My favorite story is about a house in Whitehall that I lived in a few years ago with my wife, Theresa. 

I have never believed in ghosts. Not when I was a child listening to stories around the campfire and not when I was an adult selling Real Estate and listening to the stories of home and businesses owners about their strange experiences. I’ve been one of the top Real Estate agents in the country for Century 21 for 16 years, and I specialize in unique and historic property. As you can imagine, I’ve heard plenty of stories and tall tales.

As a matter of fact, I was so sure there were no such things as apparitions, ghosts or restless spirits that I bought a "stigmatized" property in 1992. A local banker came home one night and shot his wife in the back. He then killed himself in the family room. The rumor was that he had been caught embezzling and tried to end it all before going to jail. I got a steal on buying the property because no one wanted it!

In the years that I lived in that home, I never (I repeat, NEVER!) saw anything unusual, out of the ordinary or spirit-like. That was about to change in 1995!

I purchase a home in Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania in the early 1990's as an investment. In 1995, after renting the home out to tenants, I decided to move into the property. That was the beginning of my change of opinion!

I purchased the property from an older German woman who had lived in the home for over 40 years. She had a picture of herself as a small child with Adolph Hitler because she had met him during training for the Olympics. I don’t recall if she had been training for some event, or had simply met him. When I purchased the property, she had not mentioned the ghost.

When I first moved into the home, I started experiencing strange occurrences. For the first few months, the lamp in my bedroom would turn on and off by itself. Within a few weeks, the chandelier in the dining room began turning on and off by itself. I thought I had an electrical problem, so I called in an electrician to check out the home. After a complete rewiring, I still had the same problem!

Shortly after that the television in the bedroom began turning on by itself in the middle of the night. I could understand electrical problems causing a television to turn OFF, but on? 

Then one day my wife and I came home from work to find that all the medicine in the medicine cabinet was out of the cabinet and on the counter. In the living room, all the toys were out of the toy box and all over the floor. No one had been in the home all day. At first I thought I was robbed!

A week later, while my wife was cooking in the kitchen, the cookbook fell off the shelf.  She put it back, and it fell back off.  She put it back again, and watched as first the cookbook fell, and then 3 other books fell one at a time.  She yelled at the ghost to "knock it off".  She put the books back and nothing happened!

True? Or just a scary Halloween tale? You be the judge! 

"The Cleanest Ghost in Town"

A few years ago one of our mortgage brokers lived in an old home in South Whitehall Township that had been converted to a 2-unit. 

He says he didn't believe in spirits until he moved into this home.  Being a confirmed bachelor at the time, he would make himself a quick dinner after work and leave the dishes out on the sink or counter. 

After a few months of living in the home, the dishes started disappearing from the counter, and in the morning, they would be back in the cabinet.  They hadn't been cleaned, just simply put back in the cabinets.  The mortgage broker began to panic.   He wasn't sure if he was sleep walking, if he was imagining this happening, or if someone was coming in the house late at night and playing tricks on him.

He tested what was going on over a few days, carefully leaving dishes out all over the counter and going to bed.  Each morning, the dishes would be in the cabinets.   He changed the locks, and the dishes still made it into the cabinets.

So one night he invited several of his friends over.  They locked the house up tightly and taped all the doors to make sure no one was getting in or out.  They put out dishes on the sink and quietly went upstairs to his room.  They played cards for several hours.  And when they came down... the dishes were in the cabinets!

(unknown writer)

"Careful What You Play With"

Some of you may not believe me and some may know what I went through... this is my story. It happened about 2 years ago in a small coal mining town in Pennsylvania. I had just moved in with my boyfriend at the time and his father (his parents were divorced and his mother lived out of state).

We had invited a few friends over and we all were a little bored, so my boyfriend's sister decided that it would be fun to play with her Ouija board. I had never played with one and was very skeptical. We had contacted a few "spirits" and I really started to get into it. One of the "spirits" started to get hostile and I decided I'd had enough. I went into the next room to watch T.V. After about an hour, I started to get sleepy so I kissed my boyfriend goodnight and went upstairs to our bedroom.

  I could still hear them downstairs and they were rather loud so I shut the bedroom door. I had just about fallen asleep when I felt a presence...I knew that my boyfriend was still downstairs and I hadn't heard the door open. I started to sit up when I was forcefully pushed back down. I started to scream but I felt my throat tighten and I was unable to make any sound. My shoulders were being pinned to the bed and I could feel a great pressure on my thighs as if someone was kneeling on them. I started to cry...tears rolling down my cheeks. After what seemed like forever (although the clock showed it to be about 5 minutes from beginning to end) I felt the pressure just dissipate.

 I started to scream and jumped out of the bed and ran straight to the bathroom...My boyfriend heard me scream and by the time he got upstairs, I was vomiting uncontrollably. He told me later that I was shaking so badly, he thought I was having a seizure. I told him what had happened and he went into the room to investigate. He came back and told me that no one was there and I had been dreaming. (I knew I was wide awake!)

 I went downstairs and told my best friend, whom I should tell you is very sensitive to ghosts and spirits, and he went upstairs to check it out. He returned ten minutes later and was as white as I was. He told me he had sensed something so evil and malevolent and that he would not  recommend my staying in that room... EVER! I moved my stuff into one of the downstairs rooms the next day. I avoided that room as much as possible until we moved out. Last year we had moved out of state to be closer to his mother and I asked her about the house. She wanted to know why I asked and I told her my story...then she told me the same thing had happened to her 15 years earlier.

 Apparently the house was built in the early 1900's, around 1920 or so I can't remember the exact year. The man who had originally lived there lost his wife and daughter to a car accident on what they call Hell's Hill. He never fully recovered from the shock and people say he went crazy. He was out late one night and stopped a teenage girl on her way home from a friends house. He told her that he had drank a considerably amount of alcohol and couldn't remember how to get to his house. She kindly offered to help and when they arrived at his front door he dragged her inside and upstairs... there he beat her, raped her, and strangled her to death (they found her body in the river 3 weeks later). He then hung himself in the same room -- the same room that I was sleeping in!

    I have not been back to the house since but I hope that whoever lives there now has not had the same experience.

 (Unknown Writer)

The Jim Thorpe area is filled with historic significance and gorgeous old world Victorian property displaying character and charm. In the woods outside Jim Thorpe is a beautiful old home built 150 years ago that was once home to a Civil War hero. The home can be found in a private setting at the end of a long driveway, across a small stream. From the road, you can barely make out lights in the windows late on a clear night. You’ll find no street lights along the road.

One late night a few years ago, the current owner of the home came home down from her bedroom to find an old man kneeling in front of the fireplace. He was wrinkled and scarred as he looked up at her from his position on the floor. As his image began to slowly fade, she realized that he wasn’t kneeling, he was actually missing his legs.

When she researched the history of the home, she found that this Civil War Veteran, while fighting in the 1860's lost his legs in battle, and yet returned home for the remainder of his years.

Like most ghosts, this is a friendly apparition who simply makes his presence known.

One of our specialties is in selling unique and historic property.  We've had the opportunity to represent several gorgeous Bed & Breakfasts throughout Eastern Pennsylvania (and as far away as Maryland!). One of these gorgeous Bed & Breakfasts was once the home of a wealthy coal mining executive.  An incredible Victorian edifice, it stands at the top of a hill overlooking the town.  A turret room stands above the home and it's said that the original owner would stand in the 3rd floor turret and look out over the people's homes who worked in his mine.

A grand staircase of carved oak leads up to the 7 beautifully adorned and appointed bedrooms, and a back staircase leads back down the other side.  During the Christmas season, the owners would place a large tree in the glass turret for everyone to see.

A lovely couple opened this lovely home to the public as a Bed & Breakfast. After a few years of operating the home, they began to hear stories from the people who stayed . They’d tell stories of a ghost coming through the wall of the middle bedroom at night. A spirit that would float over them.

Many customers would come back again and again hoping to catch a glimpse of this restless apparition. 

About three years ago, my wife and I were doing some casual house hunting, knowing we couldn't afford anything right then- but wanting to learn the market for when we were ready to buy a house. We were in a nice neighborhood when we came across what could be a beautiful two story house- but it was seemingly under construction. The property was a nice size, and the house was about 75% complete (all the walls were there, no interior walls or paint, and the plumbing and electric were in). We called the real estate number to see if we could look around- and the agent said feel free to go in on our own and have a look. There were no doors or fences. My wife and I began to go up towards the house when fear grasped me and I opened the door to the truck back up and sat down. As I looked at the house, I clearly saw, where before there were empty pane-less windows, two children and a middle-aged woman leaning out- reaching between windows. I saw fire. It was not crystal clear- but very definitely the top of the house was on fire and those people were trapped. I called to my wife to leave immediately- I was so shaken that I had her drive. I we drove away I HEARD screaming. My wife saw nothing but said that as she watched me looking at the house she could definitely tell that I saw something. She also said she thought she heard a scream- but wrote it off to a squealing tire. A few days later, I decided to call my cousin who works in the fire department. I asked if he could get histories on properties from his records- since he worked in the information office. He was able to pull the file on that address- and I told him nothing of what had happened to me. His records indicated that ten years prior that house was badly burned and the family died in the flames. He mentioned that it probably wouldn't be a good investment. To this day I have avoided driving past that house again.

I have always been a believer in the supernatural, but I never saw anything until I started working at a restaurant in my hometown. It was a long-standing rumor that this restaurant has been haunted. It was a large, old house that had been converted into an eating establishment. Anyways, when I worked there, I always worked the later shifts. These would usually last until 1:00 a.m. and I worked the upstairs setting up tables and doing clean-up. But I always felt uneasy at work, especially when I would pass by the stairs to the third floor. Whenever my back was turned towards the stairs, I would get this feeling that someone was watching me. This continued for sometime. Then, after a few months, I would see movement in the corners of my eyes and it would always come from the top of those stairs. The thing that really scared me was what happened late one night when two other coworkers were upstairs with me. We had a really busy night and it was especially late when we were setting up tables. We had just finished setting the tables and we were talking when we heard the sounds of movement. All three of us look towards a table in the corner just in time to see a chair move up to the table by itself! One of the coworkers, who had been there for 6 years, calmly laughed and said it was the ghost. When we talked to him later, he said that he had seen lots of things like that, and when I talked to other coworkers, they said they got the same feeling I did, and saw movement at the top of the stairs as well. Maybe we are all just imagining things, I don't know. This is what I saw and experienced and I believe it. Judge for yourself.

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