Perhaps it’s the full moon. Or the unusually temperate climate for late October, requiring only a light jacket for an evening stroll. Or maybe it’s the wish to kick off Halloween weekend with a spine-tingling scare. Whatever their motives, more than 60 people have arrived at the Smith Cadbury Mansion in Moorestown on a Friday night last autumn to participate in Moorestown Historical Society’s annual ghost tour.
So many have shown up that the crowd has to be divided into two groups, one for families with kids, which vows to be a bit less scary, and a second that promises no holds barred. I opt for the latter, expecting ghouls jumping out of dark alleys, spirit sightings, and stories of murder and mayhem.
But over the next 90 minutes, as this tour winds its way through downtown Moorestown, I see that I’m in for a lot more. From the costumed characters representing different eras to the tales shared by our guide, I get a crash course in the history of this Quaker town that played a role in the Revolutionary War and has been visited by everyone from Benjamin Franklin to naturalist John Audubon to women’s suffragist Alice Paul.
“This is not going to be your typical haunted hayride,” says Gary Ell, a historical society trustee and lead guide. “You’re going to learn 400 years of actual history, tales of heroes and rescuers from the Revolutionary War to the Civil Rights era. And it’s going to blow your mind.”
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Held over three weekends in October, the Moorestown ghost tour reflects an evolving approach to this annual fall institution, adding authentic details and interesting insights to the otherwise sometimes hokey seasonal activity. Moorestown isn’t alone in creating an added-value element to its ghost hunting.
Recognizing its locale as “certified brainiac territory,” the Princeton Tour Company takes a scientific approach to the ghost tours it leads through the town that is home to New Jersey’s only Ivy League-university. Armed with dowsing rods and therma-meters, the ghost-hunter guides lead guests through graveyards, campus passageways and battlegrounds, seeking evidence of spectral beings who continue to haunt the town.
“We go to sites where there have been unexplained experiences and try to track down unsettled spirits,” says Mimi Omiecinski, owner of Princeton Tour Company, which, throughout the rest of the year, runs trolley tours, pub crawls and a tour of sites where movies were filmed in Princeton.
The ghost tours are held the last three weekends in October and draw as many as 150 participants on a given night, says Omiencinski, who notes that some of the uncensored ghost stories can get a little graphic. With such notable people as Grover Cleveland, Aaron Burr Jr. and Paul Tulane buried in Princeton, you’re bound to learn a bit of Princeton’s history as well.
Focusing on 20th-century history, Asbury Park’s ghost tours feature graphic descriptions of murdered children, a devastating fire at the local newspaper’s office, and echoes of a blood-curdling scream from a washed-up corpse. Kathy Kelly, the owner of the Paranormal Book Shop and Museum, offers curated ghost walks through Asbury Park’s downtown and along its boardwalk from May to November.
After opening her bookstore and museum on Cookman Avenue in 2008, Kelly went back to school to get a master’s degree in history to research the stories that she tells.
“When I first started these ghost walks, I had the stories, but accessing the areas where they occurred was a little dangerous,” says Kelly, referring to Asbury Park’s downturn in the not-so-distant past. Kelly—who also conducts seances at her museum and has been brought in to conduct numerous paranormal investigations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania—credits her tours as contributing to the seaside town’s renaissance.
“We have many people who spent their childhood summers here, and they come back now to take the tours with a profound sense of nostalgia,” says Kelly.
For the ghost tours, Kelly has fleshed out close to 20 stories, which a handful of hired guides rotate through on a given night. On the downtown tour my daughter and I took in May, our guide, Johnny Peterson (who is also a performance artist), told us about the 1917 fire that swept through the Asbury Park Press building, where the sounds of the old printing press can still be heard on some nights.
We also learned about a banker’s son who got caught in the bank vault and died, a forlorn Native American looking for his long-lost wife, and the frequent sighting of a man in a blue suit occupying the last bar seat at Barrio Costero. And then there is Asbury Park’s most famous death: 10-year-old Marie Smith, whose headline-grabbing 1910 murder has been the subject of numerous books, podcasts and films.
Back in Moorestown, the ghost stories are more benign, from the apparition of Father Damian, often sighted in a window of the parish house of Our Lady of Good Counsel Church on Main Street, to the silent women playing croquet in the moonlight, reenacting the daughters of a 19th-century embalmer.
The stories get a bit more colorful as the tour continues, passing through a graveyard, a former brothel, and a still-intact but long-abandoned jail cell.
In a whisper, Ell provides sketchy accounts of a dead sex worker and a man stabbed in the head. When pressed for more specifics, the historian admits that the local police “told us to take out some of the ghost stories,” like the one about a long-dead policeman still seen patrolling the streets by some. Nevertheless, the audience remains riveted.
“I always feel like ghosts are of someone who was murdered, or had an unsettled death,” says Ell. “That’s why they are still here with us, and why people want to connect to them.”
Moorestown Ghost Tours
Held on Fridays and Saturdays the last three weekends in October. Run by the Historical Society of Moorestown, tickets are $15 per person.
Princeton Ghost Tours
Held on Fridays and Saturdays Oct. 11–26. Run by Princeton Tour Company, tickets are $3 per person.
Asbury Park Ghost Tours
Held Friday–Saturday from May to November. Run by Paranormal Books and Curiosities/The Paranormal Museum, tickets are $15-$20 per person.
[RELATED: Visit These New Jersey Cemeteries For a Fascinating Walk Through History]
Jill P. Capuzzo is a food and features writer for New Jersey Monthly, a contracted freelancer for the New York Times, and a contributing reporter to the Philadelphia Inquirer and other publications.
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