What do you do if your library has a ghost that’s so active she’s been seen floating among the stacks by numerous people over several decades? You issue her a library card! That’s exactly what the staff at the Bernardsville Public Library in New Jersey did. Although, their ghost hasn’t checked anything out. At least, not yet…
This post is going to dissect the story of Phyllis Parker, the ghost who haunts the Bernardsville Public Library. But this is more than just any old ghost story. This is a story of true love and high intrigue that deviates slightly from your typical bodice ripper.
The Bernardsville Public Library wasn’t always a library. It was originally an inn. According to the National Directory of Haunted Places (yes, there is such a thing), the Vealtown Tavern was built in a village called “Vealtown” during the revolutionary war. The red-brick building was owned and run by Captain John Parker. His daughter, Phyllis Parker fell deeply in love with one of his tenants, Dr. Byram. They married quickly following a whirlwind romance. Shortly afterwards, General Anthony Wayne of George Washington’s Continental Army stayed at the tavern overnight with his staff. When his pouch containing top secret documents inexplicably went missing, the General cried thief (1). Everyone had a legitimate alibi except for poor Dr. Byram. Believed to be Aaron Wilde, a well-known Tory spy, he was seized and tried for treason. He was hanged soon after. It is still unknown as to whether or not he truly was a spy, or if General “Mad” Wayne Anthony was living up to his nickname.
Captain John Parker retrieved his son-in-law’s body and returned it to the tavern in a pine box. Phyllis answered the door, opened the box, unsuspecting of what lay within. Although, its size and weight should have given her pause. Her screams tore through the entire tavern, chilling everyone to the core. Apparently this discovery shattered her sanity, and she spent many years afterward sobbing and wailing in the tavern near where she found her beloved’s cold corpse. It’s unclear as to where or when she died. One source claimed that she committed suicide (2), but most others acknowledge the gap in the historical record.
Jump to 1974. Now named Bernardsville, its public library was undergoing renovations when an apparition of Phyllis Parker was first seen. Her cries could be heard in the part of the building that was once the tavern, which is now the public reading room. In 1987, local paranormal investigators held a seance, which can be viewed in the local history room in the library. Unfortunately, this video footage is not freely available online, and the results of this seance are not easily found online. Nevertheless, in 1989, a child saw her ghost “wearing a white dress” (how original), so clearly she has yet to move on (3).
This is an interesting case. It’s possible that it’s the ghost of Phyllis Parker haunting this building, but it’s unknown as to whether or not she died there. However, the intense emotions of grief and anguish that Phyllis felt while in this house may have left behind an imprint. It was hard to find a “reliable” resource for this statement, but sometimes in the literature and, let’s face it, in horror movies, strong emotions leave behind energy imprints, which are “essentially time stamps from the past” (4). Is this what happened in this case? Did Phyllis feel such intense anguish that her pain and grief soaked into the building? Did the renovations knock loose this energy that was embedded in the walls? Or do you think that the renovations gave the staff a chance to read the history of the building, where they uncovered a gruesome and heartbreaking story that was too good not to share? I always find it hard to disprove cases like these. So many people have seen or heard Phyllis, which makes it difficult to believe that there isn’t some truth to the story. Psychologists claim that conspiracy theorists suffer from paranoid delusions, and are more likely to suffer from mental illness. Am I paranoid in thinking that this could be a conspiracy? Does thinking that everyone in Bernardsville is “in” on this charade constitute as a form of a conspiracy? Is it more reasonable to think that there’s truly a ghost haunting this library?
When reading about the historical figures involved in this torrid affair, I discovered that there’s a second ghost story worth mentioning. General “Mad” Anthony Wayne, the man who sentenced Dr. Byram to his death, has his own gruesome tale to tell. He died when returning to Detroit from active duty in 1796. His death was boring – complications due to gout – but it’s what comes afterward that’s fascinating. His body was buried at Fort Presque Isle, outside of the blockhouse. Flash forward to thirteen years later. General Wayne’s son, Isaac, finally got around to fetching his father’s body to bury in the family plot. They dug up the body, but it didn’t look normal. It wasn’t decomposed, like you would expect a body that’s been dead for thirteen years to be. It was still intact. Isaac had only travelled in a surrey (which is a two-seated carriage with an open top), so he didn’t have room to transport back the entire body (he really should have thought that through before digging up his father) (5). He enlisted a doctor to boil the flesh off the bones, so he could carry the bones back with him to Detroit. Other sources claim that they boiled the flesh off the bones to remove any potential for disease (6). I find the latter reason much less disturbing, so let’s choose to believe that’s why they removed the flesh.
Of course, Isaac, being a completely competent son, failed to secure the bones in the carriage before leaving. Apparently, many of the bones fell from the surrey and were lost along Highway 322. Nowadays, it is said that General Anthony Wayne haunts the highway, searching for his bones. Some might say he has a bone to pick with his son. General Wayne’s ghost can be seen along Highway 322 on New Year’s Day, because that was his birthday.
I find this ghost story a little harder to believe than the story of Phyllis Parker. Why would he be haunting the highway, and not the final resting place of the rest of his bones? Apparently, Wayne’s ghost has been seen in plenty of other locations over the years. This is thought to be because he travelled a lot in life, so he has plenty of places to visit in death. Among these places are Lake Memphremagog, near Newport, Vermont, and he’s been seen travelling by horse on the Storm King Pass by Cornwall, New York. This ghost gets to travel more than I do. I suspect that the reason that his “ghost” has been seen so many times has something to do with his stature in life. If he’d been a nobody, no one would bother “seeing” him. Or is it possible that people are seeing other ghosts that they’re erroneously identifying to be him? Assuming, of course, that they’re seeing ghosts at all.
But back to the story of him haunting Highway 322. Why would he haunt it on his birthday, of all days? Maybe he spends the other 364 days of the year “travelling”. It’s also interesting that he haunts the highway, and other places across North America, instead of the spot where he died. I think that the story behind this urban legend is likely something along these lines: Someone found bones along the highway, called in the local police, they said “Oh yeah, those are the bones of General Anthony Wayne. His son was supposed to bring him back to Detroit”, and then rumours of a ghost began. I highly doubt any ghost has been seen.
To test this theory, I did some Googling, searching for anecdotes of a ghost being seen along Highway 322. There were a lot of sources that say that he is “said to haunt” the highway, but there were no anecdotes or specific information beyond the vague wording already stated. This leads me to believe that it isn’t a “true” story, and more of an urban legend. What do you think? Do you think that General Mad Anthony Wayne is actually haunting the highway?
Which of these two ghost stories is more plausible? Believing in one of these hauntings does not mean that you can’t believe in the other, but it’s interesting to compare and contrast such different haunting stories. Is it more likely that a woman who lost her one true love now haunts the place where she lost her sanity, or that a man who died from gout now haunts a road where he might have lost a few bones (postmortem) centuries ago?
References
- The Ghost of Bernardsville Library. (2013, November 27). Retrieved October 31, 2017, from http://visitcryptoville.com/2013/11/27/the-ghost-of-bernardsville-library/
- Maberry, J., & Bashman, J. G. (2010). Wanted Undead or Alive: Vampire Hunters And Other Kick-Ass Enemies of Evil. Kensington.
- Hauck, D. W. (2002). Haunted Places: The National Directory : Ghostly Abodes, Sacred Sites, UFO Landings, and Other Supernatural Locations (2nd ed.). Penguin.
- Energy Imprints: The Culprit Behind Your Haunted House. (2013, February 4). Retrieved October 31, 2017, from https://modernparanormal.wordpress.com/2013/02/04/haunting-vs-imprints/
- Wood, M., & Kolek, R. (2010). A Ghost a Day: 365 True Tales of the Spectral, Supernatural, and…Just Plain Scary! Simon and Schuster.
- Ogden, T. (2008). Haunted Highways: Spooky Stories, Strange Happenings, and Supernatural Sightings.
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