It’s a recent Saturday night, and my two professional ghost hunters and I are in the dark basement of a century-old home in Asbury Park, New Jersey, looking into paranormal activity reports. And things are rapidly becoming quite bizarre.
A little larger than a mobile, an electrical device with a red light to indicate paranormal activity, begins to flicker. Then the camera that we have with us to record our research begins to spin erratically on its stabiliser.
As our filmmaker Joe Travers puts it, “It’s freaking out.”
One of the two famous paranormal investigators, Amy Bruni, observed it rotate.
Of whatever is down there with us, she continues, “It does not want the camera to work.”
A jolt of terror shoots through my body. What or who is it?
This Halloween season, I wanted to go inside a haunted house with some real paranormal investigators, rather than just write another article about them from a distance. The popularity of reality TV programmes that focus on the paranormal appears to have increased during the COVID-19 epidemic. And I was eager to join in the fun.
So I went along with Bruni and Adam Berry, the stars of the Discovery+ series “Kindred Spirits.” Our goal was to find out if the magnificent, century-old house in Asbury Park, The Bradley, which was transformed into a dozen opulent condominiums, was indeed haunted.
Locals claimed to have seen a woman standing on the building’s great staircase in an antique attire. Someone reported hearing kids’ voices coming from the attic. Additionally, there was a rumour that several inhabitants, who were alone in the basement of the building, felt a hand brush across their shoulders. Even though I wasn’t precisely a believer, it was creepy stuff.
So I went to The Bradley with Berry and Bruni one evening recently. They gave off the impression of being amiable, typical, down-to-earth folks who happened to make their career by doing paranormal investigations on national television.
I had no idea what was ahead for us.
The unsavoury history of Bradley
Time has erased a large portion of the building’s known past. However, Kathy Kelly, owner of The Paranormal Museum and Paranormal Books & Curiosities in Asbury Park, uncovered what she could, including some dubious information.
According to Kelly, the Bradley was constructed in 1909 as a vacation home for a rich New York City family. The original owner, Gustave Gerard Barnett, was a former commissioner of the New York City Fire Department in addition to being an investor in real estate. He liked to sue his opponents and then sue them again. Barnett’s kid, dubbed “Gerry” and called after his father, was allegedly accused of giving a little girl such a hard kick that she ended up in the hospital.
Kelly estimates that the family spent around a dozen years residing there. After Gerry left for college, they sold the house, and for the next 70 years or so, it was an Elks Lodge. Then, the structure was abandoned as crime increased and the Jersey Shore municipality became bankrupt. Most likely, homeless people and drug addicts utilised it. Asbury Park saw a rebirth in 2005 and was transformed into luxurious condominiums.
Kelly described her feelings about the building to me as we sat at a dining table in one of those apartments that belonged to her friend.
Sometimes, she remarks, “there’s a sense of presence here.” “All of a sudden, the air is silent. But I don’t sense any bad vibes in this place.
Then an unusual event occurred. Suddenly, the bulb against the wall a few feet from the dining table brightened as we strayed into discussing ghosts and whether or not the living could detect them. Furthermore, it wasn’t dimmed.
I told myself there may have been an electrical problem. It is, after all, an ancient house.
Electrical problems plague our paranormal investigation.
Shortly later, Berry and Bruni arrived. They made themselves comfortable in the lobby for what was to be a brief interview that the Realtor.com® team would be filming. Even though Bruni was obviously worn out from spending the entire day at a local paranormal exhibition, the crew was eager to be the first to go inside this supposedly haunted house.
The brief interview, though, wasn’t brief.
The microphones used by the hosts of “Kindred Spirits” were always breaking. Berry and Bruni said that since ghosts are capable of manipulating electrical systems, this was typical in haunted places.
I regarded this explanation with scepticism. Mikes that are finicky are not that unusual. I’ve worked on several non-haunted productions throughout the years when we experienced audio problems. Hence, although ghosts could be deceiving us with our clip-on lavaliers, there were plenty of other likely reasons.
We eventually got the audio after what felt like six takes and made our way to the basement.
What’s lurking in the basement?
I had anticipated going down a pitch-black, rickety stairway and into a dimly lit cave. Rather, it was a tidy, almost joyous room. The basement was divided into separate storage spaces where homeowners kept crutches, bicycles, and other items they didn’t want to take up space in their apartments. They painted the concrete floor a brilliant grey colour. One storey up, we could hear what sounded like TVs.
Berry and Bruni discovered a pitch-black area surrounded by PVC pipes, where they claimed to be able to “block the spirits in.” A laser grid was set up with the intention of detecting any paranormal movement. Then they started questioning whatever was down there using their electronic voice phenomena recorder, which is like a little tape recorder.
The grid then started to flicker.
At that point, one of our videographers’ cameras started acting strangely and erratically. It beeped for a while before spinning on its stabiliser.
Our video producer, Travers, would tame it, only for it to flare up again. He said that even though nobody was around, it was responding as though someone was pushing it.
Bruni made an effort to speak with the invisible.
It’s okay to be who you are, she adds. “You’re not required to go. Would you want to speak with us? Would you like us to depart?
I couldn’t think of a logical, non-supernatural reason for the bizarre camera movements. Travers had never used anything similar before, and this was his personal gear. If this was a hoax of any kind, it was a very sophisticated one.
According to Travers, “It was doing things I’ve never had it do.” He recalled feeling chilly.
“It seemed as though a magnet was interfering with it.” It resembled a gyroscope as it was rotating in circles, he claims.
The camera stopped spinning as soon as the questioning ended. Bruni and Berry listened to the recording again. The static that appeared after they asked the “spirit” its name sounded like someone saying “Larry” or “Harry.” Actually, it sounded a lot like “Gerry,” the original owner of the building’s son’s moniker.
It’s conceivable that the static was giving us the impression we wanted to hear. The audio was not of high quality. Perhaps we were still frightened by the cameraman’s apparatus going full “Exorcist” on us. Though I did not want to think about it, it was also possible that the recording had been altered without my awareness.
“Answers are not audible with your own ears, but occasionally they can be heard on the recording,” explains Berry.
We scurried out of the basement not too long after.
We then went to investigate the building’s attic, where a condo owner had claimed to have heard children’s voices. However, we couldn’t locate anything extraordinary there, so it was time to call the shoot off. After packing, everyone left for home.
Is The Bradley haunted?
It was just after midnight when I came home.
As my boyfriend walked one of our dogs outside, the fire alarm abruptly went off as I was cleaning up in the bathroom. That struck me as strange considering that we hadn’t lighted any lamps or turned on the stove. Since I could not smell smoke, I proceeded into my building’s corridor. The only flat with an alarm that went off was ours.
Had anything followed me into my house?
By nature, journalists are sceptics. There’s a proverb that goes, “Make your mother prove she loves you.” Even though I was unable to provide any evidence of paranormal activity at The Bradley, there were a tonne of “coincidences.”
I’m still sceptical, but I’m also open to other possibilities.
“I would say this place warrants further investigation for sure,” said Bruni in the greatest possible way.
The sixth season of “Kindred Spirits” is available to viewers on the Travel Channel. On Halloween on Discovery+, Adam Berry and Amy Bruni will also be appearing on “Ghost Hunters” to investigate one of the most terrifying jails in America.
