Is this old Somers Point house really haunted?
Young learned that three funerals had been held in the home in 1904: George Denver who had died from drowning; an unidentified woman who had died of infection; and two-year-old Virginia Murphy who died from polio. It was commonplace in the 1900s for funerals to be held in people’s homes, and the caskets would sit out overnight in the home.
“None of them were the ghosts in my home,” says Young.
The medium (Sharon) told Young that the three spirits who inhabited his home were not associated with the home in any way, but rather they came because they wanted to be there. Sharon identified the spirits as Agnus, a 78-year-old woman who lived between 1820 and 1998; and two children — Jonathon, a 10-year-old boy who passed on in 1851, and Sarah, a two-year-old girl who died in the 1920s from scarlet fever.
“Agnus was with me since I was 30,” says Young. “She came into my life because I was married and divorced and began to push people away. Agnus was like that in her life, and ended up a lonely old woman. She didn’t want me to end up that way.” And the children, Young says, came because of Agnus, who acted as a grandmother figure to them.
The medium also told Young that a fourth spirit had also visited the home — while his wife was still living there. “It was a dark spirit who liked the anger and deception going on between us, and it left when she left,” says Young. Sharon said that this dark spirit was the cause of the vomit smell, a common trait of demonic presence, according to many paranormal investigators.
Paranormal events continued to happen in the Young home for seven years. But Young said he was no longer afraid. He knew that these spirits were not there to hurt him. He began to talk and interact with them, leaving toys for them to play with.
“My niece was fascinated with the fact my house was haunted,” says Young, pulling out three photos. The photographs were of his son and niece putting on a Thanksgiving play for the family in his living room. In the first photograph, a small circular illumination, known as an orb, can be seen above his niece’s head. In the second, a larger orb appears a few centimeters away. The third photograph shows an even larger orb, again in a different spot in the image. “Orbs grow when spirits are happy,” Young explains.
While many ghost investigators believe orbs to be proof of spirits on camera, others disprove them as dust or particles on a camera lens. Were these orbs in Young’s photographs a sign of a spirit or just a coincidence?
Young’s neighbors believe the house is haunted, but some think he is crazy. “A lot of people don’t believe,” says Young. “Until it happens to them.”
Young says he has not experienced any activity in the home in about a year, and thinks that perhaps his spirit friends have moved on. He has written three books that document his story in more detail: A Father, A Son, and a House Full of Ghosts (Volumes 1, 2, and 3).
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SPEND SOME TIME IN ATLANTIC CITY AMID ITS FLASHY CASINOS, the fine restaurants, and the rolling beaches and Boardwalk, and you can’t help but marvel at how far the resort has come. But every step you take is still gently haunted by all that has been here before. Atlantic City wears its history like a comfortable old coat — tattered, but comfortable. From its days as a “health” resort in the 19th century, to its naughty and haughty days of irreverence during Prohibition (highlighted in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire) to its eventual decline and then rebirth as an East Coast gambling mecca, Atlantic City and the region has been attracting visitors since its inception. In this issue, our first “Then & Now” issue, we look at Atlantic City’s long journey to get to this point in time. We look at a resort thriving...
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Kelly “The Ghost” Pavlik knows he had a bad 2009. And the end of 2008 wasn’t so hot either. So for his first fight in 2010, Saturday (April 17) at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City against Sergio Martinez, there’s more on the line than his middleweight championship belts. For Pavlik the fight is about redemption, respect and, most importantly, his future as a fighter.
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