Description

This week on Loreplay, your host Dayna Pereira drags you—lovingly, chaotically, and with a full set of trigger warnings—into one of New York’s darkest intersections of myth and reality. We’re talking Cropsey, Staten Island’s OG boogeyman… and the very real institutional nightmare that fed the legend: the Willowbrook State School.

From childhood dares in the woods… to abandoned tunnels… to unethical medical experiments… to the disappearances of multiple children… this episode unpacks how an urban legend stopped being folklore and started feeling uncomfortably real.

Dayna dives into:

• The original pre–Andre Rand versions of Cropsey
• The creation, collapse, and absolute hellscape of Willowbrook
• The hepatitis experiments (aka: “science said WHAT?”)
• Geraldo Rivera blowing the lid off the institution
• The disappearances that shook Staten Island
• Andre Rand’s crimes, accusations, and the cases still unsolved
• How myth, trauma, and institutional failure fused into one terrifying narrative

Equal parts horror, heartbreak, and “holy-shit-how-was-this-real,” this episode is a reminder that sometimes the scariest legends are built on top of real places where real people were failed.

Turn off the lights. Lock your doors. And let’s go find the line where folklore ends… and monsters begin.

SHOW NOTES

Trigger Warnings:

This episode contains discussions of child abuse, neglect, institutional abuse, unethical medical experiments, kidnapping, and the deaths/disappearances of children.

Topics Covered:

• History of the Cropsey urban legend
• Early folklore origins of Cropsey (pre–Andre Rand)
• Founding and deterioration of the Willowbrook State School (1947–1987)
• Conditions inside Willowbrook
• The hepatitis experiments conducted by Dr. Saul Krugman
• Geraldo Rivera’s 1972 exposé
• The disappearance cases of:
  • Alice Pereira (1972)
  • Holly Ann Hughes (1981)
  • Tiahease Jackson (1983)
  • Henry Gafforio (1984)
  • Jennifer Schweiger (1987)
• The arrest and convictions of Andre Rand
• The 2009 Cropsey documentary
• Modern interpretations, hauntings, and how the legend persists

Sources & Further Reading:

(Note: these are clean, reputable sources suitable for show notes. No need for academic citation formatting.)

• “Cropsey” (2009) – Documentary by Joshua Zeman & Barbara Brancaccio
• Geraldo Rivera’s 1972 Willowbrook exposé (ABC/Local Eyewitness News)
• New York State Archives – Willowbrook State School Records
• The New York Times coverage of Willowbrook (1960s–1980s)
• The Disability Rights Movement & The Willowbrook Consent Decree
• New York Daily News & Staten Island Advance reporting on the Rand cases
• Saul Krugman’s published hepatitis studies (1950s–1970s), archived medical journals

Support the Show:

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