How to Build a Haunted House
Ihave never slept in a haunted house. Or so I think.
One day, while researching my first book, Occult America, I made an impromptu road trip to central New York to visit some hot spots of 19th-century Spiritualism, the practice of séances and talking to the dead.
It was a darkening November evening, and I needed somewhere to stay. I checked into a historic inn on Main Street in Penn Yan, New York, which, along with neighboring Jerusalem, was hometown to an influential, late-18th-century spirit medium named Jemima Wilkinson, or, as she called herself, the Publick Universal Friend.
After dropping off my bags, I strolled down Main Street for a bite to eat and to find locals with whom to swap Universal Friend stories. When I returned to my room after 9 p.m., a computer adapter that I knew I had plugged into the wall socket was now out and on the floor. For the first time, I also noticed a strange door in my room. I creaked it open to discover an unlit, catacomb-like stone staircase. I’m not making this up. I swear.
With only the luminescence of a small flashlight on my keychain, I crept up the stairs, Scooby-Doo style. The stairs led to an empty, pitch-dark stone-walled chamber, where I felt strange breezes. I got scared shitless and descended back to my room, wishing the door could be locked behind me. It couldn’t
