CAPE MAY — Get into the spirit this Halloween season with ghostly happenings at Historic Cold Spring Village. On select Fridays and Saturdays in Oct., guests can enjoy guided evening ghost walks throughout the Village grounds and learn about the museum’s history of hauntings. And on Oct. 11 and 25, visitors can join professional paranormal research teams on a ghost investigation in five Village buildings where they will use digital photography and sound recording equipment to capture evidence of the supernatural.
Ghost Walks will be offered on Fridays, Oct. 3, 10, 17 and 24, and Saturdays, Oct. 4 and 18. Guests will be led by lantern light through the shell-lined paths of the Village, stopping along the way at the museum’s restored historic buildings to speak of the mysterious spectral happenings reported by staff and revealed by paranormal investigation teams. Ghost Walks will begin at 8pm at the Route 9 gatehouse and will last approximately one hour. Admission is $15 and includes a keepsake lantern. Rain dates are the Sundays after each ghost walk. Please call (609) 898-2300, ext. 10 or visit www.hcsv.org/events for more information and to purchase tickets. A limited number of tickets are available! Advanced purchase is required.
For those interested in a more hands-on haunted experience, the Village is hosting two ghost investigations in October led by the Truth Paranormal and Ghost-One Paranormal Research teams. The Oct. 11 and 25 investigations will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Welcome Center with an introduction to ghost-hunting etiquette and equipment, and an overview of the history of paranormal activity at the Village. Guests will then be escorted in groups to each of five buildings where researchers will allow guests to assist with the investigations. Over the course of two hours, guests will seek out the spectral in the Spicer Leaming House (c. 1817), the Dennisville Inn (c. 1836) the Marshallville School (c. 1850), the Corson Hand House (c. 1837) and Coxe Hall Cottage (c. 1691). After the investigation, guests will return to the Welcome Center to discuss their findings over dessert. Tickets to each investigation are $40 each and must be purchased in advance. The 2012 and 2013 ghost investigations sold out! Please call (609) 898-2300, ext. 10 or visit www.hcsv.org/events for more information and to purchase tickets. Amateur paranormal investigators are welcome to bring their own equipment.
Historic Cold Spring Village is a non-profit, open air living history museum that portrays the daily life of a rural South Jersey community of the Early American era. Its mission includes the preservation of 26 historic Cape May County buildings, history education and promoting heritage tourism. The Village is a museum for all seasons. During the summer months, interpreters and artisans in period clothing preserve the trades, crafts and heritage of “the age of homespun.” From October to May, the emphasis is on teaching history through school trips to the Village, classroom visits by the education department and interactive teleconferences with schools throughout the United States. The Country Store is open Saturdays, 11 a.m. – 3 p.m., throughout the fall for holiday shopping. The Cold Spring Grange Restaurant is currently serving lunch and dinner Sat. and Sun. The Village is located on Route 9, three miles north of Victorian Cape May and a mile and a half west of the southern end of the Garden State Parkway. For more information, call (609) 898-2300, ext. 10 or visit the Village website at www.hcsv.org.