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They’ve got some demons to work out.
The Long Island Paranormal Investigators are getting the heebie jeebies from the Massapequas after a pair of shocking murders — as the charming slice of suburbia’s haunting past still lingers in local lore.
The Post joined the local ghostbusters to stake out the area, a desirable family-oriented community after several headlines that had locals wondering why the Massapequas, which counts Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann as its most notorious resident, keep ending up in news headlines.
Spiritually sensitive Emily Granados of the LIPI and its founder Mike Cardinuto recently scoped out the area after the downright creepy crime trend to see if any metaphysical misfortunes contribute to the trouble in paradise.
“It just felt like a sharp blow to the chest. It interrupted the way I breathe,” Granados told The Post after walking by Heuermann’s blood-red Massapequa Park property, where prosecutors say he committed a bulk of the atrocities.
“Even before knowing what it was, I always shuddered a little bit in the past driving by,” Granados added of the small and creepy out-of-place home neighbors described as one to skip over on Halloween.
Massapequa Park specifically, which was ranked as the No. 1 place to live in New York by US News & World Report in 2025 and 2026, has been giving Granados and other brave ghostbusters the creeps for years now.
“I run errands on Park Boulevard. I’ll be in the parking lot there, and I just feel this sadness, this despair,” she said of the bustling Massapequa Park Village main street.
Nearby North Massapequa was host to a grisly family killing in late June. Joseph Horner, a 27-year-old music teacher, was accused of sexually assaulting and murdering his wife’s sister, Victoria Castle, at their house while his spouse was away on a bachelorette trip.
He called the police to turn himself in.
Days prior, 22-year-old Kristin Scully allegedly stabbed 28-year-old Robert Carragher to death in his family’s Massapequa home during a late-night meetup.
“I feel a lot of negative stuff here — I hate to say that,” Granados said of the section of Nassau County that’s earned an eerie reputation as of late.
“I feel like there’s a lot of aggression.”
Granados takes in spiritual serenity at plenty of Long Island locations like Theodore Roosevelt’s home of Sagamore Hill on the North Shore — but she experienced the complete opposite while walking through the Massapequa Preserve in mid-July.
“It’s spooky over here,” Granados said near the trail area where the bodies of MS-13-related killings were found in years past.
“There’s this very heavy sadness that’s lingering.”
Most townsfolk — who range from Wall Streeters to nurses, first responders and teachers — shrug off the dark stuff and rather emphasize Massapequa’s family-oriented juxtaposition of great schools, Little Leagues and mainly good-hearted neighbors.
But one home in Massapequa called in the LIPI in the past year because their child was experiencing constant disturbances at night.
“She was waking up with nightmares, just out of nowhere, these awful nightmares and restless sleep,” said Cardinuto, LIPI’s founder.
“We have captured some stuff there. I think it was audio evidence. They do want us to come back,” he added of the homeowners.
Cardinuto and his team use everyday instruments to test for paranormal sounds and other unusual events at a property — going into investigations completely cold and without researching the area.
It’s a way of avoiding any preconceived notions that could influence their findings.
They did not know at the time that the girl’s house was about five minutes over to another chilling location — the Biltmore Shores home where 17-year-old “Long Island Lolita” Amy Fisher shot Mary Jo Buttafuoco at point blank after carrying on an affair with her husband, Joey, in 1992.
Cardinuto and Granados audibly gasped when later told about the close proximity.
Massapequa isn’t alone in notoriety, though, and the haunted hamlet actually sits between a paranormal rock and a hard place that could be casting an unsettling energy, Cardinuto claimed.
Minutes east is the “Amityville horror” house where Ron DeFeo psychotically murdered his family in 1974, inspiring a series of haunted films of the same name.
Hollywood also took source material from a home on the Seaford-Massapequa border for the 1982 horror flick “Poltergeist.”
A 1950s family in the residence near Seaford High School is believed to have experienced inexplicable bottles popping, shelves falling and other objects flying — in addition to blood-curdling noises.
“There are entire states that have, maybe, one case like that. We have two right here,” Cardinuto said.
“It’s wild — that could definitely play a huge factor.”
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