MAKING OF A HAUNTED HOUSE

HAUNTED?

The Tower of London is considered one of the most haunted locations on earth, with a background of executions, torture and imprisonments, that date back over a thousand years. With all this going for it, is there any wonder why it’s haunted?

I’d like to bring to your attention to a house I’m familiar with.  Its history is one of sadness and despair.

We’ll begin this story a hundred years ago, when an immigrant couple from Poland got married in Newark, NJ. The man was a day laborer, so money was scarce, and his drinking habit didn’t make things any easier.

 Within the first year, they brought into the world a daughter, followed each year with another child. The wife became a baby making machine.  Each birth was brought into the world by a midwife, all in this house. After the next to the last birth, the doctor warned the husband if his wife got pregnant again, it would probably kill her.  She got pregnant, and soon after that baby was born, the mother died.

One could only imagine the sadness and hopelessness felt during those years by this young mother, culminating in her death only a handful of years later. Her children were taken to a catholic orphanage, all except the youngest, who was raised by the mother’s sister who happened to live a few blocks away.

Which brings us back to the house. Built in the late 1800s, in a neighborhood of poor working-class people.  A bare bone, cheap rent, cold water flat with no bathroom or heat. A house that was filled with sadness and grief.

In time, the children grew up and moved on, having no memories of this house, or their mother.

By sheer determination, I was able to track the location of the house and piece together the family story. 

Those unpleasant memories of a suffering, struggling mother are captured within the walls of this house, just like the Tower of London. There is a possibility that this sad history, today has manifested itself into unpleasant feelings or an actual haunting in this house.  Does her spirit still walk the rooms, trying to take care of her babies? This story has what parapsychologists call, the perfect formula for the making of a haunted house. 

In case you’re wondering, I will not approach the tenants of this house now.  My enquiry could only disrupt the lives of the people living there with no positive outcome except to satisfy my curiosity.

The outcome: Her three boys moved out of state, to Georgia, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Her first daughter, with her sister, remained in New Jersey until the youngest daughter later in life, moved to Georgia to be with her brother.

A hundred years later, all these children grew up, had families of their own and now are gone.  The grandchildren and great-grandchildren know nothing of this house and its story.  All, except me.

I am the son of the youngest of the children.  Call it curiosity, (or was it the retrocognition within me) drove me to uncover the family history I now share with you.

Is this house haunted?  Could be, we’ll probably never know.