerous individuals displayed immense courage, risking their lives to aid these escapees. The county's role in this network of secret routes and safe houses is a testament to such bravery.

As Underground Railroad activity was secretive in the 1860s, detailed information about its operations remains hidden as their movements were undocumented. Historians believe Westchester had two underground railroad routes crossing through the county. White Quakers who opposed slavery risked their lives running a route scattered throughout Westchester, which included rumored safe houses and stations at the home of John Carpenter in Scarsdale and the Stony Hill section of Buckout Road on the border of eastern White Plains and western Harrison.

One of Westchester's Underground Railroad routes followed the eastern shore of the Hudson River, up from New York City by train or by foot through Hastings-on-Hudson, Dobbs Ferry, and Tarrytown to Montreal, Quebec. According to local folklore, the Tarrytown home of an Underground Railroad conductor named Amanda Foster was among the stops. Amanda and her husband, Henry Foster, a formerly enslaved man who became a barber, founded the Foster Memorial AME Zion Church on Wildey Ave in Tarrytown.

For five years before the church's completion in 1864, the congregation met in a Tarrytown candy store that Amanda operated. According to local historians, visitors to the church included Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman. The church is now the oldest continuously used African American church in Westchester County and stands next to the house where Amanda lived, where it's believed that sheltered runaway slaves fleeing for freedom.

The capture of Major John Andre in Tarrytown, NY, during the American Revolution has been told and retold for over two centuries. It is a story of espionage, betrayal, and the consequences of war. But what many people don't know is that the story doesn't end with Andre's execution.