Ghosts of the Christmas City
Bethlehem, PA: Known for Its Holiday Events, Not Its Phantoms
Nov 20, 2008
Founded by Moravians on Christmas Eve 1741, Bethlehem is the Christmas City. It’s known for tours and other events during Yuletide. There were walking ghost tours in the historic district the Bethlehem Tourism Authority, featuring these spirits, held in October 1998 and 1999. It was abolished in 2000, according to local newspapers, due to the desires of the then mayor.
Ghosts: Bethlehem of Pennsylvania
Due to requests for confidentiality, some names and exact locations aren’t provided.
- Brethren House: Used as a hospital during the Revolutionary War is home to the ghost of a contemporary nurse.
- Sun Inn: According to legend, there’s a room in a tunnel near the inn’s entrance. Moravians built tunnels in case of hostile AmerIndian attacks. According to legend, Brother Albrecht hid records and valuables in the room. His ghost guards it. Cold spots, breezes and feeling a presence.
- Hotel Bethlehem: Please refer to Haunted Historic Hotel Bethlehem
- Donegal Square: Building is on the site of the house where Lafayette stayed, recovering from battle wounds. According to legend, his caretaker’s daughter fell in love with him and was heartbroken when he returned to France. Poltergeist activity includes faucets turning on by themselves.
- Former Visitors’ Center: When this was a nightclub, The Colonnade, a woman was murdered. Case, unsolved. Poltergeist activity, a misty form sighted and people sensing an unseen presence.
- Hanoverville Roadhouse: Historic restaurant has poltergeist activity.
- Historic High Street First Floor Apartment: A resident had ghostly encounters. Before each incident, the room became chilled; she felt uneasy. Apparitions, something creeping up on her bed and strange moaning sounds.
- Historic Market Street Apartment: Poltergeist activity included objects disappearing, then reappearing, sounds of phantom rodent’s claws heard in ceilings, louvered closet doors damaged when no one was home, whimpering heard in the “coopy hole,” and feeling something watched them through a bedroom’s transom.
- Modern Main Street Residence: People felt something watching them in the playroom. A child was alone in the playroom when he saw a “monster.” One night, when he was in bed by the window, he saw something white and filmy flap in and out through the screen.
- Bethlehem Home: Third floor lights turned on by themselves, phantom footsteps on the stairs, heard, something played with toddler’s toys and the cat was afraid of the vestibule. When a homeowner opened a closet door to a closet, she was stunned. There was a white-washed painting of an evergreen tree on the left wall that wasn’t there the day before. A man’s presence was sensed. Poltergeist, apparitions and a haunting.
- West Broad Street Apartment: Poltergeist activity the tenant’s cat reacted to. Objects disappeared, to be found in strange places, water appeared in places where no overhead plumbing existed, plastic bags’ handles swayed when there was no breeze, paw-steps, felt on the bed that weren’t Dusky Greycoat’s and phantom piano music heard.
- Beverly Avenue Apartment: Tenants sensed something, dressed in hooded Monk’s robe, scythe on shoulder, not the Grim Reaper, stalking the hall, paranormal knocking on front door and battery-less fire detector sounding when they watched The Omen: Part III. One night, the woman was awakened by something unseen, wrestling with her. The next morning, she noticed an inexplicable half-dollar sized bruise on the inside of her left upper arm.
A Charming Legend
John Gottlieb Ernestus Heckewelder, best known for his missionary work with Native Americans, lived on Bethlehem’s Cedar Street, renamed Heckewelder Place in his honor.
People began avoiding taking livestock to graze by the Lehigh River. They saw the ghost of a woman who drowned herself in the Lehigh. Heckewelder confronted ghost. He demanded to know why she was scaring his people. When she lived in the Old Country, her husband was cruel, so she drowned their baby to free him from abuse, then fled to Bethlehem. She killed herself out of remorse. She was doomed to remain earthbound until it was her time to die. When Heckewelder told the townspeople, they no longer feared her. When her time came, no one noticed her absence.
Related articles:
Investigation: A “Haunting” in Historic Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
My First Paranormal Investigation and Ghost Tours
Sources:
http://www.hotelbethlehem.com/haunted.htm
Sketches of Early Bethlehem, Richmond F. Meyers, (The Moravian College Alumni Association, 1981)
