Family Shares Local Home with Ghosts

When Nancy Glasgow’s son, Michael, was little he used to drive her crazy by yanking the switches off the family’s three-way lamps.

Nancy got into the habit of leaving the switches to “on” and unscrewing the bulb just enough to turn it off when she didn’t want the light. And vice versa: When she wanted to turn the lamp on, she screwed in the bulb just enough and, voila!

She did this for years, she said. So it was strange when, one night when she was alone unpacking at the family’s new home on Creek Road, the lights kept going on and off. She’d leave a room, the light on, the bulb screwed in, and when she returned it would be out. Or she’d unscrew a bulb to turn the lamp off, and when she returned it would be on, with the bulb screwed in all the way.

“I never do that,” Nancy said. “And it happened several times that night, in several different rooms.”

Initially, she thought she might be mistaken, but it didn’t take her long to figure out what was really happening.

“I pretty much knew right away that something paranormal was going on, cause there wasn’t any other explanation,” she said. 


Spirits make themselves at home 

The seemingly supernatural activity wasn’t confined to the mischief with the lights, which happened relatively frequently, according to Nancy. 

Toiletries would fall on her head in the shower, from perches where it would be highly unlikely for them to fall accidentally. Occasionally she’d get a “creepy” feeling in the house, like something else was there.

Other members of the family experienced the haunting as well, she said. Her 2-year-old daughter often talked about a young boy she saw around the house. 

“I was folding laundry in my room and she was in the bedroom with me,” Nancy remembered, “and she had turned around to look toward the door and she very quickly looked back again. Like a double take. I said, ‘What was that about?’ She said, ‘I saw a little boy. But he’s gone now.’”

A friend who came to visit told Nancy she “sensed something” in the front parlor of the house—the same room where the light bulbs were screwy. 

Her husband, a retired Navy F-14 pilot, never experienced any of this (not that he told her about anyway), but he believed her 100 percent, she said. “He just wasn’t enthusiastic about it. I think he’s more scared.”

But Nancy said the ghostly encounters she had, with the exception of that occasional “creepy” feeling, were of a mostly positive, harmless nature.

Michael, however, had a less-than-pleasant run-in with one of the specters in his bedroom in the middle of the night.

“He said he woke up … and he was scared to death. There was a very large man in a dark coat standing over his bed. He was menacing,” Nancy said. “He didn’t have a vibe from this thing that it was a fun, happy thing.”

The paranormal activity never really bothered Nancy—she’s not easily frightened—but seeing her son’s reaction to the man in the coat “gave me a little pause.”

Fortunately, the menacing ghost did not return and Michael, now in his 20s, insists he was never afraid.

“He denied it to me this weekend,” said Nancy.


‘I thought it was fun’

An etching in the rafters in the attic indicate the home was built in 1791, but Nancy was never able to discover the full history of the two-story Colonial. 

She heard plenty of stories. One of the more likely tales, Nancy said, is the home was the old tollhouse for the Rancocas Creek crossing. 

Julie Maravich, board member with the , said the house on Creek Road is known as the Heaton house, but was unable to track down any more information.

Nancy said the previous owner indicated they had also experienced unusual activity in the home. After Nancy recounted one of her ghost stories, the person replied, “‘Oh, you too?,’” but declined to elaborate further.

Another person who resided there however, said they hadn’t had any supernatural encounters.

Moorestown is known to have quite a large (and active) spirit population, according to Maravich, who organizes the  every year around Halloween. Children tend to be particularly susceptible to the spectral world, she said.

And then there are those like Nancy, who are just OK with it. 

“I think that it’s probably a combination of observational skills and maybe (the ghosts) are more inclined to feel comfortable showing themselves to someone who’s comfortable with it,” she said. “I thought it was fun.”