Meeting Ms. Nellie
Introduction
My sister Gertrude is the only person I know who has a friend who is a ghost [or a bathroom deodorizer; see below]. This is the true story of how that came about.
In 1999, Gertrude bought a house in a very historic part of Northern New Jersey. Living there, she got interested in the history of the area, partly through meeting some of the local Ramapo Mountain People (also called "Jackson Whites," although that name has pejorative connotations) at church. Later on, she discovered nearby Ringwood Manor State Park, a striking mansion set in beautiful public gardens. Enamored of the house, she volunteered to serve as a guide, leading tours through the parts that were open to the public.
From the very beginning, the people at Ringwood Manor told Gertrude it was haunted. Even though she didn’t believe in ghosts, it wasn't very long before I began getting regular emails from her about the ghosts she met. These are reproduced below, lightly edited, and with names changed (except Ms. Nellie's) as a gesture toward maintaining privacy.
Gertrude's stuff is in plain text, like this.
Stuff in italics was written by me.
February 1, 2000 -- First Encounter
I'll tell you my first ghost story. Ringwood Manor is full of ghosts, everyone sees them all the time. Even if you don't believe in them. So I was talking to the Curator who was telling me about the ghost of Miss Nellie, and he said "her aura is " and I thought "light blue" and he said "light blue, and her smell is" and I thought "rose" and he said "rose." Now, I really had never given any thought to what a person's aura is. And I generally don't try to guess what a person is going to say before they say it, so it was like someone was standing at my ear, contributing to the conversation.
February 11, 2000 -- Ghost Identification 101
I started research on the Hewitt sisters, Sally and Nellie, who you will be hearing much about as time goes on so you may as well get used to it. I got online and looked up the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Academy, which is a design museum started by Sally and Nellie. They started it in the college that their grandfather started, Cooper Union (it's free for people who can afford their own room and board), but since then it has been taken over by the Smithsonian and moved uptown to 5th Ave. and 91st. Anyhow, I called the Cooper-Hewitt library, looking for material on Sally and Nellie and immediately found out that Nellie has written a (brief) book. They very kindly copied it and sent it to me. I told them that I was a volunteer doing this for free and I worked during the day, and I was surprised when they offered to help, but since nothing has been written on these very important women, I guess they want to push it along.
Anyhow, they started the museum (it's of ordinary design materials, like cloth, dishes, etc.) by using their own money and resources. Their mother used to walk around the house saying "hey, wasn't there something there?" looking at a blank spot on a table, and when she went to the museum she would say "Didn't I used to have something like that?"
February 22, 2000 -- It Happened in the Attic
Over the weekend I did manage to go through all of the upper rooms and attics in the manor, and then the next day I went through all the drawers with a similarly nosy Restorationist who works there. There wasn't much in the drawers. But the first time I went through the upstairs/attic, I went with a woman who's afraid of the ghosts, so we went fast. While passing through one of the rooms, I saw a pile of very interesting looking old books on the floor, and I thought, "I wish I had time to look at these more closely." Later that day I went back upstairs by myself to look at the books and see what they were. I went through the entire upstairs twice, and guess what, no books. Nope. The ghosts were at it again.
Anyhow, I figure their message to me was to clean up the bookshelves downstairs, which is where their books really are, because nobody has touched them in 10, 15 years, the shelves are collapsing, and someone propped up one of the shelves with a pile of the books. First editions and stuff. So I told the Preservationist I wanted to do that and he said "OK."
February 23, 2000 -- But Why Are They There?
There is no particular reason for the ghosts to haunt Ringwood. There are also far too many ghosts for it to be an ordinary haunting. There are some secrets in the Hewitt family, but they can't be too horrible, just ordinary family fights. And overall the Hewitts were very happy and successful. So why is the father still there, and Sally and Eleanor? As well as Robert Erskine, who lived there before them? Those are the only some of the ghosts that people have seen. And also they have no malice. Everyone enjoys seeing them (except one woman who got trapped in a room for awhile and never came back in the manor again).
Well, the ground that the house is built on is Indian holy ground. There is also an Indian burial ground nearby. There are also probably about 250 Revolutionary war soldiers buried there. I think there are others, too, but I don't think it's the number of people who are buried, I think it's just the spot. It is a special place. The Preservationist thinks it's the prevalence iron in the bedrock. The secretary says the grounds are more haunted than the house.
Until I started working there I didn't even believe in ghosts. I still suspend my judgement to a certain extent, but I will just watch and see what goes on. I'm not frightened, I feel very comfortable there. But then remember in Shirley Jackson's novel, 'The Haunting of Hill House, how Eleanor, the sad woman who finally gets killed by the house, is first seduced by the house and felt she belonged there too. Eeee-eeee-eeee. By the way, that's the best scary book ever written, if you haven't read it.
March 3, 2000 -- The Haunted Camera
I guess I didn't tell you, when I went to take pictures at Ringwood Manor, every single one of them came out leaning to the left. It wasn't my picture-taking technique, because I wasn't the only one taking pictures with my camera, and it wasn't my camera, because it doesn't happen anywhere else.
March 7, 2000 -- Manifestation
Sunday I phoned Gertrude to see what was up. She had told me she was going to be working at the Manor over the weekend, but I hadn't heard from her yet. As soon as she picked up the phone, I asked "Didja see any ghosts? Didja see any ghosts?"
"Oh, that." my sister said. I couldn't figure out what she was talking about. "But I didn't tell you what happened AFTERWARDS. I haven't told anyone yet, it was so weird," ' she continued. I was, like, "Huh? Back up!"
Here is what had happened:
On a sideboard of the Great Hall in the Manor sits a bust of Abram Hewitt, who built the place. The bust occupies a place of prominence and one cannot fail to look at it as one traverses the Great Hall. In the course of the day Gertrude had given two tours and gone into the state park office section of the house several times, each time passing the bust and looking directly at it. After the last tour group left, she set out across the Great Hall to the private section in the rear of the house. For some reason she was looking down at the strips of all-weather carpeting protecting the wooden floor, rather than looking up at the bust. And then, for some reason, she looked up and straight at it.
The marble figure had turned forty degrees, so that it now faced a side door.
Taken suitably aback, Gertrude didn't back down. She shook her fist at Abram Hewitt, told him out loud "Well, I guess you got the better of me, this time!" Then she went into the back of the house to ask if anyone there had gone into the public part at any time during they day. They said they hadn't, and asked why. Gertrude said "Because the bust of Hewitt has moved."
Everyone trooped into the Great Hall to take a look. The bust had definitely been moved, and after some discussion all decided that it had moved itself. It was the first time that a ghost had ever actually moved something like that at the Manor, they said.
What was the bust looking at? Gertrude went outside and looked at the doorway, trying to see something amiss. The house was old and run down, the paint peeling, but other than that there was nothing obvious.
Gradually, the crowd dispersed and went back to their duties. That was OK, because Gertrude knew that she would have to talk to it, and didn't want anyone else to see her doing so. When the house was empty again, she went inside, closed the door, walked over to the bust, and started talking.
"How can I understand what you're trying to say if you don't tell me?" she began, and suddenly she began crying. As she cried, she was thinking, "The house is in ruins, all sorts of weirdos can walk through it, and they have no right to talk about my family they way they do!!!"
Gertrude's theory at the time was that Abram Hewitt, the paterfamilias who built the house, was not happy with how things were being run there. Later, she remembered that earlier in the morning she had heard one of the state office workers say, "No one liked Ms. Sally. Ms. Sally was a bitch."
March 15, 2000 -- Continuing Research
I went into the city to see what they had at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Academy, which is presently owned by the Smithsonian, but was started by Miss Sally and Miss Nellie. I poured over old documents, but the most interesting was a photograph of Miss Nellie. I had seen pretty drawings of her that made her seem like a sweet harmless young woman. Well this was the real her, and she was intense. Anyway, I've changed my mind about the ghost that moved the statue - I think it was her. She cared greatly for her sister Sally and hated it whenever anyone insulted her. And the fact that I cried was something that an Abram Hewitt, King of NYC Commerce, would probably never do, so it was probably her expressing herself through me. Anyway, she's the most prevalent ghost there.
March 28, 2000 -- At It Again
Did I tell you Miss Nellie walked off with a bunch of my papers this weekend? I was copying a scandalous article for the librarian at the Cooper-Hewitt and I was going to fax it to her, but I made the mistake of putting it down. Poof! It was gone. Well, you can't argue with these ghosts, they'll always win.
The Restorationist, who is now responsible for maintaining the house, is alone in the house a lot. When she goes down the main staircase (near where the statue moved), after she gets to the bottom, she hears her footsteps go down the staircase again after her, in the rhythm she just did. It's happened twice.
March 29, 2000 -- Ghost Identification 102
Eleanor was born in NYC, I think, and although her father and grandfather were very rich, they had originally come from working class background, so they were devoted to the working classes. But they were rich as hell. They lived at 9 Lexington Ave. some of the time (ritzy section then), at Ringwood some of the time, in Bar Harbor some of the time, and throughout Europe a lot. Their mother, who had six children, took what was basically a farm / mining camp (Ringwood) and made an estate. She handled the landscaping. In fact, her foresight stopped an electrical line from being run through the Ramapo Indian's village next door - she had deed the land to the state on the condition that the view not be destroyed.
There were six kids, so they grew up surrounded by each other and also fought a lot. Edward liked Nellie, but hated Sally, and Amy (the older sister with the harelip and the only one to marry) liked everyone but was distant due to age. Nobody liked Erskine, the youngest boy. But as Sally and Nellie grew, they didn't marry, and they formed a relationship with each other that was probably sort of like a marriage. I see that with my friend Hortense and her sister - they live together, they plan to do everything together, they enjoy each other and depend on each other. Moreover, they are all that the other needs.
So you sort of have to look at Nellie as part of a larger unit. I don't know much about Sally yet, although I was originally more interested in her, because it's Nellie that haunts the house. When they were still fairly young, they started a museum of ordinary objects in their grandfather's school, the Cooper Union Institute (it's a free college to this day). Since they lived in the age of enormously wealthy people and knew a lot of them, people were always donating things to their museum. Years after their deaths somehow the Smithsonian took over their museum, and they control it now. It was / is also a school. Presently it grants masters in decorative arts. They particularly liked to collect textiles.
They were busy with this, and with French lessons (they visited France frequently and were fluent in French and probably also several other languages), and with music lessons (they started the first women's orchestra) and I'm sure hundreds of other things besides. Like their male relatives, they were always into new machinery, so as soon as the typewriter came out, they had one and were using it. Nellie also taught the miner's children in a school on the grounds, much like I am now in church.
As they got older, they continued doing all this and more. Nellie eventually took over the running of the house, and Sally took over the outbuildings and grounds. The house was deeded to them when their parents died so that they would always have someplace to live.
Emily Post was a friend of theirs and there is a copy of her Book of Etiquette on the bookshelves that is inscribed to them. It circles a paragraph on the "afternoon at home" where sophisticated hostesses would entertain leading people in the arts and politics, etc., and there is a note saying "This includes you."
Nellie died suddenly of bronchitis at Ringwood Manor. I think she was in her 60s. Sally lived another seven or so years, and died in NYC. They are buried in the Hewitt family plot in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn. You can't get into that cemetery without a guided tour.
Their rooms at Ringwood Manor are surprisingly small. The mother has a massive room, but both Sally and Nellie always stayed in two tiny adjacent rooms. Not only are their rooms together, but the architecture is almost identical, and there is an adjoining door. They must have really loved each other.
So that's all that I know about Nellie except that I read she was also very athletic and once disarmed a drunken man who had a gun and was waving it at a group of children. And she wrote a book about the founding of the museum. I have a wonderful picture of her, but I only have a xerox, I have to beg the people at ooper-Union to scan it for me or something. The drawings of her make her look petit and sweet, but in the photo she is extremely intense and her eyes are gigantic.
March 30, 2000 -- Ms. Nellie on the Web
[I had been looking around on the web for stories about the ghosts of Ringwood Manor, and emailed Gertrude a couple of URLs I found. These are listed on the Links page here if you want to check them out.]
I looked at the [sites you mentioned], and of course they are wrong (but how would they know?) I especially like the ghost "servant," Jackson White. He he he he he. But it isn't Mrs. Erskine, of course, it's Miss Nellie.
I remember reading Hans Holtzer's books when I was a kid. I really enjoyed them. This stuff is fun, but I can see why a ghost wouldn't want people like him coming in and prying, after all he's not there to do them any good, he's just a voyeur. I guess it's like any other human relationship, a relationship with a ghost, they have to get to know you and trust you, and you have to get to know and trust them. I think that I am seeing from this that perhaps all those stories about evil ghosts killing people and doing horrible things might be more of a projection of living people put on the dead, because we all like to make the dark side of the soul/mind understandable/visible. I think it's possible that ghosts themselves aren't inherently bad, any more than people are inherently bad, it's just the people are afraid of them because they are afraid of the dark side of their own unconscious.
April 17, 2000 -- Ms. Nellie At Home
Nellie was around again this weekend. I brought my friend Annie there to see the place and in one particularly haunted spot, Annie said something about how strong the flowers smelled, and she bent down to smell them. Only thing was, they were plastic (no real flowers allowed in the house). I smelled it too, very strong, lilac or lavender perfume. Miss Nellie. It's nice to have a ghost as a friend.
Ghostdate 4.23.2000 -- Easter Sunday
Last night I noticed my answering machine blinking at me and played back a message from Annie, our family friend. She said she was returning my call, which was odd, because I hadn't called her in a couple of months. It was midnight her time, but I figured she'd be up, and called her back.
We chatted a bit and then of course she wanted to tell me about smelling the ghost at Ringwood Manor, which Gertrude had already emailed me about. Annie drove down to visit Gertrude, who showed her all around the house. Annie raved about the place. Well, she is very artistically gifted and very creative in just about any craft you can name, so she was drawn to the old dresses and all the other old stuff that Ms Nellie and Sally had collected and stored in the house.
As far as the ghost, Annie and Gertrude had just left the mother's bedroom and started down the hall. Gertrude was a little ahead of Annie when Annie smelled flowers. There was a vase full of flowers on a table right nearby, so she made a comment to Gertrude about how fresh they smelled and bent over to sniff them close up. I guess Annie saw that the flowers were plastic right at the same time Gertrude started saying "You smell something? You smell something? What does it smell like? That's not flowers, that's the ghost." Annie tried to smell the smell again to identify it -- ; she though maybe gardenias, or lavender, but she wasn't sure -- ; but by that time her nose was burning and she couldn't tell. Burning, she said, like after you've just smelled a really strong smell and can't smell for a while.
Annie said the ghost kind of went through her left shoulder and side and down the hall toward Gertrude. Then Gertrude smelled it too; she said "Wait a second, I can smell it now, too." I asked Annie what she meant, the ghost went through her as it passed. She replied "Well, you've walked through clouds, right?" and said it was something like that. A fresh, cool, damp, out-of-doors type breeze that's barely a breeze.
Annie went back to rhapsodizing about the house and its contents. Gertrude had let her see some of the stuff that was stored away, not on public display, and Annie had gotten all excited. Now, I should mention that it was midnight Annie's time and I could tell from her voice that she was pretty tired after a long day of work. But when she talked about the house, a measure of vitality came back to her. Suddenly she was complaining about how run down the place was and how little was being done to preserve its treasures. And things were displayed wrong. "Everything in the house looks hard. That's not the way it was. I would like to see a dress laid over a chair, ready to be worn; a glove resting on a bed, waiting to be put away. The house was wrong, there was nothing soft in it."
Suddenly her voice got slow and muzzy again. "There was nothing soft in it?" she repeated. "Did I . . . did I say that?" I told her she had. She seemed confused, but finally agreed she had meant what she said.
We chatted a bit more and she mentioned the moving chair, so I made a note to ask Gertrude about that one (which I hadn't heard yet) when I talked to her the next day.
April 27, 2000 -- Friends and Family
Over Easter break Gertrude, who is divorced, had her seven-year-old daughter, Picarina, with her. They went out to the Manor one day; later, after dropping Picarina off at her father's, Gertrude went back with her gentleman friend, Nelson.
I was at Ringwood Manor for an ordinary weekend and nothing happened. However, the Restorationist took me aside as soon as we were alone and told me that she had been working in the Grand Hall on a day when it was thundering. (According to everyone, storms always bring the ghosts out.) While she was working, she heard a woman's soft voice saying something from the next room. She usually never gets scared, but this time she did, so she went to get people from the state office section. One of them, the secretary, is very open to these strange happenings, so she went with a friend into the haunted Ryerson nursery, where they heard children first crying, then laughing.
That night there was a freak April snowstorm. I didn't go in the next day as I had planned, partially because I didn't think anyone else would go in either, but the Restorationist did. It was lucky that she did, because when she unlocked the Mansion side of the house (the servant's wing has been converted to state park offices) she found two large objects moved and a window broken. She asked the park policeman who did the midnight rounds if he had seen anything, but he had not. He also told her he always went through the house as fast as he could, with his hand on his gun.
The two objects that had been moved were a chair in the Grand Hallway (it had been turned to face the same side door that the statue of Abram Hewitt had been turned to a few weeks earlier) and a dress dummy upstairs (which moved a few feet forward). The broken window (in the Ryerson wing) was not a mystery: it was broken by a banging shutter. All of the shutters in this house bang, since they have not been repaired in (probably) 60 years (since the state took over the house). The Restorationist fixed the window and dried up the antique couch.
I think it was after this that Annie smelled Miss Nellie. Yes, it was, I guess I didn't write to you about this. And here's the rest of the smell developments:
I took Picarina to see the house and meet Miss Nellie. We went into the hallway behind the mother's bedroom (near the dummy that moved) which is exactly where Annie and I smelled Miss Nellie's perfume, and, by gollie, she was there again. Picarina smelled her and we said hello.
Then, when I planned to meet Nelson there (new boyfriend), I got there early and ran to the bathroom because I had just driven into and out of Manhattan and had a slightly ill stomach. I relieved myself and then stepped out of the stall to look at myself in the mirror and see if I looked OK. Immediately the smell was there, and my logical side went to the soap dispenser, took some out, and smelled it to see if that was the source (it was not- that was a different smell). So I told her that I was meeting my new boyfriend here and that I was going to show him the place, etc. I told her I was going to tell the Restorationist first.
When I went in to talk to the Preservationist, the smell was still with me, although it did not go into his office. Then I met Nelson, and we went in and said hello to the Preservationist, and then went into the house. Although the smell followed us from the state offices into the house, she was never directly with us in the house, and Nelson never smelled her. I could tell she was there because every once in awhile when I turned around I got a whiff of the smell, but I think she was shy and just didn't want to meet him directly. However, I did officially introduce her to him in the music room. When we left, the smell followed us all the way to the door, but he never smelled it.
I told Nelson about it and he reminded me that she was a spinster and might not like men as much as women, which I think is probably right. Although she's very fond of the Curator.
April 30, 2000 -- From "Boo" to "Boo-Hoo"
I located the source of the smell. It's an air-freshener in the state office bathroom, one of those attached to the wall with a little fan in it that blows Miss Nellie Scent all over the place. Sigh. Oh well.
On the brighter side, a book appeared on the mother's bed pillow. It's opened to a poem about a man who lost the love of a woman due to neglect, and now he regrets it. The Restorationist saw it first, and asked anyone if they put it there, but no one did. They don't even know where it came from.
May 2, 2000 -- Continuing Developments
But the thought occurred to me who put the bathroom deodorizer there? What makes us assume it was Park personnel? Perhaps, just perhaps, they had nothing to do with it. Perhaps Miss Nellie snuck out and went to the A&P and bought it and put it up herself.
Actually, and then the other question is, why does it come in certain whiffs throughout the house when it's 500 yards away in a different, closed wing?
But these questions must wait for an answer.
I forgot to tell you, lest you become too disappointed at the questionability of some of the hauntings, that tiny things are disappearing out of the state-side again.
Let me describe the state side to you, so you can have a picture in your mind for reference. The house was built from South to North, just extending and extending and extending. The southernmost tip (some would call it the westernmost tip, but it's debatable) was built around 1807, the middle around 1865, the grand hall and dining room around 1880. The servants quarters (including 2 kitchens, sitting room, butler's pantry, etc) extended north up beyond that, and their structure was made by moving other buildings to the manor and attaching them. So this is where the state park offices are now, in the servant's wing. The Curator's office is in the butler's pantry. I think the Preservationist's is in a washroom, and one of the kitchens is a conference room. The secretaries and park police are in an open space at the end, which opens onto the public part, which was the servant's sitting room. The start park administration offices are upstairs.
Now, you'd think any self-respecting Victorian lady would not hang out in the servant's quarters, but she does, or at least someone, or several ghosts do. That's where the xeroxed papers disappeared from. And this weekend a glue-stick disappeared, and two of my nickel hydride batteries. The batteries were in a charger in the bottom of my camera bag which itself was inside a plastic bag, hidden behind a door. So figure that one out.
And, just for your information, there are ALWAYS footsteps heard above the downstairs state offices, even where there is no one there. Everyone's heard them (except for me, I don't hang out there).
So if I had to guess, I think some ghost was curious about the batteries and the gluestick. After all, their fortune came from glue, and they were always inventing forms of energy and things.
May 22, 2000 -- Clangs, Bangs, and the Bust Moves Again
Here's an update on recent report of ghostly activities at Ringwood Manor.
Gertrude's gentleman friend Nelson reports:
As I was reading the existing info [on this website] last night, I remembered when I went with [my] kids [to the Manor]. Kevin and I were walking along and peeking in the windows; we had seen into a couple of the rooms. Jack and Keith were in the field and Keith was trying to fly his kite. As Kevin and I walked and peeked, I distinctly remember a shutter banging against the house. What I remembered last night was that Keith could not fly the kite because there was not enough wind. So, not enough wind for the kite but enough to bang the shutters? Was something ELSE moving the shutters?
Gertrude has this to say:
Nothing much has happened lately according to the Restorationist, who spends most of her time in the house alone. But there are several new workers now, temporary summer employees, who will mainly be manning the park entrance tollbooth. One of them is a really tall teenager. He told me he was walking through the house with the Custodian. As they were going to round a corner, they heard the sound of scraping rock, like a statue moving. When they had turned the corner, the statue of Abram Hewitt had again turned to face the side door, exactly the same way as when I had seen it earlier. So now this kid is fascinated. He tried to go upstairs by himself, but as soon as he stepped into Nellie's room it turned freezing cold and he ran back downstairs again.
One more thing which is probably nothing. I was on the grounds [of Ringwood Manor] with Picarina and her little friend Ted. We had just finished looking at the grave of Robert Erskine (the one that, when they replaced the old stone with a new one, and were taking pictures, they saw later in one of the pictures a ghost coming up out of it. The Preservationist has the picture framed on his wall above his desk*). Anyhow, we had just started back when a bell began to ring. Ted asked why the bell was ringing and I immediately said "For the dead" and then tried to quote Donne.
I thought no more about it, but when I got back [to the house], the Restorationist asked me if I had rung the bell. I had forgotten, but there is a bell tower on the house with a rope coming down, in an obscure place. You wouldn't know about it unless you were shown. Anyhow, the rope doesn't reach down low, so if anyone rang it, it must have been an adult. Except that there was no one around, and the rope was tied to a trellis.
By the way, we started to clean the books - spent the last two days on it - and are reading inscriptions, old Victorian calling cards, etc. It's fascinating.
* Editor's Note: You can find more information about Robert Erskine by visiting my links page. He played a small but critical role in the American Revolution, inventing a barrier that prevented British ships from traveling up the Hudson River. Gertrude told me the story about his grave being refurbished over the phone a month or so ago. Erksine, who is buried at the Manor, is an Historically Important Person. When his gravestone deteriorated, the decision was made to replace it with a new one. Ringwood Manor's Preservationist was involved in the process of digging up the old gravestone and replacing it with a new one. He took pictures of the proceedings to provide a historical record. Apparently when the pictures were developed, one showed a white fuzzy cloud above the open grave. That's the picture the Preservationist has hanging in his office. Maybe someday I can get a copy of it to include here.