Tinkling bells and strange orbs fascinate ghost hunters at this historic Middletown home

MIDDLETOWN - Six hand-sized bells hang from a wall in the Taylor-Butler House, a 171-year-old mansion built by descendants of a prominent Revolutionary War villain.

At one time, the bells allowed members of the Taylor family to get the attention of their servants from anywhere in the 16-room mansion. Its system of wires has long been disconnected, but the bells and some of the cranks that triggered them remain — a vestige of a bygone era.

Or maybe not.

Last month, paranormal investigators who spent an evening at the Taylor-Butler House heard the ding of a bell multiple times.

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“It was creepy. The bells freaked me out,” said Monmouth County Historical Association staff member Sydney Fernandez, who accompanied the investigators. “It was so clear that this could not be anything else but a bell.”

The incident was recorded, albeit faintly, as part of the hour-long video produced by The Graveyard Shift, a Red Bank-based paranormal team. It’s available on YouTube.

“We definitely left with more questions than answers," said Katie Gill of The Graveyard Shift, “but it was cool to be among the first people to investigate this place.”

Regardless of how you feel about the paranormal, there is undeniable public interest in the subject — and thus opportunities for historians to parlay that into visitors and even financial support.

The Taylor-Butler House is an amazing building — fully original, immaculately upkept and dripping with old-world character and craftsmanship. Now its doors finally are open to paranormal groups; two investigations have taken place already this year, and a third is imminent.

Bernadette Rogoff is director of collections at the Monmouth County Historical Association, which owns the Taylor-Butler House. Although she personally has not experienced any spooky activity there, her eyes were opened to the possibility of fusing history and ghosts after hearing a fellow curator speak at a convention.

“It doesn’t matter how you get them through the door,” Rogoff said, recalling the advice. “Once they come in, they’re yours, and then you can teach them the history.”

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Infamous ancestor, pristine mansion

The Taylor-Butler House was built in 1853 by descendants of Edward Taylor, a prominent loyalist to the British during the American Revolution whom some historians suspect was behind the infamous murder of influential Middletown patriot Joseph Murray.

Taylor spent most of the war under house arrest in Marlpit Hall, which sits adjacent to the Taylor-Butler House.

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“Edward basically was a spy for the British,” Rogoff said. “So he’s lucky that he escaped the war with his life.”

The Butler family purchased the home in the 1950s and lived there until 1990s, when the Monmouth County Historical Association bought it for $630,000 with help from a grant from New Jersey Green Acres. Relative to other historic homes, it’s in pristine condition.

“The woodwork is first rate,” Rogoff said. “It’s probably the finest surviving Italianate house in the county.”

In October 2022 the association began offering ghost tours at one of its other historic homes, Shrewsbury’s Allen House — which was the site of a Revolutionary War massacre in 1779. The tours sold out easily in 2022 and 2023.

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“I have never seen people more interested and more attentive than the people who attended the Allen House ghost tours,” Rogoff said.

With Allen House undergoing a massive restoration project now, the ghost tours will shift to Taylor-Butler in the fall of 2024.

“So many people are interested in history, but everybody comes at history differently,” Rogoff said. “I’m all for anything that gets people over the threshold and generates some revenue for the historical association.”

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Like any good historian, Rogoff wants to get the story straight before those tours take place — hence the parade of investigations taking place this winter.

“Having paranormal groups here is helping us develop a story line — how we want to interpret that for visitors,” she said.

There was no shortage of offers to help.

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'You have a gold mine here'

The first investigation was led by Ghosts on the Coast, a local group whose video posted to YouTube Thursday. One of its investigators, Patty Bickauskas, is on the board of the Atlantic Highlands Historical Society and has done extensive paranormal research at the Strauss Mansion Museum in that borough.

Strauss looks like a haunted house out of Hollywood, whereas “Taylor-Butler is absolutely gorgeous,” Bickauskas said. “Big and grand, high ceilings, big staircase, marble fireplaces in every room.”

Bickauskas said ghost groups booked Strauss “almost every Saturday last year,” a point she made to the Monmouth County Historical Association.

“You have a gold mine here,” Bickauskas said. “Paranormal groups are champing at the bit to come into these places.”

Ghosts on the Coast’s investigation detected moderate paranormal activity, she said.

“There are some strange orbs that don’t look like dust — could be something,” Bickauskas said. An electromagnetic tripwire recorded “higher readings of energy” in the front rooms of the house.

Scott Davis, a Middletown resident and Bayshore-area police officer who moonlights as a paranormal investigator, is next up to inspect Taylor-Butler. He recently did a preliminary walkthrough to get a feel for the place.

“There are things that have happened inside the walls of that house that I don’t believe the general public knows about,” Davis said. “There were a lot of women behind the scenes influencing the men who influenced the decisions in their time. Everywhere I turned in that house there was another female spirit who seemed to have the ear of somebody, and I thought that was interesting because that’s not what we’re taught about.”

He also admired the house’s fine condition. That matters.

“It means that we don’t have to worry about things like the wind blowing through the windows,” he explained. “It’s such a sturdy house; even with me being a big guy walking through there, the house wasn’t creaking, the floorboards weren’t shifting. Everything was so well built, it should be easy for us to get clean electronic evidence.”

Sometime next month Davis will return with a fully equipped team to gather as much of that as possible.

“Most important for me is we’re going to make sure the historical stuff that we know about correlates with the paranormal activity that is reported,” he said.

In the end, that’s the idea: fusing history and mystery, even if it’s as simple as a ringing bell.

Jerry Carino is community columnist for the Asbury Park Press, focusing on the Jersey Shore’s interesting people, inspiring stories and pressing issues. Contact him at jcarino@gannettnj.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Taylor-Butler House in Middletown investigated for ghosts