A ghost of a Hessian soldier appears to be responsible for sabotaging our roofing work at the "Uniquely Native" Craft Shop in Mount Holly, NJ, during the summer of 2006. Little did I realize that this shop is a real haunted place, the second one in my career.
The owner of this real haunted place is Mary Carty, a descendent of the Piney-Lenape tribal group. She has bought her artistic skills to her craft shop, creating an innovative store to browse. Our job was to paint her roof in barn red and stop the leaking on the side of the building. As we talked about the details of starting the project, she commented on the ghost of the Hessian soldier who reportedly lived in the basement. Whenever she descended the steps into her basement, she felt a chill, a presence of a nasty spirit.
Regardless of any presence of a ghost, I predicted an easy project. But I underestimated the mischief of a Hessian soldier with a mean attitude. (If you are guessing that I am disguising a dull lesson into a ghost story, you are right. Just keep in mind, all the facts are true--ask Mary).
The episode started with a phone call from Mary. "One of your guys dropped a pail of acrylic and ruined my new sign," she said. When I arrived on site, I was startled to discover that the "guy" was Lester, the crew chief. He is a 20-year-plus veteran that never drops a bucket of anything. And on that day, he had not dropped a pail, as I found out.
In his long experience, Lester had learned that certain bucket handle designs are not as secure as other styles. With these undesirable bucket designs, the aluminum handle slips out of the pail slot and the bucket falls away leaving the empty handle in the worker's grasp. The acrylic pails for this job had these less secure handles. Over the years, on those rare instances when he had to use these cheap pails, he would pour over half of the acrylic into another before climbing onto the roof. Still, on this occasion the handle failed
When I talked with the acrylic manufacturer, a wrinkle occurred in the blame game. Apparently when the manufacturer ordered a certain quantity level of plastic pails from its outside source, an office-type individual at the pail supplier company programmed the shipment of the less desirable handled buckets because of the way the buckets are packaged for shipment. So the fault began with the packaging practice of the pail manufacturer.
What started out as carelessness of a crew member changed to an off-site pencil pusher's decision, once step removed from the acrylic manufacturer. At this point, I began to suspect the influence of that Hessein ghost from this real haunted place. We had encountered a ghost before on a rural homestead project, but that ghost had a sense of humor. That homestead ghost just placed green plastic frogs on the hatch steps while the crew was working. The crew was so spooked, the job was finished in record time. However, this Mount Holly ghostly visit was more sinister.
As the photos show, Mary's new sign was damaged. With the cooperation of the sign designer, repairs were done; spilt acrylic cleaned up and stairs painted by yours truly. Happy Ending and now for the lessons learned.
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In my career, customers teach me basic truisms, even in a real haunted place
like the Budd House. In this case, the lessons learned
and translated into this ghost story are..
1.
When things go wrong, ask questions. The first conclusion may be premature.
2.
When things go wrong, work with the customer to fix her/his concerns.
3.
When things go wrong, say only nice things around any local ghost; even if you do not believe in ghosts-why chance it.
Real Haunted Place..or not: Whitesbog Village, NJ