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New York State Ghosts Volume 1
Halloween is upon us once again. As a kid, I loved Halloween. As an adult? Not so much. I enjoy watching my kids get dressed up and have fun, but the constant doorbell ringing gets irritating after the first half hour. Add in the fact that I live in a giant suburban neighborhood filled with teenagers, and well, you get the point.
One thing I have enjoyed about Halloween in recent years, have been my annual visits with local author, David J. Pitkin. He was a regular guest on my public affairs program, and most definitely one of my favorites. David is a "ghost expert" and has written several books about haunted places in the Capital Region and beyond.
I have never seen a ghost, felt a ghost or had any firsthand contact with anything remotely ghost-like. That's not to say I don't believe in them. I find the whole subject incredibly fascinating, but they have yet to find me interesting enough to pop in and say hello.
David, on the other hand, has had personal experiences that he shares in his books. He also shares others' stories and many of them have taken place in locations that you may be familiar with, like an elementary school in Saratoga County, the Saratoga Battlefield, as well as several local bed and breakfasts, restaurants and pubs.
David recently shared with me one of his all-time favorite ghost stories. It is from his book "New York State Ghosts, Vol. 1".
Others
In 1967, Bernadette’s mother bought the duplex, previously the home of the McCormick sisters, at 1311 3rd Street in Rensselaer, NY, and the girl grew to womanhood there. “When I married, my mom invited Steven and me to live upstairs, which was especially nice when we had our baby,” Bernadette remembered. “Living there was very familiar to me and nothing out of the ordinary occurred until our baby, Stephy, was eleven months old.” The child had her favorite teddy bear in the crib with her when she went to sleep that night, and Bernadette went to bed in her own bedroom.
“I was sleeping when I felt someone sit down on the other side of the bed; I thought it must be my husband. All at once, the bed started bouncing violently. Steven! What are you doing? I thought, and woke up. Without turning, I angrily said, ‘Cut it out. It’s 3 a.m.!’ Then I looked, and nobody was there. Just then, I heard the door slam out n the kitchen, and knew that was my husband. But if it hadn’t Steven bouncing my bed just then, who was it? I angrily turned on the lights in each room as I went out—nobody was there. Going back to my bedroom, I noticed the baby’s door was shut. What’s that all about? I asked myself, and pushed the door open. Turning on the light, I saw Stephy was almost blue—she was choking on something!
“Frantically, I grabbed her, tipped her upside down, and squeezed her chest while groping inside her mouth with my finger. Out came a button from the teddy bear’s face. I called 911, and we went to the emergency room. I hadn’t been afraid, I realized, but then I had had some first aid training in my second job at a hospital. The baby was okay, but Steven kept asking me, ‘How did you know what was wrong with her?’ It wasn’t easy to explain it to him. When we got back to the apartment, I was no longer scared, but I don’t think Steven believed me about the bouncing bed. After all, in a locked apartment, who else could have tried to awaken me?’
Bernadette remembers that, soon afterward, she began to experience things disappearing from their customary places in her apartment. “I complained to my mom downstairs, but she told me not to worry. She has a lot of the old country in her and seems to understand such things. A while later, I began to find the missing objects in the downstairs hall closet. Mom wasn’t scared, I decided, so why should I be?”
Two years passed, and then Steven, asleep on the bed for an afternoon nap, suddenly got bounced really hard. He woke up a bit groggy. What was this? Had Bernadette really been right? A bouncing bed? But that had all happened when Stephy was in trouble, right? And she was certainly okay this afternoon, right? And where was she? It sounded like Bernadette had come home, and he made his way into the living room. There was Stephy, contentedly sucking on her bottle, watching television. She was okay; was someone now warning him?
Steven later confessed the entire episode to his wife, who talked at length with her mother about the matter. It was as if there were one or maybe two other beings in the apartment, and they seemed to be like invisible nannies or baby sitters. Could it be that the McCormick sisters had stayed on, and enjoyed helping her as spirit babysitters? Her mother admitted to having experienced such things during most of her life, but she had come to take them for granted as being good things, so she seldom discussed them. Mainly, she told Bernadette not to worry. “Don’t be afraid if you experience stuff ahead of time in your mind,” she told her daughter.
Years passed; Stephy grew up, graduated and became engaged. Life was supposed to be easier now, but Bernadette’s intuition had become even stronger. One day, she found herself quite upset when it came time for Steven to go to work. “Don’t go in today,” she implored him, after receiving a vision of two large plates smashing together and everything becoming covered with red. For various reasons, Steven didn’t go to work. A few hours later they got a phone call that a nineteen-year-old employee working on Steven’s machine had fallen into it and been squashed, splashing blood all over the area.
“Now that the job of motherhood is over, if it ever really is over,” she told me, “life should be easier, but it isn’t. My intuition is very strong, and I’ve seen ghosts or spirits where I work. Fortunately, my mom is still here, and I can check with her when I get these visions. Maybe someday I’ll be able to play that role with my daughter,” she said with a laugh.
Want more? Check out David's books. Haunted Saratoga County, New York State Ghosts, Volumes 1 and 2, Spiritual Numerology: Caring for Number One, Ghosts of the Northeast, and his novel, The Highest Mountain: Death and Life in the Adirondacks. They are available through local bookstores, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.com.
You can also check out his website to read the Ghost Story of the Month.
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