OurStory

The first thing that came to my mind when I sat down to write
were the lyrics from the song 'Hey Jude'.

Sal and I moved to Napanoch to restore an 1700 stone
colonial. The homestead of Abraham Bevier , the first original
white settlers in our area. The historic home was in need of
serious restoration, Completely camouflaged by stucco, it had
disappeared from sight and mind and had been written off in
our local Historic Books as 'missing'.>

My husband, Salvatore, needed to get involved with the
community; started attending meetings at the 'Napanoch
Public Interest Group'. Doug Hart, an historian, activist and
president of the NPIG, immediately connected with Sal. At
that present time, if my memory serves me well, the NPIG was
working on reducing our town water bill.
A year later, The Shanley Hotel was a matter of concern to the
community. The building was for sale and the 'pending'
buyers wanted to renovate the Hotel into apartments units. By
a twist of a faith things did not work out. The Shanley's was
back on the open market.
Sal and I had many sleepless nights, the Hotel seemed to be
calling out our names.

Inadvertently, Sal and I would look at each other saying "are
we up for this?" After all. We just finished laboring over 6 yrs
restoring a 6,000 sq. ft. building and now this........
Another money pit! ( all 8,000 sq. ft. of it!) And at our age!
Well, to make a long story short........
we roused to the challenge.

The Haunts and fun begins.....

Right after the closing (and I'm not sure we had electric yet)
Diane (Dougs wife), Doug, Sal and I were sitting by candle
light on the second floor of the Hotel.
We were in 'awe' of it all, just imagining what life was back
than at the Shanley's and all of the sudden we heard loud
foot-steps coming up the main stair-way.   It just kept getting
louder and louder as it proceeded upwards. We thought
maybe it was a neighbor or the police checking out the
building, after all it has been deserted for many years, and
now they see candle light?. So we walked to the hall-way to
check out who was there..........NO ONE. Than Sal mentioned
he had locked the door .     ALL OF US had that same
expression on our faces
............ 'I T'S   H A U N T E D'.!!

Doug and Sal would be chatting on the front porch , seem to
notice that some passer-biers, upon approaching the Hotel
would walk on the other side of the street. Well the boys
( I mean Sal & Doug) had to investigate. I nick-named them
Lucy & Ethel. they were into everthing. They came across the
'secret room', and as you can see in the picture, it looked
pretty scary and someone had to go down first.......!

Doug started taking pictures and bought a motion camera.
That is where we found 'The Guardian, Victorian Women,
The Face' and much more...... We all were babe's in the
woods, and had little knowledge of the paranormal, than
Lucy (Doug) buys a recorder ...........
He was coming up with all these E.V.P's , I started looking
at Lucy strangely. We never heard of such things, and
thought Lucy needed to take time off of work or could use a
good vacation. But as everyone knows, anyone who has
visited the Shanley, goes home with tons of E.V.P;s .(Thank
God) for Lucy & Ethel,...... we were ready to sign them in)

WE researched the Hotel and found out James Shanley
was born on Halloween Day, thus started the
Halloween-Birthday Party Tradition.

The Spirits here, are quite friendly (except for Joe's ugly
disposition) and they want to see the Hotel succeed.
That is why we are all connected. They are still the 'good old
boys' and like to have fun. The ladies love to tease the guys,
especially Doug, always commenting on his clothing
(wearing his Tuesday shirt on Tuesday, and Wednesday
shirt on Wednesday) play practical jokes on everyone.
As in life you have bad times as well as the good and some of
the spirits want to conceal their secrets before they leave.

" Piece by piece" with strong discrimination they reveal
their heart- warming and chilling personal stories.
God Bless them!