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CHESTERFIELD: Tour guide knows where ‘the bodies are buried’

Community Association hosts first Crawl Haunted House Tour

By Amy Batista, Special Writer
CHESTERFIELD — The town hosted its first haunted house tour.
"This is the first year of what is to be an annual event," said Keith Reimann, adding there is plenty of material to make each year’s tours different.
"Crosswicks is a great town where Halloween is enjoyed by all ages." Mr. Reimann said. "I thought, with our history, it would be a great event for the season and people to learn a little more about our roots. With the help of a few people, it all fell together."
Crosswicks Crawl Haunted House tours were held Oct. 24 and 25 at 7, 8 and 9 p.m. and Oct. 30 at 7 and 8 p.m. One more tour may be added Nov. 2.
The cost was $10 per person and required a reservation. There are 28 stories on the tour.
"People can expect some macabre facts from Crosswicks history and stories of hauntings within the town," he said.
Approximately 90 people attended the event, according to officials.
It is organized by the Crosswicks Community Association.
"All proceeds will be used to defer the costs of our handicap accessibility project (at the Community House on Main Street), which is nearing completion," he said. "We have added a wheelchair lift that stops at all floors and an accessible bathroom."
For Mr. Reimann, the highlight of the evening was the tour guide.
"He does an amazing job and wowed the historical society on the first walk-through," he said.
"Ladies and gentlemen, so many stories and so little time," tour guide Tim Wolverton said. "I shall be your guide for the evening. Why me? Because I know the stories. I know where the ghosts are, I know where they hide the bodies. I know where all the horrible things have happened."
The tour was an hour long and was led and narrated by Mr. Wolverton, who guided guests through the streets of Crosswicks with a lighted lamp.
"Our tour guide, Mr. Wolverton, spent about six months researching stories and interviewing longtime Crosswicks residents along with consulting the historical society," Mr. Reimann said.
Mr. Wolverton said it’s about half ghost stories and half creepy history.
"I was amazed to hear ghost stories in about 15 houses in the little village of Crosswicks," he said. "My research involved personal interviews, searches of period books and newspapers as well as the historical society’s collection."
He added, "One thing I’ve learned is that a lot can happen in 300 years."
During the tour, he said, "The Crosswicks we know today is quiet and safe. It’s a bedroom community but this has not always been the case. For 200 years, Crosswicks was on the Old York Road that led from New York to Philadelphia and brought a constant stream of travelers famous and infamous enough to keep two inns busy year around and the taverns."
Stories of ghosts have been around this town for generations, he said.
He said he had a disclaimer and a warning before continuing the tour.
"Nothing you are going to hear tonight has been made up by me or anyone else for the sake of this tour," he said. "And now, the warning: The history of Crosswicks is full of events that are cruel, violent and tragic and I won’t be sparing any details."
Mr. Wolverton told his guests that if they were brave enough, they could continue with him to their next stop, the Garden Hand Inn, a stagecoach stop up until the 1850s.
He told of new homeowners who moved in the early 1990s. The mother was outside cleaning windows one day and ran out of the commercial brand of window cleaner and didn’t want to stop cleaning so she went to the closet, but there was no more, only Uncle Al’s window cleaner.
"Her Uncle Al was a favorite," he said. "He liked to invent things and make his own solutions and give it away as gifts to friends."
He said Uncle Al had died so she just kept it as a memento.
"It was then she noticed smoke coming in the window," he said. "She looked out; no one was there. She went all the way around the house, and there was no fire. She went back to work. It was then she realized that it was not just any smoke, but it was pipe smoke, and it was the very flavor of cherry pipe smoke that her Uncle Al use to smoke."
It comforted her to know her Uncle Al is always here, he said.
July 15, 1962, John Wine came home from a weekend fishing trip sponsored by the insurance company he worked and arrived home around 8 p.m. when he opened his front door and was blown into the middle of Main Street by an explosion, Mr. Wolverton said.
"It was a back draft caused by a sudden rush of oxygen to a fire that had been smoldering all day," he said. "His wife, Ethel, 51, had been smoking in bed and was burned beyond recognition."
It might have been Ethel’s ghost waiting for the new owners in the late ’70s when the Seahuts moved in, he said.
"Someone was trying to keep them out of one of the bedrooms," he said, adding they kept finding the door locked from the inside with a deadbolt.
They had to climb out on the roof and go in through a window to unlock it, he added.
"This is also the place where Aunt Emma has been since, an old woman in a rocking chair," he said, adding residents of three houses in town have seen her.
He said most of the houses in town have had someone die in them.
"It’s not terribly unique," he said. "Dying in a hospital is a relatively new phenomenon."
The Sutton family moved into their house in the early 1990s and found they have a very "playful ghost."
"Mrs. Sutton is very organized and likes to have everything put away at bedtime, but toys would be missing," he said. "That’s not too surprising. The interesting part is that, by morning, they would be back where they belonged," adding they decided their ghost was a child.
He spoke of an incident when the family was rushing out the door, carrying a board game, and the pieces dropped on the back porch.
"Some of the small pieces fell between the floor boards and went down into the abyss," he said. "Well, they weren’t about to go under there and get them, but at bedtime, Mrs. Sutton pulled back the covers on her toddler’s bed and there were the missing pieces under the covers."
He said a couple of years later, they remodeled their kitchen. They pulled up their floors and found an old well. In the middle of the pile, they found an old photograph, almost a century old, taken around 1920, of a boy about 5 years old in front of the house playing with toys.
"We don’t yet know who he was, but at least the ghost now has a face," he said.
For Mr. Wolverton, the highlight of the tour is the finale, "when I tie up some loose ends and tell about the Quaker and Native American grave yard being moved for the sake of traffic improvement."
"The reaction I get from the visitors when I give the gory details is priceless," he said.