The New York Times, Sunday, March 22,1998

Guiding Spirits, Don't call Jane Doherty a Ghostbuster. She Breaks Their Spell by Making Friends With Them.

By Bill Kent

Jane Doherty gets one call a week, sometimes more, especially in spring and fall, when, she said, "spirit activity is at its peak."The callers complain of cold spots, oppressive feelings, inexplicable noises and varieties of bumps in the night."One caller was quite distraught about her teen-age daughter, who had suddenly started to speak French," Ms. Doherty said. "What bothered her was that her daughter didn't know French."

To the distraught, perplexed or linguistically impaired who find her telephone number, Ms. Doherty gives a basic instruction. "I tell them to calm down," she said. "I tell them not to panic. I tell them to get a hold of themselves and to believe in themselves -that they are always in control, not the ghost."And is it always a ghost?

"Usually. In most situations, after I calm the people down, I can tell them how to deal with the particular kind of spirit activity they seem to have. In four cases out of five, that's all that's necessary. We can learn to live with spirits, and it can be a positive experience. Sometimes the ghosts are loved ones who are present because they are interested in us and want to help us."

Sometimes, but not always. "About a dozen times a year," she said, "I feel a need to investigate."Don't call her a ghostbuster. For 15 years, Ms. Doherty, 51, of South Plainfield, an assertiveness trainer and part-time psychic, has been performing what she calls "ghost investigations" that have taken her to Waterloo Village in Stanhope, the Spy House Museum in Port Monmouth, rental houses in Piscataway, Victorian inns in Cape May and, last June, a bed-and-breakfast in Fall River, Mass., where Lizzie Borden was accused of murdering her father and stepmother in 1893.

"There was definite spirit activity in that house," said Ms. Doherty, president of the Morristown-based New Jersey Society of Parapsychology. "During a seance I led, I sensed that Lizzie didn't do it, that there was child abuse going on in the house and that it was important to the spirits there that the word get out."
It is also important to note that the numerous laboratory studies by scientists have yet to establish a conclusive test for, or proof of, ghosts, hauntings, psychic abilities and paranormal phenomena, and that such beliefs have regularly been debunked by numerous psychologists, physicists and skeptics.While accounts of ghostly visitations can be found in the Bible and the plays of Shakespeare, the vogue for seances, spirit mediums and ghost investigations dates back to 1848, when Margaret and Katherine Fox of Rochester, N.Y., made highly publicized statements that they could summon spirits that made rapping sounds. The Fox sisters, and many others, were later exposed as frauds, but this did not stop such eminent Victorians as Henry James, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Elizabeth Barrett Browning from believing in their abilities. Ms. Doherty encourages skepticism. "It took me a long time to accept that I had this ability," she said. "I went through a lot of denial. When I was growing up, all I wanted was to be an english teacher.

She went so far as to get a degree in English from Trenton State College and teach English for two years in the South Plainfield school system. She stopped teaching 22 years ago to raise a family. She is now single again; her two children live with her.

"Did I think I would ever divorce my husband when I married him? Of course not," she said. "When people hear you're a psychic, they think you know your own future, but it never works out that way. You can't apply your talents to yourself, and you can't exploit your talents to make money or for personal gain. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow on the stock market. It's not that kind of a gift."

So far, her ghost investigations at the Spy House Museum and Waterloo Village brought her notice as the subject of an episode of "Sightings" on Fox television. She is also a regular guest on "Future Friday" on WCTC radio in Somerset and leads ghost tours of Waterloo Village on Halloween night. Her self-education in ghost investigating "is mostly intuitive," she said. "I've read as much as I can on the subject,but most of what's written isn't that helpful."

Especially when there isn't a ghost. "Sometimes people who have called me had mental problems and just didn't want to get help," Ms. Doherty said. "There's nothing I can do for them but tell them to get the help they need. You need to have an open mind, but you also have to maintain a healthy skepticism."

Skepticism about ghosts did not stop Christy Igoe, owner of the Sea Holly Inn in Cape May, from calling Ms. Doherty in 1993 when she began hearing "footsteps when nobody was in the house," Ms. Igoe said. "My late husband had seen what he thought was a shadowy figure in the window several times when he was outside. We also had cold spots in various parts of the house."

To be sure, Ms. Igoe first checked the inn's heater. "I consider myself the biggest skeptic I know," she said. "The heater was working just fine."After spending a night in the inn, Ms. Doherty, who said she had never charged a fee for ghost investigations, found at least two ghosts: a former chambermaid and a former owner of the inn. Ms. Doherty asked the ghost of the owner, which she believed to be the source of the noise, to leave. "She called that 'going into the light,' " Ms. Igoe said. "She just stood there and talked to it and he was gone. It wasn't that dramatic."

The chambermaid was invited to remain. "We're quite happy with her," Ms. Igoe said. "Some of our guests have felt her as a warm presence. It would be nice if she'd help out with the chores, but you can't have everything." Although Ms. Doherty has done ghost investigations and seances in five Cape May Inns, other innkeepers were reticent about describing what services she rendered. "What she did was amazing, but I can't talk about it," said one innkeeper who is involved in local politics and spoke on condition of anonymity. "People would get the wrong idea."

Most of those who summon her for ghost investigations "keep quiet about what happens because the reasons for the spirit activity can be very personal," Ms. Doherty said. "In the 15 years I've been doing this, not one case has been the result of something evil. I've found what I believe to be evidence of murder, rape and acts of cruelty that the spirits want us to know about, but nothing in which spirits want to cause the occupants of the house any kind of harm. Sometimes they're just confused and don't know that it's time to go."

In addition to loved ones, Ms. Doherty said, ghosts can be former pets or even "areas of energy that remain in a specific place and cause what might be called poltergeist phenomena, but nothing like what you see in the movies."

Making a three-bedroom suburban house in Succasunna, Morris County, give up its ghosts "required meditation, compassion and a little love," she said, after the owner of the house Shirley Sicsko, asked her to Investigate in October. Ms. Sicsko, who had met Ms. Doherty on her annual Halloween ghost tours of Waterloo Village, did not tell her anything about the "noises, moans and groans, and heavy feelings" she had found when she converted the house to a holistic health school.

"The first thing Jane said when she walked in was, 'Oh, no, I'm going to have to go up into the attic," Ms. Sicsko said. The two ghosts Ms. Doherty detected in the house, an old man and a young boy, had died long before the house was built, she said. One was in the attic.

"Ghosts can be drawn to a new house, looking for security or a feeling of closeness with its occupants," Ms. Doherty said. And they can be made to leave, she said, when informed that the closeness they seek is "really on the other side."

In addition to performing ghost investigations, Ms. Doherty has been a paid consultant in Federal and state fraud cases involving people posing as psychics. Ms. Doherty was recommended for the job by Anna M. Lascurain, a Freehold lawyer who has prosecuted consumer fraud cases. Ms. Lascurain is a co-author, with Dr. Joanne D. S. McMahon, of "Shopping for Miracles: A Guide to Psychics and Psychic Powers" (Roxbury Park Books, 1997), a book about recognizing psychic fraud.

"Jane is one of the most ethical psychics I know," Ms. Lascurain said. "She's sincere. I've seen her work, and if she doesn't feel anything about the house or a person, she'll say that. If she's wrong about something, she'll admit it. Frauds will say anything to appease people. They make their money by exploiting people's hopes and fears." Although she has observed Ms. Doherty conducting ghost investigations, "I've never seen a ghost," Ms. Lascurain said. "I've never felt anything. I don't know what to believe."

For Ms. Doherty, a practicing Catholic, "what people think about ghosts and psychic phenomena is not that important to me," she said. "I've learned that I can help people. If I can help them, I will. If I can't, I'm the first to admit it."

The Courier News, Thursday, October 14, 1999.

By Robert Makin
Staff Writer

Ghost hunter Jane Doherty stands on the porch of the Metlar-Bodine House, A Raritan Landing home that is Piscataway’s historical and cultural museum. The South Plainfield-based paranormal investigator gained notoriety in 1997 for channeling the confused spirit of accused killer Lizzie Borden "into the light."

That was during one of more than 200 seances and 100 paranormal investigations the clairvoyant has had since 1986. "You rarely can see a ghost," says Doherty, a former english teacher who turned to ghost hunting to "edu-tain" the public about "the other side." "I’ve only seen about eight. But you can feel their presence. You can sense them by a sharp drop in temperature or a smell, like pipe smoke or perfume. They’re also abundant near some kind of energy source, like a river."

Both Doherty and I turn to look beyond River road at the old Raritan. She smiles as she opens the door, which she’ll do several times Halloween weekend and throughout November doing ghost tours of the Metlar-Bodine House and its haunted counterpart across the Raritan, the historic Van Wickle house in the Somerset section of Franklin. As I step inside the museum, the new batteries in my tape recorder stop working. Later, Courier News photographer Kenny Pang has a similar experience with his camera’s freshly charged battery pack.

"That happens all the time," Doherty says. "Stop it, John!" She’s scolding the ghost of John Metlar, the last of the Metlar’s to own the 221-year old house. But he doesn’t listen. Fortunately, I don’t need a tape recorder to relay what happens next. "Put your hand on my stomach," says Doherty, standing in a corner of the room that is the first stop of the tour. Either the portly Doherty has the stomach control of a belly dancer or something is making her tummy expand about 6 inches.

"This is how I know I’m, in the presence of a spirit" Doherty says. "They channel themselves through my stomach." A restrained laugh turns into a shudder as I look at the object displayed in the corner. A chill rattles my spine and a smell permeates the room. "He must have smoked a pipe," says Doherty, staring down at the tombstone of Jonathan Martin, the grandson of John Martin, who founded Piscataway in 1656. About 20 years later Peter Bodine built his home in 1728, Jonathan Martin died and was buried where the Middlesex Mall now stands. His tombstone was found near the mall a couple of years after it was built and brought to the museum in the early 1980s.

"His family plot apparently is underneath the mall," says Betty K. Scott, the museum’s historian." I guess he’s not too happy about that."

Only one volunteer at the Metlar-Bodine house claims to actually have seen a ghost. They’re friendly ghosts they’re more mischievous than anything else. But several staff members have had other kinds of eerie encounters. IN 1990, curator June Sadlowski was in the kitchen making tea when she heard glass shatter.

"I had just put a photo of the field house on the mantel," says Sadlowski, a volunteer at the museum since it opened in 1979. "When I heard the crash, I was thinking that it must have dropped off the mantel. But it had apparently been thrown across the room." Scott says the man in the field house photo, John Perrine, did not get along with John Metlar. "We just assume that John Metlar didn’t want a picture of this guy in his house," Scott says. Sadlowski adds, "It was then that I really believed that there must have been a ghost in the museum."

A year later, the museum’s caretaker, Jim Podeszwa, and his wife, Shia, were awakened at 4a.m. by someone singing in the room above theirs. Because no one else was in the house, Scott believes the voice may have belonged to the ghost of Metlar’s wife, Estelle, who wrote limericks and sea chanties in that room. "They’re friendly ghosts," scott says. "They’re more mischievous than anything else. Lights will flicker and the gas in the stove will go out. We find it amusing."

Doherty includes on her tour the Podeszwas’ room, now decorated with a spindle bed and a dress stand with a white, Victorian dress. She tells how a volunteer once tried to enter the house but it was locked. The volunteer had wanted to take photographs of some of the exhibits. Instead, she went across the street to take a picture of the house. From the window of the room, she saw a man waiving at her.

"Ghosts also manifest around psychic energy," says Doherty, the host of psychic call-in shows on WCTC 1450AM in the Somerset section of Franklin and WJHR 1040AM in Kingwood. "The opportunity to have an experience with a spirit is also greater with a crowd of people, because there’s more energy coming off them. On last year’s ghost tour, somebody said they saw a ghost as they were coming out of this room."

Having sensed more than a dozen ghosts during an investigation of the Metlar-Bodine house a year ago, Doherty will conduct a séance Nov. 19 there to try to find out exactly whose spirits are there.

She’s convinced one belongs to Eleanor Mills, victim in the unsolved 1922 Hall-Mills murder case. The original robes of the presiding judge, Charles Parker, are on display at the museum. "I get a strong sense that she wants some justice," says Doherty, whose first book, "Seeing Through the Mystic Mind: Insights into Prophesy," is scheduled to be published next year.

If she’s not too busy promoting her book, Doherty would like to have a séance next Halloween at the Van Wickle House to tap into the unhappy spirits of an owner who died in the 1920s and her daughter, who reluctantly sold the home rather that live there alone. Doherty says she has sensed the ghost of Gen. Charles Cornwallis at The Franklin Inn in the East Millstone section of Franklin. His British troops briefly were headquartered there during the Revolutionary War.

But the owners of The Franklin Inn, now a used bookstore, won’t allow a ghost tour. The owners of the Cranbury Inn in Cranbury are much more cooperative, Doherty says. While the ghost hunter doesn’t have a tour there, the owners, who called Doherty in for an investigation, are happy to share stories about their eatery. Doherty also found spooky spirits in the Raritan Public Library in Raritan Borough. But neither she nor the library’s staff will comment about the ghost hunt she conducted there. "All I can tell you is that the place is really haunted," Doherty says.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 29, 1996

Tapping into the Spirit of Cape May

By Jacqueline L. Urgo, Inquirer Correspondent

Jane Doherty checks out a room at the Sea Holly Inn in Cape May. The owners invited the paranormal investigator to spend the night. Doherty said her stomach would protrude if a spirit was present. It did.

Cape May- Jane Doherty's overnight stay in two of this resort's bed-and-breakfasts resulted in a lot of moaning and a terribly swollen stomach. A case of indigestion? She thinks it was the ghosts. Doherty, a South Plainfield clairvoyant and paranormal investigator, doesn't use the electromagnetic equipment associated with Hollywood ghostbusters. She relies strictly on her gut feelings. She says the apron of flesh around her ample middle expands and turns rock solid when she encounters what she believes is spirit energy. And Doherty's stomach got a workout this week after local innkeepers asked her to deal with what they fear are transparent guests who refuse to leave.

The owners of the Sea Holly Inn and The Rose and the Thorn, both on Stockton Avenue, invited Doherty to contact the spirits they believe haunt their establishments. Both of the inns are closed for the season and Doherty did not charge for her services. "My stomach doesn't lie," said Doherty, the middle-aged president of the 125 member Jersey Society of Parapsychology. "I've come to depend on my stomach as a very reliable tool. But sometimes I think the least they could have done was make me skinnier instead of making me expand when I was given this gift," said the former high school English teacher, who tries to bring humor and education to an avocation that draws its share of skeptics.

At the Sea Holly, where owner Christy lgoe believes at least two ghosts reside, Doherty said she met up with a spirit, called Elizabeth who once worked as a maid for the original owners of the house. While the invisible maid has never lifted a finger to cook or clean any time since Igoe bought the place 10 years ago, she has been said to make herself visible on several occasions to the owners and guests.

From her encounter with the ghost, Doherty feels that the long-dead woman haunts the house because she is waiting for her lost-at-sea fiance to return. She has reportedly been seen as a hazy white light illuminating a third-floor dormer, from the room she presumably once inhabited." I believe that many times, spirits linger in a place because they are stuck and cannot move on after they have died," Doherty said. "I try to coax them to find the light and move on."

A seance at the house later that evening appeared to produce another round of mysterious circumstances. While Doherty attempted to contact the spirit of one of the participants' dead spouses, the scent of the cologne the man always wore wafted into the room.

After the seance was over, at the stroke of midnight, the digital alarm clocks in five of the inns' guest rooms sounded in succession. Laura Calnan, who owns The Thorn and the Rose, invited Doherty to spend the night in her place to try to find out why her then 9-year-old son, Branden, began speaking in a very pronounced French dialect one summer day soon after the family moved in.

Calnan says a second-floor front bedroom and a third-floor hallway are also the scenes of hauntings. According to the owner, in the bedroom, a female spirit on three occasions has appeared to male occupants of the room and sat on the edge of the bed. In the hallway, a bouncing ball and a child's wagon have been heard, she said.

Doherty believes Cape May may be a hot spot for ghost haunting, and hunting, because of its storied past and its unique collection of old buildings so close to the water. "Spirits need water to manifest," Doherty said. "That makes this the perfect spot for them."

"The fact that there are ghosts here doesn't really bother me," said Calnan's daughter Katrina, 15. "But if they are going to stay, I think they should have to pay up like any other guest.

Copyright©2005 Jane Doherty. All rights reserved

Television Appearances: The TODAY SHOW- NBC SIGHTINGS-Fox SIGHTINGS-NBC America's Talking- CNBC Into the 90's (United Artists Cable) People are talking NBC House Party CNN News12 New Jersey In Your Interest A Closer Look (Suburban Cable) Gordon Banta Show (TKR Cable) Jersey Accent (TKR cable) Sky Watch-UFOs (Long Island Cable) News Features (Monmouth Cable) Face to Face (Storer Cable)

Read Jane Doherty's Account of How Her Own Psychic Abilities Developed: Awakening The Mystic Gift by Jane Doherty This facinating story lays out the path of how one special woman, Jane Doherty, started down a road untraveled by many and understood by few - the world of the psychic researcher. Jane will take you through her personal journeys and her emotional and philosophical challenges and inspire you to believe in your own possibilities. Her book is an interesting and unique examination of spirituality and mysticism that reads like an adventure story. Jane's experiences will both fascinate you and keep you reading for more. To Read this Book - Order Here

Site contents and images copyright Wild Wolf Webmasters.com
Web Site Design and Search Engine Optimization
SEO Writer and SEO Writing