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Local Legends Devil’s Tower Mark and Mark June 20, 2021 An ominous looking edifice stands in the town of Alpine that has come to be known as Devil’s Tower. It’s a six-story gothic stone clocktower that the Devil himself is said to inhabit. There are several dark legends about the structure, including exact procedures to follow in order to conjure its spirits. Here are just a few of the dozens of stories that our readers have told us about this unholy place: “The big stone tower at one time housed evil rituals by Satanists early in the century. Some evil tragedy happened, and after the group’s demise, there have been several attempts to tear it down, but to no avail. Some say work crews have died in the attempt.” As with most sites like this, it became a popular destination for teens in the ’70s and friends of mine who have been inside reported encountering mysterious gusts of cold wind that sent them screaming for their cars. Another reader e-mailed us a slightly different version of the tower’s legend: “As you approach it, you can almost see people in the windows of the tower. When you get there, according to what I have heard, witnessed and attempted myself, you are to drive your car around the tower in reverse three times. After the third, when you come to a full circle, turn off your car and headlights and the ghost of a woman should approach you. This hasn’t happened yet, but I and others have seen a mist start to form. After that, I don’t know what is supposed to happen, and what isn’t.” Still others say six times around the tower is the magic number which will raise the dead: “The Devil’s Tower was owned by a rich married man. He built the tower so his wife could see New York without really going to New York. One night, his wife was looking out of the top of the tower and she saw her husband with another woman, so she jumped right down the center of the tower. The husband was so upset that he stopped all the work on the tower because it was for his wife and now his wife was dead. Now if you drive around the tower backwards six times, the ghost of the wife is supposed to control your car and drive it straight into a tree. This happened to a group of teens. When they went around it the sixth time, something controlled their car and drove it into a tree, killing a girl.” –Nick G. One person told us that if you walk around it backwards six times at midnight, the Devil himself will appear. There is satanic graffiti on the inside walls, but the tower is now gated and locked. The doors and windows have also been sealed, allowing no entrance. According to the Alpine Historical Society, the Devil’s Tower: “…was the centerpiece of an estate called Rio Vista, which was owned by Manuel Rionda in the first half of the 1900s. Rionda was a Spaniard who made his fortune from sugar cane plantations in Cuba. His mansion was on the cliffs where the present day Alpine Lookout is located. His property was the largest estate on the Palisades. Rionda used to delight in taking guests up to the top for the view (there was an elevator). Just off to one side of the tower was a chapel and ornately decorated mausoleum. Rionda’s wife and sister were both interred there at one time, though their bodies were removed when Rionda died in 1943. The entire estate was subdivided years ago, and was mostly just woodlands through the 1970s. The name “Devil’s Tower” probably came about around that time, when kids used to break into it and party and leave graffiti, sometimes of a “Satanic” nature. Eventually the tower was sealed up, and large houses were built on Rionda’s former property (the development is called “Rio Vista”). The tower is on a public road called The Esplanade, which is accessible from Route 9W, about a mile north of the Tenafly-Alpine border.” Ghostly Figures Haunt the Tower I recently visited the Devil’s Tower and heard a loud strange noise coming from within it. The noise sounded almost like creaky steps, but we have no idea what it actually was. Then we decided to drive around slowly and take a closer look. We got to the right side of it and parked the car because we saw something in the window on the right. Not the very very top one, the one that’s a good number of feet under it, all the way to the right. It looked like there was a broken window, but yet the window kept going up and down, up and down. It disappeared for a couple seconds and then a blurry figure of a person in all white, leaned out and looked down at us, but there were no facial features! It almost looked like it was wearing a veil or cape. It was grayish white and very distorted. –Michele Devil’s Tower Figures My friends and I went to Devil’s Tower in Alpine. We decided to drive around, what we thought was the correct number, six times in reverse. We got to the last time around and stopped. Huffing and puffing we looked up and saw nothing at first. Then to our amazement me and my friend May saw what we thought were white eyes in the top middle window. ...