A highlight of the Third Annual New Jersey Ghost Hunters Society conference was “The Ghosts of Angela Webb,” a joint presentation by Rosemary and psychic Karl Petry, who has made the story into an independent film by the same name. Read Daily Record reporter Andrew Nynka’s coverage below. Permission to post has been granted by the Daily Record. The URL of the online version is given at the end of the article. Note, the haunted house is in Milford, not Millburn.

04/23/06 – Posted from the Daily Record newsroom

Haunting tales told at ghost conference

Audience in Hackettstown hears stories of spirits that remain where lives ended

BY ANDREW NYNKA

DAILY RECORD

HACKETTSTOWN –Describing the “true and shocking tale of a soul-eating house,” Rosemary Ellen Guiley, a self-described paranormal researcher and investigator, told the story of a haunted house at a ghost conference here on Saturday. “Everything we’re going to learn about today is real,” she told some 75 people at the third annual New Jersey Ghost Hunters Society conference at the Hackettstown Community Center.

“It’s a soul-eating house because, if you die in the home, you don’t leave,” Guiley said.

Guiley described the stories of several people who died in the home and whose ghosts still occupy the building. Among them is a farmer who committed suicide in 1795 and “is probably buried on the property,” she said.

Guiley and Karl Petry, a psychic and a man who said he can see ghosts, both described their experiences with the Millburn home during the daylong conference.

Petry would not provide the exact address of the building, but he did note that on his first trip there with another psychic colleague in 2001, “our minds started to spin.” He could see ghosts as he spoke with the home’s owner, who contacted him to examine the house, Petry said.

It is not entirely clear why ghosts are tied to that particular home, both Guiley and Petry told the audience, though they offered several guesses.

“These are purely speculatory paranormal hypotheses,” Guiley told the crowd, “but I think the energy of the place has a lot to do with it.” The building also can “sit on an inter-dimensional doorway,” she said.

“The spirit world, if you don’t know it already, is a serious place,” Kelly Weaver, who presented audio and video of various haunts at the conference, warned her audience.

John Wilton, a member of the New Jersey Ghost Hunters Society since 2000, called Saturday’s turnout “the best I’ve ever seen.”

He said he has been ghost hunting since 1996 and, like many people at the conference, both he and his wife do it as a hobby.

“When we started out, people thought we were nuts,” Wilton said.

“The best part about it is getting together with people who have the same interest,” Wilton said.

The conference included discussion of other supernatural topics, such as haunted investigations, exorcisms and segments on “Ghosts: What are they and how best to document them?”

L’Aura Hladik, who founded the society in 1998, said there are a number of haunted places in Morris and nearby counties, including Bell’s Mansion and the Stanhope House in Stanhope and the Washington Cemetery in Washington, Warren County, which people can explore on their own.

Together with his wife, Wilton maintains the Web site www.spiritsearchers.net. He said the lure of ghost hunting is in the unexpected.

“I always compare it to fishing — you never know what you’re going to catch,” Wilton said. “Except you’re fishing for ghosts.”

Andrew Nynka can be reached at (973) 428-6621 or anynka@gannett.com.

See the online version at: http://www.dailyrecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060423/COMMUNITIES17/604230351/1005/ARCHIVES

###