Betty Roxx!

It’s that time of year again. Halloween. Time to tell ghost stories and go ghost hunting. Here’s a little story I wrote in 2005 about a haunting I experienced years ago. The names have been changes to protect the “innocent”…

Saturday, November 19, 2005 Cedar Brook Road

Recently, an old boyfriend of mine, who I hadn’t seen in 20 years, resurfaced when his “father” (step-father…I’ll explain later) became one of my patients in the nursing and rehabilitation facility where I work. That sure did dig up some old memories, especially about the haunted house that his family lived in on Cedar Brook Road. He and I dated when I was 18 years old…1984. We weren’t together for very long for reasons that aren’t relevant to this story, but i did spend some time at his house and I actually witnessed some strange occurances myself. In order to get the entire story about the “haunting”, I conducted casual “interviews” with my old boyfriend’s sister on my cigarette breaks. She requested that I don’t use anyone in her family’s names, so I have changed them to tell the story.

As I said, it was 1984. I used to hang out at Joe’s house and watch tv, have dinner, or a few beers. Mostly we sat at the kitchen table playing cards or just talking with his family or friends. There was a big picture window behind the kitchen table. Late at night, I could see the top of a tall man’s head walk past the window to come to the back door. Everyone came in the back door, the front porch was someone’s bedroom and the front door was kept locked. They had 3 or 4 small dogs that ran to the door whenever someone was coming in, so they all ran to the door barking, but there was no one there. I indicated to Joe that there was a man walking past the window to the door to come in but he’s not at the door. Joe just laughed and said, “That’s my Dad coming home from work.” But, Joe’s Dad had been dead for 20 years!

Joe’s sister, on her visits to the the facility where I work, explained, in detail, what happened to her father in 1964. At that time, Joe was in the hospital, he was about 3 years old, and his mother was pregnant with Joe’s sister, Dee. Their father, Joe Sr., was a foreman at Mrs. Paul’s Seafood in Braddock, NJ. He was out of work sick for the week but decided one night to go to work and check on things. His wife told him not to go, but he insisted.  He pulled up to the plant and got out of his car. A former employee, a Hispanic man, was waiting in the parking lot, not particularly waiting for Joe Sr., but someone of authority at the plant because he had been fired earlier that week. He asked Joe Sr., “Why was I fired?” Joe Sr. answered, “I don’t know. I was out sick all week.” Another shift supervisor emerged into the parking lot and the Hispanic man asked him the same question. The other man replied, “Because you don’t do your job!” It was then that the Hispanic man pulled a gun from his pocket and shot Joe Sr. in the chest. Joe Sr. turned around and started walking away and the Hispanic man shot him again, this time in the back. Joe Sr. kept walking! I’m not sure what happened to the other supervisor, but as Joe Sr. walked toward the entrance door of the plant, the Hispanic man shot him again, this time only grazing his thigh, however, Joe Sr. kept walking! Finally, he opened the door to the plant and said, “I’ve been shot…” Then, he fell to the floor and he was dead.

Now remember, Dee was still inutero when all this happened. She told me she hear this from her aunts. But a good, detailed acccount of the murder. Anyway, in the tradtion of old Italian families, it’s the “responsibility” of the unmarried brother to care for his dead brother’s wife and children, so I’ve heard. Joe Sr.’s brother, the man in the facility where I work, Mel, married his brother’s wife and took care of the family from 1964 until the present. Needless to say, Joe Sr. left this earth with obvious unfinished business. A pregnant wife and a very ill 3 year old. Aside from the fact that he died so young, unexpectedly, and violently. Seems to me like good enough reasons to be a “restless spirit”.

According to Dee, there was more than one ghost in the house on Cedar Brook Road. Not just Joe Sr.’s ghost, but “others”. Specifically, Dee doesn’t know. The source of the haunting, or “portal” was Joe’s closet in his bedroom. It had a trap door that led to the crawl space/attic. Most of the activity happened in that particular bedroom. Over the years, the family became so disturbed by the haunting, that they actually conducted a seance with a medium. Mel and Dee both told me the same account of that particular event.

The family and medium were all downstairs at the kitchen table doing whatever people do at a seance, holding hands by candle light and summoning spirits. Then suddenly, the entire upstairs became illuminated. The house had been dark except for the candles that were lit for the seance. Then, down the stairs came individual balls of light, one by one, as if in a line, waiting to be seen. Needless to say, everyone at the table was scared out of their minds, so the gathering hastily concluded. Dee couldn’t tell me how many balls of light she witnessed, but apparently enough to make the family move out of that house not long after the seance. The family thinks that there may be an old cemetery under where the house was built or somewhere in the yard. No one bothered to research the history of the area, they just couldn’t take it anymore and moved out.

Like I said, I had my own experiences at that place when I hung-out there, aside from seeing Joe Sr. coming home from work every night. This one night, Joe, another friend, Sue, and I were sitting in the front seat of Sue’s car (bench seats back then), Sue in the driver’s seat, me in the middle, and Joe in the passenger’s seat. We were in the driveway of THAT house. Suddenly, from the back seat, I felt someone pull on my hair. (I had long hair then, a mullet, to be exact, it was the 80’s). Sue’s hands were on the steering wheel, Joe’s hands were on his lap, and I certainly wasn’t pulling my own hair. I questioned both of them and it was obvious, neither one of them had done it. Well, Joe got out of the car, and Sue and I sped out of there quickly, at my insistance. I was a little scared, I think. That was only a “minor” incident. I saw a few more unexplainable things in that house. Dressers shaking for no reason, a globe from a lamp floating across the room and bowling over wine bottles, and invisible footsteps in the plush carpet as if someone was walking there when there was actually no one there. Just plain old freaky, unexplainable occurances.

After speaking to Dee about her experiences, some friends and I, who just so happened to be on a ghost hunting kick, decided to drive by the house on Cedar Brook Road and snap a few pictures of the place. It was inhabited and looked peaceful enough, but when I snapped pictures of the house, there was quite a large number of orbs. Once I got the photos uploaded into my computer and magnified them, the weird thing was, the window of the bedroom where the alleged “portal” was located, had misty faces in it, quite a few of them. So at that point, to me, the accounts of the seance became validated. I believe that my experiences in that house WERE of a paranormal nature. I’d sure like to find out if the current occupants have had any experiences. Maybe someday I could interview them, if my ghost hunting becomes something more than amateur…