Ghost Stories of the Southern Tier Part 5

Why are Haunting's so Different?

According to paranormalhaze.com, each individual person is unique in personality, experience, and countless other factors. Therefore, the imprint of a deceased human (their spirit or ghost) retains these specialized factors if they are unable to move on after death. These unique characteristics mean that each story attached to each ghost and thereby haunting locale is different. Many different factors exist to explain how a place becomes haunted because of the natural ability of humans to vary from each other on numerous levels. Do not expect each haunted location to be haunted for the same reasons since they are all haunted by different spirits and therefore different people with their own stories to tell the living.

Roberson Museum
Even a place dedicated to natural science can't scare away supernatural visitors on Front Street in Binghamton. The Roberson Museum, (above) was built in 1907 for Alonzo Roberson, Jr., who lived there with his wife until his death in 1934. This Italian Renaissance Revival mansion is absolutely beautiful, and hosts activities of all kinds. It's home to the Christmas tree forest every year, among those activities. In a page on haunted houses from this old house.com, But Museum curator, Eve Daniels, says there have been several unexplained activities there as well,  including one in the summer of 2008 in which security cameras showed disembodied legs walking across the floor. Daniels has also heard children's voices coming from one of the fireplaces. Incidents like these are the focus of tours that take place throughout the month of October.

Some people believe that the ghost of Alonzo Roberson, Jr, haunts the elevator and halls of his home.  As discussed in an early writing in this five part series, it's said that ghosts are fascinated with mechanical things such as elevators, and reportedly will play with those elevators from time to time.

The site originally opened to the public in 1954. Since then, visitors to the Mansion have reported the sensation that they are not alone or that they are being watched. Strange noises and cold spots are reported as well as mysterious footsteps where no living person is seen walking. Doors reportedly slam when people are being too nosy. Perhaps most interestingly, some visitors have reportedly met the apparition of Alonzo Jr,  himself in the elevator. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

Binghamton Inebriate Asylum 

The Binghamton Inebriate Asylum was started in June 1858 as the first treatment center in the United States that treated alcoholism as a mental disorder. In 1858, Isaac Perry came to the area design the multiple floored building, with wings for the patient rooms that looks like a castle.

The building sits on 200 acres on a hill overlooking the city of Binghamton, New York.There were many firsts at the Binghamton State Hospital, including electrical shock treatments which began in 1942, the first pre-frontal lobotomy in 1946 and finally in 1955 medications to help in the treatment of mental health diseases. In 1974 the hospital is renamed the Binghamton Psychiatric Center. It was also abandoned when a section of the west wall failed. The building has been closed up since 1993.
Like many old asylums and buildings around the United States, this one is also haunted. The Paranormal & Ghosts Society did an investigation of the Binghamton Inebriate Asylum in 2003.

Here's one amazing story......

In Dec. Of 1993 I was 13 years old. It was over winter break and I went to work with my dad (he was a ''linemen'' he worked for the phone company) we were there to install new cables for the internet (in the new building)....
We didn't just work in the building... We worked under it in the steam tunnels! My first day there I knew we were in for it. To access the steam tunnels we had to enter down a man hole in the south yard from the new building when we pulled the steal manhole cover off you would swear we just released demons and spirits from hell.
There was horrid ''screaming'' with the burst of hot air that shot out of the steam tunnel into the frigged December air. By the time I covered my ears the screaming had stopped and all was calm... A little to calm.

We climbed down the shaft about 30 or 40 feet to the floor of the tunnel it was so hot we stripped off our overalls and began to install the new lines. After about 3 hours of work we came to a ''crawl space'' that was made of very old brick the crawl space was about 3'x4' with an arched ceiling and was about 10' long.
My father shined his flashlight in the dark and said ''the blueprints say this is the way we go ... So this is the way we go. '' he went through first and then I followed right behind. As I was about 2' into the crawl space I heard laughter behind me like 2 little girls and then the old bricks on the ceiling started to give way as I was about halfway through.
My father grabbed me and pulled me through as the crawlspace collapsed behind me. We were in total darkness other than the dim light from my fathers flashlight that shined through the dust from the collapse.

We were now in an old section of the steam tunnels from the 1800's. After walking a while in the pitch dark we found a metal ladder that went up through a shaft and out a manhole into the east yard behind the old castle...
On the other side of the old castle just south of the new brick psych building is where we started. Do not go in the tunnels!

NOW MY PERSONAL STORY
I worked at the Binghamton Psychiatric Center for over two years beginning in 1976. I was part of the YOP (Youth Opportunity Program) which helped kids like myself, get a job on "The Hill," as it's known to those that worked there.

Anyway, my first day I was placed on the security ward in the Broadmore building on the farthest side of the campus. It was an eerily spooky looking structure, with the aging metal fire escapes and chain link fence surrounding it's porches. I was 16 years old at the time, and clearly outta my element. That would soon change.

At one time, the "State Hospital," as it was once called, had it's own farm, cobblers shop, carpentry and electricians shops and more. It was pretty much self sufficient. Back in the day, the patients, as I was told, used to go out and work the farm. It was a means of keeping them busy in the days before medication was widely used to control their outlandish behavior. It used to tire them out and make them easier to work with.  These patients lived and died, on "The Hill."

I heard tales from the "veterans" who worked there of strange happenings. Seclusion doors banging by themselves in the middle of the night. Strange noises coming from empty rooms. I knew that it was just a way to scare the young lad that I was.... or was it?

As I became more callous to the goings on around me, I began to listen to the building that I was working in every day. A building that housed people who have committed all kinds of horrific crimes against humanity. Murders, rapes, arson's, molestations.... A building in which the mentally disturbed, lived... and died in. A building that was alive, with the dead.

During the day the wards at the Binghamton Psych Center were alive with activity. But, during the evening shift, when the patients were in bed, Broadmore began speaking to not only me, but to the people I worked with. I heard those seclusion doors banging in the middle of the night, but upon investigating their was no one there. And all beds were accounted for. There was also a high pitched whining from time to time. Was that from the steam pipes, or from the troubled souls that remain locked in that building forever?

At first, I was scared in regard to all the "happenings" I witnessed, and heard about on 'The Hill.' But after awhile, you learn to live with the ghosts, and they learn to live with you.

Haunted House

There's a house upon the hilltop, we will not go inside,
For that is where the witches live, Where ghosts and goblins hide.

Tonight they have their party, All the lights are burning bright,
But oh we will not go inside,The haunted house tonight.

The demons there are whirling,and the spirits swirl about.
They sing their songs to Halloween."Come join the fun," they shout.

But we do not want to go there, so we run with all our might
And oh we will not go inside, The haunted house tonight.......(HAPPY HALLOWEEN)