The days of farming have ended and the days of tourism have begun. Winter and spring awaken and summer begins. Busy people with busy lives from busy cities escape to Beach Haven. Today two twin homes stand at the intersections of Atlantic and Coral Street and Atlantic and Berkeley. They are larger than the homes around them. Each home features a sharp spire standing from the roof and an onion shaped rotunda called the Lotus Room. Both homes are now elegant bed-and-breakfasts, but they were once the summer residences of twin sisters. Built by their father as wedding presents, these two homes featured eight bedrooms each with its own character and charm.  The young girls would get married and have plenty of children each and escape metropolitan life in Manhattan every summer in order to enjoy the soothing sounds of the waves by the seaside. If only the lives were as harmonious as this sound. Well… supposedly… the more attractive of the two sisters caught the eye of her sister’s husband and an illicit summer affair began. Lies were told and the two somehow evaded publicity for decade.  They would crawl out of the balcony of their respective houses and meet on Pearl Street Beach and gush about their undying love for each other. Until one day, the man woke his wife accidentally on his descent from the Lotus Room and she caught him and her sister holding hands on their way up the Pearl Street Pavilion. Instead of calling them out right then she decided she have her own fun and made her way to her sisters home where her sister’s husband lay alone in his Lotus Room. She woke him seduced him and murdered him. Awaiting the return of her sister, she hid behind the armoire. When she heard her climbing back up the house to get into her room she emerged from her hiding spot and threw her sister down from the balcony. No one really knows what happened to her husband but I think it’s safe to say his end was just as painful as those of his lover and brother-in-law. My only advice is at all costs avoid the Lotus room.

N has spent his summers in Beach Haven, Long Beach Island, New Jersey since he was born. The tiny town was established in the late 19th century and holds incredibly rich and often, dark history in the original structures that still stand. Many Victorian buildings still exist, which gives the beach town a unique flair. A popular pastime of teenagers on the island is to bike ride at night to the various, rumored-to-be-haunted locations and scare each other. Thus, the telling of ghost stories is prevalent in the childhoods of the children who grew up on the island. These twin houses are the most prominent and well-recognized because of their rotundas and spires. It is popular to dare each other to spend a night in the bed and breakfast because of all the ghosts that are rumored to haunt the premises.

Of the four island ghost stories, this one seems the creepiest and most plausible, as two proven murders took place on the premises. I can understand why local youth would be fascinated and simultaneously scared by this story.

This island I was talking about has an interesting history itself. During colonial times, the entire state was settled, and Long Beach Island was home to a specific tribe of the Lenape Indians. The island is fourteen miles long and roughly a mile off the coast of the mainland, and there were no bridges, there were no motorized boats, there was no walkway—the only connection between the mainland was the canoes the Native Americans made from the trunk of the great oak. Much controversy surrounds the shifts in inhabitants from Native Americans to the Colonial settlers, but one thing is agreed upon: somehow…some way, the slaughter of an entire tribe of Native Americans occurred, and a mass burial took place on the southern tip of the isle.  Some say it was syphilis that took down the tribe, others think it was a severe hurricane, some say the settlers who valued land for fishing and farming and agriculture decided to head over to the island in middle of the night and execute every Indian in sight.  There is no evidence of exactly what happened, but people who live on the island sometimes report that sometimes, late at night, they can almost hear the wails of the dead echoing from that burial site.

N has spent his summers in Beach Haven, Long Beach Island, New Jersey since he was born. The tiny town was established in the late 19th century and holds incredibly rich and often, dark history in the original structures that still stand. Many Victorian buildings still exist, which gives the beach town a unique flair. A popular pastime of teenagers on the island is to bike ride at night to the various, rumored-to-be-haunted locations and scare each other. Thus, the telling of ghost stories is prevalent in the childhoods of the children who grew up on the island. N’s grandfather told him the story of the slaughter of the Lenape Indians on LBI, and is another ghost story that was prevalent in his youth amongst his friends as they biked around in the dark.

This piece reminds me a little of the lost colony of Roanoke and the mystery surrounding the disappearance of its inhabitants. The unknown leads to peoples’ imaginations wandering, and it’s interesting that various theories were mentioned in this performance. It’s also interesting to consider the sordid past of this quaint beach town.

Every summer I lifeguard down on the Jersey shore in this town called Beach Haven and there’s this legend on the beach I lifeguard on called Pearl Street about the shark in a series of shark attacks that occurred I believe in the summer of 1916.  So, it is said that an off-duty volunteer lifeguard at the time was enjoying the beach at dusk and wanted to watch the sunset. He had his dog with him maybe it was a poodle or a labrador…I don’t know what it was specifically. But he saw something flashing in the water and with his lifeguard instincts he of course assumed it was a victim in need of rescue. So he bolted into the water, swam out to the victim, and his dog ran into the water and chased after him until he got to the spot where he saw someone drowning… except there was nothing there. There was just crashing waves and some white water. He started to make his way in until he was stopped by a shark bite to his lower abdomen. His dog started barking ferociously and the lifeguard was screaming, still trying to make his way onto the beach. A couple of beach patrons ran into the water to assist the man who was bleeding profusely at this point, and they brought him onto the beach and dragged him to the closest motel… where he died on the front desk. His blood spilt down the desk, staining the hardwood floors. His soul supposedly haunts room 714, which was the date of this attack. And rumor has it the shark continued to some towns north from here, taking a few victims along way. And a popular book was written about this specific shark… called ‘Jaws.

N has spent his summers in Beach Haven, Long Beach Island, New Jersey since he was born. The tiny town was established in the late 19th century and holds incredibly rich and often, dark history in the original structures that still stand. Many Victorian buildings still exist, which gives the beach town a unique flair. A popular pastime of teenagers on the island is to bike ride at night to the various, rumored-to-be-haunted locations and scare each other. Thus, the telling of ghost stories is prevalent in the childhoods of the children who grew up on the island. N learned this specific story from the lifeguard who passed down the torch to him on the Pearl Street lifeguard stand. This story is special because N himself is a lifeguard, and often while on duty he stares out into the ocean and considers what is lurking underneath the water.

Everyone knows the movie “Jaws,” so first it is interesting to me to hear the origin story of the shark, and it makes it even more interesting that I have a personal connection to it, knowing someone who swims in those exact waters. I definitely think the story has been stretched out and exaggerated a lot— especially the part about the lifeguard dramatically bleeding out onto a motel’s hardwood floor—by teenagers attempting to see who can scare each other the most. But I think it is interesting to try to pinpoint the exaggerated parts of an already-scary story that was attempted to make scarier because someone didn’t consider scary enough to begin with.

I didn’t believe in ghosts until I was staying at this old hotel in Lake Como, Italy. It was a five-hundred year-old building. An old hospital, no less, that they turned into a hotel. You walked in and there were angel statues everywhere. It was cold and dark inside, but full of history. We were staying in the penthouse and it had this wraparound balcony overlooking the lake… it was so beautiful. But I was absolutely terrified. Like, a hospital? Really, mom? You have us sleep in an old hospital? That’s like, almost as haunted as a graveyard. And of course the first night we were there there was this massive thunder and lightening storm. I was sleeping in this little room off of the master bedroom. And I was terrified of all the noises outside, so I was sleeping on my stomach, buried underneath the covers, my head under the pillows. And then…all of a sudden something started pressing down on my back. Hard. Pushing me into the bed. And I couldn’t breathe. It felt like two hands pushing me down. I started flailing… I literally felt like I was going to die. And then it stopped. I was crying, I went to go sleep in my parents’ bed. They thought I was being such a freak, imagining things, because I was already scared just staying there. My dad went to sleep in my little bed. And I was laying on my back, burrowed under the covers. I couldn’t sleep. Someone had literally just tried to suffocate me. And as I’m laying there… all of a sudden… the balcony double doors fly open and a burst of lightning zigzagged through the doors. There was a clap of thunder. The curtains billowed out with the wind. I’m not kidding. It was so scary. I expected like a vampire or something to appear in that doorway. I didn’t sleep a wink the rest of the time we were there. My parents never believed me.

M experienced this story for herself, and she deems it the scariest moment of her life. But few people believe her. Most think she was having a nightmare. But she recounts how real it felt, the feeling of not being able to breathe. She likes to tell this piece because it’s an experience few have had, and she’s not sure why it happened to her.

I believe M’s story. I definitely believe in ghosts, but I’ve heard very few firsthand accounts of people claiming a ghost was able to touch them. That thought scares me. This must have been a very angry spirit, maybe someone who didn’t have a pleasant life or died violently. I would be traumatized if this happened to me.