South Jersey Paranormal Research

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In my previous house: My daughter who was 1 yrs old at the time lost her earrings while she was down for a nap. I looked EVERYWHERE in her room, sheets, crib, EVERYWHERE! I chalked it up to she must have ate them. I did what the doctor told me to do and checked her diapers for them. Nothing. I just considered them gone. About two months later I went into a half bathroom that had nothing in it because we hadn't decorated it yet after moving in. The only thing ever in this bathroom since we moved in was the soap on the sink (I used this bathroom everyday). There they were sitting plain as day on the sink as if I had left them there for the past two months. Many things had gone missing and reappeared like this in this house. Not since we moved have we experienced the "trickster" again :(

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Kim Lenkowski, SJPR Investigator klenkowski@comcast.net

What the...?

Kim is an SJPR investigator and the owner of Pure Clean, a commercial and residential cleaning business. This is the story of a recent experience she had while cleaning a client's house!

I was cleaning the house of a 90+ year old client. I was on the second floor, which we never usually clean, because she generally lives on the first floor only. You should know that her house is stocked with mementos of trips abroad and I mean stocked, it’s like cleaning a museum when you are there! Well, I was working in the old master bedroom, cleaning the dresser, and had cleared everything off to dust, including the picture of her husband who passed away 6 years ago. I had placed the picture on a chair next to the dresser. So, I turned around to pick up the cleaning solution, turned back to the dresser and realize that the picture was back on the dresser where I had originally found it. So, I put the picture back on the chair, thinking that I must not have moved it the first time. I turned to reach for my cloth, only to find the picture back on the dresser again when I turned to clean!

Of course, the third time I put it on the chair I stood back and watched…nothing happened! Well, needless to say, I am taking my audio recorder for our next visit along with the digital camera!

The moral of this story…..when you least expect it….EXPECT IT!

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Lorraine

The other night we were in our kitchen and next to our kitchen table is our microwave. Our lid that we use to cover our food when heating it up was laying flat on top of the microwave. We weren't by the microwave and the lid just lifted up and flew through the air onto the kitchen floor - and it did that like 4-5 times through out the late hours of the night.

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Todd

I have always been skeptical of stories about ghosts and the spiritual world. I have always questioned religion. You could say I have always been a skeptic. I became a believer a few years ago. I experienced something with a girlfriend of mine that is absolutely unbelievable.

We used to live in a house in Manayunk, PA. Our bedroom was on the third floor. I play guitar. Many nights I would play guitar before going to bed. One night I woke in the middle of the night and saw an apparition dancing behind the TV. It was a young girl, between the ages of 8 and 12 years. She wore a dress and was swaying back and forth. I thought I was going crazy. I woke my girlfriend and she could not see her. I forced myself to go back to sleep. She eventually disappeared.

Another night my girlfriend woke me and she saw the same girl. That night I could not see her. My girlfriend was afraid to leave the room to go to the bathroom. I had to walk her to the bathroom. Both nights that we saw her I had been playing my guitar.

Another night a music box that sat aside of our bed that had not been wound up in years, actually chimed three times in the middle of the night. I am convinced the girl wound up the music box. To this day, I now believe in ghosts and the spiritual world. I wish I could see her again.

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Stephanie
scole@bellsouth.net

I have lots of stories to tell but I'll just do one for now. I was working in an old hospital in Kentucky and the hospital happened to be the one I was born in. It isn't a hospital anymore and it wasn't when I was working there. I worked as a secretary up front on the second floor and I saw everyone who came in and went out. There was a glass door where anyone entering or leaving had to go through and it was about fifteen feet away from my desk. They had hanged a mirror beside the door so when the clients walked to my door, which was steel, and had to be unlocked by me on the side where my desk sat.

One day I was sitting there working on the computer and I heard the outside, glass door open. Everytime it opened, the air pushed my steel door and it jarred a little. Naturally I heard the steel door move and when I glanced up, I saw a woman walking toward the steel door. She had short blonde hair, and she was wearing a tan skirt and jacket suit. I waited because she didn't look familiar to me before I hit the buzzer to open the door but no one knocked. When I stood up to see where she'd went I didn't see her. So I got up and walked around to the door and opened it then walked around out in the waiting room, no one was there but me. The only exit she could have went through was the one I was staring at the entire time I thought she was out there. It was a ghost and it's not the only one I've ever seen. This is my story, thanks for listening.

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Barbara

In July of 2006 my husband and I drove down to Myrtle Beach, S.C. to visit some friends, John and Sally, who had purchased a condo in the area. We spent 3 or 4 days exploring the area and looking at real estate, eating, drinking and relaxing with them. They drove a green Acura.

They had planned to leave to return to NJ a day after us. We began our trip early in the afternoon driving North on 95. About 2 hours passed and I was looking out the passenger window at the heavy traffic. I saw John driving their green Acura and his wife (who has a very distinctive profile) sitting beside him in the passenger seat. "Look!" I exclaimed to my husband as I pointed and craned to keep track of their car in heavy traffic. "It's John and Sally!" "Where?" he demanded. "Over there, they're ahead of us now...I lost track of the car." "Well, that's impossible," he said. "They're not leaving until tomorrow morning, and besides John hates driving on 95 so he told me he's taking an alternate route home."

"But I SAW them!" I insisted. "You know as well as I do you can't mistake Sally's profile." "I saw them as clear as day!" "Well you saw somebody who looked like them in a green Acura, NOT THEM!" he said.

I briefly looked at the time, 2:35 PM and kept watching out the window hoping to see the green Acura in traffic. After awhile, I gave up and went to sleep. At 4:30 PM the mobile phone rang. It was John calling to tell us he and Sally had been in a car accident at 2:35 PM and were being discharged after treatment for minor injuries at the hospital. On their way to the supermarket (in the green Acura) a huge deer had leaped in front of their car and onto their windshield and crashed through. The car was ruined, the deer was dead, and they were glad to be alive.

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Liz
E_Santiago21@yahoo.com

I am very "sensitive" to these kind of experiences. Most recently while living with my boyfriend in his friends house, we had a visitor. He had dated a girl about 5 years prior who had died in her sleep from a seizure. He had pictures of them together in his mirror and also a chain of hers and a frame with pictures she had taken of him. It started out slowly and progressively got more intense as the time went on. I would feel her presence late at night, always in the same location.

As time went on, whenever I felt her presence, I would tell her not to worry about him and that I loved him. After awhile, I ended up telling him about the experience and of course he didn't believe me until.....one night I told him we had a visitor and he said that he had felt it too. I turned my back to the area that she was in and I felt her touch me. I jumped!! A few nights after that, she came back around as I was walking into the bedroom and felt as someone was walking fast up behind me. I jumped into bed next to my boyfriend and told him that she was here. At that same time I felt totally overwhelmed as if she was standing right over me. I then started crying and shaking I was also unable to breath. He then told her to leave me alone and everything stopped after that.

We made an agreement that when we moved into our new house, that we are now in, that he would not bring over the memories (her pictures.....) And told him to bury them.

Another one of Liz's stories......

I used to live in Lake Hopactong, NJ. While standing in the doorway of my friend's house smoking a cigarette, I saw a man standing underneath one of the trees in the yard. I played it off and ignored it but after awhile I started to get to me.

I then proceeded to tell my friend of an old man wearing one of those old style Irish hats (not sure what they are called) with those button down brims. I asked him if he knew anyone like this and said that it was his grandfather and that this had been his house. He then showed me a picture of him and it was identical to what I had seen outside.

I made a joke and asked him why he would be standing under that particular tree and he said that he had been cutting down some of the branches. I assumed he didn't like that very much.

Just One More...

While living in Lake Hopactong, NJ (apparently this is an old town) I moved into a house with 2 other roommates. This house was way up in the woods and if anyone knows Lake Hopactong, it's pretty hilly and woodsy in certain locations.

Once again, everything started out slowly.....I would come home from work and be scared to go in the house when no one was there, none the less look at it. I would leave until someone else got home. Numerous times, while alone, I would hear someone in the upstairs bedroom and the door close to the hallway. We had cats so I just figured that it was them..

I ignored the noise upstairs until I saw what appeared to a tall man wearing a big hat and a long dark coat walking down the stairs. I saw him in the kitchen after that too. Hoping this was the end of what was going to happen, I soon realized it was just the beginning.

My room was on the first floor and on outside of the house there was no ground since it was built up on a hill. I told you this because one night there was knocking on my bedroom window, when i went to go look outside it would stop and once back in my bed the knocking would start again. There is no way to reach my my windows. I had a friend of mine sleep over and they had said the same thing happened.

One night while getting ready to go out I heard additional noises come and get like someone was jumping on furniture in the house. I told my friend to come and listen and she said she was leaving and never coming back. This was very weird because the only location you could hear the noise was from my bedroom.

After awhile I had to sleep with the lights on because the presence became so strong in my room I no longer felt safe. Lights didn't help after awhile and I soon began to fear even staying in the house. After a month of staying there I could no longer deal with it and moved out.

Like I said before in my previous stories, I am sensitive to this. It always works out with something small happening and then building up to more obvious things happening. Almost like I bring it out. As far as I could remember I have always been like this

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Tracy Farquhar, SJPR Investigator
ukjerseygirl@hotmail.com

Haunted in Haddonfield

When I tell people I’m a “ghost hunter trainee,” they often want to know what sparked my interest in paranormal phenomena. I grew up in a rather unconventional household, with family members who had lots of paranormal experiences. Even though they often tried to shield me from these things, I was aware of a lot of what was going on and had plenty of my own experiences, especially while living in Haddonfield, NJ.

I moved with my family to the house in Haddonfield in 1967 when I was 8 years old and stayed there until I was 15. It was one of three houses built by a man for himself and his two daughters; they are all built in different styles, with the only visible similarity being a small stained glass window of the same design installed in the upper floor of all three houses.

There was one bedroom on the second floor of the house which tended to have the most unusual activity. We would often experience strong odors with no known origin, usually of incense or floral perfume. Several people who slept in the room said that they felt the bed being shaken. I remember my mother saying it felt as though a little man were standing at the foot of the bed, pushing on the mattress just to be mischievous. It was never a menacing presence, and when our “little man” was asked to stop shaking the bed, he would stop immediately! It is interesting to note that only the women in our family had these experiences; the men never smelled or felt anything unusual (at least not that they admitted to).

I had the bedroom next to this one until my teen years, when I moved to the attic for a little more privacy. The attic was divided in two; one side was used for storage and the other was the finished room, which was my bedroom. In the storage area were rails where clothing was hung; the clothes would often move as though being blown by a breeze when there were no windows or vents open in the attic. I often had the feeling of a presence in my room; one night, when my sister was sleeping in the attic room with me, we both woke up to the sound of loud footsteps coming up the stairs. My sister groped for something heavy, thinking she would need to defend us from the approaching intruder, but no one ever appeared. In fact, it seemed as though the number of footsteps we heard far exceeded the number of stairs to the attic room.

Another time, my sister and I both awakened by an extremely strong smell of gas. We were very alarmed, but hesitant to wake our parents. We lay there sniffing the air, then putting our heads under the covers for a minute before sniffing the air again, to be sure we weren’t imagining it. When we were sure there must be a terrible gas leak and that the house would explode at any moment, we woke our parents. My mother smelled it immediately, but my father didn’t smell a thing. My mother was alarmed enough to call the police, who came and agreed with my father. The men all thought we women were crazy and sent us back to bed. We never found out what caused that strong odor.

Our house had a back staircase that led from the kitchen up to a landing, which joined with the main staircase to the second floor. One day, a heavy object thumped down the back stairs, startling everyone. We later found out that my father, who was traveling, had suffered a serious heart attack at the same time we had been startled by that noise.

When we sold the house and moved, my mother received a letter from our next-door neighbor, who we had never gotten to know very well in the years we lived there. Her letter asked if we had ever had any “unusual experiences” in our house and she asked if she could meet with my mother to talk about it. Unfortunately, she died shortly afterwards, before my mother was able to talk to her. My mother often wished that she had made this date to find out what had happened in their house, and if perhaps we shared the same ghosts!

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Eugene W.

I am a Third year student at Camden County College. There is one building called Jefferson Hall that is said to be Haunted. I believe it because as I was walking to class I heard someone humming in a low voice and saw a man in a robe. I blinked once and it was like it never happened. This all happened in a matter of seconds and it freaked me out

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Bob & Dee Mumie

My wife and I moved into a 2nd story apartment in a historical home in Berlin, NJ last spring. The home is about 150 years old and has a rich history, being owned originally by a doctor and used as a hospital during the civil war. We have been told that people were treated here, were born here and even died here. It was converted to a triplex in the 1930's.

Since moving here, we have experienced some subtle and some not so subtle events which we attribute to the possibility of paranormal activity.

Almost immediately after moving in, we would wake to find lights, TV's and radios on that we are sure were off when we went to bed the night before. We also noticed the feeling of a presence. There were no emotions attached to the presence so we really don't fear it but occasionally we know it's there. After a couple of weeks, we approached the landlord who lives on the first floor and asked if he ever had anything happen.  He said if we meant people walking around with no head or blood coming from the walls, no, but to our surprise, he said he had experienced the same things we did. Lights, TV and stereo going on and off by themselves. He said other tenants and people who have stayed there while he was away on vacations experienced these as well. This was happening so frequently he had an electrician check the service to make sure there wasn't a problem. It checked out just fine.

We have had a few occurrences that went beyond the playful electronic games though. I was taking our dog out for a walk and I noticed a light in the hallway at the top of the stairs pulsating slowly, dim to bright. I checked the bulb and it was screwed in tight.   I was going to head down and tell the landlord there might be an electrical issue when I noticed my dog frozen in the hallway. I called her and she would not come to me. She was fixated on a point near the light. I finally had to grab her by the collar and she fought me until we got past that point in the hall. She crept past the light and then ran once we reached the top of the steps coming back in.

Another time my wife came home to find the dog with it's back to her in the kitchen, looking up like it would a person and wagging its tail like it was waiting for a treat. No one was there, but the dog was so preoccupied with whatever was there it did not even notice my wife had come home. She yelled to the dog and startled her.

We have come home and found that the dog was in rooms we keep barricaded during the day almost as though someone had moved barricades to let the dog in.

Within the past two months we have had a couple of really strange things happen. Pictures we hung were taken down. Not fallen, taken down. They were placed on the floor leaning against the wall under or near where they were hung. This has happened a few times. Almost as if someone disapproves of their being there.  They were hung on existing nails. The only thing that will stay on the one hook is a crucifix we hung there after the picture kept ending up against the wall.

Occasionally at night in the bathroom I have heard light knocks on the door; 3 light taps in quick succession. Usually this will happen 2 or 3 times inside a 10 minute span. At first this was a great help with constipation. I have grown used to it. I can count on this happening at least once or twice a week and always late at night.

The absolute strangest activity happened on August 21st. I know the date because I was stuck on jury duty and my wife was off and home. I called on break and she told me she had been walking around the apartment cleaning and had been up and down the hall several times. After passing that way several times she turned in the hall to find a baby seat that was in the kitchen sitting on the floor in the middle of the hallway as though it had been placed there. This shook her up a little bit knowing it was not there earlier and she was the only person at home. In case you are wondering if my wife scares easily, I should tell you that she is a Marine veteran and it takes a bit to get her shook up. While I was talking to her she let out a yell and informed me that the washing machine had moved as though someone bumped into it hard while walking.  She took the dog and went outside for about an hour until the landlord came home before going back upstairs. When I came home later that day I observed it had moved about 6 inches away from the wall. This was in the middle of the day. We have noticed that our friend does not hold exclusive night time rights.

In general we are not afraid of whatever or whoever is hanging out so long as they don't start materializing or making a mess of things.   Same rules apply to them. If you drop it or break it pick it up. We can all live happily together that way!

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So, Bob, would you like to have SJPR come out an investigate? Your house sounds most interesting!

Susan - SJPR

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Bonnie Sauter, SJPR Investigator

My House or The McCulley's House?

In the early mid-80's, my family moved into an old Victorian home. It was the house of my dreams, but not of my husband because he would rather have had a newer home. To my luck, we couldn't afford his taste, so I was the winner. The home was not very wide, but it was quite high going up to three stories. Over the years, previous owners had changed the exterior design by doing things like removing the wrap around porch. Oh, how I wanted to restore that porch. Also, in an effort to update, they put heavy wood panels up all over the house - literally not one wall was nonpanelled! The backyard was a haven for our young daughter and her new puppy with lots of running room and areas for escape, such as her clubhouse.

For the first few months, all was well, except I would notice noises on the 2nd floor when no one was up there. Not long after, my daughter complained of the "monster" who shook her bed at night and was frightening her. At that point, I thought it was childhood dreams, but then the activity began to escalate when I started to believe that my young child was being terrorized by something. I demanded that it leave our home and never return. Well, that didn't go well because that same night there was banging on the wall opposite my bed's headboard. There were also sounds up and down this hallway, which ran into my daughter's bedroom. When I finally slept, I was awakened by the feeling that I was being crushed by something invisible. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't move.....I was being held down! After this incident, I started to regularly demand that this spirit leave our home, but in the name of God.

Not long after, I received a reply, but it was in a dream. An old woman came to me as I slept and told me her & her husband's name (which I don't recall now for sure) as well as their surname, McCulley. She told me that she used to live in the house with her husband and that they both had died. She wanted to move on, but he wouldn't go, so she is still here to look after him. She told me not to be afraid, that he will not harm us, that he is simply playing around with us because he had dementia when he passed and he still had it. I asked her to get him to stop and she said that she was doing the best she could to control him....but again, we should not fear him. (note: her husband was in the background of my dream giggling the entire time). I also ask her if there was ever a fire in the house because I had visions of young boys running down a similar hall while a fire was raging at one end. She told me no, but there was one across the street on the corner; (note: I later confirmed that the house across the street from mine had burnt to the ground and that they did, in fact, have several young boys. Thankfully, no one had died in that fire). After that, I knew it was not a dream, but a visitation.

Although things started to calm down, my husband found another home he wanted us to move into. I never did get to renovate the old Victorian and I often wonder what we would have stirred up if I had. It is important to note that you can, in some instances, communicate and even solve problems if you are open to such interaction. I bet Mr. & Mrs. McCulley are still in that house, which peculiar as it may seem, is up for sale for what I believe is the fourth time since we sold. Perhaps it is the feeling that you get while living there.....that you are just a visitor.

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Joe Tornatore (Jim's brother)

The Double Swallow of Hard Candy

I believe that the truth is often stranger than fiction and fiction is no stranger to the truth. Freudian Slips is no stranger to irony but what you are about to read is not only strangely ironic and true but born entirely fictitious and ending up largely factual. The odds and reasons of how it turned out that way is incalculable, unfathomable and beyond my words even as a wannabe writer.

In the 1980’s, I accepted employment at New Lisbon Developmental Center, an antiquated institution for the developmentally disabled carved out of the wilderness. For a twenty-four year old man, the work environment proved quite startling to my sheltered psyche. I never knew human beings so different from the normal populous existed so tucked away from the front pages of mainstream society.

Holding a lifelong interest in writing, I started to pen a fictional novel about a morality driven psychologist who accepts a post at a similar institution for the mentally retarded. In creating characters within a thin storyline, my rich imagination intersected with only marginal writing skills. I devoted the next six years of my life inventing and writing, devising and revising. I titled the byproduct of my imagination Of Might and Manacle, a spin-off of the classic Of Mice and Men. In 1992, I copyrighted the manuscript where it has sat unpublished and untouched on a dusty shelf for the last fourteen years.

To properly tell this story I need to revert back in time to 1987, when my manuscript needed script. I took a group of clients for a nature walk in the neighboring Pine Barrens of New Lisbon Developmental Center. As a breeze jostled through the towering pine trees, something quite unusual came over me. Beneath the very ground that I walked and toiled for a living, I internally sensed an additional subplot for Of Might and Manacle. To escape the depicted injustices of institutionalization, I imagined a runaway attempt by two young brothers from the house of the unholy. During my invigorating and inspiring walk with nature, a picture book materialized in my head of what later became chapter eleven of Of Might and Manacle.

I invented two inseparable characters, uncommonly handsome twin brothers named Akeem and Kareem McNair, originally from Atlantic City, New Jersey. Bonded by the same blood and bound by the same institution, I imagined the early life of the borderline mentally retarded, incorrigible brothers. After a disastrous home life and a series of failed foster care arrangements, the McNairs became wards of the state and sent to dwell in a flawed institution. I sketched out one brother to be a gifted Special Olympics track and field champion. At the risk of rehashing Hollywood movie formula, I concocted Akeem shaking hands with the Governor of New Jersey months before this runaway attempt. Contrastingly, I fashioned the other brother as a juvenile delinquent, who often resorted to slashing his wrists in attempted suicides.

Convinced they would rather die then languish in an institution, the McNair brothers join forces to make a daring daylight escape. On a warm day, they take advantage of a lapse in supervision by indifferent staff members, including a fictitious staffer named Westly. Running across the white sands of the backyard courtyard, the brothers scale the perimeter fence then dart for the Pine Barrens. Reaching the sanctuary of the woods, the runaways "hide motionless and scared in the camouflaged brush,” looking back at the institution that held them captive. Under the threat of hound dogs, they trudge on. By nightfall, they scale a tree to sleep in a deer hunter’s tree fort, where they eat all of their provisions, including candy. The brothers “marvel at the natural beauty of the celestial sky. Shortly after dawn the twins awake to chirping birds.” They sojourn miles on foot and even take up a cross-country run during which one brother is not able to keep pace with the other. Along the way, they celebrate their newfound freedom by disrobing their institutionalized garb to swim and frolic in a murky creek. Mother Nature reveals itself with the hooting of an owl, the indiscernible sounds of wild animals, and the odd, broad-daylight sighting of a white-tailed deer. Hunger sets in. The dense woods eventually thin. They share brotherly camaraderie and rival banter along their journey. While the love they have for one another is all they have in this world, it has never been enough. So they steal a hillbilly’s pickup in an attempt to return to Atlantic City, NJ where they last saw their father. My copyrighted version has the brothers caught by police after a couple of days on the lam. After the brothers accusingly argue over whose idea it was to elope, they return to the same hellish nightmare they risked their life for to escape. End of chapter.

Enter the theater of the absurd with the world just a stage. On the very day, I decide to take my manuscript off its sedentary perch on the library shelf to endure another round of circumspect editing, I learn from a close friend of a 2005 published non-fiction book entitled Hard Candy by Charles A. Carroll. The subtitle, Nobody Flies Over a Cuckoo’s Nest, is a spin-off on the movie classic. The author and his brother are former patients of New Lisbon Developmental Center. I Google search the book online. I find the listed book, book excerpts, and the author’s email address. Wasting no time, I email him with envy. As if the author is on the other side of a parallel dimension, Charles A. Carroll emails me right back. A flurry of emails follow back and forth across the country with all roads turning to New Lisbon Devleopmental Center. Irony then all but fuels my car to the bookstore to purchase a copy of Hard Candy. I can take a hint.

Hard Candy chronicles the aborted foster care placements of a handsome-featured Charles and his behaviorally involved brother Robert, who became wards of the state and institutionalized. Of normal intelligence, Charles Carroll wrote Hard Candy years after my copyright arrived for Of Might and Manacle, a decade after my walk in the woods. I learn that what the wind placed on my pores for me to breathe during that leisurely stroll in 1986 actually happened. I somehow absorbed glimpses of real events and put them into prose through what I cannot explain other than odes of osmosis. Whatever the case may be, it mysteriously inspired two authors to include mirror chapters in their novels. So excuse me if the following true account sounds redundantly like my work of fiction.

An entire chapter in Hard Candy details a 1954 summertime elopement by brothers from a cottage on the same campus grounds where I worked. In their escape, the brothers scoot by a sleeping staff member by the name, Mr. Westly. They advance outside the building to the sandy terrain of the backyard where they run with “the speed of Olympians” in a scramble for the Pine Barrens. They scale a perimeter fence separating the institution from the woods then hide “under a bed of golden leaves” where they “looked back at New Lisbon.” As if art imitated life, the Carrolls stare back at the institution I used to work, from the woods in which I embodied their pangs of freedom. Unsure of what lies ahead of them, but not deluding their chances for escape, the Carroll brothers are certain that they would rather die in the wilderness then return to their previous existence. At “the onslaught of daybreak. the birds were giving us a throaty warning.” They walk for miles through the dense woods, but wading through the underbrush poses challenges until the woods thin. By their lively dialogue, you can sense the profound sadness that each other is their only sense of family in the world. The brothers “stared at the stars high above us through the trees.” As their AWOL status eclipses the night, they have consumed all of their meager provisions. During their hiatus, the brothers climb a tree, listen for wild animals, talk about hound dogs, hear the hoot of an owl, watch a deer give the birth to a fawn, argue over incidental stuff, and while traveling through the woods, the physically stronger brother urges the other to keep up. They even remove their clothes to swim in a swamp. Police capture the boys a couple of days later. After blaming the other for whose idea it was to runaway, the police return the boys to the same institution I worked at thirty-two years later.

The published words bore uncanny parallels to my printed manuscript. I canvassed Carroll’s non-fiction book to gain a broader perspective of the ironies from my fiction. Throughout my transfixed reading of Hard Candy, I was thunderstruck by the graphic descriptive similarities of two wordsmiths. While mere words were enough to frighten me in living color, the photographs included in Hard Candy convinced me unexplainable forces were at play. I stared incredulously at the wide smiles of the Carroll boys in a picture as they frolic in a lake realizing that this snapshot of freedom was the backdrop scenery embedded in my brain that fateful walk in the woods. I stared in disbelief at the 1954 picture of ward of the state Charles Carroll meeting Robert B. Meyner, the Governor of New Jersey, at a publicized athletic event several months before his ill-fated elopement. I could not help but recall my main character, Dr. Dex Margold, as I stared wildly at Charles Carroll pictured beside the staff psychologist who befriended him. The element of surprise was gone by the time I read of Robert Carroll’s homicidal tendencies to slash his wrists, behavior that led to his transfer to a mental hospital. So I only stoically read the epilogue citing Charles Carroll’s remorse about never reuniting with his biological father and of his 1959 institutional discharge, which led him to choose no other place in the world to live than Atlantic City, NJ, the hometown of my fictional set of brothers.

I closed the book at that point. The truth about Hard Candy remains difficult to swallow and I might not ever digest its content. So I ended another ironic chapter in my life realizing too that I am never really out of the woods with coincidence.

In the early part of 1989, my husband & I lived in a very large farmhouse whose construction dates back to the 1700's with additions built in the 1800's &1900's. Although I ignored a lot of paranormal events that had occurred during the time we lived there, I couldn't ignore these!

For some time, I had been seeing shadowy figures in the corner of my eye, heard my name called when no one was home, smelled Lily of the Valley perfume that my deceased grandmother had worn, and even had pictures fall off the wall for no good reason. In the first few months of living there, I was awoken by vivid dreams of my room on fire. All these things I dismissed or rationalized that my imagination was running wild.

A few months after moving in, my husband called me to the basement of the house, which basically was only below the original structure, or so we thought. He had discovered an opening to one of the additions, the section below our bedroom. The massive beams supporting the addition were scarred by fire, some even appeared warped! No wonder I had been having fire-filled dreams!

Shortly after discovering the basement, I experienced another event. I had gone to bed early with my back to the bedroom door; my husband and family were at the opposite end of the large house watching television. I sleepily heard the doorknob turn, door open, footsteps cross the room, and felt my husband lie down in bed, or so I thought. I thought it odd that he did not speak to me, so I rolled over to speak to him. My vision beheld an empty bed, with only a depression where a person could have laid! Let's just say I wasn't the least bit prepared for that!

There were similar incidents over the time that we lived there and we, for the most part, got used to them. We moved out of that home, but our extended family remained living there for several more years. In fact, my mother would babysit our girls there. Our oldest daughter, who was 3-4 years old at time, would often play next to the main fireplace in the oldest section of the house. Since her sister was an infant, she would often play alone, yet we would hear rather animated conversations with an imaginary friend, "Rabbit." Our daughter always said "Rabbit" in a strange way, & one could argue that she was actually trying to say "Robert" with a colonial accent. In the same room, my mother reported seeing on several occasions a large man, dressed in black with only a white collar at his neck, similar to Colonial Quaker dress. She said she would only see him in that room, and only when the kids were around. We asked our daughter to describe her friend and she said he was a man dressed in black, with black hair. We also asked if "Rabbit" plays with her at our apartment, to which she looked at us like we were really stupid people (yes, "stupid parent syndrome" starts that early!) and replied, "No, he lives here." Well, long story short, we were helping to remodel one of the bedrooms in the oldest section of the home, and had removed the plaster and lath only to discover that etched on the wall were three names of the original occupants of the home; one name was Robert W. My research revealed that he and his two brothers were Quakers who settled there in the 1700's.

To my disappointment, our daughter no longer remembers her friend, "Rabbit."

I own a small business and several months ago had a meeting in my offices with a prospective vendor. Upon her arrival, my guest walked through the front offices to the rear office where I was working. She sat down next to me and we began our meeting when my assistant came into the room to do some filing. No one else was in the building at this point, nor had there been for a number of hours. We suddenly heard a male voice loudly say, "Mooooooo." I looked at my guest, who was quite puzzled by the sound, and turned to my assistant to see if she had also heard what we had heard. She didn't even have time to respond when we again heard this deep male voice say, "MMMOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"

My guest, who was a very large woman, looked quite upset and began to question, "Who said that?" She thought someone else was in the building with us and that they were playing a cruel joke on her due to her size. As I began to nervously giggle, I relayed to her the fact that the building was haunted and that she had just been privy to hearing our resident ghost! Immediately, her composure changed from agitated to relaxed. She was no longer upset and, to my surprise, was very intrigued and excited to discuss our spirit. She then went on to relay her own paranormal tale, before we reinstated our business meeting.

Our ghost has not "Mooooed" at anyone lately, but we know how capable of audible EVP he is because at one point, he even answered the phone and said he was me.......but that is another tale for another time. SJPR recently completed an investigation at my pest control firm's location and you will be able to view the results right here on this site. I'll post additional stories of this building in the future, so keep an eye on the Case Studies pages and for the business in Grenloch, NJ!

Ann Richards, SJPR Investigator in Training June 2, 2006

A FOND FAREWELL

Thirteen years ago I experienced one of the most special events ever. I can honestly say that I would be hard-pressed to find anything comparable among the more mundane occurrences in my life.

The incident in question occurred in Fairport, NY - a little community about 15 miles east of Rochester. We had lived in this village for about nine years and I loved it. It was old, had a history, and certainly a friendly atmosphere. At the time We lived in a cute house that was a converted barn that was about 40 years-old. The house was a cheerful one and I never felt the least bit intimidated or on guard as a result of anything that I experienced in my home. I say this because there would have been many opportunities for the entire family to feel uncomfortable and unwelcome had that been the intent behind our experiences in that house.

Our house was a two-story home. We often sat together downstairs in the living room, which was directly under my daughter Liz's room and the hallway leading into her bedroom. We heard rather heavy footsteps walking up and down the hallway and into Liz's room several times a week. It was such a common event that I often found myself being aware of the sounds only towards the end. We were all acclimated to the noises of our friend.

The pattern of all three of us hearing these footsteps continued as usual with no additional events until the last month that we lived in the house. My husband had accepted a job in Detroit, Michigan and we were busy organizing, sorting, and generally preparing to make that move. On the basis of our activities and numerous conversations about the upcoming move, it was certainly no secret what was going on in the household.

It was at this point during the time we spent in this really great house that we met my daughter's "protector." One afternoon, Liz and I were talking in the little room next to her room where I had clear visibility of her bedroom entrance. I looked up to see a man dressed in overalls and a red (and other colors) flannel shirt standing in her doorway, I knew immediately that this "farmer" had been the source of our disembodied footsteps over the years. Without having to exchange any words with this gentleman, I knew that for the years we had lived in Fairport, this man had been my little girl's protector and had watched over her every minute that she was home and had come to us to bid us good-bye. Psychically, I was never clear on what other things may have gone on with this sweet man, but I did pick-up intuitively that he had probably never had children. I also sensed that his wife was close by but that this was his project.

I think of this man often, I miss him. Above all, I am so grateful that he chose guardianship of my daughter as his responsibility at that time. I also remember making a big production of telling this man good-bye and letting him know how much I appreciated his presence over the years, and that my wish was that there would be others in this house who were able to accurately assess the goodness of his Spirit as he protected them.

NOTE: Just to carry the sentiments of this story a little further: If there are folks who are experiencing unusual activity in their homes, it is important to realize that some entities can begin to feel like valuable and appreciated members of the family. I felt very honored that this man allowed us to share his home. I really wish that I had been cognizant of who was making the footstep noises long before he made me aware. But I guess there are reasons for everything.

I would have to say that there was only one draw-back to this experience. Liz's farmer didn't do toy pick-up...ever.