Halloween Adventures
By: Joan Ruddiman
Halloween has become a big business. Not only do little kids dress up for Halloween parades at school and trick-and-treating in the neighborhood, but adults also dab on the fake blood, don wigs and get into elaborate costumes to go to work on the 31st.
Halloween is ranked sixth in the "big spending" holiday category, according to an article on FutureWire. Data from a National Retail Federation survey indicate that consumers spend well over three billion dollars on Halloween costumes, decorations and other related items. One reason Halloween is outranked by the winter holidays Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s and Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day (in that order) is that Halloween buying does not include big ticket items like jewelry and electronics that are part of gift-giving holidays.
But Halloween spending is on the rise due to the increased and enthusiastic involvement of the 18 to 34 demographic group who seem reluctant to give up a favorite childhood holiday. Phil Rist, who conducted the NRF survey said, "Halloween remains one of the only days where society gives adults permission to act like kids again."
For those who are into the Halloween spirit, here’s an idea for more than a trick or treat trip around the neighborhood or the office. Cape May, that quaint shore town at the tip of New Jersey, has discovered that ghosts are good business. Folks there are more than willing to share their spirits with visitors for a price of course.
Haunted hotels and houses are nothing new to those who know Cape May. However, before hauntings were so cool, most owners hushed up any talk of their ghosts for fear that spirits would hurt property values. Then a few years ago, a couple of ghost experts introduced Cape May residents to their ghostly neighbors.
Given the nature of small towns everywhere, in Cape May the issue of who "owns the ghosts" becomes territorial. A. J. Rauber, a parapsychologist, claims to be the creator of the Cape May Walking Tour the "original ghost tour" in town. Rauber is a familiar figure to those who follow ghost stories from his many interviews in New Jersey newspapers (including the Packet), and radio shows, as well as his appearance on television’s Fangoria ghost stories series.
Craig McManus, however, is the more notable ghost guy in Cape May, mainly due to his popular column in Exit Zero, a free weekly news magazine found all over town, and volume one and two of "The Ghosts of Cape May," published in 2005 and 2006 with Jack Wright, the editor/publisher of Exit Zero.
McManus is also connected with The Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts MAC the folks who run the many tours and events in and around Cape May. Cape May and the thousands of visitors who come to the town annually owe a real debt of gratitude to this non-profit that organized in the 1970s to save the Emlen Physick Estate. The Physick Estate is not only a fine example of Victorian architecture, but also serves as a living example of a way of life long forgotten.
MAC is dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of Cape May’s heritage. It also fosters the performing arts. In both realms, MAC has married the best of non-profit intentions with some real business savvy. Its energetic and informed volunteers run trolley tours, walking and self-guided audio tours of the town that inform visitors of the history and architecture of this unique community. In recent years, MAC has added tours that explain Cape May’s role in World War II and ecological tours of the wetlands areas. At its jewel, the beautifully restored Emlen Physick Estate, MAC offer tours of the house with history of the family and life in the late 19th century, including special events such as reenactments of a Victorian funeral.
And they are now into the ghost tour business thanks to Craig McManus.
McManus is a self-professed psychic and medium. Perhaps because McManus genuinely likes his ghostly acquaintances and makes them seem so benign, town folks and the MAC organization were intrigued. Tourists, however, were wowed and the ghost business in Cape May took off.
Here is a taste of McManus’s ghost adventures one he shares in "The Ghosts of Cape May." Appropriately enough, it includes how he met and became part of the good work MAC is doing to save the historic Physick Estate and the historical integrity of Cape May.
McManus first visited the Physick Estate as most do, on a tour given by the MAC guides. As he and his friends stood outside the house, he "saw" a woman in period dress at a window on the second floor. As they entered the front door, he writes:
"I had to stop myself and refocus for a minute. I had just seen FIVE dogs run up the staircase! I realized in a few moments that what I had seen was a ‘psychic image’ received telepathically from the dogs. You see, these dogs had their day about 100 years ago! The Physick Estate, it seemed, had gone to the dogs, but the dogs had never gone to their maker WHY?"
Over the course of several more visits, McManus checked the place out "psychically" and asked a lot of questions. The staff at the estate knew of Aunt Emilie Parmentier, Dr. Physick’s maiden aunt who was his mother’s sister. That was, or so they thought, the household: two older women and the young Dr. Physick who at 21 retired to Cape May choosing to be a gentleman farmer rather than pursuing a medical career like his illustrious grandfather who is known as the "father of American surgery."
But McManus, besides all the dogs in the house, recognized another presence an older woman who seemed to be ill, who was called Bella. McManus had begun a series of lectures at the house for the MAC group, and over the course of several years was in the house often. But he writes that he "could still not solve the mystery of the phantom dogs, or for that matter, who the invalid woman ghost was."
He ran the story in Exit Zero, asking readers for help in solving the mystery. One reader sent a copy of an old census from the late 1800s that listed with Dr. Emlen, Aunt Em, his mother Mrs. Ralston, the servants, another sister named Isabelle, with a notation that she was crippled.
Further investigation, now armed with what they were looking for, revealed a tombstone in the Physick plot for Isabelle Parmentier Bella.
As for the dogs, McManus bumped into Aunt Emilie one day as the dogs were running out the back entrance. In their "conversation," Emilie revealed that she let the dogs in the house against Dr. Emlen’s orders. She not only fed them, but also cooked their food daily in the kitchen.
Emilie claims she "stayed behind" around to "look after" the house when it was abandoned and became a victim to vandals in the 1960s. The dogs, too, were "stuck" in that space, so she remains with them.
That’s just one of many ghost stories from Cape May. Sea captains, serving girls, children who were lost in the sea, and many more "hang around" their houses and hotel rooms, in bars and stores all over Cape May. McManus is happy to share in his books what he "sees" and "hears" among the ghosts. The MAC folks are happy to sell a tour ticket to those who come to town for a visit for the ghosts, architecture, history or ecology!
For more information, go to www.capemaymac.com.
Joan Ruddiman, Ed. D., is a teacher and friend of the Allentown Public Library.

