By Tim Zatzariny Jr.
For OCNJ Daily
As the wind whistles down the alley, Lee Griscom tells ghost stories.
“It’s always windier here,” he says, alluding to the possibility that spirits lingered in the alley that runs between Eighth and Ninth streets on Asbury Avenue, behind City Hall and the Crown Bank building.
Under a crescent moon on an October night, Griscom, 74, leads a tour that promises to reveal the terrifying details of downtown Ocean City’s most haunted locations.
A resort town so rich in history (Ocean City was founded in 1879 as a Methodist retreat) is bound to have some ghosts in its closet, and Ghost Tour of Ocean City brings these stories out of the shadows.
“We feel like the history behind the story, that’s what makes it,” says Eileen Reeser, owner of the tour company. “Without the history, it can be a very dull story.”
The scary stories Griscom tells on the tour come from the 2003 book “Ghost Stories of Ocean City, NJ” by Reeser’s husband, Tim.
http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Stories-Ocean-City-NJ/dp/097292650X
Eileen Reeser’s company first offered ghost tours of Ocean City in 2002, and the company runs similar tours in Pennsylvania and Florida.
People are always looking for a good jolt, no matter where they live, Eileen Reeser says during an interview.
‘Every place has its ghost stories,” she says. “It’s a mysterious subject with no definitive proof, so it makes you wonder, ‘Are (the ghosts) there?’ And I think a lot of people hope they are.”
Back in the alley, Griscom tells tour-goers they’re smack in the middle of the so-called “Alley of the Dead,” which has been the site of numerous gruesome demises dating as far back as the 1930s, when a robber got into a shootout with the police and wound up dead. Over the years, at least two men leaped to their deaths from the seven-story bank building, landing in the alley. And, more recently, a worker was fatally electrocuted while repairing a utility pole in the alley. To this day, people report hearing the sounds of gunshots and someone crying in the alley, Griscom said.
The 90-minute candlelight tour includes a story that focuses on a seemingly quaint Victorian home at Seventh Street and Central Avenue. The house once belonged to Bert Griscom, an actor and playwright who was a descendant of Betsy Ross. (Bert was a distant relative of Lee Griscom’s.) Bert Griscom collected occult items, including ghoulish masks, which covered the walls of the house. He held séances at the house, and legend has it his ghost still roams the upper floor, where various residents have heard unexplained footsteps and seen an apparition with a face similar to Bert Griscom’s.
The tour then moves to a flat-roofed building at Eighth Street and Wesley Avenue housing a Mexican grocery. The presence of a dancing ghost on the second floor has driven numerous tenants from the apartment upstairs, Griscom says, adding a man’s rhythmic footsteps can frequently be heard on the upper floor. The building was the site of Ocean City Dance Hall in the 1930s and 1940s, according to Lee Griscom, and perhaps one customer never left.
Next up is the scariest stop on the tour: a yellow Victorian building at Seventh Street and Asbury Avenue, which now houses a real-estate agency. There have been frequent reports of ghostly green orbs seen through the windows, and of contractors having their equipment moved or damaged inside the building when no one else was around, indicating the presence of a poltergeist, Lee Griscom says. The malevolent spirit may belong to a man who was killed in a fire at the back of the building decades ago, he said.
“This is the vortex for supernatural activity,” he says of the area surrounding the building, although no one is sure exactly why.
The tour ends where it started, on the steps of City Hall, which has its own ghost stories. The building, constructed in 1914, is, according to some, home to the apparition of an unusually tall man. Employees have also reported hearing ghostly footsteps on the third floor. Lee Griscom suggests that the building is haunted by a former mayor who suffered a fatal heart attack after leaving City Hall to go home for lunch before packing up his desk on his last day in office.
“Maybe he came back for what he left behind,” Lee Griscom says with a grin.
Lee Griscom is a local resident whose current job seems appropriate given his previous career as a cemetery sales manager.
On the steps of City Hall, he gives tour-goers a short history of the Jersey Devil, the mythical creature who, according to legend, was born three centuries ago just up the road in Galloway, and who still lurks somewhere deep in the Pinelands.
Then Lee Griscom issues a warning.
“When you leave, you’ve got to get on the Parkway, you’ve got to get on the Expressway,” he says with a rustle of his cape. “Please do not make any pit stops, because he’s out there.”
Ghost Tour Ocean City offers tours June through November. In October and November, tours run on Fridays and Saturday at 8 p.m., including Halloween. Tickets are $15; $10 for children ages 4 to 12. Advance ticket purchase required. The tour is designed to be family friendly, but the stories might be frightening for very young children. For tickets or more information, call 609-814-0199 or go to Ghost Tour Ocean City’s website. http://www.ghosttour.com/oceancity.
Have your own Ocean City ghost story? Tell us in the comments section below.
