At Spuyten Duyvil, the oldest house was that formerly belonging to the Berrien family, now the Isaac G. Johnson Estate. I recall also to old Schermerhorn house on the south side of Mosholu Avenue, near Broadway. This disappeared many years ago. It was occupied for a time by a family named Burke, and then stood vacant until its destruction. It had the reputation of being haunted, from the following circumstance. Sometimes at dusk or in the evening a light was observed dimly shining through the cracks of the closed shutters, while peculiar musical sounds were heard. Persons in the neighborhood were afraid to go near it, believing they were produced by a ghostly visitant. At last one young man, bolder than the others, sneaked up to a window and peering through the cracks, saw by the light of a candle one of the neighbor’s boys practicing on an old and worn-out piano left behind by a former tenant. The performer, having a taste for music but not the means of gratifying it, took this means of indulging his taste after work hours, getting in through a cellar window.