A Ghost in the Forest
The Philadelphia Centennial Exposition celebrated 100 years of US Independence in 1876. Many of Sea Girt’s founders were instrumental in putting on the fair. Over 200 temporary buildings and massive halls were built to celebrate American ingenuity. Martin Maloney, who later spent some of his millions in Spring Lake, won the contract to light the fairgrounds with his gas lamp burners.
After the fair, Sea Girt Land Improvement Company President James Hunter purchased half of the Agricultural Hall, and half of the Public Comfort Building. The largest timbers were used to span the Wreck Pond Inlet, the rest to build hotels like the Tremont and the Lake House, rooming houses like the Beacon House, and to curb streets in Sea Girt and Spring Lake. Entire buildings like the New Hampshire and Missouri buildings would wind up as cottages in Villa Park.
In 1876 Albert Spalding started a sporting goods company. He manufactured the first official baseball, then standardized tennis balls, golf balls, and footballs. The first college track meet took place. The banana was introduced to America at the Philadelphia Exposition and was a hit. As the fad spread, tossed peels led to many slips. Alexander G. Bell conducted the first two-way telephone conversation. Shortly afterward, the Beach House and the Monmouth House communicated by stringing of a single wire along First Avenue, one of the first telephones in the area.
Rendering of Sea Girt’s beach house from the ocean. The Crescent and Morris’ Cedar Mer is the house to the right.
The Two luxury hotels competed for prominence. The Beach House in Sea Girt had the pedigree of being the former home of Commodore Stockton. Guests called it “Our House”. Spring Lake’s Monmouth House was the most modern and elegant beach hotel on the coast. The area between, what is now First Avenue was a cedar forest with a dirt road and a few scattered cottages like the Hughes house (Now Ridgewood House) built in 1873. Elliston Morris spent his first summer alone on the dunes with Elizabeth Canby Morris and their extended family from Germantown PA. They also enjoyed the deep woods of Crescent Park behind their home.
The woods along the Carriage way in 1880 Morris’ Avocado in the distance
If you walk through our remaining woods and you see a ghost, know that she has been wandering there a long time. This story appeared in a paper called the Atlantis in August 1886, referring to an 1876 ghost.
There were few structures other than the hotels in 1876. This one (the Ridgewood House) was 3 years old. Below is the house from a 1905 photo
Haunted
It is perhaps not generally known that in a grove of trees bordering the road leading from the Beach House to Spring Lake, there wanders a ghostly figure. This spirit, differing from the ordinary ghost, is not clad in the clinging white garments of the grave, but attired in a magnificent ball dress, while from her arms and neck the jewels sparkle and glitter.
The face and form is that of a beautiful girl, and ever and anon she throws up her arms with a gesture of despair and a moaning cry that pierces one's very soul. And the story runs thus:
About some ten years ago there came to the Beach House a wealthy widower accompanied by his only daughter, a beautiful girl of twenty years. She had traveled about, seen life in its many varied forms, had been courted, both for her beauty, and yet her heart remained untouched.
During her sojourn at this romantic spot, she met a young and talented banker, from New York. It was but a repetition that never grows tiresome to young and loving hearts. In a short time, they became engaged,— she little knowing the man to whom she had entrusted her life's happiness.
One fair moonlight night there was to be ‘a German’ at the Beach House; and Leonora with a light heart and merry smile was glancing over the pages of a letter she had just received when suddenly her face blanched and she reeled to one aide, but quickly recovered herself as she thought, ‘It is false” dashed across her mind.
Then turning to her fiancé with a light laugh, she said, “Reade, did you ever hear such nonsense? ” and together they passed out upon the porch. He hesitated a moment, then took the letter and read it to the very end.
“Well as I'm found out, we might as well end it here," he said with a cruel laugh.
“So it's true,” she murmured in a low, heartbroken voice.
“Yes, I might as well confess, I have been married five years, but my wife and I did not get along very well together we parted, and I thought I might as well amuse myself."
Just then the strains of one of Strauss’ entrancing waltzes reached their ears, and turning proudly away she left him to join the merry throng gathered in the office. It was said she never danced so well nor looked so proudly beautiful - and yet her heart was sad.. Through her mind ran this:
“Wild waltzes with a dying fall,
In every note,
A plaintive call,
Of passionate entreating pain,
Are woven with each mirthful strain."
After the dance was ended, the lights lowered, the flowers faded, and silence reigned over all, forth from her room she crept and with faltering steps wandered wildly through the woods, uttering a low, moaning cry until at last the restful waters of Wreck Pond, glistening in the moonlight, seemed to draw her with a curious fascination into their embrace.
Alas, poor soul, not yet at rest! She wanders o’er the scene of her deep sorrow to this very day.
The original Monmouth House in Spring Lake from the 1878 Wolman & Rose Atlas
This story likely grew out of a true 1882 incident at Wreck Pond, when a young woman who worked at the Monmouth House wandered into Wreck Pond and was soon in water over her head. Not knowing how to swim, she drown. At the time, the inlet was open to the sea, with a marshy area in what is now the most southerly section of Spring Lake. The shifting sand, mud and tides made swimming in the inlet and pond quite dangerous.
