| Author | Message | ||
     Barleyrooty |
Since it's that time of year, are there any good Maplewood or S.O. ghost legends? | ||
| Extuscan |
How about the one of the kids who were cutting through the MCC and encountered the ghost-golfer who threw his clubs at them for trespassing? You can make up the details, I just made up the story... oh wait no that one was real, they did throw clubs at me. Ok, so how about the evil woman with the Toy Store... Eva... Evil Eva... who threw buckets of water on kids? Oh wait, no... that one was true too. hmmm this is tougher than it sounds. John | ||
| Nan |
Golf ghosts? Is this the best we can do? No wonder we never get mentioned in "Weird New Jersey." http://www.weirdnj.com/home/index.html You are all going to have to try harder! | ||
| Bella |
Okay, so I don't know any good ghost legends that would concern the whole town. But, there was definately something in our second house in Maplewood. This is something we never discussed until after we had moved, but we all had similar experiences of seeing something in the corner of our eye and turning to see what it was and there not being anything there. I alone always felt terribly at ease on the third step down from our second floor landing (but only when walking up the stairs, never walking down them.) While the rest of the family never experienced this uneasy feeling, they remember the dog looking up the "empty" stairs and barking and growling. (This is a dog who only barks or growls when very upset.) | ||
| Extuscan |
My mother used to swear my dead grandfather was haunting our attic for a few years. I'm sure the giant ACME attic fan had something to do with the slamming doors in the unused attic... But there was no explaination there than the paranormal for turning the water supply off to the first floor bathroom toilet with great regularity... and the constant turning on and off of the light on the basement stairs... we'd watch it happen. (I know... juvenile pransk and loose wires... Just like it was the attic fan... SURE! John | ||
| Nan |
Bella, Interesting story. Do you know if the people who live in your old house now notice anything strange? Did you mention it to them when you were selling the house? | ||
| Tom |
There is definitely a ghost story of some kind about a house up near Roosevelt, at the end of a dead-end street. Something about two dead children, I think. For the life of me I can't remember anything more specific than that. Anybody ever hear that one? | ||
| Bella |
Nan- I don't know if the people who have lived in the house since us have noticed anything. Since none of us discussed it with each other while living there, no we didn't say anything while selling the house. Okay, this isn't a ghost story but it creeped me out as a kid- one winter when my father was a kid on Schaefer Rd the family came home to find footprints in the snow that came from behind the garage and went around the house, stopping at all the windows and doors and then away from the house. | ||
| Dave |
C'mon, this is the perfect time for a good ghost story. Deadwhitemale must have one or two.... | ||
| Nan |
BOO! I haven't seen any ghosts yet today, but here is something REALLY SCARY: it's 9:15 am and I've already eaten a half a bag of Halloween candy. Memo to self: next year reconsider taking this day off as your "floating holiday." I'm going out for a walk now...I will report back with ghost sightings later... | ||
| Beans Citizen Username: Nalini Post Number: 22 Registered: 11-2004 |
Just moved to Maplewood and was doing Laundry at 10:30pm in the basement (yeah, I know it was kinda late to be doing laundry, but was traveling for the next few days) and there was this shadow that I saw from the corner of my eyes and then I had goose bumps up and down my arms. I can actually describe the shadow that I saw...tall, White, long gray hair. How do you explain that? | ||
| Joan Supporter Username: Joancrystal Post Number: 4649 Registered: 5-2001 |
The cat was in the basement watching you do the laundry? | ||
| Beans Citizen Username: Nalini Post Number: 23 Registered: 11-2004 |
Joan, I think that would explain it, however, I don't have a cat nor a dog.  | ||
| Mrs T Citizen Username: Netjack Post Number: 34 Registered: 12-2004 |
I quite often find the front or back door unlocked, when I know they had been locked. This has happened when we've gone away for while, return and find the house unlocked. Nothing is gone. This happens to the slide lock on the back door as well. My husband has 'seen/felt' someone at the stairs a couple of times, and had a door slam shut out of his hand, that was spooky!! | ||
| Crazyguggenheim Citizen Username: Crazyguggenheim Post Number: 760 Registered: 2-2002  |
okay...it was me! | ||
| Bobkat Supporter Username: Bobk Post Number: 7546 Registered: 5-2001 |
I may have posted about this before, but it is an interesting story and I swear it is 100% true. Back in the early 1970s my uncle and his wife lived in a pre-revolutionary war home in upstate New York about 20 miles outside of Albany. They used the original kitchen, complete with a huge cooking hearth, as a dining room. Opening off the dining room were two small rooms with original plank doors and wrought iron hardware. In colonial times these types of rooms were known as “keeping rooms” and were used for sick or pregnant family members because they were kept warm by the hearth and the chimney mass. It is quite likely that people had died in those rooms in the past. Unc and Rachel loved to tell about how, several times a year, but on no set schedule they would hear the latch open on one of the old doors and the door would swing open and how their two Siamese cats would swivel their heads as if they saw someone or something walking across the room. I thought this was just a good story until one winter evening when my father and I were visiting and we heard the click of the latch and saw the door swing open and watched the cats following something across the room. Up until then I scoffed at ghosts and ghost stories. Since that time I haven’t been so sure! Uncle Bill had checked out the basement and other areas to see if there might be a damaged beam or some other explanation. He couldn’t find anything and the door that swung open was perfectly balanced and didn’t swing on its own when left part way open. At least the night this happened in my Dad’s and my presence there was no unusual traffic on the road outside the house. There were some other unusual happenings at the house, including perfume bottles that were cut in half with the precision of a laser. | ||
| Psychomom Citizen Username: Psychomom Post Number: 27 Registered: 5-2005 |
There's the story of Carol's Cabin...any girlscout in the area can tell you that the Carol's Cabin up in the Girl Scout Oval off of South Orange Avenue is haunted by Carol, a girlscout who died young. I believe the real story is that her family donated the cabin in her honor, but there is a placque to honor Carol in the cabin and noone wants to stay in that cabin. I did stay there a few times and nothing happened...but it did make for some great scarey stories around the campfire! | ||
| Bob K Supporter Username: Bobk Post Number: 8804 Registered: 5-2001 |
Pshychomom, when our daugter was in Girl Scouts in the late 1980s the girls insisted that one of the cabins was built over a grave. You could see a rectanglar concrete structure under the building. I don't know if this is a separate legend, or if Carol's cabin had morphed into what the late 1980s scouts insisted was true. | ||
| Brett Weir Citizen Username: Brett_weir Post Number: 873 Registered: 4-2004  |
People in Washington Park used to swear they heard the hoofbeats of ghostly horses pass the Timothy Ball House when I was a kid. | ||
| Gracefulvintage Citizen Username: Gracefulvintage Post Number: 9 Registered: 10-2005 |
There is a story that the playground/park located next to the big storage building on Valley st is haunted. Is it true that the park was built over a cemetery? | ||
| curb Citizen Username: Curb Post Number: 501 Registered: 1-2001 |
Yes that was a cemetery at one time. | ||
| Gracefulvintage Citizen Username: Gracefulvintage Post Number: 10 Registered: 10-2005 |
I was attending a meeting at the Ethical Culture Society on Prospect one night about 5 years ago. We were on the first floor & I went to the rest room which is situated akwardly at the end in a hallway that kind of bends off the main rooms. I had the creepiest feeling back there - I wanted to get out as fast as possible - I could feel the hair standing at the back of my head. I ran into the other room & asked the people there if they had any idea about the history of the building. Someone told me it was once an infirmary. Has anyone else had a similar encounter there? | ||
| Gracefulvintage Citizen Username: Gracefulvintage Post Number: 13 Registered: 10-2005 |
This is not a SO-Mplwd ghost story but I thought I’d share it on Halloween since there are not that many stories here. I grew up in Perth Amboy in a two family house probably built in the 20's or a little earlier. We lived on the first floor of this small house. It had a deep basement with a coal room with brick walls (yes we had coal delivered in those days - only 60 years ago or so). That coal room was the source of many nightmares during my childhood. My brother and sister and I shared a small bedroom which was located right above this coal room. My sister and I shared a double bed in one corner and my brother had a little single bed in the other corner. We were separated by the width of a window and/or Singer sewing machine which stood between the beds against the wall. The distance from the window to the doorway was about 8 feet. It was a small room. We would sometimes wake in the middle of the night to find our ceiling lights on and our pillows and blankets thrown on the floor. This did not happen often maybe three times total that I can remember. My mother said it was because I (the kid at the end of the bed) used to get up and do things in my sleep which I didn’t remember. I never developed into a sleep walker in my adult years and I never forgot waking in the middle of the night in that chaos. One of the most striking incidents I remember from that time occurred when my brother was recovering from a serious bout of some childhood disease. I remember it was serious because I remember my mother being pretty worried during this time - it might have been some sort of influenza. I was about 8 or 9. He was 7. One night, I woke in the middle of the night to see my mother sitting on the edge of my brother’s bed just across the room from me. His bed was a little higher than mine and I remember her sitting very tall with her head turned away from me and looking down at him. I called to her and she turned. The face that met mine was not my mother’s and looked at me with a stern questioning look - it was not my mother. This woman looked straight at me and frightened me so badly, I shut my eyes and started to pray. I opened my eyes a few minutes later to find the woman gone. I layed there wide awake and scared to death she would come back. I eventually fell asleep but I can’t forget that vivid encounter with what I now believe was a visage from the other side. We moved away a few years later, but that strange encounter, my nightmares about the coal bin and finding bed clothes on the floor in the middle of the night are among my vivid memories of living on Grant Street in Perth Amboy. Happy Halloween everyone! | ||
| Psychomom Citizen Username: Psychomom Post Number: 90 Registered: 5-2005 |
GREAT story!!!! Happy Halloween to you all! BOO | ||
| Peter Citizen Username: Peter Post Number: 95 Registered: 7-2004 |
We thought we had a ghost in our house. But it turns out our dog snores. | ||
| tom Citizen Username: Tom Post Number: 3798 Registered: 5-2001 |
speaking of out-of-town ghost stories... I went to music school in Ohio, and heard this tale first-hand from people on the nighttime cleaning staff who had experienced it. What would happen, after the building closed at 11 the cleaning people would hear piano playing from one of the practice rooms upstairs. They'd unlock the door, but there would be nobody there, and the lights were off. Over the years this story circulated a lot, and a lot of people claimed or were said to have heard it -- opened the door -- and found no one there. 25 years earlier, a first-year student failed a "jury"-- a solo piano performance in front of the faculty-- and in despair had went upstairs and hung himself in that very room. | ||
| Glock 17 Citizen Username: Glock17 Post Number: 199 Registered: 7-2005  |
I want to hear more about the Ethical Culture society and whatnot |
