Hey guys, it's Kathy from paranormal books and curiosities and the paranormal museum. And this is paranormal tales from the tower. Today I am going to talk to you about the Berkeley Ocean Front hotel here in Asbury Park. And the reason is is that during paranormal pride, May 31st through June 2nd, we are actually going to be allowed to investigate this hotel for the first time. When I first came to Asbury park about 14 years ago, one of the locations that I really wanted to get into and really wanted to investigate was a hotel that was known as the Berkeley Carteret. The Berkeley Carteret was one of these huge old luxury hotels that had been built at the turn of the last century. It was amazing looking. It was this huge brick structure that was shaped like a giant x. And when it had been built, it had been built as the premiere resort hotel on the east coast. It had pretty much everything that you could possibly want and was within spitting distance of the ocean. Now right across the street where the ocean is and the, and the boardwalk is, um, is what's known as Asbury Park's North beach or north shore depending on how you say it. And this location has actually been the site of two major shipwrecks in New Jersey history. Now it's not uncommon for ships to wreck off the coast of New Jersey. We have a very complicated coastline, but there are 127 models of potential landing spots for wrecking ships. And the idea that two of the biggest ship wrecks with the largest loss of life should pretty much um, come to rest. One on top of the other in, you know, about a quarter of a mile space is kind of unheard of. Uh, 80 years apart. The first ship was called the new era and the shipwreck was called the wreck of the new era. I'm not going to get into that if you come to paranormal pride, we're going to talk a lot about that. But it took place in 1854, so a good 20 years before Asbury Park became, as we park and incorporated the entire area. Had a reputation for being haunted from the events of that shipwreck across the street now is this huge luxurious hotel. Now the Berkeley Ocean Front, as it's known now has been completely renovated. It's a beautiful place. It's, it's a remarkable structure. And one of the reasons that it is so remarkable is that it's the only hotel to have stayed in continuous operation from its opening until today. So Asbury park had tons of hotels, tons of b& b's, tons of motels, but they all came and went with the changes in Asbury Park's financial and cultural history. The Berkeley didn't, the Berkeley kind of weathered the slings and arrows of all of Asbury Park's fortune. Now, when I first came here, I reached out the then owners of the Berkeley Carteret and I said, hey, I've heard amazing stories about what's going on there and I would really love to come in, investigate, right, a true history of it, and share with you guys anything that I come up with. And I got a very curt,&, succinct note back, which essentially said, if you tell anyone that the Berkeley Carter at hotel is haunted, we'll sue you. Now guys, that's not going to happen. You can't sue someone for claiming that a hotel is haunted. But in the interest of being a good neighbor, I backed off and I just said, hey, if you're ever interested or your every ready to have this story told, please come to me. And every couple of years I would check their temperature to see whether or not they were interested or whether or not, um, their circumstances had changed or, but I still kept collecting the stories. Now the hotel history is really diverse. So it started as this amazing luxury is a hotel. And then around, uh, um, in the 1930s when everything kind of changed, uh, because the economy of the entire country changed it, it wasn't able to make as much money. And so it started to have different types of occupations, different types of, of people coming in meeting. Some people were staying for the summer, some people would stay for the night, some people would stay for the entire year. And so he had different structures. Um, they had a massive full, a city block size pool that was right around the corner from there. And when World War Two happened, Asbury Park became a, uh, location for the navy to, um, train midshipmen. Um, and it also, the Berkeley Carteret hotel became a hospital for naval officers and naval enlisted men, sailors who were injured when they, they would send them back to the United States, they would send them back from the Pacific back from the Atlantic theater and they would, um, they would recuperate here. Obviously some of them survived and some of them didn't. But the Berkeley Carteret is kind of famous for having been a hospital for sailors, um, amongst other things. Um, Johnny Cash ownned this hotel at one point, um, on pretty much every major rock star from the 1960s, the 1970s stayed here. And I'm not going to get too much into the history. Um, I'm just trying to kind of give you guys an idea of why we're so excited to be able to do this. Um, there is one room in the hotel that has had an inordinate number of suicides. It's not the only room in the hotel, but there's one where multiple suicides have occurred. Um, and that's really interesting because, um, even though suicides are fairly common in resort towns, to have everything kind of focused on one room is, is unusual. And we've secured that room. We're going to be in that room. And the interesting thing is all of the other rooms surrounding it and specifically on the floor below it have a reputation for a lot of activity. But one of the things that I wanted to do is just read you some of the reviews of the hotel. Now guys, this is before paranormal even opened. This is 10, 12 years ago. Um, and these are all online. These are unprovoked. Um, and you can go and just Google this stuff. Um, and it's just haunted Berkeley. Um, I'm typing it and you guys can hear me right now. Um, and you can see what people are writing even 10 years ago now, remember people that were coming in and seeing me for years and years and years saying, Hey, can you tell us more about this hotel? These are the people that actually just went online and decided to write a review. You can well imagine that there are probably dozens who didn't. So the first, um, the first one comes up and it says haunted review of Berkeley Ocean fronts in this was reviewed in 2008. I don't even know where to start when it comes to the Berkeley. First of all, Asbury Park is freaky enough. It's true. We all felt like we were in the movie silent hill. When you pull up to the hotel, you feel like you're entering, entering a psychiatric hospital, even though the inside looks brand new, you get this weird feeling from the minute you enter the hotel, especially since it's so huge, but has so few guests, we all thought the elevator was going to collapse and literally held onto each other around 1:00 AM we heard people outside our doors. So my fiance tried to open the door to get into the hall and someone was literally holding it from the other side. He struggled for several minutes, finally got the door open and no one was there. Even though we shut off one of the lamps by the switch, it was still flickering until we unplugged it all together. Our whole group was so scared that we didn't even fall asleep until 3:00 AM then we woke up early, got our stuff together and about 10 minutes and headed for seaside heights. I would never go back to this hotel or Asbury park again. So obviously this was a long time ago. Things have changed drastically in Asbury Park, but the experiences that this person is talking about, and it's Trishy 86 from New York, um, this is not uncommon. These are the things that people report all the time, including famous performers who have come into my shop and explained the situation and explains some of the experiences that they've had specifically on the fifth floor. So this is actually someone who traveled from New Zealand in 2012 uh, I'm sure it then it just says right at the top review of Berkeley Ocean Front hotel. I'm pretty sure it's haunted. That's the name of her review. The hotel decor was nice and my friends and I liked it. I didn't find a problem with the cleanliness to our room. It was fine. We paid blank for the night, which isn't horrible for the Jersey Shore. A lot of hotels are priced much higher and not nearly as nice. The staff is friendly. I don't like that you have to pay for parking. Unfortunately guys and Asbury Park, that's an issue and that there is no fridge, but weird stuff happened in our room. Lights were flickering, weird noises, water shutting off out of nowhere. It just felt as if it was haunted, haunted, wondering if anyone else felt this way. The answer is yes. Other people did feel this way. In fact, if we just move on to the next review, it says Nice hotel but totally haunted and this is from jinx jewels from Brooklyn, New York. I have to say we really enjoyed staying in this hotel. We loved the pool and the close proximity to a pretty quiet and chill beach in Asbury Park, which I love. It's such a cute gridding town and I've enjoyed visiting Asbury park for a while now. This is the second time I've stayed at the Berkeley. It's clean, big grand, and the rooms are nice enough. I have no complaints on that end, but I do have to say that it is totally haunted. I'm very sensitive to ghosts and spirits and they are everywhere. We came down with my boyfriend's three year old daughter and she was up in the middle of the night having a full conversation with our man in our room. She wasn't the only one in our room who felt him. We all did, but she was able to talk to him. It made our little vacation that much more of an adventure, so I don't mind, but I would be curious about the history of the Berkeley. It seems like there's much more to it than just a hotel and of course the answer is there is way more to the Berkeley than just a hotel. It has been so many different things. It has been used in a multitude of different ways. It has been the site of murders, suicides, a unfortunate deaths, but also wonderful, great, exciting moments in people's lives. It is a grand hotel when you look at this place. In fact, when I brought Adam to it for the first time, he looked at it and he said, this is what Waverley would look like if it was intact, and that's the kind of size and magnitude that you get. It's like going to Waverly hills, but it's still there. Now what's really cool is the management has given us kind of carte blanche to do whatever we want in the locations that have a reputation for being haunted. So we're planning on doing pretty extensive investigations. We're going to have all the bells and whistles. We're going to set up SLS, camera's going to have night vision cameras. But aside from that, we're keeping it a very small and intimate group. So we're going to be able to really investigate this location. Now if you're coming to paranormal pride because you want to hang out, have a couple of cocktails and just meet Adam and Ben and hang out with chip and me, that's absolutely cool. But if you're coming to paranormal pride because you want to investigate guys, we got that for you. This is a fantastic location. I hope it's something that you Google. I hope it's something that you check out and make sure that you look at all of the pictures too because you're going to see how far back this goes and just think about being able to be in these rooms, um, and to, to wander the halls, especially on the fifth floor. Now if you have the means, we have a block of rooms booked, blocked off for participants in this, there is a discount on the paranormal pride website, www.paranormalpride.com that will get you 10% off. I'm telling you, these places are very active. So if you have the means and you want to stay, I'm going to highly recommend that you get one of these rooms and the investigation can go on a lot longer than just the four or five hours that we have set up. Anyway, I hope that you, um, I hope that you've made your plans to come, even if you can only come for one day, try to get there, try to come for the Saturday investigation. You will be amongst the first people to ever investigate what I think is going to be one of the best haunts on the east coast of the United States. Anyway, thanks so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope I get to meet you guys and see you. Um, if you have any questions, if you have anything that you want me to talk about, go ahead and send me an email info@paranormalbooksandj.com and I'll address it and my podcast where you can hit me up on Facebook at a paranormal and j or on Instagram at the paranormal museum. Um, you guys know how to reach me. Um, and I hope you have a great day. Take care. Bye.