My purpose in writing this diary of supernatural experiences is to chronicle generations of a strange interface with another side of life.  Many of these incidents may have very reasonable explanations; I just have not been able to find them.  Those things that have been passed to me may have been somewhat embellished over the years, but I have found over the years that such things usually contain a kernel of truth.  You be the judge.

DATE: 192?

PLACE: Rawtenstall, England

DESCRIPTION: My father, along with his brothers, would spend harvest time in England bringing in the crop.  He said that, often on the farm where they stayed, he would wake up in the morning on the oppo­site side of the room in which he went to sleep.  This would happen with others in the room.

DATE: 192?

PLACE: Kilmovee, Ireland

DESCRIPTION: In 1976 my uncle Mike, my father's brother, described an incident that he and my father experienced one night walking back from a dance together.  It was late at night, and since there was a moon, they decided to take a short cut home.  They could save a bit of time by leaving the road and cutting across a "forth," that is, a depres­sion in the earth where unbaptized babies and non‑Christians are buried.  As they were crossing the forth, a large white dog jumped out of a hollow area under a boulder and came tearing after them.  They ran as fast as they could, with the dog at their heels until they got to their house.  As they got over the gate, they realized that the dog had disappeared.  It had never been seen before, or since that inci­dent. {note: such stories are common in Europe, concerning large white dogs = spirits}

DATE: 192?

PLACE: Kilmovee, Ireland

DESCRIPTION:  My father told me a story about how there was a cottage which had been “tumbled” during the famine in the 1840’s (the tenant farmers were evicted by the British landlord for non payment of rents, and to make sure the tenants didn’t return, the building’s thatched roof was set afire and some of the walls were knocked down) which was of course, abandoned.  However, every so often, a light would be seen in the remaining window, and an old woman would be seen sitting at it, looking out across the bog.

DATE: 192?

PLACE: Greenport, Long Island, NY

DESCRIPTION:  My mother and her family spent many summer vacations with her Aunt Mary in Greenport.  Once, the house that they stayed at was overflowing with people, so her aunt Emma Drach and her grown stepdaughter agreed to stay at a relative's house.  This house had a reputation for being haunted, and it was said that people staying in the guest room were subject to being pinched or stuck with "pins" during the night.  Emma was awakened out of a sound sleep by a pain in her foot that was like a pinprick, and when she sat up was slapped across the face by an unseen hand with a force strong enough to make her cry.

DATE: 1932

PLACE: 818 Ocean Avenue, 3rd floor, Jersey City

DESCRIPTION:  My mother told me that, when she was newly married, she got up one morning, after my father had gone to work, and went into the kitchen.  Upon walking in she saw a nun sitting at the kitch­en table, with her habit on, and with her head bent down as if in prayer.  My mother ran back into her bedroom, got dressed and left the house with the nun still sitting there.  When she returned later, she was gone, and my mother never saw the apparition again.

DATE:  Summer/Fall 1938

PLACE: 91 Bayview Avenue, Jersey City

DESCRIPTION: This happened to my father and his young friend, Tommy T. on the roof of the apartment building in which my father and mother lived at the time.  My father kept pigeons in a coop on the roof, and he and Tommy would spend hours up there cleaning the cage or working with the birds.  One night, as they were working on the coop, my father noticed something in the air moving toward them from the New York skyline.  As Tommy related to me in 1984, at ** Seaview Avenue, both watched it as it slowly approached them, and they were trans­fixed at its sight. 

He said it resembled a large serpent (I don't remember if he described its size, but I have the impression that it was at least 10 feet long, and as thick around as a man's thigh) as it undulated through the air in a snaking fashion.  It hissed as it moved, and emanated a strong, rotten smell as it passed directly over them, at a height of 20 feet above them.  It showed no recognition of their presence, and as they watched it disappear, they looked at each other and ran down the fire escape as fast as they could.  They described what they had seen to my mother (who confirmed his story to me 45 years later), and swore never to tell anyone else.  Tommy claimed that he will never forget it, and had no idea what it could have been {he was visibly agitated in recounting the incident}

DATE: 1960

PLACE: 96 Seaview Avenue, Jersey City

DESCRIPTION: The house was a six family, three-story tenement, com­prised of railroad room apartments. Our apartment, on the first floor, consisted of a living room, two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom, in that order.  My parents slept in the bedroom nearest the kitchen.  The bathroom was on the opposite side of the kitchen. My mother got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and as she walked through the kitchen, she saw, to her left, a large dog sitting in front of the stove (which had a built in heater for heating the room), staring at her. 

She said that the dog was big, with short, dark hair, and pierc­ing, red eyes.  She wouldn't look directly at it, out of fear, but on the way back from the bathroom got a good glimpse of it, and saw it staring at her.  She quickly went into the bedroom and jumped into bed, hanging onto my father, who was sound asleep.  She then felt the blankets being pulled off the bed in the direc­tion of where she supposed the dog was (she refused to look in that direction).

In talking with her 25 years later, she recalled each detail as if it had happened yesterday, and swore that the bed clothes did not slide off, but were forcibly pulled; she pulled back with all her might and managed to get them onto the bed.  She laid there until morning, and found no sign of the dog the next day.  For years she and my father heard the sound of a dog walking through the railroad rooms at night.

DATE: 1960?

PLACE: 96 Seaview Avenue, Jersey City

DESCRIPTION: Before my brother Jim moved out to get married, and before my sister Patty left home, my brother and I slept in the living room of the house.  One night, I awakened to find my right hand on top of a gray cat in my bed.  We did not own a cat, and I was surprised to find a warm, furry animal under my hand.  I started when I woke, and the cat jumped off my bed, onto the floor.  I quickly got out of bed and stamped my foot on the floor, I assume to scare it away from me.  When I did that, it hissed and ran over to the stuffed chair sitting in front on one of the two windows to the street.  I ran to my brother, and tried to wake him up, but he would­n't.  I stamped on the floor again, and the cat turned and leapt through the window, which was closed and had a closed storm window behind it.  At this point I was able to wake my brother, who told me to go back to sleep, that it was just a dream.  I checked the window, and found it securely closed and locked, and there was no trace of a cat anywhere.

DATE: 1967

PLACE: ** Seaview Avenue, Jersey City

 DESCRIPTION: My family had bought a house that was constructed before the Civil War (it was rumored to be part of the underground railroad, moving slaves from the South to freedom in Canada).  It consisted of three apartments and a base­ment, and was quite ordinary.  However, in 1967 my father and I worked exten­sively on the top two floors, getting them ready for tenants.  The work consisted of ripping down the plaster and lath walls, replac­ing them with sheet­rock, replacing all windows and doors, replacing fixtures in the bathrooms, floors, and such things.  The work was started after my sister moved out of the third floor, and while ten­ants lived on the second.  The plan was to finish the top floor, move the tenants up, and then work on the second.  Eventually we were to get to our apart­ment on the first floor. 

At this time, my father was working on the midnight shift at the railroad yard, and would work on the house until about 9:00 at night, then get ready to go to his job.  Early one morning, at about 2:00am, the tenants on the second floor called my mother to complain about the noise on the second floor.  They said that they understood that my father was in a hurry to finish the apartment, but they had to get some sleep, and wanted him to stop working.  My mother couldn't under­stand what they were talking about, as my father was working at his job at this time.  They asked her to come upstairs so she could hear for herself.

When she went to the second floor, the tenants were already on the landing, and they all distinctly heard the sounds of work (hammering, sawing, etc.) coming from the third floor.  The only explanation that my mother had was that someone had broken in.  Of course, that gave no explana­tion why a burglar would work on the house while he was robbing it, but no other explanation was available.  The police were called, but the sound stopped when they approached the door, and no traces were found of anyone in the apartment.  After they left, there were no further sounds.

DATE: 1964‑67

PLACE: ** Seaview Avenue, Jersey City

 DESCRIPTION:  My sister Kathleen lived on the third floor of the house at the time that we bought it, and she and her husband Ken, and their four children stayed on for a couple of years.  During that time, she experienced several unexplainable occurrences:

Their bed was in the large room off the kitchen that was normally used as a living room.  I believe that it was a convertible sofa bed, which they folded up during the day.  One night, after Ken had come home from his 4‑12 shift at the factory where he worked, he sat in the kitchen reading the newspaper while Kathleen lay in bed, waiting for him.  She had her back to the kitchen, which was on his side of the bed, when she felt Ken sit down on the bed.  She waited for a moment, then asked him why the light was still on in the kitchen; he replied (from the kitchen) that it was because he hadn't finished reading the newspaper yet.  Simultaneously she felt the bed spring back to its normal position, and when she whirled around to look, there was noth­ing there.

Their three older children (3 ‑ 6 years old) slept in a room off the living room.  Like most children, there were nights that they would stay up talking in bed, and Kathleen would have to go in and tell them to go to sleep.  However, several times over the three years she lived there, they told her that they were talking to "the lady" that was dressed in robes.  They all agreed that she appeared every so often and spoke with them.  She could never find out what was discussed. 

There was a very small room off the living room, at the front of the house, that Kathleen used as a TV room.  I recall several times being asked by my mother to go up and sit with my sister until her husband came home.  I would go up and find my sister sitting on the small sofa in that room, watching TV with her husband's WWI rifle in her lap.  I assumed that she was just afraid of being by herself, but years later my mother told me the real reason that she needed company. It seems that every so often, as she was watching the television, she would see something move out of the corner of her eye in the doorway of the room.  When she turned her head to look fully at it, she would get a split second glimpse of the figure of a man dressed completely in black, with a black cloak on.  She never saw any particular features of his face or body, except that she had the impression that he was bald, with a fringe of white hair around the top of his head.  When she looked directly at the apparition, it would disappear. 

The first time it happened she became hysterical, running from room to room, anticipating to find an intruder.  After several such incidents, all she did was ask my mother to send me up to sit with her until her husband came home at 11:00.  My mother was smart not to tell me previ­ously, because I would never had gone up otherwise.  After she left, the apartment was vacant for over a year while my father and I reno­vated it.  Meanwhile, tenants had rented the second floor apart­ment in anticipa­tion of moving into the top floor after renovations were complete.  They never met my sister, and of course my mother never related her experiences to the tenants.  After the renovations were done, Mr. & Mrs. S. moved into that apartment.  About a month later, as Mrs. S. was paying my mother the rent, my mother asked her if everything was comfortable.  She replied that it was, but that her imagination was running away with her; one night she was using that small room to do her ironing in, and she imagined that she saw someone dressed in black standing in the doorway.

DATE: 1967

PLACE: ** Seaview Avenue, Jersey City

 DESCRIPTION: My father was working late in the third floor apartment on night, installing baseboard in the bathroom.  He had a coffee can full of nails that he pulled after him as he moved around the small room on his knees.  At one point he reached behind to get the can, and found them missing.  He searched the room, but they were gone.  He had used the can just seconds before, but now they could not be located.  He gave up in frustration, and quit for the night.  The next day he went back to look, and the can was in the room, on the floor.

DATE: 1967

PLACE: ** Seaview Avenue, Jersey City

DESCRIPTION: My friends Jack W., Pete R., Charlie P., and I had a small party in my backyard one summer evening.  We had some beer and cooked on a makeshift grill.  After it got dark, around 9:00, we laid down on lawn chairs and tried to identify stars and constella­tions, although we were not very well versed in the subject.  At the same time, we made note of a pale light moving across the sky directly overhead.  The intensity of the light and the absence of any blinking lights made us conclude that we were looking at a satellite, which was about the same size and intensity of some stars.  We were speculating on which one it might be (telstar, etc.), when it suddenly began to change direction, moving in a great, sweeping arc, until it had gone 180 degrees, while picking up speed until it was a blur, then gone.  We all shouted at the same time, and jumped out of our chairs as it disappeared across the sky.  Had we only seen it moving at its slow pace, or just after our sighting, we would have supposed that it had been a satellite, or a shooting star.  But, following its progress as we did, we had no idea what it could have been.

DATE: 1967

PLACE: ** Seaview Avenue, Jersey City

DESCRIPTION: In this house, my bedroom, which I shared with my younger brother John, was off the backyard. My bed was next to an outside wall, and the head of it was against the wall separating our room and my parent's bedroom.   I had a habit of staying up late, especially on the weekend, and this night I must have gone to bed after 1:00.  I had just gotten into bed, and did not even have the chance to doze off, when I heard the sound of something scraping against the asphalt shingles on the other side of the wall, about at the foot of my bed.  I was instantly on full alert, as the sound slowly moved toward my head.  I guessed that there must have been someone outside the house in the neighbor's backyard running a stick against the house, but I couldn't understand why the three German Shepherd that lived there were not barking.  You couldn't sneeze outside at night without them trying to jump through the window to get at you. 

The noise proceeded up the length of the bed, then stopped when it came to the point that the internal wall met the outside wall.  I assumed that the person holding the stick stopped dragging it against the house, or that I couldn't hear it anymore after it went past the internal wall.  Much to my surprise and discomfort, the sound  p501  began again, after about a ten second respite, in the internal wall.  Frantically, I considered the possibility that it was a mouse or squirrel inside the wall, but then I realized that it would not have been able to travel that distance, much less turn the corner, without being stopped by the studs in the wall.  The sound stopped at my head, and did not move any further.  Eventually, I fell asleep.

 DATE: 1967

PLACE: ** Seaview Avenue, Jersey City

 DESCRIPTION: My friend Pete R. was staying over in my "room" so that we could get up very early and go fishing out of Sheepshead Bay in New York.  As usual, we work up late; the alarm clock always wound up to be shut off by morning (one of us probably shut it off in our sleep).  As we were hurrying to get ready, Pete remarked on the fact that our dog was sleeping by the furnace the night before, and bumped against the sofa on which he was sleeping (it was across an opening to the furnace area).  I checked it, and found that the dog was not in the cellar that night.  Pete also said that he saw something moving around in the dark in that area.

DATE: 1967

PLACE: ** Seaview Avenue, Jersey City

 DESCRIPTION: My mother told me that sometimes she would have trouble sleeping, and would leave her bedroom so as not to disturb my father, and sit on the living room couch to have a cigarette.  Several times in a row, she would be relaxing in the quiet, and would hear what she described as "a tinkley piano" playing.  She would check to see if there was a radio on in the house, or in a car in the street, but never heard the sound unless she was sitting at a particular end of the sofa.  One day, I was playing my radio, and she rushed over to tell me that was the type of sound she heard.  It was a harpsi­chord. During one incident, she dozed, and saw a vision of men in white uniforms (without guns) marching through the streets of Washington; the people on both sides of the street were standing, watching without emotion.  My mother has no sense of history, and had no idea of the connection of the house with the Civil War period, or Washington DC.

DATE: 1967

PLACE: ** Seaview Avenue, Jersey City

 DESCRIPTION:  My friends and I had established a club in my cellar where we would congregate at night. I had staked out an area and furnished it with a sofa, chairs, desk, etc. from midnight trash picking.  I further walled the area off with floor to ceiling drapes.  One night, as I was cleaning up, I was just outside the "room" when I felt a cold chill go through me, though it was warm in the room.  Suddenly, I heard the sound of someone laughing, practically a loud chuckle from the other side of the curtain.  It scared me so much that I pulled the banister off the wall as I ran up the stairs to the house, and I left the lights on all night.  Of course, there was no one there.

DATE: Summer, 1968

PLACE: Bayonne (Hudson County) Park

DESCRIPTION: It was just at sunset when my girlfriend and I were driving past the park on our way back from some errand.  We thought that it would be nice to stop for a minute and watch the final rays of the sun on Newark Bay at the edge of the park.  We turned down Dillon Drive, which runs perpendicular to the park, and started driving toward the water.  At this point the park is about 50 feet above sea level, and we had not yet come to the slope to get access to the seawall part of the park, when a very strong feeling that something was terribly wrong came over the both of us.  It almost seemed like we were driving into a dark tunnel of trees that grew denser with every second.  We both felt overwhelming fear at the same time, and I immedi­ately turned around and left the park.  As soon as we got out the feeling left us.

DATE: 1968

PLACE: ** Seaview Avenue, Jersey City

DESCRIPTION: I had improved my room with paneled walls and a door, to replace the curtain.  Very late one night, I heard a pounding at the outside door and heard my friend Jack W. holler­ing for me to open the door.  He had obviously been out drinking, and when I opened the door, he practical­ly fell on top of me in a stupor.  I brought him to the sofa and set him up for the night, throwing a blanket over him and turning the light low.  I kept it on so that he would know where he was, and wouldn't panic when he woke up.  I was working at Great Eastern at the time (a department store) and had to get up early.  

When I went down to see Jack in the morn­ing, I found the bed covers thrown on the floor, and the doors to my room and the outside wide open.  This was unusual of Jack, so when I finished work, I stopped into his house to find out why he left the house in such a state.  He was a little hung over, but his eyes were wide when I asked him why he left in such a hurry.  It seems he woke up in the night (it was dark out, but he didn't see what time it was) and realized where he was.  However, he saw a figure standing between him and the light.  At first he thought it was I, and called to it, but there was no response.  When his eyes focused, he thought it looked like a tall man with a cape on, who started to walk toward him.  Something about it terrified him, but he was frozen and could not move.  When the figure finally hovered over him, he watched it open its cape and take what seemed like an ice pick from its pocket, then it plunged it down toward Jack's face.  Instinc­tively, he rolled away from the blow, covering his face.  Apparently he passed out at that point (from booze or fright) and when he awoke, found himself alone.  He jumped out of bed, opened the doors, and ran all the way home, which was at least one mile. 

Admittedly, there was a poster on the ceiling of someone in colonial dress holding a small bell over his head; but Jack swears that he did not confuse that with what he saw that night, and he never slept over again.

DATE: Summer, 1969

PLACE: B.......d Lake, Pocono Pennsylvania

DESCRIPTION:  My wife's parents had a small lake house in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylva­nia.  It has a main rectangular living area with a common kitchen, dining area, and living room, with four bedrooms and a bathroom on the periphery.  Off one corner of the house is a screened in porch, where Andrea and I sat in lawn chairs looking at the lake.  Everyone else was out of the house.  Suddenly we heard footsteps through the dining area, and Andrea got up, thinking someone had come in.  When she went into the house to see who it was, she found the house still empty.  She returned to the porch and the footsteps started again.  Another look confirmed that the house was still empty.

She and I had gone for a row in her parent's boat on the lake, and had come back to the landing.  I jumped out to pull the boat further up on shore, and she remained seated in the back of the boat.  Before I could pull the boat, she jumped, and then looked over her shoulder.  She told me that she felt someone put a heavy hand on her shoulder, and could still feel the impression there.

DATE: 1969

PLACE: ** Seaview Avenue, Jersey City

DESCRIPTION:  We had decorated the cellar room with various objects of teenage interest: old signs, drawings, photos, and an old telephone that was used in a bar in the 1930's.  It wasn't a real telephone as we know them now, but a metal box with a speaking hole, and some buttons for different loca­tions, and an earphone connected with a wire.  I had intended to hook it up to the front door of the cellar, so I could talk to a potential visitor, but never found something that could be used at the other end.  The telephone was just left hanging on the crowded wall.

While I was in the Navy, stationed on a heavy cruiser in the Atlantic, my mother had gone into the cellar to listen to my radio.  She was playing the numbers, and left the radio tuned to a certain station that broadcast the total mutual handle of a certain racetrack.  This way, she could find out how much she lost before the newspapers came out.  This one afternoon, as she was waiting for the report, the telephone started ringing.  Since I also had a phone connected to the upstairs line, she assumed it was that one, and picked it up.  All she heard was a dial tone, but the ringing noise persisted.  Then she realized it was coming from the old telephone on the wall, the one that had never been connected. 

At first she thought that I had set it up to ring while I was at sea, as a joke, but then she started getting scared when she saw that it was not connected to any wires.  She picked the receiver up and put it to her ear.  The ringing stopped, and there was no sound.  The same thing happened to my father in a similar circumstance.  When I came back on leave, weeks later, they told me the story and I checked the telephone out, but could find no reason why it rang.

DATE: 1969

PLACE: ** Seaview Avenue, Jersey City

DESCRIPTION: One Friday, after a week at Nuclear Power School in Bainbridge, Maryland, I returned home to spend the weekend.  My par­ents did not know that I was coming, so when I arrived at about 2am I thought it best not to just walk into the apartment unannounced.  Besides, I had a bed in the cellar in my old room.  So, I went down into my room and got undressed, and got into bed.  I had my glasses off, and was just getting comfortable, when I saw a light flash past my face.  My eyes were just about closed, but when it happened, I opened them, thinking (or rather, hoping) that it was just a car's headlights shining on the wall from the window.  Just as I was realizing that the heavy shades on the windows would not allow a headlight to shine through the window, out of the corner of my eye I saw the light move over my head. 

By this time I was fully awake, and my eyes were wide open.  The light had appeared not as just a light, but as the reflection of light from something moving, such as a white cloth.  I said aloud "if I see another thing, I'm going upstairs," and immedi­ately afterward I saw the light pass directly in front of my face, about two feet away.  I was as good as my word, and proceeded to run up the stairs and into the apartment, which woke the whole family up.  After relating the story I slept upstairs.

DATE: 1970-71

PLACE: ** Seaview Avenue, Jersey City

DESCRIPTION:  When the crying in the night first started, my mother assumed it was the woman on the floor above, Margie S.  The evening before, my mother bleached Margie's hair, and the job did not turn out well.  She figured that when she heard the crying in the middle of the night, it was Margie regretting having done it.  When she mentioned to Margie the next morning that she had heard her crying, she said that it wasn't her, and that the bleach job was fine. 

On several occasions after that, my mother, father and brother John heard sobbing coming from the cellar.  When this would happen, our dog Teddy, a huge German Shepherd, would refuse to go into the cellar, which usually was his favorite place, and where he slept. No one found the cause of the sound, but my brother John later met a young woman whose mother had lived in an adjacent house.  He spoke with the mother who remembered hearing that a woman had died in the house during childbirth many years before.

DATE: January, 1971

PLACE: ** Seaview Avenue, Jersey City

DESCRIPTION:        My father had a severe heart attack, and I was called from Pearl Harbor to come home on emergency leave.  I was at home for about a week, and had been working on the house wiring in the cellar with my friend Pete R. and my brother John.  My mother called from upstairs to tell me that she was going to visit my father in the hospital.  About an hour later, we heard footsteps walking overhead in the first floor apartment where my family lived, and I assumed that my mother had come home.  I left the work and went upstairs to see what news she had about my father, but there was no one there.  I looked throughout the first floor, but found no trace of anyone.  After locking the front door to the apartment, I went downstairs and ex­plained what I had found, or rather, didn't find.   The work pro­gressed, and within a short time we again heard footsteps and then the kitchen chairs being dragged across the floor.  We all raced up the stairs, unlocked the door, and found nothing in the apartment.  In fact, the chairs were still in their places against the table.

DATE: 1971

PLACE: ** Seaview Avenue, Jersey City

DESCRIPTION: I was working at the time for Public Service Electric & Gas Company, and this day I was on the 4pm to 11pm shift.  Shortly after arriving home, I was having a snack with my father, at around midnight.  Suddenly, I heard a loud banging that literally shook the house.  My father and I ran to the living room window to determine what was making the noise, as it was coming from that part of the house.   We couldn't see anything, from the front window, but we then realized that the sound was coming from the area under the front porch, and that it was probably someone banging at the front cellar door. 

My first thought that it was a drunken friend trying to get into the cellar club, but the violence of the noise convinced me that it was no friend.  I suggested to my father that we call the police, but he refused to let me pick up the phone.  We went down the cellar to try to be sure of where the sound was coming from, and we could see the heavy wooden door shaking in the frame at each blow.  We called out, and the noise stopped for a second, then started up again, with the sound of the garbage pails that were stored there being thrown around.  For some strange reason my father started to unlock the door, and I stopped him, my reason being if anyone came in, I probably would be the first one attacked.  We went upstairs with the intention of calling the police, but when we got into our apart­ment, the noise stopped.  Again, my father insisted on watching, and not calling the police.  After about an hour of silence I went to bed. 

The next morning I went under the porch with a nightstick in my hand, expecting to find a mess and some trace of the person responsible for the activity of the night before, if not the person themselves.  Howev­er, I found absolutely no evidence of what had happened.  Sur­prising­ly, a large porcelain sign that was fixed to the cellar door, which I was sure was destroyed, had no marks on it at all.  Even the garbage pails were in order.  I never found the cause, but had a vague recollection of this happening once before.

DATE: 1970-71

PLACE: ** Seaview Avenue, Jersey City

DESCRIPTION:  One night I was in the hallway of the house for some reason, when I happened to look out the small windows on the front door.  The three 8" X 10" windows are about eye height.  The sight that I saw made my blood run cold;  a young couple was slowly backing up our front stairs, and three men were approaching them menacingly with clubs and what seemed to be chains.  The decision that I had to make quickly was, should I open the door and try to get the couple in the house before the men reached them and thereby risk being in the middle of the fight, or should I keep the door locked and try to get the police?  I quickly made up my mind to take the risk, and glanced down at the doorknob to unlock the door.  When I looked back through the windows as I prepared to swing the door open, I was stunned to find the porch empty. I slowly opened the door and looked around, but there was no one there.  What I saw did not hap­pen... at least not in my time.

DATE: October 31, 1974

PLACE: ** Seaview Avenue, Jersey City

DESCRIPTION:        My wife and I decided to hold a séance in the cellar of my parent's home.  We got an Ouija board, and convinced our friends Pete and Karen R. to join us.  For some reason, my mother and the wife of the tenant on the second floor were out that evening, but my father and her husband were sitting in our kitchen, talking. 

We put the board on a three-legged table in the cellar, and stuck a candle in an empty beer can for atmosphere.  We then turned off the lights and lit the candle, and tried asking questions of the board.  At first, we were giggling and joking, but Andrea told us to stop fooling around and give it one serious try.  We all agreed, and she asked the question, "If there are any spirits present, let them make themselves known".  Instantaneously after the question was asked, a tremendous crash came from a corner of the cellar, by the furnace.  Pete started, and my wife assumed he saw something behind her, in the direction he was staring.  She then jumped over the table, knocking over the candle and plunging us into darkness.  I fell over Karen trying to get the light on, as my father and Jack S. came down the cellar stairs asking what the noise was.  At first we thought that they made the noise, which sounded like all the pots and pans in the Salvation Army soup kitchen hitting the floor at the same time, after being dropped from a height of ten feet.  They swore that they did not do it, and we could not find any trace of anything in the cellar or the first floor that would have made such a noise.  We did not try that again.

DATE: Summer, 1975

PLACE: ** Seaview Avenue, Jersey City

DESCRIPTION:  My father had cancer, and I was living about three blocks away at this time.  He had been operated on, and was just hanging around the house, getting sicker.  One day he noticed the curtain moving on the living room picture window.  This was a sheer, floor length drape.  He later described it as if someone was behind the drape, slowly pushing it away from the wall with their hands over their head.  Expecting that the window was open, though the air conditioner was on, he went over to check after the movement stopped.  The window was tightly closed and no explanation was found.

Later that summer, one day as he was walking across the floor, he felt himself kicked in the rear end so hard that he almost fell over.  I asked him if he didn't think that it might have something to do with the physical effects of the cancer, but he looked me in the eye and said that he could feel the imprint of a foot pushing him.

DATE: Summer, 1980

PLACE:  Jersey City

DESCRIPTION:  My wife and I lived on the first floor of her parent's two family house since we were married in 1972.  One night, after we had just settled into bed, we were quietly going to sleep when I heard a voice whisper a word that sounded like "getroffnet," right near Andrea's face.  My blood ran cold, but for a second I thought that I must be dreaming.  Finally, I said to her, "what was that?" and she said "I don't know, but I heard it too!".  We put the covers over our heads and slept that way.

DATE: Summer, 198?

PLACE:  Jersey City

DESCRIPTION:        My wife and I were asleep, when I had a dream that I was floating above the bed.  The strange part of the dream was that I felt precariously balanced on something, on my back, approximately two feet above the bed, to the side of the bed.  I tried to maintain my bal­ance, but felt myself slipping and slowly falling down.  I awoke with a bump, on the floor, about a foot away from the bed.  It felt as though I had very lightly landed on the wooden floor, flat on my back.  I am certain that I did not slide off the bed, as I fell flat, and did not roll.  Furthermore, I was not hurt in any way, and was not tangled in the covers.

DATE: Summer, 198?

PLACE: Jersey City

DESCRIPTION:        My wife and I were sleeping, when she was awakened in the middle of the night by the feeling of someone or something gently blowing in her face.  She looked up, and could still feel it, and noticed that our dog was sitting at the end of our bed, staring at her face with his eyes opened wide.  We did not sleep near a window.

DATE: Summer, 2001

PLACE: ** Seaview Avenue, Jersey City

I visited the house to say hello to the people who bought it in 1985 – I had not seen them since then.  After a few discussions about the changes they made, I asked them, “have you seen any odd things in the house?”.  There was a moment of silence, and the two young daughters of the owners looked at each other, then one turned to me and said “you mean the man who walks around at night?”

They had numerous experiences of seeing a man dressed in black, who would stand over their bed – they would awaken and see the silhouette leaning over them.  At one point, one of them felt him get into the bed with her.  When she turned to see who was there, there was no one.  I photographed the first floor stairs, and when I downloaded it at home, I saw strange "orbs" on it - I always thought that they were caused by bubbles in the developer, but this was a digital photo!  (see below)