Liberty Hall Museum hosts Paranormal Activity Night

By Jennifer Balsa | Published by October 23, 2020

It is that time of the year again when we bring out all the scary decorations. From skeletons to squashed brains to hanging eyeballs, the facades are ready for Halloween.

It is tradition that the month of October is dedicated to fall activities, such as apple picking, pumpkin carving, corn mazes runs, haunted houses and many other entertainments. However, with the new and restricted lifestyles that we are all being forced to follow this 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, spooky season is taking  a new twist. Trick or treating will be exchanged for retail family-sized bags of chocolate at home in order to keep the little ones happy.

As for Kean University students, the school has also taken a very creative approach to Fall activities and Halloween celebrations this year.On Saturday Oct. 3, at 7:00pm, Liberty Hall Museum hosted its first Paranormal Activity night. The event was announced on the Liberty Hall Museum Website, where tickets went on sale and rapidly sold out. It was open to the general public but required the attendees to be 18 years of age or older.

The event took place at the Main House as well as the Carriage House where the team of New Jersey Paranormal brought their paranormal activity equipment to detect any “ghosts” from any deceased Kean family member that used to call the museum their home. It states on the event flyer posted on the website that “there have been full-body apparitions in several locations of the museum.”

The event was organized by Maryellen McVeigh, who is also a staff member at the Liberty Hall Museum.

“We are taking advantage of our outdoor space to hold events and keeping them at a smaller capacity than what we normally would as well as requiring attendees to wear a mask at all times,”  McVeigh said, referring to the new way the museum has adapted to the pandemic to conduct activities.

She explained that the staff has had to ideate various creative ways in order to keep the museum functioning and open to the public for tours and recreational activities.

The NJ Paranormal activity team brought different types of equipment utilized for detecting movement and sound. They first scouted the place for any paranormal sightings and then later asked the audience to step in to presence the findings.

“At some point there was a drastic drop of the temperature in the room,” McVeigh said. She explained that throughout the event the equipment kept detecting some sounds that were similar to footsteps as well as some strange movement. Additionally, one of the machines with movement detections that was used to contact the spirits picked up on the presence of the spirit when asked “Let us know if you are here.”

“This is nothing new for the staff,” McVeigh explained, as they have witnessed several partitions in the past but always benevolent experiences.

Liberty Hall is rich in its history, since it has gone through many different generations of the Kean family. It first belonged to governor William Livingston, who bought the acres in 1760, and spent the next 12 years developing the terrains. After Livington’s death, Peter Kean buys the property for his mother, Susan Livingston Kean, who was governor Livingston’s niece. They were the first members of the Kean family to inhabit the property.

In 1925, Captain John Kean, who had inherited the house, married Mary Alice Barney. “Mrs. Kean had a love of art and American history. When Captain Kean inherited Liberty Hall in 1932, the couple researched the history of the house and brought together family antiques to enhance its historic character,” as stated on the Liberty Hall’s Museum’s website.

After the Captain’s death in 1949, Mrs. Kean began to transform the house into a museum. Due to the property’s various owners and family history, it is not rare for the staff to sometimes witness strange behavior in the museum.

The Paranormal Activity event lasted until 10 p.m. and had a total of 18 attendees who were divided into 4 different groups of about 4-5 people each in order to follow appropriate  social distancing guidelines. Due to the success of this event, more activities like this will be carried out throughout the month of october such as a “Ghost Tour,” on Oc. 30 and a “Pumpkin Patch Day, on Oct. 31.

“The Liberty Hall Museum staff will continue to find new ways to carry out our events in order to offer the community a safe way of entertainment,” asserted McVeigh as she affirmed her confidence in the success of future events.

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