Strange Saga

In telling the story of Timothy Green Beckley, one wonders where to begin. There has been so much water under so many bridges that time is hard to grasp and truly lay hold on. But we can at least approach the telling of Beckley's personal odyssey by beginning at The beginning, when he was a child growing up in New Jersey.

Excerpt:

"I don't know how many people know this," Beckley began, "but the house I grew up in in New Jersey was 'possessed' or 'haunted.' There were all sorts of poltergeist-type manifestations. We had lights going on and off and we had doors opening and closing.

"I remember one time," he continued, "being seated at the kitchen table with my parents and there was a nice-size plate, chinaware, that just kind of scooted across the tabletop and dropped onto the floor but didn't break."

There were further events around the Beckley home that made it difficult for Beckley to sleep the peaceful sleep of childhood.

"When you're that age," he said, "certainly talk of ghosts and spooks will send a chill up your spine."

There was another incident that Beckley witnessed while with his mother, who was herself interested in the paranormal and had read some of the literature available at that time, the mid to late 1950s.

"She was interested in all these things," Beckley said, "and maybe even brought on a little of the phenomenon. One time, in the middle of the night, she woke me up and told me to listen and see if I could hear anything. I can recall hewing the sound of a baby crying somewhere, but it didn't seem to be coming from inside the house, but from outdoors somewhere."

Beckley and his mother followed the sound to the backdoor. It was midwinter, and there was snow on the ground.

"We opened the door and there were what appeared to be baby footprints or booty prints in the snow. My mother followed them out to the gate and she said that they just disappeared."

There was also a later incident, this time involving Beckley' s godmother, who was a devout Catholic with little or no belief in the paranormal.

"She had the fright of her life," Beckley said. "She described this to me later, about how she had been [visiting there] one night and heard this sound of the baby ciying. She opened the door that led from our apartment to the apartment upstairs, and she said there was a woman standing there with a baby in her arms, trying to get the baby to stop crying. She knew it wasn't 'real.' There was nobody like that living there." Beckley explained further that the woman his godmother saw was dressed in clothes from a much earlier period in history. His godmother crossed herself and closed the door. When she summoned up the courage to take another look, there was nobody there.

"Later on, we did find out that apparently back about 1910, 1912, during one of the big epidemics, someone had died in the house and their child had died at the same time or shortly thereafter. They had a wake with an open coffin with the baby in the woman's arms. Perhaps this was what was responsible for spooking me out."

Sean Casteel