Ghostbuster

Usually when you pick somebody up at Penn Station, if you happen to have a conversation with that person, you will be told they are coming in from Boston, Philadelphia, New Jersey, or upstate New York and they are here either on business or to visit their sister. So when a young lady got in my cab recently and told me she'd spent the day hunting ghosts in Perth Amboy, it got my attention.

Her name was Lindsay May, and this was her story...

The Proprietary House http://www.proprietaryhouse.org, an old mansion in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, is haunted. Expeditions are available for people who want to get up close with the spitits. The house dates back to colonial days when it was used as the residence of the royal governor of New Jersey. The last in the line of the royal governors, by the way, was William Franklin, the illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin, who sided with the British against his father's wishes. Franklin was arrested after the Revolution began, spent a couple of years in jail, and eventually went to Britain, never to return. (Who knew?)

Anyway, the house has had various incarnations since then, including being used as a barracks during the Civil War and as an orphanage. So it's had plenty of opportunities for disembodied spirits to settle in. And apparently they have.

Lindsay May told me devices called EVPs (Electronic Voice Phenomena) are used to record ghostly sounds. And that during the day she at one point walked through a ghost and at another point was swept into a room. She had no doubt whatsoever that the place is indeed haunted.

I dropped her off at 5th Street and Avenue C in Alphabet City. An area of the New York which, I must say, by my own observation is also somewhat haunted.