Charles J. Adams III tells a spooky story at the Schuylkill County Historical Society.
Writing and photos by Wes Cipolla
Originally published in the Pottsville Republican-Herald on October 31, 2021.
POTTSVILLE - Charles J. Adams III sees history as a brightly lit boulevard. Off the boulevard is the dimly-lit street of folklore, which leads to the dark alley of legend. Finally, there is the abandoned dirt road known as the ghost story.
Adams, a trustee of the Berks County Historical Society, has written dozens of volumes compiling macabre tales of ghosts (or “Schpooks” in his native Pennsylvania Dutch), shipwrecks and other frights from Pennsylvania and beyond. To him, they are the stories of “what lies beyond history,” stories for the “sensitive” people who can see what others cannot.
“I’m deep into history,” he said. “And I’m deep into mystery, and folklore, and how it all intertwines. I just can’t get Schuylkill County out of my mind. I love it up here.”
On a Wednesday night that was neither dark nor stormy, Adams regaled a crowd at the Schuylkill County Historical Society with ghost stories, his black cape billowing as he recounted each quaint and curious piece of lore.
“I’ve been on all the TV shows,” he told the crowd. “‘Ghost Adventures,’ Ghost Hunters,’ Ghost This and Ghost That. You come to the realization that it’s fake, it’s phony, it’s junk.”
He says that “Ghost Adventures” host Zak Bagans is “a heck of a nice guy” but a “showbiz type.”
Adams dropped his cane.
“Did you see that?” He said in amazement. “Fell right out of my hand! That’s the crap you see on TV.”
Adams believes that the trauma of past generations is what truly haunts a house. A friend of his called it “a voice coming from this place, but not this time.”
“That’s an apt way of describing it. No blood, no guts, no murder, no high in a windy hill. Just tragedy… If I die right now, I’m just a dead deer on the road. I’m a dead animal. I’m a carcass. What happened to the energy, what allowed me to talk?”
Adams started to believe in ghosts in 1967, when he was in the Navy and stationed on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean. One night on guard duty, he heard men screaming and hatches opening and closing, and smelled rancid oil. His chaplain told him that he wasn’t the first person to report such a thing, and that during World War II, 21 men were killed when a kamikaze pilot crashed into the aircraft carrier.
“To the sensitive, the sounds of those, the smells, are still being heard and felt,” he said.
Before his speech Adams was checking out the Schuylkill County Prison, rumored to be haunted by the Molly Maguires who were executed there. He was accosted by two guards, “big coal-crackin’ guys.” It turned out one of the guards had a prison ghost story of his own. Luckily, Adams wasn’t in his Victorian garb at the prison.
“I don’t live in a world of perpetual gloom,” he said. “I don’t dress like this all the time.”
Adams’ stories Wednesday night mostly focused on the Hawk Mountain area, which was part of Berks County when much of the region’s folklore was first introduced (“We owned you,” Adams said, “Get over it.”)
The ghost stories of Hawk Mountain largely originated with the first white settlers of the region. Violence between the white settlers and the native Lenape inspired much of the stories. Folklore became history, a way for the settlers to make sense of their place in the new country. Lenape attacks on white settlements were blamed on “His Sulphurous Majesty” (Satan) who would appear at a spot known as the Devil’s Retreat. The settlers connected the natives, thought of as superstitious due to their belief in sacred trees and creeks, with supernatural forces. Somewhere on what is now Route 895 was a place known to the settlers as “Ghost’s Walk” or “Spook Hollow,” a place of witchcraft and disappearances. Likely in Drehersville, Spook Hollow was a place where fairies and ghosts would gather, including men on horseback and girls in white.
Another legend tells of “the maiden,” the ghost of a Lenape woman, who would wander the woods every night in search of her lost love. Only one living man ever spoke to her, and his ghost now supposedly haunts the area, holding a floating lantern.
Adams revels in telling the ghastly story of Schaumboch’s Tavern in Kempton. Before it came under the ownership of Matthias Schaumboch, it was built by Jacob Gephardt, the sole survivor of a Lenape attack of his family. Jacob, no older than 10 at the time, watched his family burn alive inside the cabin.
“That is level one of what I call the imprint of energy that swirls there,” Adams said. “But you wouldn’t come to hear a guy talk about ‘Energy Stories of Schuylkill County.’ But that’s what I believe was there - the energy of the poor souls.”
Weary travelers often stopped at Schaumboch’s Tavern, looking for food and a place to stay. 11 of them would never leave. Schaumboch was known for serving sausage to his customers. He had no cows or pigs on his property.
Adams didn’t want to get into the grisly details because a “young lady” was present - 12-year-old Briah Glowacki of Pottsville. Glowacki believes in ghosts and claims to have seen one in her grandmother’s house.
“It was, like, white,” she said.
Schaumboch was never convicted of murder but supposedly made a deathbed confession. He was buried on a beautiful Saturday morning, in an unmarked grave in Kempton’s New Bethel Church. According to local lore, the grave was struck by lightning right after it was dug.
Adams enjoys taking people on tours of the graveyard and seeing them get scared. He claims that once, he and a busload of tourists saw a glowing grey figure walk through the cemetery.
“I ain’t Disney,” he said. “I didn’t have a hologram. Half of me is thinking ‘Yes, this is the way it should be!’ Half of me is thinking ‘No, I’m scared!’”
Berks County realtor Phil Macaronis, who ran the bus tour, swears by the story. The morning after the sighting, Marconis got phone calls from tourists who were so scared they couldn’t sleep the previous night.
“I took them to a mass murderer’s grave and they paid money for it,” Adams said. “They saw what was probably energy, a ghost, and they complained about it!”
Adams’ favorite Hawk Mountain ghost story is one that was told to him personally by the man who witnessed it. It’s Adams’ favorite because, he says, “it can happen to anyone at any time.”
It is the story of a young couple who lived at the bottom of Hawk Mountain, in a big house at the end of a long dirt lane. The man worked in a factory and woke up before his wife. One morning, like any other, he kissed his sleeping wife goodbye and went to work. Driving down the long lane back home, he saw his wife on the front porch in a nightgown, waving at him. When he entered the house, she was nowhere to be seen. He found her dead body in bed. When he kissed her that morning, the warmth was still leaving her body.
“I looked him straight in the eyes and said ‘You’re not telling me this is all true,’” Adams remembered. “He broke down crying. That is a ghost story. Even more frightening and more impactful than the mass murder at Hawk Mountain.”
Adams had a request for the SCHS volunteers.
“Can the lights be turned down in the room?” He said. “Just for effect.”
He had a wild look in his eyes. His hands trembled as the lights dimmed.
“More, more, more, more, more, good! I could sense something when I came into this room. It’s gonna be very frightening, or an absolute dud. But there’s something in here, a very historical building, a lot of joy, a lot of tragedy that played out between these walls. It’s haunted.”
He asked us to focus our eyes, and our energy, on a silver coffee urn and teapot in the museum. The polished surface warped the room and our bodies in its reflection. Adams whispered incantations and wandered through the room.
“A few minutes ago I sensed something whirling towards you,” he said, pointing towards Cathy Satterwhite of St. Clair. She was beaming. Satterwhite, who wore bat-shaped earrings and a brooch shaped like the devil, believed in ghosts even though she has never seen one.
“I’m still waiting,” she said.
The room was quiet. Everyone was waiting. Was there a ghost in the room?
“BOO!”
Everyone jumped, and laughed in spite of themselves. Satterwhite screamed.
“It was all just a cheap parlor trick,” Adams said. “Shortest ghost story in the book - ‘boo.’”
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