"REID’S ICE CREAM FACTORY"

I scream, you scream, we all scream for…

While working on my next horror novel I was looking out my office window one morning and happened to witness a little boy going to town on an ice cream cone. I later learned that day that there is yet another legend in Long Island, New York. Perhaps this is more eerie than any books I’ve written thus far. A place in Long Island known for it’s past much like all places are known for. Reid’s Ice Cream Factory has a past and one perhaps that is scarred. It intrigued me to learn that a place such as an Ice Cream factory could contain anything remotely devastating in it’s history, but what makes it more disturbing, is that when I think of Ice Cream in a literal sense, I think of children.

I mean after all, what better place to frequent as a child? What better dessert is there than Ice cream? Vanilla and Chocolate dreams that have taken us all back to our childhood at one time or another. All of us can remember the sweet nostalgia of summer where innocence sometimes becomes lost. Maybe that is why the legends pertaining to Reid’s Ice Cream Factory seem so bone chilling. The legends related to this story are not any different than most ghost stories. After I was done writing this, I went over to my local Dairy Queen and ordered a cone of vanilla. It’s a wonder as to why, except that maybe I was haunted by my own realizations that innocence is not lost, it’s found in grim places like legends. Reid’s Ice Cream Factory is settled in Blue Point. Set in this town is the Ice Cream Factory that’s been abandoned for years.

In the 1950’s, Blue Point was home to a nightclub that was the highlight of its time. Known as the PLACE to be, people would come from all over to experience the nightlife hidden away on the south shore of Long Island. A local girl, a few people referred to her as Linda, had been hanging around the club for a while when she accepted a job as a dancer there. One night she met a man while working. He had been eating a cone of ice cream and smiling at her for most of the evening. Small talk led to illusions, and she agreed to meet the man later that night in a parking lot after her shift was over. Linda said goodbye to one of the girls. The two of them drove to the ice cream factory, a secluded spot that doubled as a make out spot. The man attacked Linda with a straight razor and left her body lying in the dust as the ghost of her killer’s taillights fell upon her body.

Since then, and to this day, stories of screams and crying can be heard at the deserted factory and especially at night, when the imagination takes full hold of you, but then, why has there been sightings of this woman being seen walking the property? Some people say she’ll walk right up to you while tilting her head to show the lacerations Mr. Straight razor has made, and just before she reaches you, she vanishes.

Sometime in the 70’s a little boy was playing in the factory. Climbing on an old piece of machinery, he fell to his death onto the factory floor. Since then the sounds of giggling and singing have been reported as emanating from inside the factory. There are even reports of the sound of small feet echoing down the main entrance, and they sometimes continue outside in front of the vine-covered walkway.

There is a sign hanging in the entrance to the abandoned factory above an old machine that still hangs today. The sign depicts the word CHOP.

A fire was supposedly responsible for destroying the original building, rebuilds have been planned but more fires followed each time the rebuild was set in motion. The fires were mysterious, seemingly coming from nowhere. The owners eventually gave up plans to rebuild; they boarded up the factory and abandoned it to time.

Time, like ice cream, can bring along many mysterious pasts of those that favor them. It leads me to believe that the haunted places of Long Island, are more than victims to time, they are part of the forever folklore that make up this wonderful State of New York, and Long Island is quite frankly, the cherry on top of it all.

Eric Enck
January 12, 2006 1:27 PM Eastern

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