SOMERVILLE, N.J. — Someone, or some thing, is tickling people, rearranging shoes and otherwise wreaking havoc at the historic Hotel Somerset, a Main Street boarding house and home of the popular McCormick's Pub.
It
might sound funny, but residents and the hotel owner said suspected
ghosts that have been reported over the past five years is no laughing
matter.
Three residents have complained of their feet being
tickled while sleeping, most recently during the past three weeks by
Curtis Jones, a resident of the hotel for seven years. Jones said his
neck also gets tickled in the middle of the night, and something messes
up the order of his shoes underneath his bed.
"I just want it to go away!" said Jones, a 67-year-old Vietnam veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.
So
does third-generation operator Tom McCormick. That's why he called East
Brunswick-based Paranormal Diagnostics Group to investigate.
McCormick
said he believes the ghost story because two other residents complained
of tickled feet four and five years ago in a different room from Jones,
but the same one where a tenant had died many years before.
On
two separate evenings during the past week, McCormick said, his new
night-vision surveillance system picked up what he said appeared to be
three orbs darting in and out of a storage room. He also said that he,
his wife, Shannon, and their 5-year-old son have experienced several
run-ins with ghosts.
"I was getting soda down in the basement,
when I heard a woman or a girl whisper to me, 'Help me,'" Shannon said
about an incident that occurred last year.
Two hours later, their son said he saw the ghost of a girl in the basement.
"We
get to the bottom of the basement stairs, and he takes four steps and
plants," McCormick said. "I said, 'Is she here?' He pointed to the same
exact same spot as my wife. I just grabbed his hand, and we ran up the
stairs."
The hunters
McCormick said he called
Paranormal Diagnostics Group because they have a medical background and
use scientific equipment and evidence to confirm and more often debunk
ghostly activity.
Respiratory therapists in a Somerset County
sleep center by day, ghost hunters Robert McCaffrey, 48, of East
Brunswick, and Dave Orloff, 42, of Howell, have investigated Hotel
Somerset three times in as many weeks. They said they have collected
more evidence of paranormal activity than typically presented in one
episode of "Ghost Hunters," the Syfy Channel cable show that inspired
their growing hobby.
"We have several sound recordings and video of flashes and shadows," McCaffrey said. "We're going to continue to investigate."
The ghost hunters said they have had an interest in paranormal
activity since their teens. They said their first investigation was five
years ago, when Orloff's neighbor invited them to Pennhurst Asylum, an
infamous property near Valley Forge, Pa., that his family now owns and
markets as a haunted attraction.
Originally, the "asylum" was the
Eastern Pennsylvania State Institution for the Feeble-Minded and
Epileptic, then the Pennhurst State School and Hospital. According to
the 1968 news report "Suffer the Little Children," many patients were
abused and tortured, which continued until a 1977 lawsuit led to its
closure 10 years later. According to a medium who conducted a séance
with McCaffrey, Orloff and others at Pennhurst, the spirits of several
of the abused, as well as their torturers, haunt the asylum.
"We've learned a lot since then," McCaffrey said, "and have a lot better equipment."
The
ghost hunters use UV meters to measure fields of energy, laser lights
and smoke machines to distinguish shadows, orbs and other images, and
thermal imaging and night vision video cameras to capture them. After
five years, McCaffrey said, they have yet to see a full-bodied
apparition but have seen and recorded several other anomalies.
Paranormal
Diagnostics also has investigated the Burrowes Mansion, a Revolutionary
War site in Matawan, and a Middlesex County home said to be possessed
by a demon, whom they apparently recorded asking them less-than-politely
to leave. The team also is interested in investigating the Bound Brook
Hotel, another Revolutionary War site said to be haunted.
"Central
Jersey is loaded with Revolutionary War sites," McCaffrey said. "We
would like to investigate each one of them, and see what kind of stories
we can find."
The history
The team's interest in the Revolutionary War led them to Hotel Somerset, McCaffrey said.
Established
in 1748, the Somerset is the oldest continuous hotel in the country,
McCormick said. During the American Revolution, Gen. George Washington
ate there and his men slept there while Washington stayed at the nearby
Dutch Wallace House, McCaffrey added.
The hotel also played a part in the 1926 Halls-Mills murder trial in
which a widow and her brothers were acquitted of the murder of her
pastor husband and his mistress. During the trial at the historic
Somerset County Courthouse, the jury was sequestered across Grove Street
at the hotel.
McCaffrey and Orloff said they haven't been able to
determine whether the hotel's suspected ghosts are related to the
American Revolution, the trial or any other aspect of a rich history.
But a medium told them that she could sense the presence of three
deceased children, confirming the suspicion of McCormick's son. Without
ever having seen it, the medium drew a diagram of Jones' room and said
his closet is a vortex of paranormal activity.
"Something
definitely is going on at the foot of his bed," McCaffrey said in
reaction to extensive energy readings usually indicative of electrical
wiring or appliances.
"We were able to debunk the readings at
Curtis' (Jones) front door because there is electrical wiring there, but
there's nothing electrical at the foot of his bed," he continued. "So
where are those readings coming from?"
The haunting
McCormick
said he recently found out from his parents that throughout their
40-year ownership, five tenants died in the hotel. Another killed
himself by jumping out of a window in the same room in which McCormick
and his young family had stayed. During the first paranormal
investigation of the hotel three weeks ago, McCormick and McCaffrey said
they saw and took photos of blue orbs in that room.
In the attic,
the team also recorded audio of what seemed to be the name Evelyn.
McCormick said he asked his father, Ken, about a connection to that
name.
On Friday, McCormick told the team that an Evelyn Epright lived
behind the hotel in a home that was torn down in the mid-1960s. As they
sat at a booth around a laptop computer, Orloff played back the
recording, and McCormick's jaw dropped when he heard the voice say,
"Evelyn Epright." He burst out of his seat and yelled, "You've got to be
kidding me!"
The team then played the recording several more
times at various speeds. The voice clearly said "Evelyn," then
pronounced the same syllables and rhythm as Epright. Yet, other than
once living next to the hotel, Evelyn Epright had no connection to it,
the McCormicks said. But a Dorothy Epright was a waitress there in 1954,
according to a city directory.
The hunting
Paranormal
Diagnostics also recorded video in the hotel's attic, from where
footsteps often have been heard despite a lack of floor boards on which
to walk. As a machine pumped smoke through a maze of laser lights, the
team called out to an Evelyn Epright, as well as to the suspected
children, asking them if they wanted to play and if they liked ice
cream.
In the basement Saturday night, Shannon reluctantly agreed
to participate in the third and latest investigation because "the
spirits seem drawn to her," her husband said. She said she saw someone
suddenly poke their head out from behind McCaffrey, as he and her
husband stood next to each other videotaping, the ghost hunter with a
thermal imaging camera.
"Honey, did you just poke your head out behind Rob?" she asked.
"Uh, no," her husband replied.
Shannon then bolted up the basement stairs in fright.
"I
think it's safe to say this place definitely is haunted, but by who or
what, we don't know," McCaffrey said. "We're going to compile all our
evidence over the next couple of weeks and see what we can find out."
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