Writing and photos by Wes Cipolla
Originally published in the Pottsville Republican-Herald on November 2, 2021.
JIM THORPE - On Halloween, the autumn chill has a lovely bite, and a welcoming smell fills the night air. It is a day with its own special enchantment. Sunday, Halloween, was the last day of the Reading, Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad’s Fall Foliage Train Excursions from Port Clinton to Jim Thorpe.
Passengers wait to board the October 31 train from Port Clinton to Jim Thorpe.
I was looking for something fun to do on Halloween, and I realized that - horror of horrors - I had never been to Jim Thorpe in my life (maybe once when I was a baby, but that doesn’t count). I was determined to make this the spookiest visit imaginable.
On the train, a cheery disembodied voice explained that the last barge of coal that sailed out of Port Clinton was the Merry Rose, which took coal to the Hamburg sanitarium in 1939. The ghost-white smoke from the locomotive hung in the air. Outside the window were the ruins of autumn, illuminated in the shrouded morning sunlight; fluffy tufts of green and yellow in the mountains, an orange carpet on the ground and gnarled tree trunks that curled like witches’ fingers in the coal-colored Little Schuylkill River.
The train made its way through coal patches, cornfields that looked like the carapaces of long-dead insects, an abandoned pumpkin patch and a solitary church.
We rode through little old towns with little old houses that had little old jack-o’-lanterns on the front - all three in various states of rot. We were practically suspended in midair over the Hometown High Bridge and its dam, at a dizzying height and surrounded by the mountains and their explosions of color.
“Feel free to take all the dam pictures you want!” The disembodied voice said.
That pun was truly chilling.
The view from the Hometown High Bridge.
Disembarking at Jim Thorpe, I was immediately stunned by the town’s preserved architectural beauty. It was as though the mountains had protected its august Victorian buildings, had cradled them.
Broadway, the town’s main drag, was filled with tourists and costumed trick-or-treaters who stopped in local businesses like Antiques on Broadway, which sold autographed photos of Mel Torme and Johnny Weissmuller, and a non-autographed FBI wanted poster of an international terrorist.
Scenes of Halloween on the historic streets of Jim Thorpe.
The spookiest store on the street was the Emporium of Curious Goods, which sold all manner of mystical items associated with witchcraft and the paranormal.
“Have you seen our cat?” One sign in the store read. “If you think you have, your eyes might be psychic - THE CAT IS A GHOST!”
The store’s owners were lifelong friends with the late Ed and Lorraine Warren, two of the most famous ghost hunters in America. Their books were for sale - get them soon, the advertisement warned, because their authors’ deaths would make them hard to find.
Of course, the ghastliest location in Jim Thorpe is the Old Jail, where several of the Molly Maguires were executed and home of the infamous ghostly handprint of Alexander Campbell. Campbell was one of the men hanged on the “Day of the Rope” for his alleged affiliation with the Mollies. According to local lore, he put his hand on the wall and proclaimed that his handprint would last forever as an eternal sign of his innocence. The handprint remains, and has spawned ghost tours and a copious amount of merchandise (including sweatpants with Campbell’s handprint on one buttock and the words “not guilty” )
The Old Jail was festooned with Halloween decorations, which makes one wonder why a jail with real ghosts would need styrofoam tombstones and plastic skeletons advertising the fact. Inside the jail was a man dressed as Santa Claus, yet proof that Christmas comes earlier every year.
All of this pales in comparison to the experience of touring the mansion of Asa Packer, business tycoon and founder of Lehigh University. The mansion of Asa’s Harry is next door, and while it is renowned for inspiring Disney World’s Haunted Mansion ride, only Asa’s is open to the public for tours.
The Harry Packer Mansion.
If there ever was a house that looked haunted, the Asa Packer Mansion is it. It is ominously perched on the hillside and hidden by trees. Each and every one of the Mansion’s 14,000 square feet is ensconced with gargoyles, paintings, statues, animal carvings, floral wallpaper and other filigree. In Asa’s study was an unusual 50th wedding anniversary present for him and his wife Sarah. It was a terra cotta model of his domain, with miniatures of his coal mine, his railroad and his mansion, allowing Asa to look down on his domain.
The Asa Packer Mansion.
The Mansion, with its copies of Renaissance paintings and ceilings painted to resemble wallpaper, is a place of illusions and innuendo. Even the butler was a status symbol, a piece to be brought out before guests so the Packers could prove their wealth without resorting to bragging.
“When you’ve made your first million dollars,” said tour guide Carolyn Izzo, “you go to Italy and buy this.”
The blood-red German stained glass windows on the mansion’s stairway were made of gold leaf. The more gold leaf, the deeper the red. There is no Tiffany stained glass in the mansion, because Tiffany designed stained glass for Lafayette College.
The view from Asa Packer’s porch.
Despite having every Halloween cliche in the book - winding dimly-lit corridors, creaking floorboards, severe-looking paintings of Asa and Sarah whose eyes follow you across the room - but Izzo has never heard any stories of ghosts in the Mansion.
Life in the Asa Packer Mansion was all about appearances, including the appearance of being haunted. Perhaps that is because of the relative tranquility of Asa’s life - by all accounts he was a kind, generous and God-fearing man. Twice a year, on Christmas and Easter, he would give his servants a $500 bonus.
“I’m still waitin’ on my first one,” Izzo said. “Asa don’t listen to me.”
Tour guide Carolyn Izzo outside the Mansion.
Was I disappointed? Maybe. But I also learned that instead of toilet paper, the Packers used torn pages from a Sears catalog (the catalog had a place of honor in their bathroom). Sometimes the truth is scarier than any ghost story.
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