New Goth Ball brings paranormal fun to Rockwood with mediums, '80s band & haunted trails

Ryan Cormier, Delaware News Journal
·4 min read

Hosting something spooky this time of year at Rockwood Park & Museum is like shooting fish in a barrel.

The Penny Hill estate and gardens filled with weeping willows is 170 years old with a mansion built in rural Gothic Revival style, giving off major "Dracula" vibes at night.

Over the years, the spot has begun hosting popular paranormal programs, haunted trails and theatrical ghost story tours.

Enigmatic Goth Ball to make its Rockwood debut

This year, Rockwood director Ryan Grover is borrowing an idea from his old job as curator of Biggs Museum of American Art in Dover and turning it on its head.

Instead of doing a stately gala that he and his co-workers hosted at Biggs, Rockwood is unveiling its first Goth Ball: A Night at Rockwood, a one-night deep dive into all that is eerie at merchant banker Joseph Shipley's retirement home built in 1854.

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"Apart from the fact that they're both meant to feature a museum and have a live band, there is nothing in common with the Biggs Gala and our Goth Ball," Grover says. "This will be much more dramatic, much more enigmatic and a little more playful."

Rockwood Park & Museum in Penny Hill will host a Goth Ball on Sept. 29, 2023, with live music, a medium, open bar and the opening of Rockwood's Haunted Trails and Oddities Tour of the garden and museum.
Rockwood Park & Museum in Penny Hill will host a Goth Ball on Sept. 29, 2023, with live music, a medium, open bar and the opening of Rockwood's Haunted Trails and Oddities Tour of the garden and museum.

The Sept. 29 Goth Ball runs for four hours starting at 7 p.m. with a full lineup of fun that would make Wednesday Addams break into a dance.

Haunted Trails & lamplight tours with 'The Revisionists'

The interior of Rockwood Mansion at Rockwood Park & Museum in Bellevue. It will host a Goth Ball on September 29 with live music, a medium, open bar and the opening of Rockwood's Haunted Trails and Oddities Tour of the garden and museum.
The interior of Rockwood Mansion at Rockwood Park & Museum in Bellevue. It will host a Goth Ball on September 29 with live music, a medium, open bar and the opening of Rockwood's Haunted Trails and Oddities Tour of the garden and museum.

It will be the first night for Rockwood's Haunted Trails, a free program that started last year and runs throughout October. You'll get a map and then you're off to roam the grounds on your own, an option that was popular with families last year, Grover says.

Goth Ball will also preview another event added last year: "The Revisionists: A Haunted Victorian Walk at Rockwood."

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The theatrical haunted walk through the grounds is led by a character known as a Revisionist, "a person that retains the innate ability to speak with the unliving, to hear what sent them, and at times help to reveal and rewrite their circumstances and untimely demise," organizers say.​

Rockwood Park & Museum in Penny Hill, anchored by Rockwood Mansion, an English country estate built in the mid-1850s in Rural Gothic style.
Rockwood Park & Museum in Penny Hill, anchored by Rockwood Mansion, an English country estate built in the mid-1850s in Rural Gothic style.

Led by lamplight, they tell stories and "protect event-goers from the apparitions that find their way back from the spirit world. Viewers will hear handwritten tales mixed with vignettes with ghosts from Rockwood's haunted past as the night unfolds," they say.

"The Revisionists" will be held Oct. 13, 14, 20, 21, 27 and 28 every half-hour from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Tickets are $30.

Live band with '80s new wave tunes, a medium & 'Oddities Tour'

Melt With You, a six-piece Pennsylvania-based '80s new wave/alternative rock cover band, will perform three sets at the ball inside the Carriage House. The band says ballgoers should expect a set including songs by everyone from The Psychedelic Furs, The Cure and The Clash to The Human League, Modern English and INXS.

During the second intermission, medium Kelly Kearney will go into the crowd and tell them about the psychic and paranormal activity that she has experienced during her times at Rockwood.

Also, the new Oddities Tour at Rockwood will be revealed for the first time in partnership with Arden's Oddporium gift shop.

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"We created ghostly, paranormal vignettes inside the museum that people will be able to interact with the whole month of October," Grover says. "We're playing with themes like apothecary, re-creating wakes that happened here when it was a private mansion and bringing out strange things in our collection ― items we don't usually know what to do with because they are so bizarre."

Throw in an open bar, appetizers, photos shoots with visitors and a silent auction and your Goth Ball experience will be complete.

It costs $100 to get in the door. Up to 200 people are expected and goth apparel is recommended, but not required.

As Grover promises, the whole thing will be "creepy AF."

Have a story idea? Contact Ryan Cormier of Delaware Online/The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier) and X (Twitter) (@ryancormier).

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Rockwood piles on its haunted offerings with new Goth Ball