New to the Garden State, I set out on an exploration, never dreaming that my jaunt would take me straight to the site of a haunting.  Knowing nothing about the quiet seaside town of Cape May (which many claim as the most haunted town in New Jersey), I rolled in clueless, taking a room in the very first hotel I stumbled upon on Beach Drive, unaware that I might have rested instead at one of the area’s charming and perhaps ghost-occupied B&B’s, reminiscent of a bygone era.

On foot that evening, I circumnavigated the colorful, gingerbread-trimmed inns, the cute shops and trendy restaurants, the cozy park with its bandstand gazebo behind the Washington Street Mall.  With the sun lowering on the horizon, the sea breeze wafting cool on my skin, and the gaslights winking on, the tranquility of the evening was broken only by the sedate clip-clop of the horse-drawn carriages. Nearing the far end of Beach Drive, something drew me in the direction opposite my hotel; wild with dunes and sea grass, it was an area difficult to navigate on foot.  Beyond the lights of the boardwalk, all was dark beneath the stars and all, but for the incessant pounding of the surf and the hushed undulating of the brush, was still.  Born on Halloween, dark places often fascinate me.  So, on that night, I turned in what many would deem the wrong direction.  

My feet stopped dead before an imposing structure whose fading sign proclaimed it The Christian Admiral Hotel.  Unlike the other hostelries, the hotel’s windows were black beyond its dusty panes; not a sound floated out into the night from its stately interior.  Clearly, the place was abandoned and just as clearly, as I stood examining it from the sidewalk, it had seen better days.  Normally, such a building would beckon me, daring me to peer into its dim, cobwebbed heart.  But inexplicably chilled, the hairs began to rise one by prickling one along my body.  Instinct commanded me to beat a hasty retreat and I obeyed, too terrified to look back.  Ghosts usually do not frighten me; in truth, I relish the few encounters that I have had, thus far, with the spirit world.  Angry at my own foolishness, I vowed to return to the place — with company.

Having not spoken of the old Admiral to my husband, sister, or brother-in-law, a few weeks later, I led them, without warning, to the site. On this nearly moonless night, my husband laughed nervously, remarking that the old hotel looked like a good place for a murder.

“Or a haunting,” my brother-in-law gulped.

My sister stated emphatically, “I don’t like this place; we need to leave now.“ 

“Not so fast,” I explained, “Who’s brave enough to stroll up to the front door and have a look inside?”

After hemming and hawing from the men-folk, the guys laughed away their jitters, raced up to the hotel’s doors, peered inside for two seconds, and dashed off, breaking my previous record and pulling my sister and me along with them.  Not long afterwards, the derelict hotel, originally built in 1905, was torn down to accommodate the large modern domiciles that have replaced it along this end of Beach Drive.  I was sorry to see the old place go: I love a mystery and this one niggled at my mind, unsolved.

Several years later, quite by accident, I read of a married couple’s true encounter at the very same spot that had thoroughly spooked my family and me.  After the Admiral‘s destruction, as this couple strolled quietly one evening alongside those high dunes and grassy fronds, they spied three men upon the beach, close to the street.  Dressed to the nines in black tails, all three appeared to be gentleman.  Given that the hotel was no longer there and that this end of the beach was a bit out-of-the way to attract a private party, the couple slowed their steps, perplexed.  As they gazed upon the three men in their finery, however, they were chilled to their souls to realize that the gentlemen were not standing upon the dunes but rather, floating a few feet above them!  Perhaps clued in to the couple’s presence, the forms of the three men began to … astoundingly! … whirl and merge into a column of light, spinning higher above the dunes like a mini tornado that had blown up out of nowhere!  In a matter of seconds masquerading as an eternity, the ghostly tornado sucked itself into the night sky and simply … dissipated!   The witnesses, being of sound mind, could find no earthly explanation for this other-worldly confrontation, on that quiet night directly across from the Admiral‘s gravesite.

What was it that I had feared, alone, as the hotel stood its ground against its coming demise, with its blind and yet watchful eyes upon me?  What had my family feared though we saw no apparitions?  More importantly, what had that couple witnessed?  Once touted as “the largest and finest hotel in the nation,” the Admiral Hotel had, in its hey-day, hosted the rich and famous.  Henry Ford himself once reveled in its banquet hall, and Louis Chevrolet had raced his cars upon that very beach.  If, as paranormal research supports, objects and structures retain the energies of those who have passed on, perhaps the couple in question had been privy to a sort of psychic snapshot upon which the three natty fellows of yesteryear have impressed their energies.  And if, indeed, there is strength in numbers, this may account for the group energy manifesting so as to appear, prior to the little whirlwind, almost of this earth.

I may solve the mystery myself one day.  That is, if I have the courage to return to that spot where something — or someone — once raised the hackles along my otherwise fearless, ghost-loving spine!