Ghosts at The National!

GHOSTS -- at The National.

Winnifred Seip (Kalnas) lived in The National Hotel in 1955-60. She used to tell her daughter Christina about the ghost of a little girl who walked the halls crying for her mother.

A much-more persistent ghost is that of a woman with orange-red curly hair who wears a white dress She is seen occasionally in various parts of The National Hotel. Marlon Aranha has never seen her, but he said that since he became general manager there in 2009, she has been reported to him by customers at least five times. The woman smiles pleasantly and is not ghostly or frightening; customers think she's real, he said.

The ghost was seen washing her hands in a main-floor lavatory by a woman who waited her turn, only to find later that the bathroom was empty. An overnight guest reported seeing the ghost after she had knocked on his room door. She usually does not speak, but has a friendly demeanor. A previous owner told the current owners, Pete and Maria D'Costa, that once the ghost had quizzed a guest about his cell phone.

Around 2010 a disheveled woman with strange abilities showed up and identified the spirit as “Lizzie.” The description customers have given roughly coincides with photos of Elizabeth A. Apgar (1893-1963), a daughter of William C. Apgar, owner of the hotel from 1876 to 1911.

The mystery woman demanded to be taken to Room 304. Once there, she communed with the spirit of a man who'd allegedly been shot to death in that room, possibly in the early 1900s.

Witnesses to her visit wanted to dismiss her as a crank, but she knew things about them that she couldn't possibly have known, thus gaining some credibility. My studies are not completed, but I have found lots of people who'd been shot in Frenchtown, but none fatally.

At least one man died by his own hand there. Pasted into William Apgar's scrapbook is a yellowed newspaper clipping that details the grim incident.

J.D. Emory, a 40something stranger from Bethlehem, Pa., checked into the National one April evening in 1898. He asked innkeeper Apgar to wake him at 7 a.m. When Apgar complied, there was no response from within. He forced the door open and found Emory's still-warm body and two empty 2-ounce laudanum bottles.

The Hunterdon Independent concluded, “Mr. Emory belonged to a good family in Bethlehem, and we understand was fairly well off financially, but of late years had been rather reckless.”

Tomorrow: Our other haunted hotel -- the Frenchtown Inn.

From “Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia”