Riddle Mansion

The **Riddle Mansion** is an empty mansion and landmark located south of Ashford Falls, New York on Winchester Road (Highway 12) just past the Gilbert House and before Wyckoff Road. For much of its existence, the structure has been empty, briefly being occupied for short periods of time. Several locals known of it as the "Ashford Falls Murder House" because of several deaths there in September 1953.

Not much of the house's history is known, but just as in the Bachelor's Grove Mansion, several events have been revealed about it from various locals who know about the house, such as former mayor Lionel Creekmore, Bradley Larabee and Sheriff David Carmichael. According to Creekmore, it was built in the 1880s when the land was party of the county and before the grounds were incorporated from the county into the city limits. Larabee in his interest of the town's oldest buildings later revealed the mansion was built by Edward Fox, a robber baron who made his fortune alongside Franklin Hedison, but he died before the house was finished. It stood empty until the 1900s when Samuel Riddle acquired it and finished construction. Riddle reportedly died shortly after moving in with his family and servants.

According to Creekmore, Riddle's son, Thomas, refused to live there, and instead chose to rent it out to several people over several years. One of his renters was Emile (Miles) Sharp, who used the house to store his collection of eccentric and macabre artifacts from his travels around the world; much of the collection is still in the house. Sometime in the 1950s, Riddle's son, Carver Riddle, rented it to an eccentric named Noah Boddy from Massachusetts.

According to Carmichael in a story told to Ted Beauchamp, Boddy was reportedly into several lucrative criminal activities, and after faking his death, he invited six guests from people he believed had cheated him and who were probably criminals themselves to the house for the reading of his will. Among these people were retired Colonel Matthew Ulysses Steward, socialite Emily Whyte, a bordello owner known only as Scarlett, Professor Percival Lambe, Petunia Cocke, the widow of a former state senator and an FBI agent and closeted homo sezual Ronald Greene. Carmichael was ambiguous about the events of the night except to say that Boddy and two of his servants and a few other strangers were murdered in the house, and the murderer was never caught. Beauchamp eagerly tried to solve the unsolved deaths, but his other duties as a police officer eventually took precedent.

Sometime in the 1970s, Lincoln Hedison acquired the house from the bank as Carver Riddle had left no heirs. His family didn't care for the house much, finding it creepy and inhospitable because of the decor and reputation; they later built and moved to a new residence east of town. Hedison rented it out to a few tenants, and after his death, his son, Carter Hedison, leveraged the value of the house to make several financial deals. Carmichael also suspected Carter had falsified the value of the house in order to make money from the location.

Through the 90s, the house was practically abandoned. Jason Pryde, Harvey Kirkland and Aaron Samms explored it through high school until Blake Hedison hired a caretaker to restore and protect it.

Its current status is unrevealed.