When my family traveled to Cape May in the early 1970s, the only ghosts I was interested in were in Wildwood amusement rides. The Pirate Ship, the Golden Nugget, anything with (manmade) ghosts drew me in. I didn’t realize there was a rather large collection of real ghosts, just a few miles south.
In those days, Cape May looked haunted. Some homes had been closed up for a long time, and many were in disrepair. I can remember driving into town to go to the beach or the shops and gazing up at some of the looming old buildings from the back seat window of our family car. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had inherited the family “gift” of psychic ability, and some of the eerie feelings that I thought were just my imagination were actually a bit more than that.
When I returned to Cape May in my late 20s, something had changed. There were now multiple walking ghost tours. I was now beginning to work part-time as a psychic medium and was busy tuning my abilities. It was a great realization that Cape May was not only admitting to having a lot of ghosts, but it was also openly promoting the idea!
After taking several of the ghost tours, I wanted to know more. I knocked on a few doors or walked up to B&B owners on their porches, but found many would not open up about the idea of having ghosts. The solution? I would pay to play. If I was a paying guest, I would have access to the managers or owners of the property in a casual setting and might get them to share some storie. It worked! Once I started sleeping around in Cape May, I realized just how many places were truly haunted.
At that time, my late friend Walt Melnick had purchased the 1875 Sea Holly Inn on Stockton Street. The previous owners had reported a ghost sitting on the bed of guests and even appearing in a wedding photograph taken at the home. My first stay was in the dead of winter, before Cape May’s shoulder season became more active. The Sea Holly was the only inn open in that part of town midweek in January. The gaslights were flickering in the blowing sea mist. The sound of the ocean was all one could hear walking up the creaking steps of the old inn.
The author Craig McManus in the cupola of the Carroll Villa on Jackson Street.
What was this guy from North Jersey and his two friends doing in Cape May on a cold winter’s night, Walt might have wondered. I was not sure how he would react to me being a snooping psychic medium, so I saved that announcement for breakfast.
That first night, I heard Walt walk past my door just before midnight. His footsteps moved past my second-floor bedroom door, but strangely he did not cast a shadow on the light coming under the door. I heard him trudge up to the third floor. The excitement of spending my first night in a haunted house kept me from falling asleep, and I noticed Walt went up but never came down. I chalked it up to the house having a back stairway.
The next morning at breakfast, when I came out of the psychic closet, Walt said he didn’t believe in ghosts. Then I asked him if he wasn’t afraid of going up to the third floor, which was reportedly where the ghosts loomed. “I don’t go up to the third floor after 9 o’clock,” he replied. I told him I heard him pass my door, as did my fellow companions, but he said he did not leave the back of the house and that there was no longer a back stairway.
On return visits, we again heard the phantom footsteps, along with disembodied voices coming from the living room, as if several people were having a late-night conversation. Yet, upon checking, the rooms were dark and empty. Multiple guests also reported a strange occurrence in a third-floor bedroom where the ladies would see or hear a child calling out in the middle of the night, while the gentlemen would experience what one referred to as a frisky woman wearing heavy perfume.
Another guest yelled at Walt, complaining of children running up and down the stairs and banging on his ground-floor bedroom. Walt told the man there were no children in the house. Early in the morning, upon hearing children running, playing in the living room, on the stairs, and having his doorknob turned, the man yanked open his room door to catch the troublemakers in the act. He was met with nothing but a blast of cold air. Walt said that the guest and his wife packed their bags and exited through the bedroom window onto the porch, leaving in the middle of the night.
We have never been able to determine who the phantom children were, but ghosts of children will act like children. They are also transient and can move from place to place. Ghosts will haunt for various reasons, one of which can be a life cut short. These earthbound spirits continue to live out the lives they were denied. Congress Hall has been the venue for two ghostly children who used to play with toys and dolls in one of the lobby stores.
There have been several ghosts of children spotted in and around the Washington Street Mall. The ghost of a young girl is sometimes seen sitting on the steps going upstairs at the Ugly Mug. The former manager of the Cotton Company reported the sound of children running around in the upstairs apartment, when no one was home. One of those young ghosts also fancied blue-color garments. These garments would sometimes be found on the floor or be seen coming off the racks by patrons. During a book signing in the store, many years ago, I was talking to a lady buying my book about a ghostly girl named “Caroline” who loved blue dresses. Across the store, another customer yelled after a rack of blue garments ripped off the wall in front of her.
Staying on the Mall, Cape May Fish Market has been the scene of multiple cases of physical phenomena, and a fabulous apparition captured on the security camera. The Fish Market’s Paula Slawek contacted me several years ago to say they were having paranormal occurrences in the restaurant. Security camera footage showed pictures flying off walls, brooms dancing in the cellar, and chairs sliding across the floor. The most startling was an image of a large man with a lobster-like hand hovering over a table at about 4am.
When I investigated the restaurant, I traced some of the activity to an abandoned well at the back of the property. It seems someone must have met their demise there, and still haunts the premises. The two floors above the restaurant were, at the time I first visited, abandoned apartments, the location of a former small hotel, the American House.
In these old upper rooms, I experienced what I felt were two genuine ghosts. One woman was sitting in front of a long unused stove, waiting for something or someone, long gone. The other ghost was an older man who seemed to have stayed there long ago but never left. He moved away each time I tried to get closer to him, finally fading away.
I could not determine the identity of the ghostly man who appeared below in the Fish Market. I feel he is most likely the one causing physical phenomena. It takes a lot of energy for a ghost to move objects. This one seems to have mastered that particular art.
Ghosts can move objects, but it is rare and usually occurs when one is not looking for a paranormal experience. They can also affect electrical things. Ghosts/Spirits are thought to be fields of energy with a consciousness. Being energy, they can also affect other energetic fields like lights, appliances and computers.
One stay at the 1882 Columbia House years ago produced several memorable experiences. When I attempted to communicate with the ghost here, a chair moved from the end of a table, while the microwave started flashing “hello” as the lights flickered. I was also visited by a ghost cat named Alex, who belonged to the two previous owners and spent years lying on the front porch. One night at about 3am (isn’t it always 3am when this stuff happens?) I was awakened by what I thought was my cat. Then I realized I was not at home but in Columbia House. Next, I went to pet the cat I felt walking around my blanket only to put my hand through thin air.
While seeing ghosts is rare, apparitions (visible ghosts) have been reported in Cape May. At the Mason Cottage on Columbia Avenue, a tall man wearing a top hat, long coat and using a cane has been reported by people crossing Columbia from Gurney for many years. Motorists assume it to be a living person dressed up for a Victorian event, until he disappears behind the tree in front of the Mason Cottage. I feel this is the ghost of Edward A. Warne, who first built the house. According to family lore, Warne got into a fight with his son-in-law and daughter’s family and apparently bricked up the doors between the “mother/daughter” home now called the Mason Cottage. Behind every haunting is a ghost and behind every ghost is a story. Ed Warne’s story seems to be one of remorseful past behaviors that alienated him from his family.
The Mason Cottage, on Columbia Avenue, is said to be haunted by Ed Warne, the man who built it.
If you want to experience your own ghostly encounter in Cape May, you can stay at one of the many wonderful haunts in town. Hauntings have a certain frequency, each one unique. You may stay in a haunted place, haunted room, and have nothing happen.
Other times, when you least expect it or are not looking for an experience, something will go bump in the night. You can never tell when the ghosts will come out to play in haunted Cape May.
