Hamptons Ghost Hunting Diary – Session I: Conscience Point

Last Saturday, October 12, my wife Colleen and I held the first of three Hamptons ghost hunting events through the Southampton Historical Museum. All 20 tickets were sold early (all proceeds go to the museum—Colleen and I get paid in access to the historic sites), but only a few people showed up when we met at Conscience Point in North Sea that afternoon. To be fair, it was a bit windy and cloudy, but the site was beautiful nonetheless.

Southampton Historical Museum director Tom Edmonds gave the group the lowdown about Conscience Point (download history .pdf here) and how it was a Native American settlement and early port for white settlers. It’s an unorthodox spot for ghost hunting, especially during daylight hours, but no one had done it before and it seemed promising, considering how many shady dealings and deaths occurred in the old port towns, such as it was.

So, we took the Conscience Point trail out toward the water, which was stunningly gorgeous, but it ended up being way too windy to do any proper investigating with audio devices, or even environmental measurement devices—EMF readers, thermocouple thermometers, etc.

Thankfully, our guests (Steve Merlino, and sisters Terri and Jo-Anne Horton — all from Yaphank) already had some background and experience ghost hunting, so we ended up talking shop, sharing some experiences and hopefully giving them a few new tricks with which to enhance their future paranormal investigations. Thanks for coming, guys, it was a real pleasure to meet all of you!

Overall, the first of our three ghost hunting workshops/presentations was fair. We didn’t quite accomplish what we set out to do, but I am absolutely sure that this Saturday’s event (on October 19) at the Halsey House in Southampton will be far more productive and, I hope, well attended.

Unlike Conscience Point, the Halsey House is well documented as haunted, including a well researched chapter in Kerriann Flanagan Brosky’s book Ghosts of Long Island (ghostsoflongisland.com). In her book and on her blog, Brosky notes that early resident of the home Elizabeth Wheeler Halsey was supposedly scalped by Pequot Indians during an attack in the 17th century, and she claims to have captured EVPs (Electronic Voice Phenomena — ghost voices on tape or digital recorder) there. The house, built in 1648, is very old, so we hope to connect with anything, or anyone, left over from its long and storied history.

Also, being indoors will make it easier to have a bit more organized presentation before we set out to hunt ghosts and find evidence of the paranormal there. I do hope you’ll join us and participate in the investigation. This is a terrific opportunity, thanks to Tom Edmonds and the Southampton Historical Museum, and it’s unlikely to be offered again anytime soon.

If you come, please make sure to bring a digital camera and any kind of portable voice recorder you may have. Colleen and I will demonstrate some other, less readily available, investigation tools, we’ll try to share some evidence and give participants a basic how-to primer on paranormal investigation/ghost hunting. Tom Edmonds will share the history of the Halsey House before Colleen and I get started with our presentation.

We’d also love to hear your ghost stories and experiences after the talk! Sharing stories is an important part of investigating the paranormal.

READ more about my experiences and motivations as a paranormal investigator.

After that, on Saturday, October 26, our third evening of haunted fun and education will be at the Rogers Mansion in Southampton. The headquarters of the Southampton Historical Museum, the Rogers Mansion is also said to be very haunted. I’ve heard a number of firsthand stories about the crazy experiences people have there, so I’m pretty excited for this third event. Hopefully we can share and examine any evidence that may have been captured at the Halsey House the week before.

Visit southamptonhistoricalmuseum.org for more info about the two locations and our events. Also feel free to email me with any questions or comments at oliver@danspapers.com.

Hear me and Tom Edmonds Discuss Hamptons Ghost Hunting with Bonnie Grice on WPPB FM’s Eclectic Cafe!