East 9th Street, Gravesend

On 15 August 2012 the New York Daily News featured the following story by Mark Morales entitled ‘Gravesend woman’s sci-fi tale about living in a haunted house featured in SyFy reality show’.

A retired Gravesend nurse’s unbelievably spooky tale about living in a haunted house is now reality TV.

Elaine Mercado, 64, says she spent 22 years living with ghosts who terrorized her and her family in their old Queen Ann-style home on East 9th St.

Mercado’s spooky tale was featured on the SyFy network’s show “Paranormal Witness” about close encounters with ghosts on Wednesday.

“Things happened that we just couldn’t explain,” said Mercado, 64, who wrote a book about her ghostly experience called “Grave’s End.”

“Sometimes I would cry. [The house] would be charming if it wasn’t so creepy,” said Mercado.

The retired emergency room nurse from Coney Island Hospital first moved into the house in 1982 with her two young daughters and her first husband – and she immediately felt like she was being watched when there was no one else in the room.

Soon, she had a creepy feeling a ghost was pressing down on her chest and stomach while she would sleep.

After her daughter saw a strange man who was sitting at the top of the stairs disappear, Mercado called paranormal psychologist Hans Holzer and a medium for help.

They told her the home was full of the ghosts, including a bride who mysteriously died in the home’s attic and still wore her wedding dress.

After Mercado’s mother died, she put the spooky house up for sale so she and her husband Matthew could move in with her elderly father.

Mercado told the new owners the house was haunted and even gave them a copy of her book but said they were not scared.

Years later, the owners of the house say they still have not seen any spooks, specters or apparitions in the home.

“After we moved in I remember hearing a bunch of footsteps upstairs and getting scared. But then I remembered I had four kids in the house,” said the current owner who declined to give her name. “We renovated [the house] and that must have took [the ghosts] out.”

Mercado sometimes drives to the block and wonders if the ghosts still exist and said she understands if her horror story is too much to believe.

“If someone were telling me these stories without having experienced what I’ve experienced, I’d probably say the same thing,” said Mercado. “It’s okay if you don’t believe.”