Back from the Dead

Remember me? Like ALF, I’m back! In Substack form.

After a few years of blissful silence, I’m opening my yap in a new online incarnation. This follows the closing of my long-running blog in April of 2021.

Why not just reanimate the blog? I dunno. I just wanna try something new.

Like the blog, this Substack will cover any subject of interest to me, though I’m making a concerted effort to avoid politics this time around.

One of my interests is evidence for an afterlife. Such evidence is far more plentiful and, in some cases, more persuasive than most people realize. I’ve devoted three books to this topic — two nonfiction titles, The Far Horizon and the recently published Life & Afterlife, and one novella, Chasing Omega. I’ve also put out an ebook edition of Charles Drayton Thomas’s Some New Evidence for Human Survival, which is in the public domain. Info on my books in general can be found at my recently revamped author site.

Today’s adventure is an excerpt from Ghosts of Central Jersey: Historic Haunts of the Somerset Hills, by Gordon Thomas Ward (Haunted America, 2008). Yes, it’s a ghost story, and as a rule, ghost stories don’t provide very good evidence. But in this case, I found the number of sightings, by apparently responsible witnesses, to be at least somewhat persuasive. Proof? No. Something to chew on, anyway.

The principal ghost in this account, who’s been dubbed Phyllis, is a character in a local legend about a Revolutionary War tragedy. Although members of the community believe the background story to be factual, author Gordon Thomas Ward does a good job of debunking it. He believes the legend was invented to provide a context for consistently reported paranormal events.

The site of the phenomena, originally known as the Vealtown Tavern, was frequented by George Washington's troops. Later it became a post office, then a library, and then the offices of an interior design firm. As of 2008 it was unoccupied. The town itself was originally called Vealtown, but in 1840 it was renamed Bernardsville.

In 2006, Garrett Husveth and some fellow ghost hunters visited the building and recorded EVP voices on digital audio. Included were the words "Say it!", "Sick with woe!", and "I'm down … in the wall."  These and other EVP recordings are supposedly found at the Haunted New Jersey site, but I could not locate them.

What follows is excerpted from Chapter 2:  “The Former Vealtown Tavern and Bernardsville Library.” 

Over the years, there have been numerous sightings of apparitions and reports of paranormal events in the building by very respectable people. Library employees working after hours have reported hearing children's voices in murmured conversation and a woman's voice softly singing from somewhere inside the library, but upon investigating every room in the building, no apparent cause could be found for these sounds. Doors were heard to open and close before business hours, and objects would sometimes move by themselves, especially in the staff kitchen area. There were also areas that gave people the uneasy feeling of being watched during the day and night. Given the amount of unexplained phenomena occurring in the building, it got to the point, during the library years, that the ghost was referred to as Phyllis, and the library actually issued Phyllis her own library card that was kept on file. In 1989, a three-year-old boy kept pointing into the reading room and asking his mother to come and look at someone. Upon gazing toward the place beside the fireplace where her son was pointing, the mother saw nothing, despite her son's insistence that he saw a beautiful lady in front of them with dark hair and a long, white dress that went down to her feet. The boy told his mother that he said hello to her, but she didn't respond to him.

Passersby would tell of seeing a woman in white inside the library's reading room, which, at one point, originally served as the structure's kitchen. The sightings were reported. during the night and after the library was closed and the interior lit only by its night lights and exit signs. Furthermore, during the 1940s and 1950s, almost every member of the Bernardsville police force had an encounter with a woman in a long, white floor-length dress. One of these officers was former Police Chief John Maddaluna. In 1950, with his training sergeant, he was checking the locked doors of the library as a new recruit during the midnight shift. Officer Maddaluna shined his light inside the library and twice spotted a female figure in a long, white dress. When he informed his sergeant, Maddaluna was told not to worry, and that it was only the ghost, which the sergeant had already seen many times. When the woman's apparition was spotted by the police the first time, the library director was called, the building opened and the entire site searched in vain. The building proved to be empty. Eventually officers on the night shift began to park their police cars across from the library while on break, hoping to spot the ghostly figure of Phyllis.

During the building's tenure as an interior design firm, a variety of paranormal events were reported by the employees and the owner. During a meeting, one of the owner's earrings went flying across the room while the entire staff was having a meeting. Upon retrieving the earring, it happened again. At another time, a woman was once glimpsed in one of the rooms by an employee who was walking down the hallway. Upon going back to check, thinking the woman was a client, the room proved to be empty. Murmured conversation and singing were heard in the building with no apparent source. Soft footsteps, accompanied by a swishing sound similar to that of pant legs and the rustling of clothes, could be heard in different parts of the building late at night and before the doors were open for daily business. Several times, employees on the second floor would hear the sound of someone coming in through the front door. Upon going downstairs, intending to help the customer, there would be nobody there. Sometimes, customers would try to leave but would not be able to open the door. When staff members went to assist them, it would be found that the deadbolt was locked, something that was only done by key at the end of the day. Often, items would go missing, only to show up at a later date in very unusual locations.