A creepy babydoll, coffin door and drawers that open on their own: Inside the real-life Westchester haunted house that inspired a new horror novel

“I didn’t move into this house thinking I was going to move into this house full of ghosts and write a haunted house novel,” author Aimee Pokwatka, 45, told The Post.But that’s exactly how things went.

In 2019, she and her husband, Jason Kyle, bought a Westchester home dating back to the 1750s for themselves and their two sons, then ages seven and nine.With historical features like a “coffin door” — leftover from the days when people held funerals in their living rooms — a dangerously steep staircase in the back and an underground tunnel that cut through the property, the Lewisboro, NY, home was strange from the start.

The idiosyncrasies were a selling point for Pokwatka.“My dad, when I was growing up, was obsessed with Bob Villa,” she said.“We watched ‘This Old House’ like it was our cartoons.” Then odd things started happening.

The radiators hissed like human voices and a creepy babydoll appeared in the yard.More than once, Pokwatka said, someone asked for napkins in the kitchen, and the right drawer just mysteriously popped open. The novelist couldn’t help but think, “What if a family moved into a house … and failed to notice that the house was actually haunted?”The result is the new horror novel “Accumulation” (out now; G.P.

Putnam’s Sons), which tells the story of a family besieged by paranormal visitors — among other destabilizing marital dynamics — after moving into the wife’s dream home in an unnamed New York City suburb. For the most part, Pokwatka and Kyle have enjoyed their home’s quirks.When the doll, with its dirty cheeks and lifeless eyes, appeared in the yard, it inspired a years-long game. “We started hiding it for each other … As one does, upon finding an obviously cursed object in one’s yard,” Pokwatka said with a laugh.

“He would put it in my underwear drawer and I’d be like, ‘now it’s my turn’ and I’d put it in the console of his car, or in the grill.” A similar d...