I grew up in Cape May, which is known as one of the most haunted towns in America. There are many different ghost tours offered by carriage, trolley, or walking, that can tell you different stories about events that may or may not have occurred at various restaurants or bed and breakfasts. As teenagers, we would mock these tours and walk slowly behind the tourists waiting for the perfect moment to scream and make them all jump out of their skin. Some of these stories may have a bit of truth to them, but only the locals who work at these business or live in these homes can tell you the full story.
I lived in a home that was haunted by the ghost of a little girl. She would turn my tv off and on and hide my things but I was never afraid of her. Then again, I never saw her, but my parents did. One night while I was out at a sleepover, my parents saw a girl about my age and height stop in front of their bedroom and turn and look at them before she walked right into my bedroom. They immediately ran to my room to find no one in there. My parents waited to tell me this story until I was going away to college, but I always knew that I shared my house and my bedroom with the little girl.
For one of my first jobs I worked at Atlantic Books on the Washington Street Mall, now the location of Stewart's Root Beer, which used to be a local bank. I always felt scared and uneasy in the basement of that building, where our break room and overstock books were located. One day while I was sitting in the break room eating my lunch, the room got breezy, which shouldn’t be possible in a fully enclosed room in a basement. I looked up from the magazine I was reading to see if there was somewhere noticeable that the breeze could have come from. In that moment, I felt a burst of air against the back of my neck that I could only compare to someone exhaling. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I ran up the steps onto the first level. I’m not sure how to explain the breeze and the exhalation but I knew that I wasn’t going down in that basement ever again.
Later that summer Craig McManus, the author of the Ghosts of Cape May Books 1-3, stopped in and said he felt all sorts of energies and that he wanted to return when we were closed to get a reading of any paranormal activity. He spent a few hours there and he was able to read many different ghosts. He said from his reading he found out that before there was a bank in the building it was actually built to be a pharmacy. Back in these days when the ground was too cold to dig up graves in the winter they would store bodies in the basement of the pharmacy. Some of the ghosts he sensed were people who were stored there and others were people who died near that location. The ghost that he sensed that scared me the most was the nanny for the children of the pharmacist. This ghost of the nanny told him she would watch the children in the playroom by the stairs, which at the time was our break room. I felt chills through my body when he told me that. I knew that it had to have been the nanny that exhaled against the back of my neck.
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ReplyDeleteI've been going to Cape May for many years now and I had never known it was considered a haunted town. I've always gone to the beach or little restaurants. I don't know how you managed to live with a ghost in your house I've always said if I ever find myself in the situation I am running away as fast as I can? The articles and videos you included are really cool and i'm super interested in going to check out some of the spots next time in Cape May!!
ReplyDeleteI vacation in Cape May every year and I have read two of Craig McManus's books. I love taking the trolley tours and learning all the ghost stories. it's so interesting to read a personal account like this!
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