Devil's Tower (Rio Vista)

A six-story Gothic stone clock tower built in 1910 by sugar baron Manuel Rionda for his wife Harriet to view New York from the New Jersey Palisades. The tower sits in one of America's most expensive neighborhoods where Beyonce and Jay-Z own property.

The structure known as Devil's Tower rises one hundred feet above the Palisades in Alpine, the centerpiece of what was once the Rio Vista estate. It was designed by architect Charles Rollinson Lamb -- a founding member of the National Sculpture Society whose father established the renowned J. and R. Lamb Studios -- and commissioned around 1910 by Manuel Rionda, a Spanish-born sugar baron who had amassed one of the largest fortunes in America through his Cuban cane plantations. The estate sprawled across more than two hundred acres encompassing parts of present-day Alpine, Closter, and Cresskill, featuring a man-made lake, bridle paths, elaborate gardens, and a neo-Gothic compound of deep grey stone buildings. Rionda had the tower built behind the main house so that his wife, Harriet Clarke Rionda, could enjoy views of the Hudson River, Yonkers, New York City, and Long Island Sound from its upper floors. In reality, the imposing structure served a practical purpose: it was an ornate water tower housing a large wooden tank that provided water pressure to the various buildings across the estate. Rionda also maintained a private office at the top.

The legend that haunts the tower, however, tells a very different story. According to local folklore, Harriet caught Manuel in the midst of an affair with another woman and, devastated by the betrayal, threw herself from the top of the tower to her death. In the years since, visitors report hearing her scream as though she is falling, smelling her perfume drifting through the air around the base, and seeing a shadowy figure moving behind the sealed windows. The most famous ritual involves driving or walking backward around the tower -- some versions say three times at midnight to summon Harriet's ghost, six times to summon the Devil himself. Attempts to demolish the tower have also entered the lore, with stories claiming that workers on demolition crews died under mysterious circumstances, preventing anyone from tearing it down.

Historical records tell a more prosaic truth. Harriet Clarke Rionda died of natural causes in 1922 from the complications of a stroke in a New York hospital. Her ashes were interred in a nearby chapel on the estate grounds, also designed by Charles Lamb. Manuel Rionda died in Alpine in 1943 at approximately eighty years of age. Both were eventually reinterred at Brookside Cemetery in Englewood. After Manuel's death, with no heir to inherit the property, the estate was sold and eventually became the Tammybrook Country Club before being developed into the Rio Vista residential neighborhood.

The tower's sinister nickname likely originated in the decades when the abandoned structure attracted teenagers who broke in to party among its crumbling rooms, leaving graffiti -- some of it Satanic in nature -- across the interior walls. There was also a tunnel that once connected the tower to the main mansion, and Manuel reportedly sealed it and removed the elevator after Harriet's death, adding fuel to rumors of dark secrets. The doors and windows have since been sealed and the tower is gated and locked, but it remains a landmark visible from the surrounding neighborhood, which now counts Beyonce, Jay-Z, and Stevie Wonder among its residents. Whether the screams reported on quiet nights belong to Harriet's ghost or to the wind funneling through the Palisades cliffs, the tower continues to draw curiosity-seekers who circle it in the dark, counting their laps.