Post by Joanna on Oct 20, 2014 18:37:51 GMT -5
Ghostly activity the focus of Selma Mansion Ghost Tour in Norristown
NORRISTOWN, Penn. – It’s that time of the year when a good rendezvous with a ghost can really add to the gusto of the season. But there’s no need to travel to places like the Moundsville Penitentiary in West Virginia – one of the most haunted sites in the country, according to the Travel Channel – when you can possibly get your otherworldly action right here in Norristown.
Halloween or not, ghostly gossip tells us that plenty of eerie shenanigans have been going on at the Selma Mansion located at 1301 W. Airy Street, where an official Ghost Tour is scheduled for Friday, October 24. No one is promising any moans and wails, but how will some bone-chilling cat sounds satisfy your preternatural urge to be scared out of your skin?
“On last year’s Ghost Tour, a man heard cat sounds coming from the basement and said ‘Oh, you have cats here’ ... and there are no cats in the house,” said Elena Santangelo of the Norristown Preservation Society, current owners of the Selma Mansion. “The servants would have used those back stairs and that’s pretty common that people do hear cats every now and then in the house.”
Would some whispers from the undead connect with the ghost whisperer in you? “Visitors have reported hearing someone whisper in their ears, usually on the second floor,” Santangelo said.”It happens most often with those who spend a lot of time there, like board members.”
Paranormal investigator and founder of the Norristown-based Pennsylvania Underground Paranormal Society (PUPS), Lisa Terio, has stayed at Selma overnight and claims she witnessed voices as well as an apparition in the third-floor servants’ quarters bathroom, which now seems to be the focus of many strange phenomena. “Nine people were here one night and saw this blob rise up out of the bathtub,” said Terio, standing in the distressed surroundings of the now famous bathroom.
Dee Kirkpatrick and Maryann Buser, both members of PUPS and the Norristown Preservation Society, saw it too. “It darkened the entire bathroom and came toward us,” Buser related. “We had all kinds of EVPs (electronic voice phenomena) going off.”
The TV show Ghost Detectives documented the bathroom door opening and closing, Terio noted. “From that moment on, this is the area in the house where things happen.”
Legend has it that third-floor cabinet doors operating without human intervention may be the mischief of the Knox children, who sadly died in the house back in Victorian times. According to Santangelo: “Several of the Knox children and their mother died within a few weeks of each other, which we think was from the same kind of illness.”
More recent inhabitants of the house – built in 1794 by Andrew Porter – may also be trying to publicize their not-so-discreet presence. “Mrs. Ruth Fornance, the last resident of the house in the 1980s, had a buzzer connected to her bedroom because she was bedridden for the last several years of her life,” Santangelo told us. “All the buzzers and doorbells have been disconnected, but people have said they hear them going off sometimes.”
Money raised by the Ghost Tour, one of the Society’s biggest fundraisers of the year, will help renovate the house, explained Santangelo, who added that the tour is designed to be family-friendly. “It’s not scary or anything like that. People don’t jump out at you. We want to make this fun for kids and we also like to teach history along with the ghost stories, so it’s kind of an unusual haunted house in that respect. When we do history events nobody shows up, but when we do the Ghost Tour, everybody shows up.”
One of these nights Santangelo, who said she personally has experienced “weird feelings” at certain places in the house, vowed she will stay over for a paranormal gathering. “Or I’ll at least stay late one night and see what happens.”
Regular adult admission to the Selma Mansion Ghost Tour on Friday, Oct. 24, 8 p.m to midnight, is $5. Children 5 to 12, seniors and veterans pay $3; children under 5 and active military members admitted free. For additional information, see www.norristownpreservationsociety.org
Source: Gary Pueleo, The Reporter, October 20, 2014.