Last summer I had an internship with the Delaware
River Mill Society: a historic site in Stockton, New Jersey. My main job was to
serve as a docent – or in other words a glorified tour guide. While the complex
had many historic buildings I spent most of my time in the Prall House, which
was supposedly haunted.Since I had to memorize all sorts of historical
trivia about the Prall House – which was over 200 years old – I was also
familiar with all the items sold in the gift shop, since it was part of my job
to work as the cashier. One of them was a book by Gordon Thomas Ward, titled “Ghosts
of Central Jersey: Historic Haunts of the Somerset Hills”.
Here is a link to a blog post that discusses Ward’s
book in detail: http://ns.gmnews.com/news/2010-11-04/Front_Page/Ghost_whisperer.html
Ward claimed to have done a paranormal investigation
of the Prall House with a group called Haunted New Jersey, where they took EVP
recordings from inside the Prall House. Ward spoke of such phenomena as “…footsteps
are heard upstairs near the offices of the Delaware River Mill Society [aka the
Prall House]…as well as objects disappearing and reappearing, people being
touched and the sound of boots walking across the front lobby carpet.”
Sounds pretty spooky, huh? The entire time I had
worked in the Prall House I’d never experienced any of the above events.
Wanting to experience these strange happenings ourselves another intern, David,
and I decided to camp out in the Prall House overnight. Because everyone knows
ghosts only come out at night.
Since we both had keys to the building we snuck in
after work one day, ready to give ourselves a scare. Besides the usual
TAPS-esque “DID YOU HEAR THAT?” whispering at every pop and crackle the old
house made as it settled we didn’t see nor hear any ghosts. We even tried the
same thing that Ward had in his book; which was essentially provoking the
spirits into answering us by asking the same questions over and over again.
When we played back our recordings (admittedly done on a tape recorder and not
an EVP-machine, if there’s even a difference) we didn’t hear anything out of
the ordinary except our ridiculously nervous sounding voices and the silence of
the Prall House answering.
I have always been highly skeptical of the reality
of ghosts, seeing as I’ve never seen one myself nor is there any substantial evidence
proving their existence. Mr. Ward touches briefly on the subject, stating “I
don’t think you can argue against the existence of ghosts … but what I do think
you can do is argue what they are. We can’t prove the existence of ghosts, but
we can collect evidence that supports the existence of ghosts.”
Okay, sounds a little sketchy to me. You can’t prove
that ghosts exist but you can find evidence supporting their existence?
However, there may be some credence to what Mr. Ward
says after all. According to him, if a person doesn’t have enough ‘psychic
ability’ paranormal phenomena will not occur in their presence. Ward also
claims there are different types of paranormal events…not just the stereotypical
disembodied voices and pale, translucent apparitions we associate with ghosts.
He explains that there are “…three types of
phenomena: poltergeists — energy coming from a living thing in the environment
that causes movement and noises without consciously knowing they are doing so;
residual hauntings — energy impressed or recorded in an atmosphere that can be
replayed; and apparitions — images or figures that can acknowledge the presence
of a person and can communicate. When people with enough psychic ability are in
these locations, they will pick up on things.”
Perhaps the combined ‘psychic ability’ of Haunted New
Jersey was high enough that the ghosts went so far as to touch the paranormal
investigators, as well as move stationary objects in their presence and stomp
around upstairs to let them know they existed. If the words of Mr. Ward are to
be taken completely as fact the only logical conclusion is that David and I did
not have enough psychic ability and thus the spirits ignored us.
Mr. Ward’s book, while most likely not entirely
factual, does contain EVP recordings taken in the Prall House and other sites
(which unfortunately I couldn’t find online) if you would like to hear them yourself.
To the left is the Prall House, featured on the cover of Ward's book: Ghosts of Central Jersey: Historic Haunts of the Somerset Hills. While ordinarily charming and picturesque, with the heavy use of photoshop filters it appears sinister and haunted.
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