Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Haunted Hotel in New Jersey

FOREVER FACING THE HUNTERDON COUNTY COURTHOUSE, Flemington's Union Hotel stands witness to the never ending speculation which still surrounds the "trial of the century." During the height of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping/murder case, the hotel's 52 rooms, and even its closets, were the temporary base of operations for the country's most notable journalists. Today, only the bar and restaurant, located on the building's first floor, are open to the public. The second floor houses a few offices, and the rest of the Union Hotel is the exclusive property of the building's only full-time residents - its ghosts.According to the current manager, ongoing construction in the historic landmark has stirred up spirits, who have made their presence known by slamming doors, spinning barstools and generally going bump in the night."One night, after closing," she told us, "the bouncer locked the heavy wooden front doors in the foyer, then returned to the bar. A few of the staff were sitting around the bar having a drink, when all of a sudden the locked doors flew wide open and a cold wind swept past us. When the bouncer went back out to close the doors, he saw a disembodied pair of children's black patent-leather shoes walking up the main stairway. He freaked right out and ran across the street. Then he called us from a pay phone and told us to get out of the hotel right away!" Another time, one of my waitresses was carrying the register drawer upstairs to the office after closing. When she reached the top of the stairs, she heard an unearthly voice humming a child's lullaby. She dropped the drawer full of money right there on the landing and ran out of the building and never came back."The Union Hotel's manager herself, whose office is on the second floor, has also had some personal experience with the spooks."Once at about three o'clock in the morning," she says, "I was doing the books in my office. I knew I was the only person in the building, but all of a sudden, I felt another presence. I stopped what I was doing and sat back away from my desk. There was something right there in the room with me. It came so close that I could feel the pressure of it right up against me, pushing on my chest. It was making it hard for me to breathe. I didn't feel threatened, or in any danger, though, and I simply asked it to move away and leave me alone. Then it was gone, and now I regret telling whoever it was to stop, because I feel as if I may never have an encounter like that again."No apparitional footwear materialized the day that we visited The Union Hotel, nor did we hear any ghostly voices - just the rustling of feathers of the many pigeons that come and go through the broken windows of the upper floors. Walking the deserted hallways, though, one can easily imagine what it must have been like there during the media circus trial of Bruno Hauptmann. Not much has changed in these empty rooms since the 1930s, and if there is a more accommodating residence for a specter to inhabit throughout eternity, we haven't yet seen it.