ghostsorys

The Bolton Mansion Ghosts

      In November of 1971, as a student at Bucks County Community College, I had the unique opportunity to organize a group of paranormal researchers and students to investigate a rumored "haunted house". Bolton Mansion was built in 1687 by Phineas Pemberton, an associate of William Penn, in what is now the town of Levittown, PA. By 1971 the Mansion had been vacant for years and in a state of disrepair with a reputation for psychic activity. Initially, my research was to test the effects of stress on individuals while spending a night in a reportedly haunted house.

      However, I had opportunity to have the interior of the Mansion photographed with military photoreconisance infrared film under the auspices of the Princeton University Physics Department. Of the 120 slides taken, three showed unusual activity. "The Lady and her Gentleman" is the most unusual of these photographs. This photo was taken of the staircase in the main hall of the house in total darkness and seems to show an image of a woman on the top of the stairs and a man standing on the staircase with his back to the photo. The woman appears to be in typical Civil War era dress and the man appears to have an insignia on his sleeve, stripes on his trousers and gloves. The photo is bathed in a bluish cast which indictes electromagnetic energy. The bluish cast seems to radiate from a white shape in the right corner, where it seems a very high energy source has burned the emulsion from the film. The photo lacks the color red which would have indicated any living being or heat source.

       This slide and the other two unusual slides which showed a white elipse and a strange gargoyle-type face, were examined by the U.S. Reconnasissance Lab at N.A.S. Memphis as well as various parapsychologists and paranormal organizations and was called the the most well documented photo of an apparent apparition or "ghost" ever taken, by the British Society of Psychical Research.

      As a side note, initially researchers were puzzled that the "Gentleman" in the slide seemed to be wearing a Confederate uniform in a home once used as a hideout on the route of the Underground Railroad. The slide was shown to a member of the Bolton Mansion Historical Society and she explained an interesting legend surrounding the staircase. A son of James Pemberton Morris, the founder of the Pennsylvannia Abolition Society, was disowned for joining the Confederate Army. After the War, the son returned home begging forgiveness. Morris refused to take his son back and his grieving son hanged himself from the second-floor stairwell. A servant girl who had been the son's childhood sweetheart was so devastated when she found the body that she shot herself beside him on the stairwell. Possibly these two are the "ghosts" that are shown in the photograph below.

A few years ago I worked in the county museum which was housed in one of our town's founding father's old homes. It is a beautiful Gothic Revival style mansion and has been immaculately kept. I was in charge of security and m maintenance, and I was the first on the list to be called if the audio alarm ever went off. On Christmas morning of 1988, the security company called me around 7:00 a.m. and told me they heard children's voices and a dog barking. I went to the house to investigate and found absolutely nothing. The house, like our entire small city, were quiet on Christmas morning. A former employee of the museum--a total skeptic--onces admitted to seeing a lady in a long, white Victorian gown walking down the upstairs hall. Others had seen her as well over the many years the house had been open to the public. When I was attending classes at the local university, I would often go there at night to type my papers, and frequently I heard creaking floorboards, closing doors, and distant voices. Usually, I ran out of the building as quick as I could! The house itself is gorgeous--beautiful gardens, ornate rooms...but there is definetly a "feel" to the place. My only direct encounter was when I went to use the basement lavatory one day and found myself "locked" in by a giggling child. I went to open the door and found it forced shut by "someone", and I heard a yong child laughing on the other side of the door. Often, the house smelled inexplicably like roses. Other than these incidences, I'm not aware of many other occurences. Nothing was ever threatening about the place...only odd.

Copycat
During my life I've experienced several times, in different houses yet, something I shall call a copycat. I don't think ghost is an accurate term, since those whose forms are copied are alive and well, nor do I think of it as some form of astral or mental projection, as they are usually awake and active in the next room. But on to the experiences.. my first as such was when I was about 6 years old.. this house was exceedingly haunted anyway, though I don't remember much about what went on there. I lived there from around 3 to about 8 and though we now live not very far from it, I'm 22 and most of the paranormal stuff there only survives in the tales of my mom. But I do remember this.. we had a garage accessible from our living room, and that had a spare room inside it for some odd reason, that was frequently used as a playroom by my brother and I. Well, one day I went out to that room by myself. I got to about the middle of the room and suddenly before me appeared a transparent humanoid figure. I couldn't make out any details below the neck but atop it sat the grinning heads of both my brother and myself, faces clearly detailed but equally transparent. The heads flopped right to left, phasing straight through
achother without contact and continuing to grin at me. It seems amusing as I think about it now, though I still shiver at the strangeness of it. At the time it was the most terrifying experience I could have imagined. I backed up slowly as it floated about half an inch off the ground toward me until I hit a small window A/C unit behind me and sat down hard on the floor, when it just as suddenly vanished. Needless to say I ran back inside immediately, and never felt comfortable going in the garage alone anymore. I've got lots more such experiences to share, and would be interested to know if anyone else has dealt with a copycat.