Saturday night, I ventured all the way down to Cape May to take the Ghosts of Cape May Trolley Tour, the only haunted tour running in the off-season. Christen, my friend and classmate who lives just outside of the city, joined me for both the tour and then dinner after.
I got to the beautiful and historic town in just under an hour and a half, so after parking the car I took some notes of my initial impressions of the city.
TRANSCRIPTION:
I knew the city had a rich history, which is what would help establish it as one of the most haunted city’s in America and the most haunted city in New Jersey, but I had no idea that it was so beautiful! As I drove over the first of two bridges and enter the city limits, I notice a banner advertising psychic readings provided by a medium. I continue deeper into the city and slow down to obey the twenty-five mile-per-hour limit, and marvel at how much slower the pace of the town seems to be. Even though it is a Saturday, the couple of people I pass walking on the sidewalks move at a leisurely pace. It’s as if the town is still partially stuck in the past, and it’s calming nature is contagious. I roll down the window and breath in the sun-kissed air. After a hectic week, I finally feel the tension in my shoulders dissipate.
I pull into the parking lot for Washington Commons, and look around to see if I can spot either Christen or the Chinese restaurant we’ll be eating at once the tour is over. I give her a call, and she says she’s right down the block and will be here in a minute. I watch the parking lot begin to fill and wonder how many of the passengers will be joining us on the tour. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Christen get out of her car, and gather my things to go meet her. She leads me through the shopping plaza to the booth across the street where she thinks the tour tickets will probably be sold. As we approach the booth, we see we’re in the right place, purchase our ticket, and cross the street to the green bench the woman selling the tickets indicated where the trolley will pick us up. We chat a bit about my ride down and hope that it won’t get too much colder as the sun begins to set. The church across the street begins to chime as the minute hand of the clock tower ticks forward to seven. As if on cue, the trolley pulls up the bench, and we climb on board.
The tour guide, Caitlin welcomes us on and says the trolley should be nice and toasty once we get moving. As a Florida native, she chats with us about impatiently waiting for spring and summer to come, and Christen and I agree as we pull our coats tighter around us. I pull out my camera, notebook, and pen and watch as a flood of people suddenly appear to board.
“Where did all of these people come from? I thought it was going to be just us and the guide?” Christen asks.
I take in the strange mix of people as they take their seats: a large group of maybe six or seven with ages ranging from teenagers to adults in their forties file to the back of the trolley, a family of four take the two benches in front of us (the teenaged girls directly in front if us excitedly chat about which B&B’s will be mentioned and plan to visit every location mentioned), and a trio of friends in their forties take the seats across from us. Once the trolley is nearly full, the guide welcomes us to the tour and asks everyone who believes in ghosts to raise our hands. Most of the passengers do, but there are a handful who claim to be nonbelievers.
Caitlin has the driver close the doors, and we’re off. As we head to our first destination, Caitlin provides some basic facts about the tour, like the buildings on the tour have had paranormal activity verified by paranormal investigators, mediums and sensatives, historical facts, and eyewitness accounts.
She then goes on to ask us if we’ve ever woken up at 3 AM for no reason. Several of us say that we have, and she goes on to explain that 3 AM is considered “the witching hour,” or the time of the day when the baromectric pressure is at it highest and ghosts can supposedly use that energy to manifest.
“So, all of you who said you’ve woken from a dead sleep at 3 AM, there was a ghost in your room,” Caitlin says and several of the passengers gasp.
We then pull up the Physick Estate, the home of the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts and Humanities. The house was investigated by Ghost 1, a paranormal investigation team that was able to capture some impressive EVPs (electronic voice phenomena). Caitlin goes on the describe how footsteps are heard regularly throughout the house, and a lot of Dr. Physick’s dogs still wander around the house.
“The maid, while she was dusting, heard panting and felt something brush her leg, so she bent down to pet the dog and then went back to dusting. After a minute, she realized there weren’t any dogs in the house, so she spent the next hour looking all over the house for dog but never found one,” Caitlin says as we pull around the back of the estate.
As we approach the main road, Caitlin describes how there have been several shadows and cold spots felt throughout the house. “Ghost 1 will be conducting an investigation this summer, so if you’re interested, you can come back and be a true ghost hunter for a night.” We pull back on the main road, and Caitlin jokes about how she always finishes talking too early for the estate. We then pull up to Southern Mansion, which was built in 1876 and featured on the SciFi popular paranormal reality show “Ghost Hunters.”
Apparently, the owner’s daughter, Esther, loved to party, dance, and drink alcohol, so several guests have had their champagne and wine glasses and bottles shatter for no reason. There have also been wine and champagne glasses found around the house with red lipstick on their rims. Ghost Hunters, during their investigation of the house, heard a lot of footsteps walking around. We turn onto Columbia Ave, which is said to be the second most haunted street in Cape May. Caitlin explains the it used to be marsh lands, and water is said to be a good source of energy for ghosts to use, and therefore the cause of a lot of the hauntings that take place on the street.
An old man walking with a cane in the middle of the road that has caused several people to slam on their brakes, get out of their cars, but nobody’s there. Further down the street is Mason Cottage. Several of the guests with children have been known to ask the front desk about the little boy, Steven, that plays with their children, but there is never a Steven registered and more often than not, that family will be the only one with children staying at the house. Steven is allegedly the son of the original owner, and the man with the cane walking in the middle of the street is said to be Steven’s father and owner of Mason Cottage, Edward.
As we continue down the street, I get my first glimpse of the ocean in months.
“Coming up on your left is The Inn of Cape May,” Caitlin announces as we pull up next to a large white building. This is the first building that’s been on our side of the trolley, so I quickly fumble with my camera and snap a few pictures. Most of them are too blurry to use, but the two that are usable have some strange things happening in them. In the one on the left, the bottom window is almost highlighted. I’ve looked at the picture several times, but I can never come up with a logical explanation: it’s not a reflection from the other trolley windows, I didn’t have my flash on, and nobody else on the tour was taking pictures. The picture on the right I took quickly as we were leaving the street. On the left side of the balcony is a red orb. I know orbs are not generally considered evidence of the paranormal, but it’s still strange. You be the judge: did I capture something in these pictures?
Caitlin explains that some of the most commonly reported activity includes children playing in the halls, someone walking up and down the hallways, and the furniture in the rooms being moved around the rooms while guests are out. We continue down a side street and come to Hotel Macomber. Again, after reviewing my pictures, I found that the only one of the hotel that wasn’t too blurry was this one. If you look on the right, there’s a glowing red orb next to one of the windows. I have no explanation for it, but if you do, please pass it along.
“The most haunted room in this hotel, even though they don’t want me to tell, is room 10. It’s supposedly haunted by a woman that the hotel refers to as ‘the trunk lady.’ She used to come and stay in room 10 every August, and it’s rumored that she loved this place so much that she has chosen to come back even after she died. Many guests in room 10 have been startled when they come back to their room and see an old woman sitting on the bed,” Caitlin says as we round the corner of the hotel.
We continue on to Hotel Chal-Fonte, which was built in 1876. The most haunted room in this hotel is room 19. The ghost haunting the room doesn’t want anybody to stay in the room. There has been a lot of activity happening at 3 AM. Guests have called down to the front desk to report banging on the walls and brass bedposts, assuming the noise was coming from the room next door, but there was no one staying there.
“One guests,” Caitlin says, “woke up in the morning on the floor with the mattress from the bed covering their face, and they had no idea how they wound up like that.”
We turn back onto Columbia and approach Cabanas Beach Bar and Grill.
“Has anybody ever eaten here when it was not called Cabanas?” Caitlin asks.
“Yeah,” a man from the back of the trolley calls, “I ate here a long time ago. I think it was named after a woman. Julia’s maybe?”
Caitlin nods. “Yep, it was called Gloria’s after the owner’s daughter. Apparently she had a summer romance, wound up pregnant, and her father disowned her. A couple of years after Gloria gave birth, the child was hit by a trolley car and died, and year later a similar accident happened to Gloria and she died as well.”
Some of the activity reported include exploding light bulbs, doors slamming shut on their own, and the staff being paged to the front desk only to be told when they got there that they weren’t called.
The next stop on the tour is the majestic Congress Hall. It was originally built in 1878, but was burned down the following year in a fire that consumed 40 blocks of the city. The owners decided to renovate the hotel in 2000, and encountered a lot of activity during demolition. The most commonly reported activity is said to be from residual spirits, or ghosts who practice the same behavior as they would have when they were living. One of the EVPs captured during the investigation said “Don’t hurt Schmiddy.” The investigators later found out that Schmid is the brand of boiler the hotel uses, so they assume that the spirit they contacted was a maintenance man.
“The last spot on the tour is the beach!” Caitlin announces. “Cape May was founded during colonial times, and there has been so much loss of life on these beaches since then. The entire Atlantic coast is known as ‘the graveyard of the Atlantic Ocean,’ and drowning is said to be the most traumatic and horrible way to die.” Along the Cape May coast, a shadowy figure of a man has been seen walking close to the shore and a woman in white as been spotted roaming closer to the boardwalk.
REFLECTIONS:
The trolley tour provided me with a lot of great information even though the tour itself was only a half an hour long. I was a little disappointed that I wasn’t able to go on any of the other tours, such as the walking tour that takes guests through the hotels, but those don’t run until the warmer months. Hearing all of the eyewitness accounts makes me anxious to explore more haunted locations for myself. I’ll be traveling to one tomorrow for my next in-person interview with Rich, Tracey’s father and Civil War re-enactor.
One of the things I wish I could’ve done on the tour was speak to the other passengers on the trolley, but because the tour was so short and everyone had their own plans, I wasn’t able to talk to anyone. I would like to say that I’ll be able to get back down there before the semester’s over, but I don’t think that will be possible. I was also disappointed that because I was focused on writing my notes, I didn’t get to enjoy just being on the tour, and as a result, I wasn’t as aware of my own “activities, circumstances, and emotional responses” (p. 11).
Also, because of the amount of information, I had trouble “strik[ing] a balance between describing fully and getting down the essentials of what happened” (p. 47), but I think it all came together nicely.
Julianna Lopez's Research Blog 