If you’re looking for a truly spooky experience, put White Hill Mansion, in Fieldsboro NJ, at the top of your list. Bring your bravery and your best ghosthunting gear. You may just be in for an unforgettable night. Who knows what you’ll find when you step inside these eerie walls?
White Hill is an historic mansion with ties to the Revolutionary War, 19th century inventors and the Mob. It comes complete with secret tunnels and rumors dead gangsters. ghost-hunting shows such as Kindred Spirits, Ghost Hunters and Paranormal Lockdown (three of my favorite paranormal series) have featured the pre-Revolutionary War mansion. In fact, the Friends of White Hill Mansion, which works to preserve this historic house, leverages the paranormal interest to raise funds to help preserve it.
A surly man in a striped suit, believed to be a Prohibition-era mobster, a little boy and a woman in the attic are among the purported hauntings.
A Little White Hill Mansion History
Robert Field built the mansion in 1723; his son and grandson later expanded it. Robert Field II, with his wife Mary, enlarged White Hill Mansion in 1760. They had seven children, although only three lived until adulthood. Field II was active in colonial politics and served on the Committee of Correspondence of New Jersey 1774. He mysteriously drowned in the Delaware River one cold winter morning in January 1775.
With three children and a war for independence from our colonial overlords raging around her, Mary survived by appearing to be apolitical. During the war, the Navy visited her home, but then her neighbor reported her to the Brits as a colonial sympathizer. The British searched her home as a result of the report, and then the Hessians made it their headquarters. It must have been a scary time for her. However, in 1779, Mary married Commodore Thomas Read, who died at the mansion in 1788. Eventually, the town then known as White Hill changed its name to Fieldsboro, in honor of the Fields. Mary’s sons inherited the mansion, but by the 1830s, other families owned it.
Get Haunted, a paranormal event company, led a 6-hour ghost hunt, which we joined last April. During the hunt, we explored all four levels of the mansion, from the secret rooms in the attic where prostitutes once lurked to the speakeasy bar in the basement. With creaking floors, plaster cracking from the walls, dust and dirt everywhere, it’s not hard to imagine this place has the haunts.
During the ghost hunt we used all the typical tools: recorders to capture electronic voice phenomena, dowsing rods, spirit boxes and more. The Get Haunted guides try to get the entities to repeat “peanut butter.” Sure enough, during the hunt, we captured a mumbled “peanut butter.” (They do this because peanut butter is distinctive and unlikely to be spoken in typical conversation, at least during a ghost hunt.) The dowsing rods danced, in the basement and the attic. In the front parlor, I caught an image on my SLS camera (that identifies entities, depicting them as stick figures). That entity looked awfully like a kid.
One of my favorite movie lines is “And we who walk here… walk alone,” solemnly intoned by Eleanor in The Haunted, AFTER she’s died. In this haunted mansion, however, you can be sure you’ll never quite walk alone. With centuries of eerie tales and the unknown lurking around each corner, you’re likely to have an unforgettable (and potentially spooky) experience.
Know Before You Go
Several paranormal event groups offer tours of White Hill Mansion. Get Haunted offers a good ghost hunt, during which you can experiment with their equipment in the most likely paranormal hot-spots. The Friends of White Hill Mansion also sponsor their own ghosthunts.
Getting there: 217 W Burlington St, Fieldsboro, NJ
Hours: Check out the websites below for ghost hunts dates and times.
Website: Friends of the mansion ghost hunts; Get Haunted
Can’t get enough ghost hunts? Check out the ghost hunts and paranormal investigations we’ve participated in!
