People often ask if I have the ability to “turn off” my psychic senses. Yes, to some extent, I do. I think there is always a baseline of activity in my brain for sensing things out of the ordinary, but I usually ignore it and go on with my everyday life. I am not “turned on” all of the time. That would make me nuts. I enjoy a little privacy every now and then from both the living and the dead.

I am one of those people who does not mind spending a few hours with myself. Whether it is reading, surfing the web or walking around the town, I enjoy a little solitude. Having grown up a chronic daydreamer, I often catch my mind wandering off. If I am looking at a website, I may be thinking of a movie I just watched or a place I will visit, which typically has nothing to do with the website. This is my life. Growing up with ADD (attention deficit disorder) I have become used to having to constantly refocus my brain and point it in the right direction. Sometimes I win and refocus on the task at hand, sometimes my brain just drives away without me! Walking seems to be an activity that brings my mind and body into a happy middle ground. Taking a daily jaunt is just the right mix of exercise and meditation for me. However, it does have a few distractions—and they are usually of the dead kind.

I am fortunate to live in an area in northern New Jersey that is rich in history. Old houses, some dating back to Colonial times, line many streets along my walking routes. I am a great fan of history and love to view all the wonderful architecture from an up close and stationary position on a nearby sidewalk, something one cannot do easily from a moving car. Some of the houses I have noticed before, and some seem to have popped out of thin air. Large, stately Victorian homes are clustered amongst smaller, quaint dwellings from long ago. Sometimes I get an internal dialogue going with myself about how much fun it would be to live in one of these great old places. Every so often, that dialogue becomes a two-way conversation, or even an overheard conversation—with the dead.

I don’t consciously turn on my psychic senses when I am out walking. I try to clear my mind, and envision dropping about 40 pounds in the process. Somehow, my psychic brain just finds these “new friends” and rushes off in their direction. While I try to reason with my brain to stop “trespassing,” it seems to have a social agenda of its own.

On my last jaunt, I was walking up a long hill that seemed to stretch for a mile. I slowed down near a large old fence to take a breather, when I noticed an enormous old Victorian home practically falling into the roadway. It was not actually falling, it was just very close to the road. I stopped and gazed up at the highest windows. I felt like Anthony Perkins in Psycho looking up at the tower in his home for “Mother.” As I stood a moment to catch my breath, I could feel the house’s energy close in around me—or was my psychic brain doing the moving instead? Whatever was happening, one of us was moving—metaphysically at least.

I started seeing images of people from the past and everyday events from a time long ago. A woman in along dress bathing a child in an old claw foot tub. A man shaving with a long, straight edge razor and even images of people playing horseshoes. No one living was home, as far as I could tell from the street. The voices in my head were muddled and distant, the way I will hear ghostly voices when I enter a haunted house. But I hadn’t entered the house, so why was I hearing them? I decided since I was not there to investigate the ghosts that I would continue on my way up the hill. The images and voices quickly faded. I had reached the end of the psychic tether.

Shortly thereafter, I passed and old home that is now a museum. It dates back to the 1700s and is now open to the public. The last owner of the home died in 1970 and her companion who was her long time servant died soon after. I think the two ladies are still in the house, but the current group that runs the place wants no mention of ghosts. I tried to tell the man in charge that ghosts will help bring in business and his four or five visitors a day would probably jump to 20 or 30. Alas, he is not a ghost person, but that did not stop the ladies from reaching out to me as I passed.

Now I have passed this old house hundreds of times by car. I guess that is too fast for a psychic connection to form. On foot it is another story. I was given orders to please help fix the home, that is was in dire need of repair. Hmmm—I thought, the house was not that bad inside when I recently took the tour. I do love history. Maybe I should volunteer to help. There is a group of “friends” that has been fixing up the state owned house for years. I may just have to look into a little volunteer work. If only they would let me talk about the ghosts. I made a note of the ladies’ requests and continued on my way.

I soon arrived at the local hardware store, feeling quite exhilarated and winded at the same time. I also realized I did not know about a worn spot in the back of one of my old sneakers. I now have a blister haunting my heel to boot—no pun intended. As I was purchasing some suet and a feeder for the local woodpecker in our yard (which was the reason I walked all the way up to the hardware store) I could not help but wonder just how often ghosts will try to reach out to passers by. It must be a very frustrating exercise in futility. I think many people have some degree of psychic ability, but what are the chances of someone who is open and understanding of the energy passing by a house at the same time the ghosts are trying to communicate with the outside world?

So, in addition to losing weight, I will now be on the lookout for any ghostly friends along the way. The next time I take my psychic brain out for a walk, it is going to be on a tight leash. One can never tell just what one will encounter along the way. Just like in life, there are positive energies and negative energies everywhere. I do not want accidentally experience anything negative along the way. Unless of course, it is the numbers on my scale at home heading in a negative direction—about negative 40 would be good.

For my intuitive and psychic friends out there—next time you go out for a jaunt—keep your eyes, ears and brain open. You never know what could be walking along with you.

]]> http://www.craigmcmanus.com/2010/03/06/jaunts-and-haunts/feed/ 0 http://www.craigmcmanus.com/2010/02/27/ghosts-vs-spirits/ http://www.craigmcmanus.com/2010/02/27/ghosts-vs-spirits/#comments Sat, 27 Feb 2010 21:05:36 +0000 Craig McManus http://www.craigmcmanus.com/?p=2383 What’s the Difference?

One of the most frequently asked questions I hear is “What is the difference between ghosts and Spirits?” The answer is very subjective. While some people refer to ghosts as Spirits, I think of them as two different states of a soul. When I do one of my weekends in Cape May, I can never be sure if the ghosts will show up or not, but the Spirits have never disappointed me, they seem to always be around and ready to talk! So what is the difference you ask?

GHOSTS are those souls that remain earthbound. They have unfinished business or a fear of moving on that keeps them stuck somewhere between life on earth and the afterlife. I feel there are two types of ghosts. There are  ghosts who do not even know they are ghosts. To these souls life has not yet ended, they are simply dreaming and have yet to awaken. There are other ghosts who know they have died, but either will not accept it, or choose to stay for a some personal reason. The first type of ghost we could say is “asleep” and lives in a dream state, while the second type is “awake” and conscious of its surroundings. I will encounter both types in hauntings.

SPIRITS are souls that have died and have made the transition over to Heaven/the Other Side. They are able to move between Heaven and Earth with ease. Sometimes these souls are back to help and other times they simply come to visit. These Spirits can be loved ones we have lost or people we never knew. They all have a reason for crossing back. It is usually to help in some capacity.

When I channel I will work through my Spirit Guides to bring forward those Spirits who wish to communicate with my client. Most often the client will recognize these Spirits by name. Sometimes a call to an older family member or friend is needed to verify the identity of someone who came through in a session. We may also have Spirit Guides who we never knew in life. We have these Guides since the time we are born. These Guides could be a family member who died prior to our birth, or someone we knew on the Other Side who has agreed to help us in this lifetime.

Ghosts are typically place centered. They can exist near where they lived or died, but usually you will find them where they lived. Often they haunt a favorite place that they enjoyed in life. If a ghost is haunting near where it died, the ghost is usually in the dream state I mentioned above. These ghosts may be running through their own death scenario over and over again. This type of sleeping ghost can wander aimlessly in a dream state never being able to wake.

A ghost may stay tethered to the earth plane for many reasons, but there are usually a few common themes that apply to most hauntings. A tragic, fast death, especially for a young person, is a sure way to create a ghost. If someone feels his or her life was taken in its prime, that person may resist giving up the ghost. This is probably the reason behind many children’s ghosts.  Material ties to a place or objects and emotional ties to a person or people are two of the more common factors in why ghosts will stay stuck. Every ghost is different, but they all have a reason for staying put. Some, most actually, will eventually get bored and cross over. As in life, we all have to do things in our own good time. Some ghosts just never get over what has happened to them, in the same way a living person is not able to get over something tragic that has happened to them during their lifetime. Some of us can let go and move on, some of us dwell in the past and stay stuck.

Getting a visual is difficult with both ghosts and Spirits. Ghosts are rarely seen, but can be felt and experienced in the mind. The same goes for Spirits. As a medium, I “see” both ghosts and Spirits in my mind, not with my eyes. Ghosts appear to me as shadows of people, often without faces. Spirits appear much more human, at least the Spirits of former human beings  will…there are animal Spirits and Nature Spirits as well. When I sense energies around me I can sometimes tell a ghost apart from a Spirit by this mental site. It is more likely though, that a ghost will give itself away by its own behavior toward me and its surroundings. Ghostly personalities may be perceived by humans as dreamlike phantoms. Was I daydreaming you might ask…or was that a ghost?

Getting personal or making contact with a ghost or a Spirit is really the only way that I can tell the difference. Ghosts tend to be more aloof and distant. Sometimes they will communicate, but most of the time I have to do a little psychic probing of my own to get into their “minds” and understand who they are and why they are still on the earth. Spirits will communicate with me in a very natural manner of dialogue. I just can’t hear it with my ears, I “hear” it with my mind. Spirits are fully aware of who they are/were and what they are doing. They usually retain their former earthly personalities, so their loved ones will recognize them. While ghosts are living their own internal drama, Spirits will typically be around to help us with our earthly dramas.

Spirit Guides can move people into your life path and influence the outcome of our actions. They can make things happen. They Guide, they do not decide, but if you need their help and ask for it they will be there for you. Ghosts could not care if you were alive or dead. They typically avoid the living. We annoy them. They want to have their own space and privacy and when we invade that privacy they may take action to push us away. However, some ghosts do enjoy the company of the living and will even act a little like a Spirit Guide or a companion, but they are limited in range and scope of what they can manifest and how they can affect our life paths. Everyone is different. They same goes with ghosts and Spirit Guides.

You don’t have to be a psychic or a medium to experience a ghost or a Spirit Guide. While a medium can help deliver messages from Spirits, we all have Guides around us, helping all the time. Spirit Guides will and do communicate in many ways. They may even visit you in your dreams to offer advice and guidance. If your Spirit Guide is a loved one you have lost, they may visit to reassure you that they are safe on the Other Side. Ghosts on the other hand are less likely to want to communicate. The ghostly bumps and sounds or smells we may experience in a haunting are less likely to be a ghost trying to communicate, but more likely a ghost going about its day to day affairs. Spirit Guides tend to work quietly in the background whereas ghosts can become the background in an active haunting. I get a warmer feeling when a Spirit Guide is around versus a colder more distant feeling when I encounter a ghost. Many have reported the same experiences.

So when it comes to the difference between a ghost and a Spirit (I capitalize the “S” in Spirit, to differentiate a Spirit Guide from an alcoholic  drink!) think of a ghost as a soul that is still attached to its former life and cannot let go. Whereas a soul that has crossed over and comeback to help is a Spirit. It’s just my personal definition, but it works for me.

Now that you know the difference…the next time you ask the ghost in your house to move on, make sure you are not kicking out your Spirit Guide instead!

Let me hear your thoughts as well…

]]> http://www.craigmcmanus.com/2010/02/27/ghosts-vs-spirits/feed/ 1 http://www.craigmcmanus.com/2010/02/25/the-orb-roundtable/ http://www.craigmcmanus.com/2010/02/25/the-orb-roundtable/#comments Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:00:10 +0000 Craig McManus http://www.channelcraig.com/?p=864 Orbs at the Memucan Hughes House

I have visited the Memucan Hughes House many times and each time have found something paranormal going on. The house dates from the late 1700s and was one of Cape May’s first taverns. Many people have spotted a ghostly figure in one of the attic windows. The house is truly one of the most haunted in Cape May and is now home to the Great Cape May Historical Society.

Here are a few shots from one of my visits during the winter of 2008. In each picture I took one solitary “orb” seemed to be following me around. Could it be simply a photographic “artifact?”

Notice the faint “orb” that is over an area of my brown coat. There is also a window with plenty of daylight coming into the room. Could it be a camera light refraction?

In this shot the “orb” is brighter, but so is the incoming daylight, now from two windows. There is also a faint “orb” near my waist. At the time I was sensing the ghost of woman named “Sarah” in the room. Daylight? Sarah? Lens refraction? What do you think?

I invite your comments below. If you’ve got a good “orb” picture you would like to share with everyone…send it to me and I will put it up for discussion.

Each time I turn up a new relative or generation in my family tree, I bring to light a piece of my family’s past that makes me ask the question, “I wonder if they were psychic?”

I think psychic ability runs down family lines. Most people who have “the gift” will admit they can think of at least one relative who also possesses the same abilities. In my case, I had always been told my Great Grandfather Carl Johan Horneij, who emigrated here from Sweden in 1894, was very psychic. He was a mathematician, author and member of the Royal Guard in Sweden before he moved with his wife, son and daughter (my Grandmother) to New Haven, Connecticut and then to New York City. My cousin told me the family knew he was very psychic, but they did not talk about it.

My Great Grandfather (pictured in 1923 with his second wife Helga, left) was a very talented man. As a new immigrant to the USA, he could not find work as a math teacher here. White he had written several books on the subject and taught at Upsala college in Sweden, no one wanted a Swedish speaking math teacher in Connecticut. Carl Johan went into his other love, wood carving. He took a job with the Ansonia Clock Company and carved clock cases. He eventually relocated to New York City where he worked as a carver for Kranich and Bach pianos. I still have in my possession one of his hand carved piano benches. One dark winter morning in 1927, as he was heading in to work, a milk truck struck him down as he crossed the road. He died several days later. He had such a love for life, he lingered in the hospital bed for almost a week before he finally let go. I wish I had the chance to know him.

When I was young, his Grandson, my Dad, would ask me to write down a number on a piece of paper and then envision it in my mind without revealing the number to him. Each time, as I would picture a black number on a white background or vice versa, he would guess the same. Never a miss. When I was young I thought it must be some sort of parlor trick, but as I got older I realized there was only one way he could have done it. He was psychic. His first cousin, who told me about my Great Grandfather’s gift, also revealed that she was a psychic medium as well and had worked in a tea shop doing readings. Who knew? She said she did not talk about it because people would think one is crazy. I know that feeling well. Although it’s getting better in the world for psychics.

Like many people, my Dad never mentioned it again after those early years in my life. Today he is in a Veterans Home and suffers from dementia. He often tells me people come to visit him. I believe he does see people, just dead ones. When he was in the hospital a few years ago he told me Dr “X” had given him a clean bill of health. Alarmed that Dr “X” was not his regular physician I inquired to the nurse who told me that was the name of a doctor who used to work in that wing…who had died a few years ago. At 95 my Dad is still channeling…may I be so good at his age…although I would like to skip the dementia.

Thinking my Dad’s family was the source of my psychic prowess, I was quite shocked to learn Mom had some ability as well.  On my cousin’s advice, I never spoke of my gift publicly. A few close friends knew, but that was it. One day my mother happened to spy my picture on the cover of Exit Zero magazine. I had been writing a column on ghosts for a few years and had left an issue at her house by mistake. She broke up laughing and called my sister to see if she “knew.” She did not. Mom’s always continue to surprise us and my Mom is no different.

“When I was young my mother used to attend a medium circle in the neighborhood with her sister,” Mom recalled. I had not realized my Grandmother was into such things. “A woman named Mrs. Branaire was the medium and one day I went along with my mother. Mrs Branaire put her hand over my head and said ‘this girl could be a great medium some day…she has the gift!’” Mom told me she ran out of the house they were at and ran home screaming and hid under her bed for hours. She opted to become a housewife instead of a medium, but still has the uncanny ability to worry about things that have not yet happened…and then they happen. Psychic and Mediumistic abilities definitely make their ways down a family tree. I also think many people havesome form of psychic or intuitive ability. How about you?

My mother’s Great Aunt Lillie read cards and her Great Grandmother talked to ghosts…did I leave anyone out? Isn’t my family tree starting to look like one of those trees in the haunted forest from The Wizard of Oz? I am sure there are many (dead) relatives I am leaving out of this story. They should feel free to comment. As for the rest of you, I would like to hear about your psychic gene pool. Feel free to comment below!

I was recently doing a project at home and needed some electrical equipment that I use once a year. Last year, a month after installing a new carpet and renovating a downstairs room that had not been touched in 40 years, a pipe burst and flooded the entire area. Everything had to be moved quickly out of the spreading flood waters and things just got jumbled. When I went to search this year for the wires and plugs I needed they were nowhere to be found. I searched high and low, upstairs and downstairs, and even in a storage unit. Nothing. Not a wire or plug box. I systematically checked every room in the house, the basement, the closets, even the attic. Still not a trace. I searched through piles and boxes of “stuff,” but it was as if the equipment had just vanished. Sometimes I just want to get a dumpster and clean out my house. Then I think, “Gee I really might need this or that someday,” and the clutter goes on. I have an ADD mind and my house seems to be ADD as well. Disorganization everywhere.

After checking the storage unit twice I began to wonder if, in the heat of the moment of cleaning up after the flood last year, I had inadvertently thrown the equipment out. Frustrated, I asked my Spirit Guides for help. I saw an image of a box under a bed in my mind. I quickly set off on a house-wide “under the box spring search”. Nothing. I remembered this same image coming to me many times over the years, when my friends would ask me to find something they had lost. “A shoebox under the bed” was the image that I was always shown. Each time there was never a shoebox under the bed. So why was I given this image?

Desperate to get the project moving, I asked my Spirit Guides, why every time I had needed their help it had come, but this time I was at a dead end. Perhaps they do not watch every moment of our lives I thought? Maybe certain mundane things like losing an object fall under their radar of importance? Then I thought, OK, there must be a good reason why they cannot give me help here. Maybe there was something wrong with the electrical equipment? So I got online, found a company that sells the same, and ordered a new set. That afternoon I went up to our local hardware store and on the way back decided to make a third and final attempt to search my storage unit. Now I was annoyed. The task of finding these things had been dropped squarely into my lap and I do not like unfinished business.

I stormed into my storage facility, where all of my books are kept until they are shipped out, and in an “Arnold Schwarzenegger-does-the-Terminator fashion,” started to move every last item looking for a box containing my plugs and wires. I moved one large object to see a white garbage bag lying on the floor below. Had I been cleaning up and forgot to throw out the garbage? Looking inside the bag, it took my brain a few moments to realize what I was seeing, the wires and plug boxes were all neatly packed inside. No shoebox, no box at all. Why we had inadvertently packed the equipment in a garbage bag instead of a box last year was a mystery. The idea of finally finding the lost parcel was a great relief. It actually took the bite out of knowing I would now have a double set of equipment, thanks to a no-return policy of the company where I had just ordered a new set that afternoon… that had already been shipped.

As I carried the white bag home I felt something come over me, an energetic message of some sort. It was the kind of thing I feel when my Spirit Guides help me to accomplish something. I asked them why they did not show me a white garbage bag to look for instead of showing me a box?  That’s when I got that “moment of truth” feeling. I knew the lesson here. Our Spirit Guides do a lot for us, but we need to do just as much for ourselves. If they solved every problem for us in life, we would not live or learn. I needed to find the bag myself. Had I looked more carefully, I would have found it earlier and avoided having to pay for a new set. Instead I was relying on them to just point me to the object. I was slacking, and they were not about to point.

When you ask for help in solving some problem in life, make sure you can’t solve it yourself first. Sometimes we treat our Guides like hired help. Our expectations tend to be a little high and sometimes a little too demanding. We all have wonderful Spirit Guides and Angels watching out for us, but I think they have better things to do than running a lost and found department. We all need to realize just how much we are capable of doing for ourselves… and we need to do those things ourselves. Turn those high expectations back on yourselves.

So I now have two sets of plugs, which I probably will find some use for eventually, and a lesson well learned. Maybe another part of that lesson was that I should start looking a little more closely at everything going on around me. Sometimes we tend to miss the little things happening around us. Life is too short as it is, we should take in as much of the show as possible. Now I can get back to that household project and back on my life’s path… that is at least until I misplace the next thing I need to make the journey. More lessons, ugh. Another day another lesson, but I am always thankful to have another day.

Hauntings are usually very subtle, and many people who live with a ghost rarely know it. From time to time, a ghost may make its presence know to the living. A few cold spots, phantom footsteps, shadowy showings and a few bumps in the night may be calling cards for your usually quite dead housemates. Of course all of these signs may turn out to be ordinary, explainable things, like squirrels in the attic or a loose shutter. However, sometimes those bumps in the night turn out to be something unexplainable, in that case you might just have a ghost.

Much to the disappointment of those who have been running from movie theaters to their cars and sleeping with the lights lit, 99.9% of hauntings are benevolent. What scares the heck out of many, when it comes to ghosts, is the fact that we do not have control over what they are doing. Or do we?

If you have read my books you know that one of the most important things I stress about hauntings is that the ghosts are typically trying to resolve some internal drama or conflict. They only start to bug the living when we get in their face, or more aptly, their space. Ever have a bad day and someone just walks into you at just the wrong moment? Well, ghosts were people too and they have the same feelings and ranges of emotions they had when they were alive. You can have a happy ghost or a sad ghost or both. The signs and symptoms of a haunting may point to a ghost’s mood.

Then there is that rather disturbing notion of ghosts talking to us in our sleep. It is bad enough to be awakened in the middle of the night by something lurking around your room, but what about having a conversation or better and argument with someone you do not recognize…while you dream. Ghosts do and will communicate with us in our sleep, and other than possibly sending us into an adrenalized state of waking panic, they are not going to harm us. It is more likely we will harm ourselves by falling out of bed. Ghosts are not out to scare us. We just happen to get in their way sometimes. In most instances they will move away from us and not interact. We may sense or feel their icy or warm presence, but they will generally make limited contact. It is our wonderfully human over-active imaginations that tend to play the biggest role in many “hauntings.” The ghosts must have quite a few laughs at our neurotic “check under the bed” mentality.

For those like me who are intuitive, you may have to learn how to ask your Higher Guides for protection. Ghosts will recognize and sometimes seek out those who have the psychic or mediumistic gift. While the gift is not returnable, a person can learn to turn it on and off.  If you have been experiencing some paranormal activity of your own at night while you sleep, I suggest you learn how to protect yourself before you go to bed. Ask you Higher Guides to help you stay protected as you sleep. It worked for me. You may not be able to stop being psychic, but you can certainly learn to control the urges to throw out psychic lines.

If you have a ghost, learn to coexist peacefully. If you have a ghost with some negative energy, call in Higher Guides to help move the energy away from you. Everybody has a bad day, ghosts included. If you should wind up with some paranormal activity that is too much to handle, don’t panic, there are plenty of sources of help. Most importantly, leave the movies… at the theater and remember to do a reality check on your way home. Your ghosts will thank you and you will sleep a lot better at night.

The Ghosts of Cold Spring Village

One of the places I have been spending time investigating recently is Historic Cold Spring Village in Cape May. The 22-acre compound boasts a collection of rescued historic buildings dating back to 1691. Fortunately,  for all of us, they also have a collection of ghosts. I have just begun to dig into the paranormal here. While I was able to feature a few snippets in my new book 400 Years of the Ghosts of Cape May, I plan on doing an in-depth, building by building report for next year’s  The Ghosts of Cape May Book 4.

I must admit that in all the years I have been ghost hunting in Cape May, the thought of digging through the ethers of Historic Cold Spring Village and its collection of restored period houses and buildings was the last thing on my mind. I had visited the village several times over the last ten years, but my attention was always focused on history rather than the paranormal. Contrary to what you may think, I don’t eat, sleep and breathe ghosts. I have a life beyond death, and I try my best to keep it that way. Cold Spring Village has always appealed to my historical side.

The ghosts of Historic Cold Spring Village first appeared on my radar last summer when my partner Willy and I were visiting the village with our friends Sandy and Jilly from Ipswich. It was a hot July day, and we decided to stop for ice cream. As I approached the ice cream parlor, I could sense the ghost of a woman trying to make contact with me. I stopped, tuned out from the living and listened as the woman complained about “names being spelled incorrectly.” She would not elaborate, but implored me to do something about it. It was not a complete conversation. Psychically it went something like this: “Names misspelled. Fix. Please talk to her.” This is how something will come into my head, in fragments and images, not in complete conversations. My brain has to stitch together the information and translate it into something that I can understand. I noted what was said as we went in for ice cream. The woman vanished from my head.

We stood inside the air-conditioned ice cream parlor a short time later and ordered a round of cones. As we glanced up at the board with the day’s flavors, I noticed that black raspberry was spelled “Black Rasberry.” Could this have been what the ghost was talking about to me? As we devoured our cones, I pondered the idea with Willy, Sandy and Jilly and considered telling the woman behind the counter about the ghost encounter. The problem was I did not know the woman working the counter at all and was not sure how she would react to the idea of a haunted ice cream parlor. Some people love it; some people have a meltdown.

We finally decided I should say something and with that, the woman behind the counter exclaimed, “Last week someone had misspelled the flavors on the outside sign as well!”

I was now officially invited to tour the upper floors of the old house called the Ewing-Douglass House by the folks at Cold Spring Village. Moving past the freezers and tubs of ice cream, my impromptu ghost hunting party made its way up the winding stairs to the second floor. It was here that I encountered the ghost of a young boy. He was very active and very in tune with our energies. He told me (psychically) that he came into the house through a door that was no longer there. I took this to mean he had been with the house for a long time and perhaps some later renovation had sealed or changed a door in the structure. Thinking he would give me some great insight into why he was there, I began to ask him some questions. He then promptly vanished. I guess I got a little too close.

Noticing an old doorway in the corner of the empty second floor room, I opened it to reveal yet another set of even steeper and creakier stairs. I followed the stairs to the attic and found another ghost or perhaps a residual haunting. An image of a younger woman, sitting on a box and looking out into the village, fixed in my psychic mind. She said nothing and she did nothing. She did not interact with us at all. This may have been some leftover energy from one of the former occupants of the house, or this ghost is so far gone from our realm that only her image, not her consciousness, still touches our world. We made our way back down to the ice cream parlor to give a full report to the living lady of the house. One of her coworkers happened to be there and mentioned that people have seen a woman staring out from the third floor window. This was a good match to what we had discovered, but this building still only gets two out of five stars in the haunting category. However, the ice cream was really good.

The presence of ghosts in this one building got me thinking. I wondered how many other buildings may have had unseen guests. My friend Sharon, who was friendly with the staff members at Cold Spring, kept pushing the idea that I should get in and do a full-scale investigation of the village. It took some time, but we finally convinced the good folks at Historic Cold Spring Village to let the Ghost Writer in for a haunted jaunt. I would NOT be disappointed with what I would find!

As I mentioned above, in my new book, 400 Years of the Ghosts of Cape May, I talk briefly about some of my encounters at Cold Spring. Since finishing the book, I was able to return to the village, tape recorder in hand, and do a more thorough investigation of a few of the houses I sensed had activity. The structure that continued to draw me in was the old Dennisville Inn, built in 1836 and moved from Main Street in Dennisville to Cold Spring Village in 1975. Here’s a place to go if you want to get up close and comfy with a few ghosts!

Upon arriving at the Inn, I noticed my video camera battery had totally gone dead. The dead have a way of coaxing the life out of batteries in equipment. Luckily, I had a charger with me and plugged in the battery for a quick recharge. In the meantime, I turned on my tape recorder that had been loaded with fresh batteries the night before. It was also…dead. However, it was not that the batteries had lost their charge in this particular case; the batteries were just plain LOST. They were gone! Was something playing a joke on me?

After loading in a fresh set of batteries, I moved (quickly) to the third floor where I felt the most paranormal energy. Luckily, my batteries held out, and this time I was able to grab a plethora of EVPs, those lovely ghost voices caught on tape. First two men could be heard in conversation on the tape. They were not talking to me. They were talking among themselves. Soon, a woman’s voice could be heard as well, all in the background. These voices were not heard in real time. When capturing EVPs, one hears the ghost voices only on playback, not during the recording session. We don’t know how these phantom sounds and voices get on the tape, but they do.

I sensed an older man with curly white hair, balding on top. He was tending to a woman in a bed, wrapping her leg in some kind of bandage. He did not stop what he was doing, but did communicate with me, albeit briefly. He told me he and his wife had lived in the Inn and were either caretakers or owners at one time. He also told me several people had seen them looking down from the third floor windows. Sharon confirmed that during some of the Civil War reenactments at the Village, some people had witnessed the phantom figures in those same windows…another confirmation.

A stronger presence of a woman greeted me in the room on the other side of the third floor near the chimney. She said her name was “Mary,” and she had worked for the people who ran the Inn. She seemed to know the others. They also talked about a man named “Carl” who was not present at the time. Because Jim was on a tight schedule, I thanked the ghosts and we moved downstairs to the first floor. (I had felt nothing in particular on the second floor.)

At this point, I asked the ghosts if the had all been associated with the Inn in their lifetimes. Waiting for a psychic “yes,” I was surprised to get another answer all together.

“We came from the church up the road,” was the response from an unnamed ghost at the Dennisville Inn. I was given an image of the old Cold Spring Church, Cape May’s main burial ground with graves dating back to the 1700s. While I have found ghosts in the graveyard before, the idea of them relocating was quite fascinating.

From what I could gather on a psychic level, many of the ghosts in Historic Cold Spring Village followed their bodies to their burial at Cold Spring and then, instead of crossing over to the Other Side or following family back home, they walked up the road and made new homes at Cold Spring Village. Ghosts can relocate, but these ghosts seemed to be from long ago and Historic Cold Spring Village has only been in existence since the early 1970s. Are these ghosts of people who have passed in the last thirty years or did the ghosts just take their time relocating? The fact that ghosts relocate is one of the more interesting facets of hauntings. Historic Cold Spring Village seems to be a seaside camp for the on-the-go dead!

In the bar area of the old Inn on the first floor, someone named “Benjamin” was all over the room telling me how this was missing and that should be here or there. He must have also worked in the Inn at one time. When I asked him what year he came to the Inn he stated “1827.” However, the Inn was not built until 1836. Since this was a psychic communication, and these types of communications can be choppy at times, I replied to him that the Inn was built in 1836, could he repeat what year he started working here.

“1827” was stated very clearly followed by, “Before.”

Jim Stephens told us that there was an earlier tavern on the site from Colonial times prior to the Dennisville Inn being built. Here was a case of a ghost moving from one building to another, and then staying with the building as the structure itself changed locations. Talk about a dedicated employee! Even though the bar is only a representation of an earlier tavern, Benjamin’s ghost made me feel like we were about to be served a hot toddy and a Colonial meal. This ghost was native to this old structure and had apparently been residing there since the previous Inn’s existence during Colonial times. His energy was very warm and inviting, but alas, we needed to move on to other haunts. Bidding the many ghosts of the old Dennisville Inn adieu, we made our way out into the pouring rain and across to the village’s latest (and earliest) addition.

The oldest structure in the village, Coxe Hall Cottage, was built in 1609 and originally stood on the sandy cliffs (when Cape May had sandy cliffs) on the bayside of the peninsula. This is an old house with quite a paranormal punch.

There were no houses on Cape May when Henry Hudson first sailed around the tip of the Cape on August 28^th 1609. It wasn’t until the 1670s that the first settlers arrived from New England and Long Island to stake their claims in the uncharted wilderness of southern New Jersey. Within a number of years, those early setters established Cape May Town or Townbank as it was then called. They built primitive timber houses, established a community and maintained their daily business of whaling and later farming. Four hundred years is a long time. Luckily, for Cape May (and us), history has a way of repeating itself, and the original cast of characters is usually standing by in Cape May to render a revival of earlier times. Ghosts do have a habit of reliving the past, and sometimes those ghosts will even invite a few of us along for the ride.

In the original settlement of Townbank, Englishman Dr. Daniel Coxe erected a large building just north of the village that he named Coxe Hall. In 1690s, into the early 1700s, the settlers used Coxe Hall as a central meeting hall, place of worship and lodging for some of Dr. Coxe’s workers. While Coxe himself never set foot in America, the first settlers put the hall to good use. Eventually, the large structure, with its tall observation tower, fell into disrepair. Over the years it was slowly dismantled, its sections moved and rebuilt in other parts of Cape May. One of those sections became part of an old homestead on Jonathan Hoffman Road. This early building, constructed in 1691, was probably a wing of the great Coxe Hall. It has now been moved and restored to its original state by the owners of Historic Cold Spring Village. Luckily, a few ghosts seem to have come along for the ride.

There is a lady ghost in Coxe Hall who told me, “Maker doesn’t want me.” I took this as a reference to her not going to Heaven. She did not give a reason why she had not crossed over, but her next message to me, “He never came,” seemed to indicate she was waiting for a husband to return home. He never did, and she continues to wait. The woman’s energy was gentle, but excitable. She sat on a chair that appeared (in my mind’s eye) lower than the other currently extant chairs. This may have been because in her time the floor was lower than it is today. Some ghosts will follow old boundaries from the time that they lived. I went to the upper floors of Coxe Hall Cottage and felt nothing. The energy was nil. This ghost had a very localized energy, and she did not seem to mind our presence at all. She continued rambling on, but her voice grew faint in my head, and eventually I moved on to another venue. Sometimes one must keep moving in a ghost investigation to keep it fresh. This ghost said what was important for me to hear in the first few minutes of my visit. After that, she began to ramble on about absolutely mundane things. It was time to move on to the next haunt. She was killing me with her ghostly babbling, and one of us being dead was enough.

Leaving Coxe Hall Cottage, I decided a return trip to the ice cream parlor was in order. Maybe the ghosts would be more talkative now that I had all my equipment in tow. As we started to walk towards the old Ewing Douglass House (the ice cream parlor) my friend Sharon asked if I felt anything around the house next to us. The building was the old Corson-Hand House that was built in 1837 and moved to the village in 1977 from Main Street in Tuckahoe. No, I had not ever felt anything, I told Sharon, but I also have never been inside. Psychic senses sometimes cannot penetrate very far when it comes to a haunted house. A street view rarely yields any psychic clues to what is bottled up inside.

Sensing Sharon really wanted me to experience the house, I made a detour and went inside to check for ghostly inhabitants. Jim Stephens, the man in charge of Cold Spring Village, was nice enough to allow me to poke around through whichever building I wanted to search. Clare Juechter, the new Cold Spring Country Store Manager, was also along for the hunt.

The Corson-Hand House is now used to display spinning and dyeing techniques of earlier times. The minute I entered the small old structure, I could feel a change old attitude and energy. There was almost a sense of stepping back into another time. Yes, the old decor can give one that feeling, but this was an even stronger sensation of being out of time and place. There was also a slight feeling of dizziness in my head, a sign of stronger energy.

While this feeling lasted for some time on the first floor, I could sense the ghost who was radiating this energy was above. I asked Jim if I could check out the upper floor, usually off limits to the public. Jim was once again very obliging and I made my way up the old staircase to what was set up as a Colonial bedroom.

It did not help that the second floor was sloped. The “fun house feeling” this house provided was a bit unsettling. I could feel energy hitting me like a ton of bricks. I sensed a man’s presence in the proximity of where the bed was now placed in the room. He actually seemed to be using that very bed. Before I had time to open up my psychic sense and throw out a line, he had already found me. He started communicating in a very abrupt and arrogant tone. Looking for this and that, almost treating everyone else like they were his servants. He was demanding my time and psychic attention and he was not taking no for an answer. Unknown to this old ghost, thirty years in retail had already taught me how to handle people like him, and he wasn’t even alive!

I called to Sharon and Clare to join me. I wanted to see what they felt. Both women felt dizziness and Sharon exclaimed she even felt a little sick to her stomach. High psychic energy from the dead or the living can affect others in this manner. The ghost sensed the ladies and began making rather crude remarks about them and what he expected of them. Great, I thought, a male chauvinist pig who also happened to be a ghost. This guy would not be winning any congeniality contests any time soon.

Reviewing the tape I was running yielded a plethora of great EVPs. On the “A-B-C Class” scale of EVPs, many of these were Class A, audible without using headphones. Cold Spring Village was closed at the time, and no one was around to create these extra voices. Something was helping to create some great EVPs. Was it all the rain? Was the atmosphere conducive to recording ghost voices?

On the tape I am telling Sharon and Clare that I feel a little dizzy in the second floor bedroom. They agree with me. Then I am suddenly swarmed with flies that were not there before. As we talk about feeling uncomfortable, a male voice on the tape says, “Go down from here!”

Listen for yourself. Here’s the master: unedited-track

Here is just the portion of the track with the EVP: hcsv-ch-house-go-down-from-here

None of us said “go down from here,” but clearly the man in the bed wanted nothing else to do with us. Willy had now joined us on the second floor and mentioned he saw light coming through the ceiling of the bedroom. Psychically I heard, “That’s where she is.”

“That’s the roof,” Jim told us, mentioning there were holes in various sections where light and the elements could get into an older building like this. I asked if we could go up to the attic and check out the energy up there and take a little break from the boorish man who did nothing but lay moaning in his bed, as if he were dying all over again and we needed to answer his bidding for a laundry list of sordid final requests.

Jim told us we could go into the attic, but to be careful. He said I could just poke my head up, as it was kind of a mess. At that moment an EVP on the tape says, “Not safe.” The attic roof, in fact, was lined with nails pointing DOWN. It was indeed “not safe.”

On the tape, a woman’s voice is heard having a complete conversation with a man about who we were. At one point someone even says, “That’s Craig.” This is the first time I have heard my name mentioned in an EVP. Because of the “inverted bed of nails” on the ceiling, we decided to spare ourselves from cranial impalement and go back down. Jim had an appointment and needed to leave, and our ghost hunt needed to end. I gathered the group in the bedroom on the second floor and took one final psychic glance over at the old man grunting in bed. The ladies were still complaining about feeling a little uneasy and dizzy and I was feeling the same way myself. We ascended the stairs as I took one final glimpse back at the bed and the old man laughing and moaning at the same time. “Dyeing and spinning,” what a perfect theme for this house, I thought to myself.

That brief but fruitful visit to Historic Cold Spring Village was much more than I expected. The EVP count alone was quite a surprise. I am still reviewing the tapes as I write this blog. I have decided to include several chapters in The Ghosts of Cape May, Book 4, on Historic Cold Spring Village. In the meantime, grab a copy of my new book, 400 Years of the Ghosts of Cape May, which is being released in June.

Historic Cold Spring Village is a Cape May treasure. It was founded in the early 1970s by Dr. Joe and Annie Salvatore, and is open to the public beginning this month. Take a ten-minute ride over and visit the Village and its ghosts. You can find them at HCSV.org It is well worth the trip and you might even run into someone or something you didn’t expect to.

I hope to see you in Cape May this summer. Happy Haunting.

Craig McManus

]]> http://www.craigmcmanus.com/2009/10/05/the-ghosts-of-historic-cold-spring-village/feed/ 6 http://www.craigmcmanus.com/2009/10/02/midnight-at-the-physick-estate/ http://www.craigmcmanus.com/2009/10/02/midnight-at-the-physick-estate/#comments Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:21:30 +0000 Craig McManus http://new.channelcraig.com/?p=105

Midnight at the Physick Estate

*2009 EVENTS SOLD OUT*

A few years ago, the folks at The Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts (MAC) asked me to develop a ghost trolley tour with them. Within a year the tour became one of the hits of Cape May. Soon we spun off a combination tour that had the trolley stop at the old Physick Estate, at night. It wasn’t long before we all realized just how active the old house became once the sun went down. Many of our tour goers have experienced unusual things on the Historic Haunts Tour.  So many in fact, that I developed a special, once-a-year event that traps…I mean, takes 25 brave souls into one of the most haunted houses in America.

In 2007 we started the new tour called , “Midnight at the Physick Estate.” I meet the tour group on the dark and shadowy Physick Estate on Washington Street in Cape May around 11 PM. Once inside I will guide the group throughout the house, stopping in each room, to see if anyone (including myself) senses anything paranormal. This is a great way to separate those on the tour who actually have some psychic/intuitive ability from those who let their active imaginations run wild in a haunted house.

During last year’s tour, as we settled in and conducted a seance with the group in the downstairs parlor,  ghostly voices and footsteps were heard upstairs in the bedrooms when no one else was in the house with us. The highlight of the evening occurred close to 1AM as we were starting to leave the house. One tour goer exclaimed someone had started an old Victrola (an early hand-cranked record player from the 1920s) upstairs. As we gathered at the foot of the grand staircase in the foyer of the old house, sure enough, we could hear the sounds of some old song crackling from either a record player or a radio. At that point the excited MAC guide exclaimed, “But we don’t have a Victrola… or anything upstairs that could play music!”

Someone or something was having a party in the old mansion, and we were not invited. The dead that night were felt several times by tour goers who stood alone, in the darkened hallways and felt icy cold spots move right through them. I am happy to say, everyone survived the evening and had a thrilling, great time.

Just who is haunting the old Physick Mansion? That question is answered in The Ghosts of Cape May, Book 1 and The Ghosts of Cape May, Book 3 picks up where Book 1 leaves off. The house is haunted, that is for sure and there is more than one ghost doing the haunting!

Phantom footsteps walking around the bedrooms above you… ghostly voices chattering about their ghostly goings on… a cold hand grabbing your arm… If you are one of the lucky ticket holders for one of this year’s Midnight at The Physick Estate tours, you will get an up close and personal look at the haunting of the Emlen Physick Mansion, one of America’s truly haunted houses.

On a ghost hunt, our creative imagination can potentially run interference with our investigation.  When it comes to ghosts and hauntings, the human mind (and the human imagination) can run away with itself and take others with it in the process.

About once or twice a month, I will get an email from someone that contains a picture with “orbs.” Those mysterious blobs and spheres of light seem to turn up everywhere, especially during ghost hunting. Some of these pictures have one or two orbs, while others have “orb storms.” I try not to discourage anyone seriously interested in the paranormal, but sometimes we all tend to get a little carried away with ourselves when it comes to ghosts, myself included. But what are orbs really? There are a lot of theories and the subject is a matter of hot debate in paranormal circles, but no one really knows for sure what causes them to manifest in some pictures and not in others.

The picture below was taken by Willy of me investigating the upstairs hallway and rooms in the Fralinger’s building at Cape May. At one time, the building was called the Capital Bar & Hotel and the building is haunted. In every other shot taken in this sequence, prior to and after this “Batman-angled” shot, there were no orbs. In this shot there are a multitude of little white spots swimming around me in the air. They are to the right of my face, above me and in front of the door behind me. What do you think they are?

“Orbs” are what paranormal investigators and ghost enthusiasts call those semi-translucent spheres of light that appear in photographs, both on film and especially on digital pictures. While some orbs take on a life of their own, looking more like an amoeba floating in the air or sometimes even a face, most orbs are just free floating refractions of light caused by explainable phenomena.

If you are doing a ghost investigation and trying to capture evidence of the Other Side, your camera should be a tool of last resort. Cameras are good for documenting physical spaces and recording specific areas of a place reputed to have ghost activity. Video cameras are good to keep an eye on an investigation for both ghostly movement of physical objects as well as human perpetrated hoaxes.  Other than this, about the only spirits you will be able to capture with a camera are the type that can be found in a bottle. Orbs, for the most part, are not paranormal at all. From what I have been able to ascertain about orbs over the years, here is my theory on what makes orbs fly.

I feel the most common causes of orbs are light refracting off a shiny surface. Airborne water droplets or dust particles and sometimes even cigarette smoke can also cause light to refract back to the lens. If you shoot with a flash, the light from the flash hits one of these physical surfaces and refracts back to the camera. Sometimes even dust particles on the lens itself will create “orbs” in your picture.

Look again at the picture above of me and the orbs in the hallway. It was daylight out and the light is coming in over the doorway behind me. The door has a somewhat shiny surface and we did use a flash.  Any of these things “may” have caused these orbs to appear. On the other hand, maybe they truly are some form of energy. As I said, orbs are very controversial.

The picture below is of The Whilldin-Miller House in West Cape May. It was taken on a rainy summer night using a digital camera with flash. Notice the explosion of orbs to the right. The light from the flash is refracting off the raindrops. This is one that is easily explainable because we knew for a fact it was raining when we took the shot.

Some of the most common “orbinators” are:

• Shiny, reflective enamel paint on moldings, doors or windows. This is the #1 source of orbs in interior home shots.
• Glass surfaces like windows, doors and glass coverings on wall pictures.
• Mirrors are a given. If there was a mirror in your picture view you have found the source of your “ghost.”
• Sand or dust kicked up in the air at night when shooting with a flash. This is a big source of “cemetery orbs.” Get a group of ghost hunters kicking up dirt in a graveyard, take a few night shots with a flash and you will have a gaggle of “ghosts.”
• I have seen bad film developing work wonders in the “ghost” department as well. Wonderful “energy lines” and “auras” are nothing more then a chemical malfunction or an exposure issue with film.
• Bugs flying in front of a camera lens at close range or crawling on a lens will create a moving “ghost” or orb that looks especially real on video surveillance cameras. I have seen some great internet videos of “ghosts” wandering around at night caught on surveillance cameras. Well, I guess it would be logical to assume there are ghosts of bugs as well.

This is not to say every orb is explainable. Every now and then, I will come across a photograph that will baffle my common sense. Logic tells me the orbs in a picture are refractions of light, but the face staring back at me from the picture tells me otherwise! Some orbs may take on the appearance of a human face and just how human it appears will make the ghost investigator start to wonder just what has been captured on film.

The “lady in blue” appeared over my shoulder as I was talking about her haunting The Inn of Cape May at a lecture I did for MAC a few years ago. If you look at the picture (right) you can see the face of an older woman. Her cheek bones, her jaw and even her eyes, nose an a kerchief appear to be in the shot. Witnesses have reported seeing a woman in a blue dress, who appears out of nowhere in the hotel and then vanishes. It is thought the “lady in blue” is a former house keeper of the hotel or even one of the original owner’s wives.

Two different people took pictures of me that afternoon and both pictures had a big blue blob that clearly resembles a woman’s face. Now there were reflective surfaces behind me, but I cannot explain how they would form a face. What do you think?

If you stare at the lady in blue for a moment, some people even say she moves. Of course this is just an optical illusion… or is it? See what I mean? The human imagination tends not to want to “give up the ghost.”

Legions of ghost hunters still use orbs as evidence of the paranormal. If all of the orb pictures looked like the one of the “lady in blue,” I would be much more convinced that perhaps cameras can capture some form of apparition energy.  However, like all things paranormal, we are given just enough evidence to wet our appetite, but never enough to satisfy our curiosity. That’s what makes ghost hunting so much fun.

Most orb pictures really bother me. That’s why I titled this blog “those mysterious and annoying little balls of light in our ghost pictures.” I see so many ghost investigators get so hung up with orb pictures that they probably don’t even sense the ghost walking right past them shaking its head in disbelief.

So forget the cameras and stick with tape recorders. EVPs are much more evidential, I think, when it comes to ghosts and hauntings. I am not a complete skeptic when it comes to orbs, but I have a narrow window of tolerance for the subject. Can psychic energy or ghostly energy create light distortions that can be photographed? Maybe. But that’s as far as I will commit at this point in my career.

So this Halloween remember, when you are hanging out in the local graveyard, watch where you tread or you may be stirring up dust and orbs, instead of ghosts.

Happy Halloween!

©2008 ChannelCraig, Inc.

I would like to hear what you have to say about orbs.

For those using facebook, please stop by and join my group called “The Ghosts of Cape May.” Here’s the LINK.

I also have created a Craig McManus fan page on facebook.  Come on over and join the group!

If you like the new book, please post your reviews and thoughts on our facebook group thread. Would love to hear from you!

Since many people seem to enjoy the facebook world I thought I would add some ghosts to the mix.  Please come on over and join the group. I will be posting pictures and answering questions for all of my friends in cyberspace.  Come on all you Cape May ghost fans, there’s strength in numbers! Just enter “Ghosts of Cape May” in the search on facebook and it will take you to the group page, or use the link above.  I hope you can join me.

Best, Craig