Est. 1740 · Colonial Ironworks Site · Cooper-Hewitt Family Estate · National Historic Landmark · Revolutionary War Iron Production
Ringwood's history begins with iron. The manor sits on land tied to the colonial-era Ringwood Ironworks, which produced military iron through the Revolutionary War period. The first house on the site dates from 1740. Through the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the property changed hands among ironmaster families — including the Erskines, whose name remains attached to several of the site's regional ghost stories.
In 1853, Peter Cooper acquired the estate. Cooper, the inventor and industrialist who founded Cooper Union and built the first American steam locomotive, used Ringwood as a country residence. His daughter Sarah married Abram S. Hewitt, who became Cooper's business partner and later mayor of New York. The Hewitt family transformed Ringwood across four major expansion campaigns in 1864, 1875, 1900, and 1910, ultimately producing the 51-room mansion that stands today.
The family donated Ringwood Manor and a substantial surrounding acreage to the State of New Jersey in 1938. The property is now a National Historic Landmark and the centerpiece of Ringwood State Park, which protects ironworks ruins, the Cooper-Hewitt family cemetery, and several thousand acres of wooded terrain along the New Jersey-New York border. Interior tours of the manor were paused in 2025 for an exterior restoration project; outdoor tours, the carriage barn exhibit, and the park grounds remain open.
Sources
- https://www.ringwoodmanor.org/
- https://www.getoutnabout.com/blog/a-cooper-hewitt-new-jersey-estate-ringwood-manor
- https://freehiddenworld.wordpress.com/2020/08/29/ringwood-manor-ringwood-nj/
- https://dep.nj.gov/parksandforests/state-park/ringwood-state-park/
ApparitionsPhantom voicesPhantom footstepsDoors opening/closingCold spots
Ringwood Manor's paranormal reputation has unusually strong twentieth-century pedigree. The parapsychologist Hans Holzer investigated the house in the 1960s alongside medium Ethel Johnson Meyers, and the published account placed Ringwood near the top of his list of American haunted-house investigations. Holzer's work, conducted under Meyers's trance-mediumship, focused primarily on what is identified as Mrs. Erskine's bedroom — a section of the original 1740 house preserved within the larger Hewitt-era expansion.
The Holzer investigation produced three named figures: a 19th-century servant identified as Jackson White, a second servant named Jeremiah, and Mrs. Erskine herself, who according to Holzer's published account expressed displeasure at the investigation and asked them to leave. These accounts are the source material for most subsequent paranormal coverage of the manor.
More recent staff accounts describe doors that have been locked at closing time found wide open in the morning, footsteps reported in the upstairs corridors when the house is empty, and a recurring report of portrait subjects whose eyes appear to follow visitors through the older rooms. The State of New Jersey does not market the manor primarily as a haunted attraction; the folklore exists alongside the mansion's National Historic Landmark interpretation rather than as its central pitch.
Notable Entities
Mrs. ErskineJackson WhiteJeremiah
Media Appearances
- Hans Holzer paranormal investigation, 1960s
